Page 12 of Deadly Ghost (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery #12)

Eleven

Brodie poured two tumblers of my great aunt’s whisky and pushed one across his desk to Mr. Brown. I had no desire to join the conversation and sat apart at my desk.

Brodie explained that we had come across a disturbing situation while investigating our present case, the possible danger to someone.

Brown watched him through narrowed eyes. “What is it that you want?”

“Protection for the people involved until we can solve the case.”

“Why call on me? Call on your friends at the MET.”

“This is not for the MET,” Brodie replied. “It would draw attention and perhaps place others in danger. And I need someone I can trust.”

Brown laughed. “You and me, we go round and round. You do me a favor and then I owe you a favor. Which is it now, I forget?”

“You remember, well enough. Yer man, Darby.”

“Darby?” Brown repeated.

I thought he might argue the matter.

“Aye, Darby,” he said then. “A reckless fool, but one that I need. And my gratitude to you for it.”

Whatever it was, it was very likely that I did not want to know how it had involved Brodie.

“I want reliable men who will stay out of sight and not a word to anyone of it.”

Brown nodded. “I have three men that will do. Who is the person to be protected?”

Brodie provide him the information that included James’s and Linnie’s names, the location of their residence, and James’s office.

“Not the Queen herself?” Mr. Brown retorted with some humor.

“My sister and her husband,” I informed him, interrupting what seemed to me unnecessary banter.

Brown turned to me. “Yer sister, is it? It’s a wonder you don’t have a pistol and protect her yerself.”

He had no way of knowing how close to the mark he had come.

“Ye will provide yer men and give them instructions as I have given them to ye?” Brodie reminded him.

“Aye, I will.” Brown turned back to him. “But this evens the score.”

Brodie nodded his agreement.

Brown tossed back the last of the whisky, then stood to leave.

“I’ll have Darby and two men there in the morning. Since it’s his arse you saved, he’s beholden to you and will do as ye ask. He can be trusted.”

I had heard that before, yet from someone whom I trusted. He turned to me then with that smile that was not quite a smile. A leer perhaps?

“Always a pleasure, Lady Forsythe.”

His entirely, I thought, and simply nodded.

“How can you be certain that you can trust him in this?” I asked after Mr. Brown left.

Brodie pulled me against him, “Because I know things.”

I leaned back and looked up at him. “What sort of things?”

“Not for you to know, lass.”

Which of course told me absolutely nothing, and at the same time more than I perhaps wanted to know.

In spite of the late hour and little sleep the night before, I wanted to read the manuscript my brother-in-law had given me, apparently written by Victoria Grantham.

Authors wrote from their own experiences. I thought of Dickens with poverty in the East End; Arthur Conan Doyle, an author I had heard a great deal of; and certainly the woman who had inspired me—Mary Wollstonecraft.

My adventures with Emma Fortescue as my protagonist came from my own experiences. That included new adventures in crime solving, based thinly on our inquiry cases. That Victoria Grantham had chosen to write a book did seem quite bizarre.

My brother-in-law had read several chapters. What had she written that had caused such concern? And what might it tell us?

I turned over the first page with her name on it, then the first page of the manuscript. The first line of that first paragraph stopped me:

“She had been raised in privilege. But everything ended that day.’

A coldness I had not experienced in a very long time crept over me as I stared at the words. And there was anger all over again. It was the first line of my first Emma novel, and as I continued to read, entire scenes had been lifted and put into her novel.

I had taken many things from my own life and given them to Emma’s character. But this ...? It was plagiarism, in the least. But for what reason? A cold chill ran through me.

“What is it?” Brodie asked.

I looked up and found that dark gaze watching me, worry lines about the frown that was there.

I shook my head and forced myself to continue, reading through the introduction from the author, about the child who found her father dead, she and her younger sister orphaned, and the woman who had taken them in. And then the novel itself.

Page by page, chapter after chapter, it was as if I was reading what I had written all over again, the adventures identical.

My work written as if it was hers !

Brodie was there.

Not a ghost, but very real with concern in that dark gaze, and quiet strength.

“Enough, come away, lass.”

I wasn’t aware that I pushed away from my desk, nor did I notice the small things that usually happened of an evening when we stayed over—Brodie setting the bolt at the door, extra coal that he put in the stove, the light turned off as he led me to the adjacent room.

I was only aware of his warmth and that strength that wrapped around me. And then quite impossibly, I fell asleep.

No ghost of the past, I woke to the usual morning sounds after staying over at the office the night before—the iron grate on the stove, the sound of the coffee pot set atop, a window shade opened, and the scrape of a chair on the wood floor as Brodie went to his desk.

It was still there, of course, everything that Victoria Grantham had written, disturbing and sad.

I splashed cold water on my face, dressed, then stepped into the outer office as I had dozens of times. The manuscript was there on the desk before him. I struggled between tears and laughter as reading was not his finest accomplishment.

He looked up. He understood in a way that few could. It was there in the sadness in those dark eyes.

“I want to go to Compiegne,” I announced, where Victoria Grantham supposedly was born.

“It is the only way to know for certain.”

There was no argument against it, no attempt to talk me out of it with winter coming on, no discussion that we should continue our inquiries here with what we knew. There was only that one word that meant more to me than he could possibly know.

“Aye, I knew ye would not be satisfied until ye did. But ye’ll not go alone.”

In spite of everything, I smiled to myself, as we boarded the cross-channel ferry after our arrival in Dover. While I had a great deal of experience with ocean travel from my adventures abroad, Brodie was most definitely not the sea-faring sort.

We had been warned that trip might be rough, white caps churning the water of the channel. There was only a brief muttered curse as we boarded the ferry with dozens of other passengers.

“What is it?” Brodie asked as I hesitated at the entrance to the passenger cabin.

It was a moment before I replied as I searched the faces of our fellow passengers, and discovered ...

“I thought I saw someone ...” I shook my head. “I’m certain that it’s nothing.” I continued into the cabin as a heavy rain began.

To say the crossing was rough was a mild understatement, although he did bear up quite well. There was only a faint tinge of green around his mouth as we arrived at the Port of Calais, then found a driver to take us to the rail station.

Unlike a previous trip, we had only an hour’s wait until the train to Paris arrived.

However, we would not be traveling the full distance. Compiegne, in the Oise department, was north of Paris on the route from Calais, reached by way of a change at Creil.

In spite of the fact that the train from Calais was an express, we would be arriving at Creil well into the evening and would be forced to remain until the following morning before continuing on to Compiegne.

I could only wonder what we might find there. Things changed over time, and the care home where Anne Grantham had gone to have her child might no longer exist.

Yet, there would be the office of the local prefect, and undoubtedly someone who would be able to direct us to the office where that record of birth had been issued.

I glanced over at Brodie, seated across from me in the rail car. Several passengers dozed in the warmth of the heated car after that cold crossing, and it was quiet except for an occasional murmur of voices.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked him.

I don’t exactly know the reason it was important for me to know. Perhaps a way of understanding what was happening now, from someone I trusted.

He had been watching out the side window, absorbed in his own thoughts. That dark gaze met mine.

“ Taibhsean ,” he softly replied in Scots Gaelic, thoughtful. “There those who believe in such things, spirits, and the like. I am not a religious person as ye well know, still ...” he hesitated, then continued.

“There have been times in the past when it seemed that I felt my mother’s presence, her hand on my shoulder in that way she had, a word she often said, warning me about something I was doing. Or perhaps only wishful thinking, ye ken?”

Ghosts of the past.

“And perhaps,” he suggested, “her spirit saw to it that I rescued ye that day on that Greek island.”

Rescued me, indeed. The topic of discussion on more than one occasion, as to precisely who had rescued whom. Still, as Sir William Shakespeare had once written, ‘ Oh, what a falling off was there .’”

We departed the train at Creil and then went by local driver to an inn.

We were both tired, yet quite amazingly I was hungry.

“England could be invaded, and ye would want supper first,” Brodie pointed out.

I pointed out that our previous meal had been supper at Sussex Square. I did not consider a biscuit that morning from the Public House to be a meal.

We were served a hearty soup with large pieces of meat, potatoes, and leeks, and fresh croissants warm from the oven at the inn.

He managed quite well to consume two bowls of soup and a half dozen of the croissants. I restrained myself from commenting the same to him.

We retired to our room afterward, and I took out my notebook that contained notes I had made before leaving London.

A fire had been lit when we first arrived and had burned low. Brodie added more wood on the hearth as a chill set in.

“You should be prepared—there is always the possibility we will find nothing,” he reminded me as he set the screen before the fire.

He was right, of course. Not everything we pursued in past inquiries had brought results, yet those instances had often led to something that had. I had learned that particularly well in that first case that had involved my sister.

I undressed for bed. However, as I had discovered when previously traveling with Brodie other than to Old Lodge in Scotland, he chose to remove only his boots. A habit from the streets, he had once explained, if there should be the need to quickly leave.

We lay in the room with only the glow of the light from the hearth. His shoulder was solid and warm under my cheek.

I was safe from the ghosts of the past, for now.

We rose early in order to make the morning train to Compiegne. We arrived in just over an hour.

The rail station was at the edge of the town, the main station like many I had seen before, with the two-story main station that included an open platform for trains arriving from Paris, and a smaller station for departure farther to the north.

The main station was crowded with arriving passengers, umbrellas opened against the rain that had followed us from Creil.

There was that variety of languages commonly found in towns and cities across the Continent, as people moved past to find transportation into the city or another connection, while others crowded the ticket counters seeking the schedule for the next train to Paris.

“Have ye been here before?” Brodie asked.

I hadn’t, yet it should be easy enough to find information about the home where Anne Grantham had gone all those years before. If it was still there. After more than twenty years, it might have ceased to exist. Although the need for such places had not changed from what I had seen in the East End of London.

I was hopeful that we might learn something as we passed through the rail station and found a driver to take us into the city.

The ride was not far, large buildings like boxes in the style of the Second Empire, with mansard roofs and ornate ironwork along the main thoroughfare, and centuries-old buildings in the Gothic style in contrast with the spires of a cathedral rising over the city.

The driver delivered us to a city square before the Hotel de Compiegne in that same style of the Second Empire.

The decision to come to Compiegne had been quickly made. There had been no opportunity to exchange currency before leaving and I had only a few francs left from an earlier trip over on another case. It was enough to pay the driver’s fare.

As I had discovered in my travels, the hotel might be able to exchange currency for us, as well as provide information where we might find the home where Anne Grantham had gone to await the birth of her child years earlier.

“Aye,” Brodie agreed. “And send a telegram to London.”

The hotel concierge at the desk where guests arrived informed us that they accepted most currencies, including English pounds, and could make that exchange. In addition, they could also provide telegram service when Brodie asked. As we knew well, there was not yet direct telephone connection to London.

I then inquired about the home where Anne Grantham had come to have her child. There was a faint look of surprise from the clerk who spoke English quite well.

“ Oui, madame .” He responded that it was some distance north of the city, but could be reached by coach.

We had no way of knowing how long we might need to remain in Compiegne to find the information we were looking for. In addition, there were only a handful of trains through the day that made the return trip to Calais, and none at night.

It was already near midday and Brodie thought it best that we take a room at the hotel. That would provide us with a coach for the trip north of the city.

Brodie went to send his telegram to Munro while arrangements were made for a driver.

Neither of us had eaten that morning before leaving Creil. As the hotel restaurant was not yet open for luncheon, the concierge recommended a café across the square.

I was familiar with French cafés and the preference for taking a meal at an outside table. However, the weather was cold with a light rain and we chose to eat inside.

I translated the handful of items available written on a board as we entered.

“Soup?” Brodie commented, and not in a complimentary manner. This from a man who was once forced to live on little more as a child. That perhaps explained his disdain for French food that frequently included soup.

Still, having not eaten since the previous evening I was inclined to agree. We took a nearby table and I ordered a baguette of bread with sliced ham and cheese, and of course ... wine.

We returned to the hotel afterward and were directed to the porte cochere at a side entrance where we found a driver waiting, and no small amount of hope for we might learn as we climbed aboard.

The ride took us through the city business district, then crossed the river to the older part of Compiegne. Here, modest brick houses with slate roofs lined the dirt thoroughfare of a modest village at the edge of the city.

The driver called down and informed us that ‘ La Maison de Anges , ’ the House of Angels, was just beyond.

Brodie had prepared me that we might find nothing; still I hoped there might be some record of Anne Grantham’s stay.

The coach eventually turned up a narrow cart path, then pulled around before a low, pink sandstone building. The spire of the Church of St. Jacques was visible nearby through the misty rain.

In spite of the fact that I had not been to Compiegne before, I was familiar with stories of Joan of Arc.

It was where she had been captured at prayers more than four hundred years earlier. She was then taken to Rouen, tried for witchcraft before an English court, of all things, then burned at the stake.

“The verdict was changed afterward,” I explained to Brodie. I suspected that hardly made a difference to her.

Brodie asked the driver to wait. We then followed the path that led to the entrance of the large building that reminded me of a convent. That impression was not misplaced as we were met by a nun who answered the bell at the door.

I explained in French the reason we had come, regarding information about a child that was born there several years before, and added that it was a family matter.

We were asked to wait and she went to speak with someone who might be able to help us.

Brodie had been particularly silent. That might have been explained by the fact that the nun had spoken only French. Yet the expression on his face suggested more.

“It’s been a long time since I was in such a place,” he made the excuse.

“Concerned about your sins?”

The more I had learned about him since that first inquiry case, I had discovered there were dark places in his past, and people with equally dark reputations.

“I would vouch for your soul,” I whispered as the nun returned and we were shown to a room that contained shelves lined with books, a crucifix on the wall, and the woman who sat at a desk.

“You must understand what you ask is unusual,” the Reverend Mother said in heavily accented English as we sat across from her.

“We provide sanctuary for women who find themselves ... in difficult situations. Some come here to have their child, then return home. Some of the children ...” Her voice softened. “We try to find homes for those whose mothers cannot care for them, or choose not to.”

I explained that we were looking for information about a woman who would have come there approximately twenty years ago and explained that the child was now a grown woman who claimed to be a relative. I then showed her the document Victoria Grantham had provided with that faded name at the bottom.

“Sister Sandrine,” she commented. “Sadly, she is no longer with us.”

“Do you have records for the women who come here?” I asked. “Something that would show the mother’s name, and possibly the father’s name as well?”

“We have records of the women and girls who come to us, but we do not require the name of the father unless it is freely given. You must understand that privacy and sanctuary are the reasons women come here, and it is part of what we do.”

She rang a bell and a young woman appeared. She was not dressed as a nun. Perhaps she was from the village we had passed through, or possibly someone who sought sanctuary there.

There was a brief exchange in French as the Reverend Mother requested to see a record book from the same date as the document I had provided.

“You speak French,” the Reverend Mother commented as we waited. “You are perhaps familiar with the Church of St. Jacques?” She mentioned the church we had seen as we arrived.

I replied that I was. Nothing more was said as we waited.

The young woman eventually returned with a book that looked very much like a ledger.

Reverend Mother thanked her, then opened it on the desk. She turned several pages and I thought of the names there and the women who had come here, including Anne Grantham. She then stopped and scanned several entries. She looked up.

“It is here. The young woman you speak of was here for several months, then delivered of a daughter. According to what is here, she left with the child. No name for the father was written.”

We had come there hoping to find the answer to the questions about Victoria Grantham, although I knew that Brodie was right. That the answer might not be here.

I showed her the other document that appeared to be a copy of an official document with that entry that was no longer legible.

“This is a copy, but can you tell me who would have provided the original document?”

She frowned. “It would seem that the mother of the child chose to have the birth registered.”

I asked where that might have taken place.

“It is possible the original document is at the H?tel de Ville, in Compiegne. They have records of marriages, births, and deaths. They may be able to help you.” She rose as we stood to leave.

“I pray that you find what you are looking for.”

I had only English pounds left, but made a donation to the home as we left.

Our driver had waited. Brodie asked him to take us to the H?tel de Ville.

“Hotel?” Brodie repeated as we entered the coach.

I explained that it was a typical French term. H?tel de Ville, or the town hall, where public records were kept.

It was late afternoon when we returned to the city.

The Town Hall was an impressive Gothic structure several hundred years old that I had glimpsed when we first arrived in Compiegne, with conical towers at each corner, and an enormous clock at the base of a central spire that was wrapped in low clouds.

It was very near the hotel where we had made arrangements earlier for the night, and there seemed no reason for our driver to wait. He tipped his cap, then left to return to the hotel.

According to the signage on the glass door at the entrance there was still an hour before the building was closed for the day.

Brodie opened the door and we entered the building, hardly a hotel in the usual manner, but an old building typical of many in Paris that had been designated as the Town Hall for the city of Compiegne.

I approached a clerk behind a desk and explained what we were looking for. He directed us to the department of records on the second floor, with a reminder that the building closed for the day at five o’clock. That was one thing I had learned the French people were very punctual about—closing time.

We reached the second floor. A long counter filled the center of the floor with wooden shelves at least ten feet tall behind it, very much like a library.

I showed the copy of that old document to the clerk and again explained the reason we were there—to see the original document with the hope of reading the names that had been entered.

He nodded and explained that it should be easy to find the document as the date of the copy was recent compared to far older records that were kept.

I glanced at a clock on the wall when it seemed he was gone for some time. He eventually returned.

“I am sorry, madame . I was not able to find the original document. It would seem to have been misplaced.”

Misplaced? Surely he was mistaken.

“Did you search thoroughly?”

“ Oui , the birth documents for that date and several others both before and after the date. I could not find it.”

“Is it possible that someone else might have asked to see it?” There was another thought that came. “Or that it was removed? Would there be a record of that?”

“Removed? No, madame . We do not allow original documents to be removed. That is the reason a copy was made.”

“Please check again, there must be some mistake. Perhaps you overlooked it the first time.”

“Mikaela.”

I barely heard Brodie in my determination that it had to be there.

“I assure you, madame . The document is not there. It may perhaps be found at a later time. My apologies.

“If you would care to leave the copy with us, we will attempt to find the original document. If it cannot be found, at least there would be this record.”

I refused to leave it with him. “I cannot. It is all we have.”

“I understand. Perhaps in time it will be found, but we have very few people here ...”

There was more, but I didn’t listen. And I knew it would do no good to argue with him. He apologized again as we left.

“I had hoped ...” I started to say something, as we then left the building. And in that way Brodie understood.

“I know.”

“To come this far.” The frustration was there, along with the anger. I held onto it as we walked to our hotel. And then a little longer as he went to the front desk for the key to our room.

“Is it possible that someone took it?” I asked as he returned. I could see that same thought in that dark gaze.

“Perhaps. Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Victoria Grantham would have had a chance to do that before arriving in London.”

“Aye.”

I knew what he was doing, letting me rattle on with my thoughts , as he put it, in that way that I needed to make sense of things, turning my thoughts over and over in my head. He handed me the room key.

“I want to check with the telegraph clerk to see if there is a message.”

And then he left me to those thoughts in that aggravating way that he also understood.

The concierge clerk directed me to the lift. I waited until it returned to the ground floor, then stepped inside and closed the gate. It made the slow climb to the third floor, then settled to a stop.

I stepped out onto the floor, glanced at the number on the room key, then made my way down the hall, still struggling with the failures of the day.

I found our room, and inserted the key into the lock.

There was no warning, nothing I saw or heard to warn me as I was slammed against the door. It opened, and I was sent sprawling to the floor of the room.

I attempted to roll, hindered by my skirt. I was grabbed by the collar of my coat, then viciously slapped. Light exploded in my head.

My attacker was experienced, it was impossible to escape, roll away, or bring a knee up as he bent over me. I drove the heel of my hand at his face and heard the sound as his nose was broken and blood splatted over the both of us.

He cursed, then raised his fist, fingers wrapped around the handle of a knife. The revolver in my bag was somewhere on the floor, and beyond reach. The moves I had learned to defend myself were impossible as he straddled me.

With both hands wrapped around his arm in an attempt to stop him, it was clear that I was no match for his greater strength, certain I was about to feel the blade of that knife.

It was his scream I heard, not my own, and I was suddenly free of the weight that had pinned me as he was dragged backwards.

The sounds of struggle continued in the darkened room with only the light from the hallway that fell through the open door. There was sudden silence and then my attacker ran past and out the open door.

Brodie followed, briefly outlined in the light from the hall, then charged down the hallway. I scrambled cross the floor of the room, found my bag, pulled out the revolver, and aimed it toward the doorway.

“If ye fire the bloody thing, ye’ll make yerself a widow.”

I took a deep breath and a sound escaped, something very near a sob. I lowered the revolver as Brodie came across the room. And then another sound as he brought me to my feet.

His hands wrapped around my head, fingers digging into the tangled mess of my hair, that dark gaze boring into mine.

“Are ye all right?”

I nodded, then wrapped my arms around him, my face buried in the front of his jacket, as if I could melt into him, the warmth of his body as I began to shake ... and the blood!