Page 15 of Deadly Ghost (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery #12)

Fourteen

I explained that I wanted to meet with Victoria, that we believed the attack at Compiegne was only part of what she intended.

“I have to protect my family,” I told her.

I had thought a great deal about how it could be done, a meeting where Victoria Grantham thought she had the advantage.

“This is the only way to stop her.”

“After what I have told you, you must not do this. She is not in her right mind. It is too dangerous!”

In the end I was able to convince her, and went to my desk to write a note to Victoria Grantham for when she returned to Grantham Manor.

“Tell her that it was brought by a courier,” I explained.

In the note I asked for Victoria to meet me at three o’clock at Slater’s tea room in Piccadilly, where prominent ladies of London went for afternoon tea. I had simply stated that we accepted her claim and wanted to welcome her to the family.

Brodie frowned when he read it. “Are ye certain about this?”

I wasn’t certain about anything, yet it seemed logical that in the very least, Victoria Grantham would be intrigued to think that she had achieved what she wanted.

He handed the note back to me and I passed it to Mrs. Aldcott. She read it then tucked it into the small bag she carried.

I explained that she was to call the office when Victoria left for the meeting.

“You must realize that it would be dangerous for you to remain at Grantham Manor after this,” I told her. “Is there some place you can go?”

She nodded. “My son has a shop in Harrow. I can go there.”

“Do ye have the means?” Brodie inquired.

“Lady Anne saw that I was paid well enough, poor woman, and I’ve saved a good amount over the years.”

She stood to leave. I accompanied her to the bottom of the stairs. Mr. Cavendish waved down a cab.

She turned as the driver arrived. “There is a difference, you see,” she told me. She reached out and touched my cheek.

“Something very different that surgeon wasn’t able to make the same.” She stepped into the cab.

“Be careful,” she said.

“And you as well,” I told her.

Now, all we could do was wait.

We were taking a chance, to be certain. We had no way of knowing when she might call to tell us that she had given the note to Victoria Grantham, or even that Victoria would meet with me.

Mrs. Aldcott had described Victoria as intelligent and clever. What if she saw through the deception? That could be dangerous for the poor woman.

Brodie made a telephone call to Munro at Sussex Square to tell him what we had planned, and we continued to wait as the noon hour came and went.

The telephone rang just past one o’clock, the shrill sound sharp in the silence of the office. Brodie answered the telephone then handed me the earpiece.

Victoria had returned and Mrs. Aldcott had given her the note.

“I was afraid she might be suspicious,” she told me. “A strange look came over her. She changed her clothes, a gown that looks like the one you wore that other day. Then she told me there was no need to prepare supper and left.”

She had waited to make certain Victoria didn’t return before making that telephone call.

I thanked her, and reminded her that she could not remain at the manor.

“ I’ve already packed my bag. I’ll leave after we’ve spoken.” There was a pause. “Take care, miss.”

The call ended.

I glanced at the clock again, then at Brodie.

The gloom of the afternoon only added to my uneasiness as we left the office on the Strand for that meeting with Victoria Grantham.

Yet, in spite of the weather, or perhaps because of it, the store was quite crowded, and well-known ladies of London had gathered for afternoon tea.

I had picked Slater’s for the meeting place at Brodie’s insistence that it had to be a public place and one where he would be able to be present but not seen. In spite of the fact that the clientele at the tea room was mostly ladies, the store on the main floor brimmed with afternoon shoppers, and the stairway provided a means to be hidden and yet have access to the Tea Room.

There was more to the choice that I had not discussed with him. It was where I had gone in the past to meet with Linnie and my great aunt.

Was Victoria Grantham aware of that, had perhaps followed me there in the past?

There was no way to know for certain, yet it appeared that she had agreed to meet there. And she had chosen a gown similar to the one I had worn that previous day?

It was a chilling thought as I remembered something else Mrs. Aldcott had said, the way that Victoria Grantham spoke, things she said, as if she were me.

We arrived early ahead of the meeting time outside Slater’s and I stepped down from the cab.

Brodie sent the cab man on his way as I entered the store alone in the event Victoria had already arrived. He was then to return after leaving the cab and enter the main floor of the store as I waited for her to arrive at the appointed time.

I informed the waitstaff that I was meeting someone there for tea, and was shown to a table very near the stairs.

I had been in dangerous situations before in our inquiry cases, yet not with so much at risk, considering what we knew now about Victoria Grantham.

In those other instances, I felt sure of myself with a certain confidence and determination.

It would have been a lie to say that I felt confident now. Still, I managed a polite smile as the waiter brought tea service with a plate of scones while I watched and waited.

Three o’clock came, then went as I continued to wait. Then four o’clock, with most of the ladies at other tables departed. The waiter brought me a note.

He’d been given instructions earlier to deliver it to me at precisely that time. I opened it.

So very sorry to have missed you. Perhaps another time at Sussex Square.

Lady Forsythe.

I stared at the note and read it again. It was polite, something that I might have written ... And the last part, at Sussex Square? An invitation?

In that moment I knew for certain Victoria Grantham would not be meeting me at Slater’s. Yet, I did know where she had gone.

I stood suddenly, then ran for the stairs, oblivious to everything as I reached the store on the main floor.

“What is it?” Brodie demanded as he reached me.

I showed him the note. “She’s gone to Sussex Square!”

I ran to find a driver.

People on the sidewalk who passed by stared at us as Brodie caught up with me on the sidewalk and stopped me.

“Wait!”

I tried to pull my arm free.

“She knows wot ye will do! It is what she wants, what this is about, for ye to go there so that she can finish this!”

“You don’t understand ...” I argued.

“I do understand! And I know ye are smarter than to give her what she wants!”

I was terrified for Aunt Antonia, Lily, and everyone at Sussex Square— my family, not hers!

“Think! We dinna know if the man René, and perhaps others, might be with her! She wants ye to go there. It was the purpose of the note. Dinna give her what she wants!”

They were his family as well now, and I knew that he was right in what he was saying.

“Brodie ...?”

“I know, trust me.”

The office was not far. He persuaded me to return with him so that we could decide what was to be done now.

There were those whom he could call on, possibly those at the agency, and then there was Mr. Brown with his organization, two of his men at Sussex Square from what we last knew. Along with my great aunt, Lily, Munro, and the household servants.

Victoria Grantham had been very clever. I needed to be more so.

When we arrived at the office, Brodie sent Mr. Cavendish off to find Mr. Brown. I ran up the steps to the office.

“Make a telephone call to yer brother-in-law. Tell him what has happened, so that Brown’s men there will be on the watch for anyone who approaches their home.

“Then I want ye to draw a diagram of Sussex Square, every entrance including the servants’ quarters, where deliveries are made, and the distance from the gate to the steps at the front.”

I thought he must be mad.

“I’m not good at diagrams!” I fairly shouted at him.

“I know, it just needs to be good enough to recognize. We have to get inside without being seen.”

When I started to protest that there wasn’t time, he crossed from his desk where he had laid another revolver, and took hold of me by the shoulders.

“She may think that ye are the same, but she doesna know the place as ye do. That can make the difference if we get inside or no. Make the diagram.”

I knew that he was right in this. Even if Victoria Grantham’s scheme went back all those months before and she had ridden past Sussex Square as part of it, she didn’t know it as I did. I had explored and crawled over most of it as a child, including the hidden rooms and passages of the oldest part of it.

I opened my notebook, found a blank page, and began to draw, as Brodie placed another telephone call to a man he had worked with at the MET but was now retired.

“Aye,” Brodie said. “It’s not a matter for the Metropolitan, not with some of the things had have gone down since I left. I need to know whom I can trust.”

There was additional conversation, quite brief, then Brodie ended the call.

“Mr. Conner?” I asked.

Brodie nodded. “He knows a good many others like himself who can be called on. He can have his people watch the front gate after we arrive.”

“You know what Mrs. Aldcott told us,” I replied. “Victoria Grantham is quite mad. Do you believe that she might have already ...?” What I started to ask was there, but I couldn’t say it.

He came to me then as he had when Victoria Grantham first made her claim, and took me in his arms.

“I believe that her ladyship is strong and bold like yerself, though she often plays much different. I’ve had some experience with that. Munro would give his life for what she has given him, and the girl is street-smart and not easily fooled.

“For all the woman believes that she is you, with her fine gowns and a new face, she is not, and she does not know you, or them. And I would wager on all of ye over her.”

Of course he would say such things, yet I knew that it was true.

I held onto that as I finished the diagram, then folded it and put it into my bag. Along with the revolver, a hand-held lantern, and the knife Munro had given me a long time ago when I went off on my first adventure.

I then changed into clothes that Victoria Grantham would not recognize— trousers, shirt, and jacket, with boots and a cap I had worn in the past when setting off on one of our inquiry cases.

Mr. Cavendish was forced to leave a message for Mr. Brown with no assurance that he would receive it in time to assist us, but Brodie refused to wait any longer.

It was already dark over the streets of London as we set off in a rental coach, with no way of knowing what we would find at Sussex Square when we arrived.

Brodie had the driver follow the usual route we took when traveling to the fortress as he called it.

“I’m convinced the bloody place could take cannon fire and still be standing,” he had described it.

I hadn’t bothered to point out that it had, several hundred years earlier, with most of that part rebuilt.

“I canna imagine wot her Ladyship does there—it’s large enough for an army under siege.”

It had been a military fortress at one time after it was built by the King, one of my illustrious forebears by way of my great aunt. It was a marvelous place for a girl to disappear from her lessons and not be seen for several hours.

The ‘Fortress’ sprawled across an equally impressive tract of land that rivaled Hyde Park in size, and included an ancient forest, gardens, a stream, and now a car track. Along with stables and the coach barn.

As we drew near, I had Brodie stop the cab.

“Wot is it?”

The night fast approached, cold and wet with the drizzle of rain over all. Streetlamps were wrapped in halos of light as I had seen them dozens of times before, and lights glowed in the distance at Sussex Square.

It was true, Victoria Grantham was intelligent and clever. She had played this perfectly in drawing me away as she came here. And that note.

She knew that I would follow and had sent the note once she was inside the residence. Brodie was correct—she didn’t truly know me.

She would be waiting and it was possible the man René would be with her. Mr. Conner and the men who came with him would eventually appear, yet we had no way of knowing if Mr. Brown would arrive in time.

Then the question—should we wait? And with it all, Victoria Grantham would be waiting.

Were those inside dead, as I feared from the beginning? Or was she playing some horrible game?

I needed to believe that we had the time needed to get inside, and stop her madness.

As a child, I had played out the stories my great aunt told me of our ancestors. It was possible, as Brodie thought, that the apple hadn’t fallen far from that tree either.

“There’s another entrance. It’s somewhat longer to get there, but neither Victoria Grantham, nor anyone she has with her, will know of it.”

“How far?”

I gave the driver instructions to follow the long road past the entrance, then the road north just before the river bridge that ran along a high street and bordered several old estates that had once been part of Sussex Square until they were sold in some sort of land transaction three or four hundred years earlier.

There were lights in the distance from two of the estates, while two more were hidden in the darkness that spread to the river, with dense foliage that we followed at the near side of the road.

While it had been some time since I had been there with Munro, I remembered the tree that seemed to hang suspended over the road as we had passed this way. Barren of leaves with the coming winter, I was able to find it, branches hanging over the road like the massive arms of the mythical forest creatures I had imagined as a child when off exploring.

I asked the driver to stop and stepped down from the cab. Less than a half-dozen yards ahead, I found what I was looking for.

Brodie had left the cab as well. The beam from his hand-held lantern played across the narrow dirt pathway, and the stones at the bottom of the wall.

“It’s called the Smuggler’s Gate. Once inside, there’s a path through the forest that eventually reaches the stables and barn. Munro showed it to me.”

“Smugglers?”

“It seems there were a great many of them about London in the past, and pirates, according to Aunt Antonia. It’s always been a very active port. It’s the reason the King had Sussex Square built.”

“Yer ancestors. I dinna know one of mine.”

I smiled in spite of everything. Smugglers, a pirate or two, and a Scot. It seemed appropriate.

He dismissed the driver, then returned.

“The gate is locked from the inside. The key is in the stables. You’ll need to give me a leg up.”

I grabbed onto a stone that protruded from the wall, then found a toe-hold, and pulled myself up the rest of the way. Brodie followed, easily reaching the top of the wall. He dropped down in the thick cover of branches, gorse, and juniper. Then reached up and caught me as I swung my legs over.

“How far?”

I found the pathway. “No more than a half mile.”

We set off.

The way was often blocked by overgrowth or fallen limbs. We worked our way around, found the path once more, and continued until the shape of the coach barn loomed up out of the darkness.

We crossed the automobile track, and approached the gardens at the back of the manor.

This would most usually have been where Brodie told me to wait for him. He did not.

“The servant’s entrance,” he said in a lowered voice. I laid a hand on his arm.

The manor was well lit with electric there. We could be easily seen by Victoria Grantham or René if he was with her.

“The chapel.”

“There’s a chapel?”

I nodded and moved past the gardens into the older part of Sussex Square where there was no electric, ten-foot-thick walls, the old granary, several storerooms, what my great aunt once told us was an old dungeon, and the chapel.

It was time-consuming as we moved through shadows, then along high stone walls of a tower, without light. We dared not turn on the hand-held lantern at risk that the beam of light might be seen.

At the other side of the chapel was the long passage that led to the medieval hall that connected to the new part of Sussex Square.

Exploring it no doubt fed my fascination with other places and my early adventures.

We eventually reached the chapel, crossed the medieval hall with the use of the lanterns, and reached an iron-framed oak door with a stout bar across.

Brodie lifted it with some effort. The door made a grating sound of old wood across the stone floor as he leaned into it, and we heard the faint sound of ... music.