Page 4 of In Want of a Suspect

Lizzie could hear Jane’s voice in her head.He must feel some affection for you, Lizzie. What else do you require?

But before Lizzie could allow her thoughts to be mired bythis question, a shout from up the street caught her attention. “Fire!” a man’s rough voice called out. “Fire!”

Immediately the atmosphere of the street shifted as people began to look about frantically for signs of flame or smoke. Lizzie and Darcy did the same, and Darcy’s hand tightened on her arm as people began grabbing possessions and running in the opposite direction of the cry. Fire was no trifling matter—it took very little for flames to spread from building to building, especially in a neighborhood as cramped as this, with narrow streets and even narrower alleys.

As other panicked pedestrians took up the cry of “Fire!” a sense of unease overtook Lizzie. A man ran toward them, pulling two goats, and Darcy stopped him. “Where?” he asked.

“Up that way,” the man said, gesturing behind him. He couldn’t be bothered to give an exact location. “One of the storehouses,” he added and continued to shepherd his animals away from the danger.

Lizzie’s uneasy feeling solidified into dread and she took off in the direction the man had indicated—not straight behind him but down a side street. The street the officers had instructed them to turn down.

“Lizzie!” Darcy cried, but she didn’t slow, nor did she heed the advice she’d always been given by her father in the event of fire:Get as far away as you can from the flames and anything else that may catch fire.She rounded the corner and was horrified to find that her hunch had been correct.

The Mullins Brothers storehouse was smoking.

It had been three years since she’d last visited the unassuming two-story brick structure, and aside from the smoke billowing from the open door, it hadn’t changed. A small group of brave souls was clustered around the front of the building, loudly arguing.

Darcy caught up with her and took her arm. “We need to leave,” he said, low and urgent.

“It’s the Mullinses!” she protested over the din of men shouting and bells clanging. “We need to help!”

“No.” The steel edge of Darcy’s tone made her shiver. She didn’t hear it often, and never directed toward her. “It’s too dangerous.”

“But—”

“We don’t know how quickly the fire will move. I need to get you far away,now.”

Lizzie didn’t try to get any closer, but she wasn’t ready to leave just yet. She couldn’t see inside the building and so she had no idea how extensive the fire inside might be, although she could smell the smoke, heavy and acrid. It was not unlike when one of her sisters singed a wool gown with a clothes iron, but much, much worse. Most of the people who had a mind to flee had streamed past them, and those who had decided to stay—likely workers and owners of the surrounding buildings—were frantically hauling buckets of water from a nearby well. Next to the storehouse was a smithy, and the blacksmith and his assistant rolled an entire barrel toward the entrance of the burning building.

“Do you think Jack and Simon are inside?” she asked, trying to peer through the crowd of men.

“Let’s pray they’re not.”

From her vantage point, Lizzie watched as men tied wet handkerchiefs over their faces and took turns running to the building with buckets. They must not have been able to go far, for it seemed that they’d no sooner disappeared inside than they’d stumble back out again, coughing and swiping at their burning eyes.

Lizzie saw no sign of either Mullins brother.

“Need I remind you that it only takes a small fire to burn down the entire city?” Darcy asked. “Do not put me in the position of having to inform your mother of your untimely death!”

He was right, but it was a rather low blow, bringing her mother into it. “Fine,” she said. “But you won’t be telling her a thing about us coming here unchaperoned—”

Lizzie was just about ready to turn her back on the scene when two figures came bursting out of the front doors. They were coughing so hard that their bodies shook. One was an older man, hair and beard graying, and the other was a young, slim man with tears running down his face.

“That’s Jack!” Lizzie cried.

Jack Mullins kept trying to turn to face the wreckage of his family business. To see the destruction of everything his father had worked for, that he and his brother worked for, going up in literal flames... Lizzie’s heart broke for him.

But then he pulled his jacket up to cover the bottom of hisface and ran toward the door. Three men peeled away from the firefighting efforts to hold him back and Lizzie realized with slick horror that he was screaming. “Simon! You have to get Simon!”

“Oh no,” Lizzie whispered.

Even Darcy stopped pulling at her. “God help him,” he whispered.

The older man conferred with one of the men holding back Jack, and he shook his head gravely. They nodded and tried to pull Jack away from the burning building, but he was still screaming for his brother.

No one was going back inside to save him.

Which, in all probability, meant he was already dead.