Deadly Murder, page 18
“And third,” I had saved this for last. “I have never been considered docile, nor am I one to simply wait at home for the master of the house to return. In conclusion, Mr. Brodie, you knew very well I did not possess, nor was likely to ever possess, any of those qualities when you proposed to me.”
“It must have been momentary insanity.” He pulled me against him.
I fought to control the laugher. “Momentary insanity?”
“Or a wee bit longer. I’m not certain there’s a cure.” He kissed me quite thoroughly.
Lily smothered a laugh behind her hand.
Brodie finally set me from him.
“And I presume there’s no talking ye out of going to St. Pancras,” he presumed correctly.
“Not at all,” I finally managed to say. “We will be there and back in short order. Perhaps even before your return from meeting with the Home Secretary.”
He read the note again.
“You might want to dress more formally for your meeting with the Home Secretary,” I suggested.
We had both met Henry Matthews, the present Home Secretary, in a previous inquiry.
He was quite formal in his manner, yet not the sort to look down on those who were not of the peerage, and had highly valued our participation in a particular case at the time. He had left the position of Home Secretary the year before, then was called back to his present term by Mr. Gladstone.
“Aye,” Brodie replied as he retreated to the adjacent room.
When he eventually emerged, he had been transformed into the very striking image of a gentleman, albeit with tie in hand.
“I can never tie the bloody thing,” he grumbled, and would have tossed it aside.
I retrieved it. I felt that dark gaze on me as I very efficiently tied it for him. When I had completed the task and would have stepped back, his hand covered mine and he stopped me.
“Be careful.”
“Of course. After all, who else would tie your tie when you are summoned to the Home Office?” I replied.
“Perhaps a woman on the street corner,” he suggested.
“Who would tolerate that Scots temper?”
The answer was in the half smile at one corner of his mouth. “Aye.”
“You would do well to remember that, sir.”
He held onto my hand a moment longer.
“Whatever ye learn, ye’re to return here and not set off on yer own.”
“Of course, dear.”
“We should leave no later than eleven o’clock because of the weather,” I told Lily after he had gone.
“It’s only a few miles, but that will give us plenty of time with traffic and depending on the road condition.”
She grinned at me. “Of course.”
St. Pancras Old Church was not far as the crow flies, according to that old saying. Less than three miles.
However, the way was often crowded with traffic, routes that changed due to the extension of the rail line, and then there was the weather.
Mr. Cavendish was able to secure the service of Mr. Jarvis once more. He was knowledgeable of most areas of London, and I was confident he would see us safely there.
Lily and I climbed aboard. Rupert the hound immediately followed and grinned up at us as he sat on the floor of the coach between us.
“Mr. Brodie might have mentioned that the hound should accompany you,” Mr. Cavendish commented as he closed the door of the coach.
And pigs fly, I thought.
“It must be comforting to have someone who cares so about you,” Lily commented as we set off.
I smiled to myself. It was.
We encountered no delays and arrived well in time for our meeting with the vicar. I asked Mr. Jarvis to wait.
True to his nature, the hound was excited to explore the churchyard that surrounded St. Pancras Church.
We were met by the clerk of the church as we stepped inside and were informed that the vicar had been called to a meeting at Westminster. However, the clerk, a slender young man by the name of James with a kind smile, had been authorized to assist us in whatever we needed.
“If you will follow me, the church records are in the library.”
The original church of St. Pancras was several hundred years old, with the new section added early in the 19th century that included a sanctuary, chancel, and nave.
We passed the sanctuary where a sign noted that service would be held on the following Friday and then on Sunday as usual. Otherwise, it was quite empty.
The library was in what remained of the Old Church with hand-carved stone walls, the faint echo of our footsteps on the stone floor, and the familiar smell of books, hundreds of them.
“I’m told that it was far easier to keep this as the library, rather than rebuild it and then move all the books. Some of these are hundreds of years old from when the old church was founded,” the clerk explained.
“The records you are looking for should be here as all records of the church have been meticulously preserved.”
Following our trip to Cambridge, and St. Andrew and St. Mary’s church in Grantchester, Lily and I were quite familiar with church records.
“I took the liberty of pulling the records that cover the years the new church was built until present. They’re on this table. The vicar, Mr. Powell, indicated these should provide the information you’re looking for.”
“I will leave you to your search, as I have work in the office,” he explained. “I will return later if you have any questions.”
The records had been laid out on a reading table with an electric lamp. We both removed our coats before sitting at the table. I took my notebook from my bag and smiled as Lily did the same. We each spread a large leather-bound book filled with entries.
The beginning date of the one before me was 1762. The entries included a record of births, marriages, deaths, and the dates a new vicar arrived with an occasional entry noting the departure date of a prior vicar, Henry Winston.
He had arrived in May 1784, for a period of almost ten years! He departed for a new parish in June 1793, with the new vicar arriving a month prior, according to what had been written there.
There were other entries for clerks and the occasion of a visit by the bishop of the archdiocese as well as visits by notable persons, including a visit by the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria’s father, April 1816. Most were written in Latin.
I quickly scanned each page as the years passed, the archive ending in January of 1860.
“It must be in the one you have,” I told Lily as I closed the book I’d searched. “An entry could have been made any time in 1861 or perhaps 1862, depending on the church record-keeping.”
It was tedious, although I was grateful for my ability to translate Latin, while Lily was unusually quiet.
“I can’t read most of this,” she finally said. “The year for each one is written in Latin as well.”
I glanced over her shoulder.
“Look for the Reverend Chastain’s name,” I suggested. “That should be easier.”
“I found it,” she eventually announced.
I translated the remainder of the entry. “The Reverend Joseph Chastain, Vicar, arrived 8 September 1861.”
“Continue searching for when he might have been sent to a new parish,” I told her as I opened my notebook and entered the date she’d found.
“The usual term is three years before being assigned elsewhere. That might be sometime in 1864, or possibly later.”
She continued to scan the entries on the following pages.
“I didn’t find anything,” she eventually announced.
Was it possible Reverend Chastain had remained longer?
“He might have stayed on,” I suggested. “It’s possible there was no one to assume the position at that time.” I stood with her then, reading through the entries as well.
“There.” I pointed to an entry dated 16 May 1866.
It appeared that Reverend Chastain had remained at St. Pancras an additional two years past his normal term.
As with the other entries made by hand, the ink had faded as the paper in the archives aged. It was difficult to read the note that had been added. Lily moved the lamp closer.
“What else does it say?” Lily asked.
“Faithful servant in the Lord’s service,” I translated. “Departed this date for St. Mary’s Church, Hendon.”
Lily had done well. At least now we knew when Reverend Chastain had left, but what of his daughter who had suffered so horribly?
“Did you find any reference for Mary Chastain?”
Lily shook her head. “The vicar’s name was the only one.”
A sound beyond the library caught both of our attention. I glanced at the clock on the wall of the library.
It had grown quite late. The clerk had been gone for quite some time and should have returned.
“We have what we came for, we should leave. If we see the clerk on our way, we will thank him.” I pulled on my coat and tucked my notebook into my bag as Lily did the same.
“It’s quite late,” she whispered as we retraced out steps in the darkened hallway. “And there’s no one about.”
There was another sound now, very nearby. I thought of Brodie’s warning.
Was someone there, just behind us, moving swiftly now in our direction? I quickened our steps, and Lily as well.
We reached the end of the hallway and a hand reached out.
“Lady Forsythe.”
It was James, the clerk of the church.
“I was just on my way to see if you needed any assistance. It’s quite late and I will be leaving soon.”
“I thought that you might have returned earlier,” I suggested with a glance back down the hallway. “There was someone very near the library.”
He shook his head. “I have only just returned after assisting one of our parishioners.”
“I must be mistaken,” I said.
Except that I was certain I was not. There had definitely been someone in the hallway.
“At this time of the day and the middle of the week, I’m the only one here,” he explained. “Except for the groundskeeper.”
Lily started to protest. She had heard that sound as well.
While I would have liked very much to know who was there, I wasn’t willing to risk any harm to Lily. And it did seem that whoever had been there was not there now. I only hoped that Mr. Jarvis was still waiting with the coach.
I thanked James once more and we quickly left.
“There was someone there,” Lily said quite vehemently. “We should find them.”
“We need to leave!” I replied.
“But what if it was the man you saw before?”
Precisely, I thought.
Mr. Jarvis was there, the coach silhouetted against a dark grey sky as snow began to fall once more. And somewhere on the church grounds I heard the sound of a hound baying quite furiously.
Lily gave a sharp whistle, then another.
Rupert eventually appeared, though reluctantly as he stopped more than once at full attention in the direction he had come.
Lily whistled once more, and he returned to the coach.
We quickly climbed inside, and I asked Jarvis to take us to Sussex Square.
“Sussex Square?” Lily said. “We should return to the office so that we can let Brodie know what we learned.”
“It would be best if you return to Sussex Square,” I replied. Where she would be safe. Munro would be there.
She was not pleased.
“Why are ye sending me back?” she demanded. “Haven’t I shown ye that I can be helpful. I found the information about Reverend Chastain being sent to St. Mary’s in Hendon.”
The Scots accent slipped through again as I had noticed before when she was in a temper.
“Mr. Brodie said…”
“He would not want you to pursue this now,” I interjected. “We don’t yet know what this is all about.”
I thought of those cryptic notes that had been left on the bodies and the additional ones sent to His Highness.
“Three young men have been murdered. There may very well will be another attempt.”
“I don’t need yer protection,” she argued as we continued toward Sussex Square. “I’m not a child. I can take care of myself. Ye are not my mother!”
She stopped herself and stared at me across the darkened interior of the coach, her expression quite different now.
“I didn’t mean that…I apologize.”
“I have never thought of you as a child,” I replied. “But that does not mean that I do not care what happens to you.”
I was very aware that I could not prevent her choosing her own path. “I ask that you trust me in this.”
She eventually nodded, however she was silent for the rest of the trip to Sussex Square and then once again after we arrived.
Brodie came out of the office as Mr. Jarvis delivered the hound and I safely back to The Strand.
He took one look at me and frowned as he came down the stairs, then paid Mr. Jarvis.
“Aye, dinna stand there in the cold.” He took my hand.
Twenty-One
Brodie called it my woman’s intuition.
It appeared that I was far more correct than I would have liked in my conversation with Lily.
An attempt had been made upon the Duke of York, the son of His Highness, and his young wife as they returned the previous evening to their apartments at St. James’s Palace.
The attack had come on the street as they returned from a reception at Buckingham Palace, an incredibly bold attempt, not unlike the attack on the son of Lord Salisbery as he had departed White’s Club.
It explained the urgent meeting that Brodie was called to earlier.
“Was anyone harmed?”
“The guards around the Duke of York had been increased. One of them got in a blow before the man managed to escape with the aid of another.”
“Was either man seen?”
“There was not enough light with the weather and the late hour of the night. But the man who attacked the duke had an obvious impairment of one leg.”
“What of the man who helped him escape?” I then asked.
I was certain I already knew the answer—a tall man and thick set.
I explained the feeling there was someone outside of the church’s library. And my decision for Lily to return to Sussex Square. Rupert was quite insistent in the graveyard as if there was someone there.
“Aye, it was right ye did so. She is headstrong, that one.”
I then told him what we had learned from the church records.
“St. Mary’s Church?” he remarked. “That could tell us more, but not tonight,” he added as he pushed aside the heavy drapes at the office window.
“No one will be out and about, wot with the weather.”
The lights in the office flickered and then went out leaving us in darkness except for the fire in the coal stove.
He attempted to place a telephone call to Sir Avery to tell him what I had learned. But it appeared that, along with the electric, the service for the telephone had also become a victim of the weather that had steadily worsened after I left Sussex Square.
Rain beat against the office window and filled the street below, a risky enterprise for anyone who ventured out as traffic thinned.
It did appear that a good part of the rest of The Strand was without electric as well, except for gas streetlights in the theatre district in the distance.
Then the sound of the rain eased and turned to snow.
I retrieved an oil lamp from the cabinet, left from somewhat more primitive conditions only the year before, and lit it as Brodie set the lock on the door. He then added more coal to the fire in the stove.
“The mornin’ will be here soon enough,” he said, as he poked at the fire. I sat at my desk and opened my notebook and made notes in the pool of light from the stove.
It was sometime later that he added more coal to the fire, then went to the cupboard adjacent to his desk.
“Stale biscuits and whisky,” he announced.
I set my pen down. It wasn’t the first time we had only biscuits and some of my great aunt’s whisky.
“Yes, please,” I replied.
He poured us both a dram, handed a tumbler to me, then set the carton of stale biscuits on my desk.
I munched—it was good that I had strong teeth—then took a sip of Old Lodge whisky.
“Is it possible that Reverend Chastain is behind the murders?” I asked him. “Revenge for what happened to his daughter, even though that was over thirty years ago?”
A strong motive, as we had seen in previous inquiry cases.
“Perhaps,” Brodie replied as he bit off a piece of biscuit.
“I suppose it is possible that the man who’s been doing this might be the husband of Mary Chastain,” I said as I thought of what we knew.
“Aye, perhaps.”
“She could be living somewhere here in London and her husband learned of it…”
“Perhaps.”
That was the third “perhaps,” an obvious sign that he was deep in his own thoughts.
He tossed back the last of the whisky in his glass.
“I will contact Sir Avery first thing in the morning,” he said as he had obviously been directed to do so, yet not at all pleased about it. I sensed there was more.
“It was good that ye took Lily back to Sussex Square,” he said again. “It would probably be best for ye to go there as well, then Sir Avery’s people and I will see what can be learned at St. Mary’s Church.”
This was a new tactic—compliment, confuse, then subtly persuade.
Two could play this game, I thought, as I set my own glass on the desk. I’d had enough of stale biscuits, whisky, and a bloody stubborn Scot!
I rose from the chair across from him at the desk and went to the door to the adjacent bedroom.
“Perhaps,” I replied.
It was much later when he entered the bedroom and I listened as he removed his boots, shirt, and trousers, then felt the bed dip as he joined me and pulled the blankets over the both of us.
