Page 56 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
“Do you have a confession to make, Willie?”
Alex suddenly turned to her. “Did you lose your key?”
Her face drained of color. She reached out, her fingers searching for the table for support. I pushed a chair under herand guided her to sit. She lowered her head into her hands, muttering something we couldn’t hear.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“It ain’t my fault. I was drunk.”
“Being drunkisyour fault!” Cyclops snapped.
Alex stepped between them, like a boxing referee keeping the opponents apart. Not that it would come to physical blows between the old friends, but there was every danger their exchange would be heated.
Or so I thought, until I saw Willie’s forlorn face as she glanced up at Cyclops. She blamed herself, too. So much so that she even admitted it with a groan. She buried her face in her hands again.
I rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. For once, she did not shrug it off. “Tell us what happened.”
“I went out drinking a few nights ago. I didn’t realize I’d lost my key until I got home. It was real late and I knew the Bristows would be in bed, so I went into the mews and slept in the motorcar until the house woke up. Later, I borrowed Bristow’s key and got a copy made.” She removed it from her pocket. “I told him not to say anything to anyone.”
“Why didn’t you want us to know?” Alex asked.
“Because you and Gabe made fun of me last time I came home drunk. You told me I can’t hold my liquor anymore, that I’m getting old.” She sighed. “So that’s why Bristow’s been acting odd. He didn’t say anything earlier when we were here with Daisy and the others.”
“I asked him not to,” Cyclops said. “I wanted to speak to you myself, but I had to go out to check on my men’s progress.”
I’d not thought it possible to feel even more hopeless about our situation, but the pit of despair became an abyss. Willie could have lost the key anywhere on her way home, and anyonecould have picked it up. There was no way of narrowing our list of suspects.
Willie, however, wiped her nose on her sleeve and sat up a little straighter. “I reckon I’ve got an idea who took it, but…” She gave her head an emphatic shake. “No. Can’t be. I must be remembering that night all wrong.”
Cyclops and Alex crowded close. “Talk it through with us,” Cyclops said, his earlier anger having vanished. “Where were you? Who were you with?”
“I was supposed to meet a friend at The Flying Duck for a drink, but he never showed up. Some people I knew saw I was on my own and asked me to join them. We drank together for a while. Sometime later, I remember I tripped over something. I went sprawling, knocking over a chair. I reckon the key fell out of my pocket then.”
Alex sighed. “Anyone in the pub could have picked it up.”
Willie rubbed her temple as she shook her head. “It was just us in the snug and I didn’t leave then. I stayed on, as did they. One of us would have seen the key on the floor before we left. The snug ain’t spacious, and they weren’t as drunk as me.”
“So, one of them saw the key fall out of your pocket and picked it up then and there. Who were you drinking with?”
Willie wasn’t a ditherer in any sense, yet she was reluctant to answer Alex. She bent forward and groaned.
He glared at her as if that could gouge the response out of her. “Tell us!”
She lifted her head. She displayed not a single trace of the bravado she was infamous for, none of the cockiness and spirited sass. There was just despair. “You ain’t going to believe it.”
CHAPTER 12
“Who?” Cyclops pressed. “Who could have picked up your key, Willie?”
“I was drinking with three others: Stanley Greville, Juan Martinez and Francis Stray.”
I gasped. “Gabe’s friends? Surely not.” Yet even as I said it, doubt crept in.
Alex shook his head. “Why were the three of them drinking together without Gabe? He’s the mutual connection between them.” He was right—Juan and Stanley had fought alongside Gabe in the Grenadier Guards, but Francis was an old school chum.
“Gabe had been at The Flying Duck with them earlier,” Willie said. “He left before I got there.”
Alex was still shaking his head, over and over, as if trying to dislodge an insidious thought. “It can’t be one of them. It must have been someone else, Willie. Think.”
