Page 8 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
Even in the weak red light, it was plain the fellow was beyond mortal help. Nevertheless, Gray checked, but there was no pulse to be found. As far as he could tell, Quimby had been stabbed very close to the heart. Just one blow. But what made the hairs on Gray’s nape rise was that the body was still warm, the blood still sluggishly oozing, only just turning sticky.
He rose and drew in a deeper breath. The photographer had been killed while Gray and Izzy had been in the office.
What if I hadn’t been here? Izzy would have been alone…
Thrusting aside the thought, he turned to her, taking in her stricken expression and stunned, helpless eyes. He was shocked, too, but he’d seen death—even violent death—before and in much uglier circumstances.
He stepped across, blocking her view of the body, and urged her toward the darkroom door.
She made an incoherent sound and tried to turn back to the dead man, but inexorably, Gray steered her on. “Yes, he’s dead. We need to summon the police.”
Chapter 2
After relighting the lamps on her desk, Gray settled her in the armchair he’d previously occupied. When she stared mutely at her bloody palm, he fished out his handkerchief. “Here. Wipe it with this.”
With a wooden nod, she took the linen square.
He recognized shock when he saw it. He didn’t want to leave her, but the police had to be informed. “Where are your keys?”
She blinked up at him.
“I want to lock you safely inside while I go and fetch the police.”
Without a word, she hunted in her reticule, drew out a set of keys, and handed them over.
Suppressing his concern—meek wasn’t a label he’d ever thought of applying to her—he quitThe Crier’soffices, locked the door, and strode quickly to Bernard Street. With no convenient policeman in sight, he walked the short distance to Woburn Place. The major thoroughfare still buzzed with evening traffic, and as he’d hoped, a bobby was idly pacing its pavement.
Gray hailed the fellow and, in a few short sentences, explained that a man had been found dead, stabbed, in the offices ofThe Crieron Woburn Mews and unblushingly used his title to demand the attendance of an inspector from Scotland Yard.
Having been back in the country for only three months, he wasn’t sure how the police force currently operated, but the bobby accepted his demand for a denizen of Scotland Yard without argument.
The excited constable left hotfoot to report to his local station, and Gray returned toThe Crier’soffices.
He arrived to find Izzy sitting exactly as he’d left her, staring down at her now mostly clean palm, his stained handkerchief crumpled in her other fist. She hadn’t even looked up at the jingling of the bell above the door. He’d hoped she would have eased out of her shock; seeing her as she was bothered him on some fundamental level.
He walked into the office and halted beside her, but she didn’t lift her head. Reaching down, he eased the stained linen from her fingers, then tucked the crumpled ball into his greatcoat pocket.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The response was automatic—ingrained good manners.
He thought, then asked, “Is there somewhere the staff make tea?”
Strong tea was the standard prescription for ladies under stress.
She raised her gaze to his face, then waved vaguely toward the workshop’s rear. “Go past this side of the press, all the way back to the rear wall. There’s a bench, a sink, a small stove, and tea things there.”
He returned to the foyer, turned up the lamp on the counter to full, then went hunting and discovered all he needed. He filled the tin kettle, boiled the water, then poured it into the plain brown teapot, over a large quantity of leaves.
While he waited for the tea to steep, he looked around. To his right, close to the water supply, was the coal-fed boiler that generated the steam that apparently drove a wide belt connected to the printing press.
He glanced the other way and noticed a door set into the rear wall, not far from the open doorway of what was plainly a storage room. On impulse, he wandered across and tried the door. It opened easily and silently.
Stunned, he looked out across a narrow lane. He stepped into the doorway and glanced about; he could see up and down the lane, to Bernard Street at the southern end and to some other street to the north.
He closed the door and stared at the handle. After a moment, lips compressed, he returned to the tea, poured a cup, then hunted and found a canister of sugar and a bottle with milk still fresh enough to drink and doctored the cup. Milky and sweet was recommended for shock.
He noticed a clean rag and dampened it with warm water, then carried the cup and rag to the office.
