Three
We spent the night at the office and were both up quite early.
Brodie dressed in his street clothes, as I called them, with a felt cap and worn boots. In the past he had worn them when he was going into ‘other’ parts of London on some matter.
“You will be careful?” I repeated what he had said the night before. “I do not care for widow’s weeds. And there are all the details to see to, not to mention what would I do with the office?”
“I would think you would carry on as ye always have, Mikaela Forsythe. No doubt with a half dozen men beggin’ for your hand.”
A half dozen?
“Not at all, Mr. Brodie. I would not choose to marry again, when I have already experienced …”
“Wot is that, Mrs. Brodie?”
If he was hoping for compliments, I was above that. Particularly when he refused to tell me what he was working on for the Agency.
“… Someone who shares my taste in whisky.”
He gave me that look, that dark gaze, the expression on his face quite serious. He gently touched my cheek then kissed me.
I would have preferred more. However, he was already some other place in his thoughts.
“Be careful and take the hound with ye when ye go out and about.”
“Careful as church mice,” I replied.
“That is hardly reassurin’, knowin’ how mice end up.”
And with that he was gone.
For myself, I intended to return to Covent Garden with the hope of speaking with Gwen Tavers’s friend, Lizzie.
I dressed, finished another cup of coffee, then called down to the street and asked Mr. Cavendish to hail a cab.
A driver had pulled his rig to the curb as I locked the office and arrived at the sidewalk.
“Mr. Brodie said as how you were not to go alone,” Mr. Cavendish informed me. “He was most insistent.”
“Very well, then.”
It wasn’t the first time the hound had accompanied me.
Mr. Cavendish whistled and Rupert slowly emerged from the alcove that he usually occupied below the stairs. He stretched, shook himself, then approached with tail wagging.
He was such a scrounge of a beast that reminded me of hounds my father kept when I was a child.
“He was out late last night and asleep ever since.” Mr. Cavendish winked at me.
“It’s not the first time. There may be a ‘ lady ’ involved.”
I had never seen the hound quite so ...? ‘Exhausted’ was probably the best way to describe him.
The driver had provided transportation previously and made no comment when Mr. Cavendish motioned for the hound to jump inside the cab. I climbed in and we set off for the Garden.
It was still quite early, and the traffic was thin on the streets this time of the morning. However, Covent Garden was bustling with sellers and customers when I arrived.
The stalls were filled with baskets of flowers and produce from growers in the countryside beyond London, as well as from the docks with cargos arrived from France and beyond. Shoppers, housekeepers, and others crowded the stalls to make early purchases before the day warmed.
I directed the driver to the part of the Garden where I had learned that Lizzie worked at a stall. I paid him, then Rupert and I walked the short distance from the main street to the entrance to the Garden.
There was more than one curious stare as we made our way through vendors and customers. The hound did make a curious sight, following along.
“Eh, miss,” a bold fellow approached. “Wot might you be lookin’ for? Flowers? Or somethin’ else?”
Cheeky fellow. Yet, before I could respond Rupert planted himself between the man and myself, a lip curling back over his teeth as he growled.
“Wot is this?” the man demanded and laughed. “Should I be afraid?”
“That is entirely up to you,” I replied. “However, you should know that he hasn’t eaten yet this morning.”
I turned and continued toward the area where Lizzie worked, leaving him and Rupert to sort the matter out. In very short order, the hound reappeared at my side.
“Settled that matter, did you?” I commented.
He looked at with me with that expression that could only be described as a grin.
“I thought so. Now, behave yourself.”
Rupert was keenly intelligent, quite congenial most of the time, and we had been working on certain commands that I hoped he might learn.
Among them sit, stay, and seek, which the keeper of the hounds when I was a child had taught our hounds.
He obeyed the command ‘ down,’ I suspected because he had an aversion to most people with the exception of Mr. Cavendish, myself, and Brodie as long as he had food in his hand.
We were still working on sit and stay. He obeyed those two when it suited him.
As for seek, that was Mr. Cavendish’s idea when I had managed to take myself off into a somewhat dangerous situation and Brodie had no idea where I had gone. True to his breed, Rupert had tracked and found me. He responded quite well to that command.
Of course, it might have had something to do with the food I provided, including the biscuits he was most fond of. My own thoughts were, as I well now knew about the male of the species, that he was quite amenable as long as his stomach was full.
But I digress.
I found the stall where I had spoken with the woman the day before. She was there, arranging a colorful array of carnations that had obviously just been delivered. The spicy fragrance filled the air as she unwrapped bundle after bundle and arranged them in baskets.
At a glance, I noticed an older woman at the stall across the way where she had told me Lizzie usually worked. It appeared that, once again, the girl had not yet arrived for the day.
I greeted the woman I had previously spoken with.
“You asked about Lizzie,” she recalled. “I ain’t seen her today. That be Mary Perkins. You might ask her about the girl.”
I thanked her and crossed to the other side of the market.
“Wot can I do you for?” Mary greeted me. “I just got these lilies in this mornin’, and only four shillings for a dozen.”
I explained that I was hoping to find information about Lizzie.
“That girl!” she snorted. “Got her head in the clouds. Always goin’ on about the travels she’s goin’ to take.
” She shook her head. “As if she can do that with what she earns from me. And then doesn’t show up for several days?
I may have to hire someone else. It ain’t as if there ain’t others that need work. ”
There were several more comments added to the criticism of poor Lizzie. In addition, I learned that her last name was Smith.
“Perhaps she’s taken ill,” I suggested.
“Ain’t no excuse when I’m countin’ on her,” she snapped. “I got all these orders to fill and no one to help.”
“I was told that she has a room nearby. Do you know where she lives?”
She finished wrapping another bunch the roses. “Yer might check with Archie, that’s me boy. He’s been sweet on her for the longest time. He has a stall at the other end—carrots and potatoes.”
A most enterprising family, I thought.
“Is that animal with you?” she asked, glaring at Rupert. “They make a mess of things. Scavengers, they are. I ain’t got no food here.”
I thanked her for the information, then set off to find Archie, with the ‘animal’ trotting alongside as if he was going to one of the dog shows that were now quite popular. Although I had to admit, he was not the sort one usually found at such events.
The Garden was an amazing place. I had passed by it often but usually left the shopping to my housekeeper, Mrs. Ryan.
There were stalls with a wide variety of flowers from the countryside and foreign places such as France, and bulb varieties from the Netherlands, along with vendors who sold oranges, bananas, and pineapple.
And then there were the street-side vendors who provided pastries and sandwiches for customers who arrived later in the day.
Overall, fragrances of the flowers mingled with other aromas amid conversations over prices as orders were taken, and there was the usual street conversation among those who worked the stalls, much like a village market, with a mix of accents, arguing, and laughter.
I eventually found Archie’s stall. He was presently in the process of unloading baskets of potatoes from a cart. He smiled in greeting when I explained that I had spoken with his mother about Lizzie. He stopped work to bend down and pet Rupert.
“Don’t often see a dog in the market,” he commented. “They cause too much of a ruckus. Is he yours, miss?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I replied.
Archie stood and returned to unloading the cart.
“Lizzie’s a right saucy one, that,” he said with obvious affection. “But not showin’ up again will set me mum off on her ear. That’s a full week now.”
I explained that I wanted to speak with her on behalf of a friend and showed him the photograph of the two young women.
“I seen her before,” he said of Gwen. “She comes here to buy flowers, and they go on about places they both want to see. I tried to talk Lizzie out of that. Travel on wot she makes here?”
That smile again. He was obviously quite taken with her.
“Aye, she’s a stubborn one, when she gets an idea in her head.”
I asked about the last time he’d seen her.
“That would be the week before.”
I repeated the possibility that she might be ill.
“Might be,” he said, thoughtful. “But she’s a right strong girl.”
He had been thinking of checking up on her as well and provided me the address.
“It’s a pitiful place, a basement under the tenement at that address, just the way over.” He angled his head toward the street at the end and the buildings that lined it.
“But she and the other girl have fixed it up some, and there’s a window out to the street.”
I thanked him for the information.
“You tell her when you see her that I’ll be round,” he called after me.
‘Just the way over’ might mean anything. Yet, following the direction he indicated, I easily found the address just off St. Martin’s Lane.
It was one of the older tenements that had been kept up over the years, with street-side windows at the ground floor, including that basement window Archie had spoken of with stairs that led up to the street.