Chapter 17

Seventeen

We shared the midday meal at the Public House, then Brodie was off to find the fire brigade captain he had spoken of in the hope that the man might be able to tell him something about that charred ‘paper weight,' as I referred to it.

I put through a call to Sir Laughton's office. He was able to meet with me later in the day, which would give me enough time afterward to return to the town house, change clothes, and then meet Lily and my great-aunt, along with Munro, for the cabaret that evening.

Sir Laughton's offices were on Fleet Street, very near the Chancery House and the Royal Courts of Justice.

Highly experienced in matters of law, he had overseen my great-aunt's legal affairs for as long as I could remember, and had guided her through the somewhat chaotic process of formally adopting both me and my sister to protect us from our father's losses and ruin.

If she held any animosity toward our father—he was after all quite dead by that time—she had kept it to herself until we were much older, and then only to myself.

" One's deeds do catch up on one. "

And then her somewhat infamous ‘get on with it' speech. "I never liked him. He had a weak chin. However, your mother, poor lamb, was quite taken with him. Or I should say, taken in."

I was of much the same opinion, and for several years while gaining my maturity, I found myself constantly checking my chin, much to Aunt Antonia's bemusement.

"No weak chin there, my dear. You must simply refuse to have it."

As it turned out, neither Linnie nor I had that character aspect.

I arrived now at Sir Laughton's offices with my well-developed chin, and gave my name to Mrs. Abernathy, the woman who managed the front of his office, including his appointments.

"Good afternoon, Lady Forsythe. It is so very good to see you again. How is her ladyship?"

Mrs. Abernathy had been in service to Sir Laughton almost as long as he had been my great-aunt's lawyer, and knew our family well.

We exchanged greetings, then she pressed a button on a small panel at her desk and announced that I had arrived. She then showed me to his office.

"My dear, Mikaela," he said, coming round his desk. "It is good to see you. I was quite surprised when Mrs. Abernathy said that you called for an appointment. You know that you need not be so formal." He then added, "I do hope it is nothing serious."

"I have questions," I replied, setting aside my umbrella. He assisted with my long coat, then hung it on the coat rack near the door.

"It is in the matter of an investigation that Mr. Brodie and I have undertaken."

He nodded as he returned to his chair behind the desk. "And Mr. Brodie is well also?"

I assured him that Brodie was quite well.

"How may I assist you?"

I explained the basics of the two murders, and then specifically asked about the possibility that Simon Harris might have established a trust to see to his affairs after his death.

"Simon Harris, Harris Imports. I remember that tragic situation. And to answer your question, yes, it is possible. Her ladyship has such a provision in her own trust that will provide for you and your sister for years to come, as well as her various properties. Carrying out specific duties for someone after one is gone, with a Trustee appointed to carry out those duties."

Then, that would explain the regular payments that had been made to Mr. Martins all these years since, and still…

"Is it possible to find out if there is in fact a trust for either Simon Harris or Harris holdings?" I then asked.

"There is no public record of trusts. The trustee named in the trust would hold the document on behalf of the person who had it created. Their responsibility would be to manage and administer the trust according to the terms set out in the trust."

"Would anyone else have a copy of it?"

"The lawyer who drew it up would have a copy. Perhaps a bank, if funds are to be distributed, or the title registrar if the trust calls for the transfer of property. I assume this pertains to the inquiry case you and Mr. Brodie are pursuing."

I acknowledged that it was.

"How else might we learn what is in the trust?"

Sir Laughton sat behind his desk, chin resting on steepled fingers as he considered the question.

"It might be possible to obtain a copy of the trust, as far as specific instructions are concerned, if you were a party to the trust, or perhaps a claimant."

"Claimant? What sort of claimant?"

"If, perhaps, you believed that you had an interest in the estate held by the trust and had not been properly represented."

"How would one go about that?"

"You would need to be represented by someone with knowledge of such matters," he explained.

"An official letter of intent would be drawn up and sent to the office of the holder of the trust."

"How long might that take?"

"It could take several days to establish the need for the disclosure of the trust."

"Could take?" I replied.

It seemed that it was possible to expedite the matter based on the particular wording in the letter of intent.

"For the sake of argument, how quickly might it be done?"

That gaze sharpened above those steepled fingers.

"I am reminded that you are remarkably like her ladyship."

I smiled at that. "Then, you are able draw up such a letter on my behalf, as a claimant and as expeditiously as possible, so that I might learn what the provisions of the trust are." I concluded the obvious.

"Plainly speaking, you are asking me to determine if there is a trust, who holds it, and then to tell you what is in it."

"That is precisely what I am asking."

He shook his head. "Very much like her ladyship. Very well. I will have my clerk search the archive of legal documents filed by most of us about London, and have the letter for the Harris representative awaiting that information. Where may I reach you when it is done?"

I asked him to contact me at Sussex Square the moment he had sent the letter and when he might have a response.

He promised to have some word for me by end of day. I told myself that it was the best I could have hoped for.

As I left, navigating my way to the corner through the swirls of rain that had accumulated on the sidewalk, I thought of Brodie and wondered if he had been able to find the man he hoped to speak with regarding his ‘paper weight.'

I briefly returned to the office, even though it was late of the afternoon. I made notes on the board from my meeting with Sir Laughton. I was hopeful that I would have word soon from Sir Laughton and had drawn a line under the description of a trust that I hoped he would be able to find.

I then left a note for Brodie as we had agreed we would do when going about in separate directions.

I suppose I should have objected having to account for my whereabouts, as in the past with others, but didn't. That surprised me somewhat, but in addition to our growing personal relationship, I found that I liked Brodie very much and understood his concerns that came from his work with the MET.

It was a bit flattering and oddly comforting that someone cared for my safety, even if he could be a bit high-handed about it from time to time.

Mr. Cavendish and Rupert were nowhere to be seen when I had arrived. Given the nasty weather and with both Brodie and me gone, they were undoubtedly down at the Public House where it was warm, dry, and there was food.

I called for a cab, then waited until the driver arrived below. I locked the office and set the bolt, then descended the stairs.

I recognized the driver from previous calls. He stepped down from atop the hansom.

"Good day, miss," he said with a lopsided smile. "Nice weather out, this afternoon. Where be your destination?"

He held open the gate and assisted me into the cab.

"Sussex Square," I replied.

As he reached to close the upper gate across the opening against the rain, I glimpsed a man in front of the haberdashers across the roadway.

It might have been the scarcity of those about on such a dreadful afternoon, the fact that the shop was closed, or the way he suddenly pulled up his collar as he seemed to stare across the way.

He had no umbrella as he stepped out from under the canopy in front of the shop, then pulled the brim of his hat low.

He was dressed in a dark suit with long coat over as he continued to stare, then slowly disappeared down the opposite sidewalk.

Brodie would have laughed and then teased me. But it was there, that certainty despite his being hardly visible through the pouring rain. I had seen the man before.

brODIE

Bethnal Green Fire Station was in the East End.

The red brick four-story building was little more than two years old with two large bays, a tall tower at one end of the building for hanging hoses to dry after a fire, and a stable yard in the foreyard for horses that pulled those wagons.

Captain Kearney was with the brigade at Bethnal Green, having transferred from Holborn the year before.

Brodie knew him from his time with the MET, when both had found themselves called to the fires in the East End where families were crowded into flats and cook-fires were often the cause of blazes that spread throughout a building.

Kearney was a good man, more than twenty years in with the brigade that had grown from district fire brigades to the consolidated Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which had formed several years before in an effort to provide better fire service to the greater London area.

He was a burly figure of a man who stood head and shoulders with the younger firemen, with that long handlebar mustache, and a face with deep lines, no doubt from squinting into the heat of a burning building.

"You are a long way from the Strand," he greeted Brodie as he came out of the office beside that first bay.

"Is there a fire that brings you here, my friend?"

"In a manner of speaking," Brodie replied. He gestured to the gleaming fire wagon that stood in the bay with an enormous boiler mid-wagon.

"Steam power?"

The captain nodded as two of his men carried a coiled hose from the adjacent tower, and proceeded to mount it on the wagon.

"It was just brought over from city maintenance. It is supposed to pump water faster than a two-man team. We will see." He dried his hands.

"Things are quiet today, so far. Come inside," he told Brodie. "I will buy you a cup of coffee and you can tell me what brings you to the Green."

"We have shared some adventures, eh Brodie," he said after he had poured them both a cup of coffee and sat back in his chair, in the large open area just beyond an arched opening. It was lined with cots end-to-end along one wall, a large dining table with benches in the middle, and a half-dozen wardrobe closets against the other wall with helmets above.

"That last fire at a tavern before you took yourself off in private business was a nasty one," he recalled.

Brodie nodded. "A difficult fire, that one. And started by a disgruntled customer."

Kearney nodded. "You chased the man down in quick time."

"Aye, but not soon enough to save that poor girl who worked there."

"That is the problem with a city that is over a thousand years old, with buildings on top of buildings cheek by jowl, and many of them built of wood over the centuries. A fire starts and it has its way with others before we can get to it.

"But it's better now since bringing all the districts together and organizing them, along with building the new fire stations." He made a sweeping gesture indicating the building where they now shared coffee.

"It gives the ability for all to respond to a fire if necessary." He took a long sip of coffee.

"Now, what is it that brings you here. It cannot be that you've missed me. My wife might object."

Brodie smiled. "I miss many of the lads I worked with, good men, and there are others…" He would have let that go. As far as he was concerned, it was old business, best left in the past.

Kearney nodded. "Word gets around among the lads and those with the Metropolitan Police—what Abberline did. Not right by my book." He poured more coffee for the both of them.

"Now, my friend. How may I be of assistance?"

Brodie pulled out the piece of charred wood wrapped in butcher paper that he'd brought from the site of the warehouse that had once been Harris Coffee Imports.

"Wot can ye tell me about this?" he said, laying it out on the desk.

The captain picked it up and turned it over in his fingers.

"Wood, badly charred," he commented as he rubbed his fingers down the length of the piece, then rubbed them together.

"Oily residue on the underside of the piece that obviously was protected all these years. Tell me what you know about it."

"A warehouse fire some years back at St. Katherine's Docks. It was owned by a coffee importer, by the name of Harris. I pried this from a timber that had once been part of the side wall near a back storeroom that survived."

"St. Katherine's Docks, you say," Kearney commented. "And you're investigating the fire after all this time?"

"In a manner of speaking, as it might pertain to another crime," Brodie replied.

Captain Kearney then smelled the piece of wood.

"There is a bit of a smell left. Wood always soaks it up, but usually it dries out either with the fire, or over time. You said that you pried it out where the timber at the side joined the wall of the storeroom?" he shrugged. "This still has the smell of coal oil."

Brodie's gaze narrowed. "Ye smell it as well then."

Kearney nodded. "One can't work the fires all these years in all sorts of places and not know it—coal oil, usually used to start a stove fire that gets away and you have a nasty situation."

"How fast would such a fire spread?" Brodie asked.

"It would depend on the amount of coal oil used, which seems a bit odd for a warehouse where coffee was stored. And then, what set it off? A small amount spilt by accident might not have been the cause."

"Supposedly it started late at night, an oil lamp that was left burning after a shipment arrived, and the fire got away and took most of the building."

"I remember the news articles about it at the time. Tragic situation for Harris, and he supposedly tried to put it out before the brigade arrived."

"Aye, supposedly ," Brodie commented.

"You believe the fire was deliberately set? For the insurance money?"

"No claim was every made according to articles that were published afterward. And that smell of coal oil would seem to contradict the story of simple lamp oil. And coal oil spread about, at least on that wall?" Brodie added. "There is a manager still there who keeps watch over the place."

"Have you spoken with him? He might be able to tell you something."

"He was… less than cooperative, "Brodie replied. "It seems that he receives a stipend each month to watch over the site."

"You know as well that a warehouse fire is not unusual, particularly when the owner is perhaps deeply in debt. And that piece of wood would seem suspicious."

"Aye. I thank ye for confirming what I thought."

"I hear your inquiry business has done well."

"Well enough, although we may be forced to leave the building. There is a new owner and the rents always go up."

"I hear other things as well," Captain Kearney added. "One of the lads picked up word that you have someone working for you now. A woman, he said."

Brodie thought about that before replying.

"In a manner of speaking. She is an associate for some of the inquiry cases, and my wife."

It was not often that he needed to explain, but he was finding that it came more easily now.

Kearney's eyes widened above that handlebar mustache.

"Wife, is it?" he exclaimed. "My Molly said it would never happen. The woman must be special."

"Aye," Brodie replied. "That she is."

He had what he wanted, confirmation of his own suspicions, yet was not certain what it meant to their current investigation.

If Harris had set fire to his own warehouse and was then caught in it, it wouldn't be the first time someone found himself in financial difficulties and then took such drastic measures.

"I thank ye kindly for yer thoughts in the matter, and the coffee."

"Ha! Married!" Captain Kearney slapped his knee and broke out in laughter as he left.

It was after midday when he returned to the office on the Strand.

He didn't expect Mikaela to be there. After meeting with Sir Laughton that afternoon, she would go to Sussex Square to join Lady Montgomery and Lily before setting off for the cabaret.

He understood the responsibility she felt to find answers for the murders after bringing Lily from Edinburgh, and he agreed with her that they must find those answers.

"Miss Forsythe was here earlier," Mr. Cavendish informed him as he stepped down from the cab.

"Only a short while before leaving again. Said if I saw you, that she left you a note."

Brodie nodded as he stepped under the overhang above the alcove. The Mudger, née Cavendish, joined him.

"I've seen it like this before out at sea. A big one is comin'. Could be like the one a few years back that flooded up to the Strand."

"I need to find someone," Brodie told him. "You might best know where he can be found—Mr. Brown."

"Brown?" Mr. Cavendish spat out. "He's a bad sort. You know as well as any that the man can't be trusted. What might you want with that filthy, lyin' bugger?"

It seemed the Mudger, known to commit crimes in the past, had no respect for the man.

"Does he still control the docks and the workers there?" Brodie asked.

Cavendish nodded. "As far as I know."

"Ye know where to find the man?"

"I can put the word out… Is this about the two murders?" the Mudger asked, then, "I know, don't ask. What I don't know can't hurt me. But still, there is Miss Forsythe. You know how she can be, no disrespect meant."

None taken, Brodie thought. He knew exactly how she ‘could be.'

"She is off with her ladyship this evening. And if you work quickly, there is no need for her to know that I've sent ye off to see what ye can learn."

"Right yer are," Cavendish replied as he whistled for the hound who suddenly appeared from under the alcove.

"Me hat," he told the hound, who disappeared once more into the alcove then reappeared with a battered bowler hat in his teeth.

Cavendish grinned as he firmly set the hat on his head, then wrapped the woolen scarf more securely about his neck.

"I've been teaching him to fetch. I hear the beasts are right smart that way."

Brodie could imagine who might have told him that.

"Ye have yer blade?" he asked.

The Mudger patted his jacket. "Where I can get it right quick if I need it. And I have the hound."

Not the defense Brodie would have preferred that he have where he was sending him.

"Brown will want to know what's in it for him," the Mudger reminded him.

"There will be a fee paid once I meet with him, and the information proves out. Not before."

Brodie glanced overhead the sky.

"If ye canna find the man, get back before nightfall. No one will be about once new storm sets in."

"As you would say, Mr. Brodie, it's a fine soft rain."

The Mudger grinned that gap-toothed smile as he paddled off on his platform, the hound running alongside and then disappeared through the pouring rain.

There was no one on the streets he trusted more than the Mudger. The man had an uncanny ability to change himself from ‘ helpless beggar' to fierce enemy that few would want to encounter.

It was a lesson he'd learned a long time ago. The outcome, a draw if it was to be called anything, was a friendship of respect and care. And then there was the immediate bond between the cripple and Mikaela.

Not out of sympathy, because in the way of hers, that sense she claimed to have, she understood from the beginning that Mr. Cavendish would never have accepted it.

And that was another thing, Brodie thought as he put in a call to Mr. Dooley for any information he might have on Brown.

He had always known the Mudger by his street name. Mikaela had quickly learned that his name was Cavendish and called him by it.

He suspected that the man had taken a bit of a fancy to her. For whatever reason, Mr. Cavendish had taken to washing somewhat regularly, pulling his overlong hair back in more acceptable fashion, and now wore clothes that in the very least didna smell like the hound.

Mikaela insisted that it was due to an affection that he had grown for Miss Effie at the Public House. Be that as it may, the man still had a habit of defending Mikaela in an argument.

" She is probably right, you know," he had told him recently. " The ladies often are. It's that other sense they seem to have. It's hopeless to argue with them ."

Hopeless. Aye, Brodie was finding that out. It called for different measures, such as tonight, and his hope of contacting a man he knew from the streets.

He finally reached Dooley.

The streets had been quiet of late as far as any reports of assault against business owners. Brown's people guaranteed protection from other known gangs about London.

But Dooley and his men hadn't picked up rumors of any plans in that regard. It might have been the weather.

He changed out of the suit of clothes he usually wore when making appointments with clients, and pulled on rough woolen trousers and a woolen jumper that looked as if it might have been something the Mudger had pulled from a rubbish bin on the street.

When planning a visit to the streets of the East End and a man like Brown, it was best to dress the part, a part he was all too familiar with.