Page 17 of Deadly Ghost (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery #12)

My family was safe.

There were wounds and bruises of course from that horrible night, but they would heal. Even Munro, in spite of himself. Bloody, stubborn Scot.

Mr. Brown had lost three of his men in what I was certain evened the number of favors between him and Brodie.

Mr. Conner had arrived as well that night, though somewhat delayed, saw the situation well in hand, and had promptly left for the nearest tavern. Another stubborn Scot.

Three men that Victoria Grantham had hired had been killed that night, either by Mr. Brown’s men or possibly Brodie, but he admitted nothing in the matter.

The man, René, lover, co-conspirator, murderer, and Victoria Grantham herself, along with the madness that had driven her, were both dead.

I had looked down at her that night, eyes wide, staring, but seeing nothing, with the damage from the surgeries she had sought to look like me, the marled features, skin curled back where it had separated at an incision that hadn’t fully healed, her mouth gaping open.

Brodie said the memory of it would fade in time. I wasn’t certain that I believed that.

Of course, the newspapers had a field day with the story, including Theodolphus Burke. He had somewhat redeemed himself with his publisher by mentioning that he had contributed to solving the case. My opinion of him had not changed.

Aunt Antonia’s lawyer, Sir Laughton, had Victoria Grantland’s claim dismissed ‘post mortem,’ after death, a mere formality so there could be no future claims made against my great aunt’s estate.

As for my great aunt, she had suffered no lasting ill effects from the ordeal. As she had informed everyone, “I have experienced far more serious situations, yet I can always count on Brodie.” After all, he was a man who could be trusted.

“What about the housekeeper?” Brodie had asked afterward.

“I met with her before she left to join her son and his wife after the Grantham residence was closed. She is still grieving the loss of her employer. They were quite close. She’s convinced that she had been murdered by her daughter.”

Possibly narcotics? I thought.

Surely the timing was suspicious, but there was no one left to pursue the possibility on her behalf.

I had accompanied Mrs. Aldcott to Highgate Cemetery to place flowers on Anne Grantham’s grave.

As we were leaving, we encountered a man I recognized as Sir George Trevelyan, who had been acquainted with my father, one of his club gaming partners. I did wonder what Lady Trevelyan might have known that she had refused to discuss.

As for that lost document that had conveniently disappeared from the Town Hall records at Compiegne? The truth was, without that document, there was no way to prove who Victoria Grantham’s father was.

And then there was Lily.

She was very different now from the girl I had brought from Edinburgh as my ward. We had all known that it would happen. But that night at Sussex Square, when I saw her at the entrance to the solar with that pistol in her hand, I knew the young girl was no more. She had been replaced by a strong-willed, intelligent young woman with a will of her own.

The dust had settled the past month. My sister and her husband were well into Christmas holiday plans, while Aunt Antonia had undertaken the decoration of a new nursery at Sussex Square in anticipation of the arrival of a member of the next generation of Montgomery offspring.

As for those letters that my father had written to Anne Grantham ...

“What will ye do with them?” Brodie asked, surrounded by the pleasant aroma of pipe smoke as we sat before the fire in the hearth at the office on the Strand.

“I read them again,” I replied.

I could keep them, a sort of memento.

But a memento of what? Of whom?

Someone I had barely known, whose secrets and failings had caused so much pain for my mother and haunted me for too long. Like a ghost of the past?

But there was nothing there, nothing that meant anything to me.

I tossed them onto the fire in the hearth, and watched them burn.