Sixteen
brODIE
The driver left the brightly lit streets of the newer part of Knightsbridge with its upmarket shops and restaurants behind, and continued into the old part of the district, where a handful of abandoned manors still stood.
It was lit only by an occasional gas lamp, then not at all as they reached Princes Gate, the shadows of two abandoned manor houses looming up out of the moonlight.
Once grand country homes Brodie heard had been there for over two hundred years. Now waiting to make way for rowhouses, newer residences, and other shops as the railroad pushed through to this part of the city.
“Wait,” Brodie told the driver, a man who regularly worked the Strand, and had provided transportation in the past.
Then he and Munro set off afoot toward Number 4 Princes Gate.
The bloody place was enormous, one of the grand manors of old land owners who’d left long ago—three floors with countless rooms where anyone might hide, all darkened beyond that sagging wrought-iron gate and the forest of trees that had gradually taken over.
“Too many places where she might be,” Munro said in a low voice. “How do you want to do this?”
In the past, as lads on the streets, they would have both carefully approached the place, let themselves inside to grab whatever might be of value, and then leave just as quickly.
But this was not the streets of Edinburgh, and what he was after was far too valuable to risk having Mikaela harmed or worse if they should encounter more than a handful of those inside. It was best to split up, and gain as much advantage as possible by entering from separate directions.
“Circle round and take the hound with ye. Take care and find a way inside. I’ll go in the main entrance.”
He caught Munro’s nod in the pale moonlight, his expression one he’d seen a hundred times and more. Along with that smile that flashed a deadly expression.
“Aye, and meet in the middle.”
They continued past that sagging gate, then Munro whistled softly and disappeared with the hound toward the far end of the manor as Brodie pushed his way through the overgrowth and hanging tree limbs then up the steps to the main entrance.
The main door was locked. The lock was one of the older ones he'd often encountered, and there was no light to see even if he could have picked it. He moved to the adjacent windows that framed the entrance.
The glass on the windows was thin, and several already broken, as others had no doubt discovered in an attempt to enter. He enlarged the opening of one beside the door with his elbow, the sound of broken glass on the flagstones of the landing.
When there was no response to that sound, he reached inside, felt the cool iron of the lever, then found the bolt, and turned it.
The door slowly swung open. Again he waited for any sign that someone had heard it. When no one appeared, he retrieved the revolver from the waist of his trousers and stepped inside.
The head of a bear looked down on him from the wall with a once elegant carved side table and a marble bust, as he slowly made his way down the hallway past what had once been a formal parlor, then to an adjacent room. He nudged the door open with the toe of his boot.
Light from the moon spilled through windows into what appeared to be a sitting room for the lord of the manor. Through the shadows he glimpsed the humped shape of an overstuffed chaise and settee across from it, his footsteps muted by the carpet.
He slowly moved around the room to better see what was there that might tell him something.
His boot brushed something soft. He started to walk around it, then realized that it was Mikaela’s travel bag.
He opened it and swore as he knelt in the shadows. It still contained her revolver, notebook, and the knife Munro had made certain she always carried. She would not have left it there unless she was forced to.
When? And where was she now?
Finding nothing else that might provide the answers, he pocketed the knife and revolver, then returned to the hallway.
A shadow loomed up out of the other shadows, a man by the size of him, short and stout with an overgrown beard and a bulk that told him the man was strong.
He wore a coat that hung to the knees and a wary expression that immediately turned to a snarl.
The blade of the knife the man drew gleamed in the half-light in the hallway.
MIKAELA
As I entered the drawing room I heard a sound, faint at first, then stronger as I reached the hallway where Jolie and I had fled. It came from one of the upper floors. It appeared that my escape from that room was discovered.
I glanced toward the servant’s area and kitchen, but saw no one, then heard it again, clearer followed by a terrified scream, then sound of weeping that was suddenly silenced. Sarah?
I ran up the stairs, stumbled in the dark, then pushed back to my feet as I heard that terrified scream once again. I reached the second-floor landing, and realized that it came from the third floor. I ran to the next set of stairs and followed the sound of weeping, along with a woman's voice.
“What did you see? The woman who was in this room! Tell me!”
Then the sound of more weeping, hysterical now, then begging.
I rushed toward the room where I had been bound only a short while earlier, and found a young woman cowering at another blow, and knew that I had found Sarah, as the woman I had seen in the kitchen stood over her with the blunt end of a horse whip, her arm raised to strike again.
Surprise came first, followed by confusion as I recognized her. It was the same woman I had seen at the gallery that night staring back at me. It was only a glimpse that night, but I was certain it was the same woman.
“I will not let you or anyone else ruin my work!” she screamed at the young woman, who wore only a thin wrap around her trembling shoulders with angry red welts on her back.
“Tell me where she is!” the woman screamed at her.
Her work? Her paintings?
She raised her arm to strike again.
My revolver and the knife were gone, obviously taken when I was attacked in that room below. But I would not let her continued. Angry, afraid for the girl, I ordered the woman to stop in French so there was no misunderstanding.
“You will not hurt her again!”
Sarah whimpered as the woman spun around.
“You!” she hissed at me. “How did you get out of here?” And then, “Jolie! Where is she?”
“She is with the others. They are safe now,” I replied. “Unlike Lizzie Smith.”
Her eyes narrowed as Sarah let out a startled, wounded sound.
“You told us that she went home,” she whispered.
“Worthless girl! She would have ruined everything. I had to be rid of her. And you ...!” she spat at me.
“He insisted that he had to have a painting of you! Difficult, but not impossible after I saw you that night. Do you understand? They are my paintings, my work after he could no longer hold a brush. But they would never recognize the paintings by a woman !”
“You killed her?” Sarah whispered through bruised lips. Then, screamed at the woman.
“You killed her!”
The woman turned on Sarah, her arm raised to strike her.
That scream brought his head up, eyes narrowed, as Brodie lowered the body of the man who’d attacked him to the floor.
And then another scream ...
He found the stairs and ran to the landing at the second floor, then ran down the long hall to the opposite end when he heard another scream, and took the stairway that led up to the third floor.
He was cautious if there should be other men like the one he’d left below, then stepped onto the landing and slowly entered a long room that appeared to be some sort of private gallery.
In the light from a lantern on a table, he saw a half dozen paintings on artist easels along the far wall.
All of the paintings were of barely dressed young women, two no more than girls, and one naked as she reclined on the settee—that same settee that sat across from the display. Two other paintings were unfinished. He stared at a third unfinished portrait.
The woman in the painting was turned away from the artist, her face in profile, her shoulders and back naked where the dark red gown she wore gaped away and exposed the length of her back.
It was unfinished, yet the woman was beautiful, her expression defiant, like that of a proper lady who had been caught as she undressed, her dark red hair falling over a bare shoulder, and the angle of her chin as she stared back from the canvas.
It was a look he knew well, the same look of a slightly younger woman with that same defiant spirit in that portrait at Sussex Square.
“ Putain! ”
Whore! A word Brodie knew from the streets, followed by another scream, different this time, like that of a wounded animal.
He ran toward that sound.