Page 51 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
The knockon the front door had us all leaping to our feet. We couldn’t wait for Bristow to announce the visitor, so headed into the entrance hall to see for ourselves. It wasn’t Cyclops, however. It was the sketch artist.
“I hoped to find you here,” he said. “I returned to Scotland Yard, but D.I. Bailey didn’t return, so I decided to come here instead. I don’t think he’ll mind if I speak to you without him present.”
Alex invited him into the library. “We already have a suspicion about the redheaded man’s identity. Hopefully your drawing will confirm it.”
“In case you were wondering,” Willie added, “he’s an entitled idiot who won’t confess unless we present proof he was seen talking to Mad Dog. Mother’s orders.”
The artist eyed her warily as he opened his sketchbook. “The publican took a little prompting before he opened up, but hehas a good eye for detail. I’ve made notes about coloring as that doesn’t come across in pencil.”
I expected Huon to remark on the superiority of ink and that his family could supply any color of ink, but he surprised me. “Miss Conway is a graphite magician. Her family makes excellent colored pencils using a binding agent they invented themselves. It enhances the durability of the core, and ensures the colored pigments adhere better to paper, compared to artless pencils. Naturally, Miss Conway can also use a spell in her pencils that make your drawings more vibrant.” He removed a business card from his jacket pocket. “Come to her shop and try them for yourself.”
Petra smiled sweetly at him.
The artist accepted the card. “Well?” he asked Alex. “Is it your suspect?”
Alex shook his head. “But he does look familiar.” He passed the sketchbook to Willie and me.
“That ain’t Valentine,” she said. “I don’t recognize him, though. You do, Alex?”
“I’m not sure.”
He looked familiar to me, too. The memory was so close, yet still out of reach. I wanted to scream in frustration. I pressed my thumb and forefinger into my eyelids until someone shook me by the shoulders.
A seething Willie filled my vision. “You know, don’t you?”
“I can’t quite remember,” I said.
“Think!”
“I’m trying, but you’re putting me off.”
Her lips pursed and she snatched the sketchbook off Huon who was studying it. She held the sketchbook at arm’s length and squinted. “It’s written here that the man was tall and strongly built, but not heavy or fat.”
“Those are the publican’s words,” the artist said.
“And he was pale with reddish-brown hair.” She grunted. “He saidredhair to us.”
Reddish-brown hair.I’d heard someone described using those exact words. Someone who was also tall and strong. Someone who’d paid another man to throw balls of paper at Gabe at Epsom Downs racetrack. We’d concluded it had been a test to study Gabe’s reaction if a harmless projectile came his way. Later, bullets had been fired in what we thought was an escalation of the same experiment.
Alex remembered, too, and told the others about the incident. “I never saw the man; he was simply described to me.”
“But you said he looks familiar,” Willie pointed out. “You must have seen him somewhere.”
“It’s just a fleeting memory.”
If Alex and I had seen him, but Willie hadn’t… I tried to think of the places we’d been without her. Since the stabbing, Gabe had been watched closely by both his friendandcousin. The only times they let him out of their sight was when they thought he was safe, or he’d managed to slip away.
The stabbing…
I asked to see the sketch again. “I know who it is.”
CHAPTER 11
The Rosebank Gardens hospital patient who’d stabbed Gabe in the shoulder had come at him from behind. At the time, I thought Gabe’s magic didn’t activate because he hadn’t seen him, but considering Gabe hadn’t seen bullets flying at him from all directions in the war, that explanation didn’t hold water. Gabe’s magic activated when it knew he was in a life-threatening situation. A stab in the shoulder didn’t qualify as life-threatening.
The former soldier was arrested, but his severely shell-shocked state meant he couldn’t answer questions as to why he’d attacked Gabe. His only response had been to say that God made him do it. We’d theorized that someone put him up to it, either to frighten Gabe away from the investigation we’d been conducting at the time, or to test his magic. Occurring before the incident at the Epsom Downs racetrack, it was now clear both attacks were tests, and the same man was behind them—the man with the reddish-brown hair whose face stared back at me from the sketchbook.
The shell-shocked patient had been jailed in a secure facility since the incident and a quick telephone call confirmed he was still there. As for the face the artist had drawn—the man who’dhired Mad Dog Mitchell in the Rose and Thorn—I’d seen him at Rosebank. It was a face I’d hardly taken notice of at the time, which was why I couldn’t immediately identify him.
