Page 53 of Where the Heart Leads
Stokes stepped back, waving them into his small parlor. Closing the door, he gestured them to the armchairs by the hearth, then crossed to fetch a straight-backed chair from his tiny kitchen.
Setting the chair before the armchairs, he sat. “When did this happen?”
Penelope glanced at Barnaby. “I don’t really know—we were at a soiree when the message arrived.” She looked back at Stokes. “I gave orders to be informed of any further disappearance regardless of time or where I might be. Mrs. Keggs would have sent a messenger as soon as she heard, but he would have had to travel first to Mount Street, then on to Lady Carlyle’s.”
“Say an hour for Keggs’s message to reach us, and for the news to travel from the East End to Bloomsbury”—Barnaby met Stokes’s gaze—“possibly as much as two hours.”
Ferreting in her reticule, Penelope pulled out the note and handed it to Stokes. “Apparently the doctor dropped by to check on Mrs. Carter, and found her dead, and Jemmie gone.”
Stokes read the note. “It sounds like the doctor is very sure Mrs. Carter didn’t die naturally.”
“Indeed.” Penelope sat forward. “So what should we do?”
Stokes glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf; the hands stood at a quarter to eleven. “There’s not a great deal we can achieve tonight, but I’ll send word to the local watch house. They’d been keeping an eye on the household, but as none of us imagined Jemmie—or Mrs. Carter—were in any immediate danger, the watch wasn’t constant.”
Penelope looked pained, but conceded, “There was no way of knowing they would stoop to this.”
Stokes inclined his head. “Nevertheless, I’ll go into headquarters—I’m close, so that won’t take long. We have official messengers—one will take the alert to the Liverpool Street watch house. The doctor will have reported the crime, but interest from Scotland Yard will ensure that the local sergeant immediately starts to gather all the information he can. I’ll go there tomorrow and see what he has, and what more I can learn.”
Penelope looked at Barnaby. Meeting her eyes, he didn’t need any words to know what she was thinking, feeling. But…he shook his head. “There’s no sense in us going there tonight. We won’t be able to learn anything, and in the dark it’s possible we may overlook or even destroy some clue.”
Her lips compressed; her face looked pinched, but after a moment, she nodded. “Very well. But as you mentioned, we should make plans.”
They did, rapidly assessing possible avenues of investigation, people they might question. The logistics of what had to be done were discussed; Stokes undertook to address the more formal aspects, while Barnaby and Penelope would pursue the more personal—the neighbors and locals who might have seen or heard something. Twenty minutes after they’d knocked on Stokes’s door, they rose. Stokes grabbed his greatcoat; pulling his door shut, he accompanied them downstairs. They parted on the steps, he striding off toward Scotland Yard while Barnaby helped Penelope into the waiting hackney.
Barnaby shut the door; cool darkness enveloped them. As the carriage rocked into motion, Penelope sighed and leaned back. After a moment she said, “Stokes is good at what he does, isn’t he?”
“Excellent.” Through the dark, Barnaby reached out and closed his hand about one of hers. The heat of his palm engulfed her fingers, a human warmth in the chill of the night. He squeezed lightly, reassuringly. “Rest assured that this case couldn’t be in better hands.”
She smiled in the dark. “He’s your friend—you would say that.”
“True, but ask yourself this: if he wasn’t so good, would he still be my friend?”
Her smile deepened. After a moment, she said, “I’m not sure I’m up to dealing with conundrums at present.”
Again he squeezed her fingers. “I’m only pointing out the obvious.”
Her chest felt tight, yet his nearness—the solid masculine reality of him all but filling the seat beside her—eased and comforted. “Speaking of the obvious…”
He followed her thoughts with frightening ease. “We’ll have to go back through the Foundling House’s records and look at every single boy who fits our schoolmaster’s bill, regardless of whether his guardian is close to dying or not.”
She felt her face harden. “We can’t—absolutelycannot—take the chance of another boy being grabbed as Jemmie was.”
A long moment passed. Then, as if this time he’d read her fears as well as her thoughts, he said, “We’ll get Jemmie back. That I promise you.”
She closed her eyes, told herself he was just saying what she needed to hear, but the unwavering resolution in his tone, resonating in his deep voice, made it easy to believe him—to place her faith in him. To believe that together they would get Jemmie back.
She needed to believe that.
A few minutes later, the hackney drew up outside Calverton House. Barnaby opened the door, stepped down, then handed her down. Although her awareness of his touch hadn’t abated in the least, she no longer steeled herself against it; indeed, tonight, she welcomed it—drew strength from it—which, in light of their earlier discussion, wasn’t a comforting realization.
She pushed it to the back of her mind, and let him escort her up the steps. They paused on the narrow porch; facing him, she offered her hand.
He took it, held it, studied her eyes, her face. “I’ll call for you at nine. We’ll go first to the Foundling House so you can reassure the staff, then we’ll continue to Arnold Circus and spend as long as it takes to learn all we can.”
She nodded; he’d earlier convinced her of the need to call in at the Foundling House. “I’ll be ready and waiting at nine.”
His lips quirked in wry understanding. “Get some sleep.” Before she realized what he was about, he raised her fingers to his lips and brushed a kiss—hot and distracting—across the sensitive backs.
