Laura Lee Guhrke (5 page)

“Of course she’s upset.” Miss Atwood slapped a card down on the table. “Dreams of blood and dead bodies would upset anyone.”

“I went to the police,” Sophie blurted out.

All three ladies looked at her in astonishment. Mr. Dawes peered at her over his spectacles as if she were an interesting species of bacteria. The colonel gave a disapproving humph and muttered, “A young lady getting herself involved with the police. It isn’t clone, I say. It simply isn’t.”

“Oh, but the man was dead, Colonel,” Violet assured
him. “Sophie saw it. She had a duty to report it to the police.”

“Yes, indeed,” Miss Peabody agreed. “She couldn’t just stand by and let the man be killed.”

The colonel had no answer to that. He once again took refuge behind his newspaper, saying nothing more.

“What made you go to the police?” Violet asked Sophie. “I thought you had decided against it.”

“I changed my mind.” Feeling the need to talk about it, Sophie went on, “There I was in Fortnum & Mason, and all of a sudden, I knew I had to go to Scotland Yard at once. I’m sorry, Auntie. I was so distraught, I forgot all about your lemon curd.”

Violet waved aside the lemon curd. “So you went to the police. Then what happened?”

“It was the most extraordinary thing. There I was, reporting the murder to some nice man in a blue uniform, when I looked up and saw
him
. The same man from my dream, the dead one. Only he wasn’t dead, of course. He’s a detective at Scotland Yard.”

Violet gave a little gasp. “What did you do?”

“I told him, of course. I tried to warn him, but he didn’t believe me.” Sophie slumped forward in discouragement. “He seemed to think it was all some sort of prank. He practically tossed me out on my ear.”

Miss Peabody made a sound of sympathy. “How horrible.”

“What else can you expect from a policeman?” Miss Atwood put down the last card with a triumphant flourish and came to sit with them around the tea tray. “Not at all our sort.”

Sophie refrained from pointing out that most people were not their sort. Most people did not believe themselves to be reincarnations of historical personages, or have dreams of the future that usually came true, or use a planchette to contact dead strangers named Abdul.

“We must make allowances for those who are skeptical of the spirit world,” Violet said.

Mr. Dawes closed his book with a sigh of irritation and stood up. “It’s impossible to study down here. How can I prepare for my examinations with all this chatter going on?”

The others paid little attention to that, and conversation about Sophie’s experience resumed the moment Dawes departed.

“It must have been a most distressing experience for you, Sophie, darling.” Violet patted her shoulder in a gesture of consolation. “But at least you tried. You did your best.”

“Exactly,” Miss Peabody concurred. “And there’s nothing more you can do.”

Sophie envisioned the inspector’s face, so handsome and vibrant with life, and she sat up straight on the settee, her resolve renewed. “I am not giving up. Not by a long way.”

Surprisingly, it was Colonel Abercrombie who endorsed her decision first. “Good girl,” he said and tossed aside his newspaper. He came forward to help himself to a strawberry tart and cup of tea. “You shouldn’t have gone to the police in the first place,” he told her with a fatherly sort of frown. “But, once you’ve decided on your course, you’d best stick to it.
That has always been my way. I remember once in the Bengal—”

“Tell us, dear,” Miss Atwood interrupted to prevent another of the colonel’s long, rather tedious stories of his life in India, “what do you plan to do next?”

Sophie looked at the eager faces of the other four people assembled around the tea table, and she found herself at a loss. “I have no idea,” she confessed. “But I’m going to think of something. I am not going to let him die.”

The White Horse was not the pub of choice for most policemen around Whitehall. The Boar’s Head, close to both New Scotland Yard and Cannon Row Police Station, usually held that honor. But thanks to Sir Roger Ellerton and his motorcar, the Boar’s Head was closed for repairs, so the White Horse was crowded with off-duty bobbies, constables, and inspectors when Mick walked in.

Word of his part in Sir Roger’s escapade had reached most of his comrades, and he bowed facetiously to the applause that greeted his arrival at the pub. His black eye was much admired, and his birthday provided the perfect excuse for another round.

Amid good-natured insults, slaps on the back, and birthday wishes, Mick accepted a complimentary pint of ale from the barkeep. He ordered a steak and chips from Annie, the prettiest barmaid at the White Horse, then he glanced around the crowded interior of the pub. He saw many men that he knew, including his friends Anthony Frye and Jack Hawthorne seated at a table nearby, but though he responded to their wave of
greeting with a wave of his own, he did not cross the room to their table. Right now, the men he wanted to see were Billy and Rob. He spied them seated in a far corner of the pub, and he made his way through the labyrinth of people and the haze of cigar smoke to their table.

Billy Mackay and Rob Willis were veterans of the Metropolitan Police for two decades. Though only a few years older than Mick, they had no ambitions beyond their present jobs. Both of them enjoyed being bobbies on the beat. Though higher in rank, inspectors like Mick who dressed in plain clothes garnered even less trust and confidence from the populace than the uniformed officers did.

Billy and Rob took their work seriously, but that did not stop them from playing jokes on their fellow officers. They were, in fact, notorious for it. Mick had learned that his first day on the force. Barely eighteen, he’d been initiated into the ranks with a uniform they had rolled in poison ivy. In retaliation, Mick had dusted their uniforms with sneezing powder, and he’d been friends with the pair ever since.

“Well done, lad,” Billy said as Mick sat down. “How many blots on your copybook do you get for arresting an earl’s son?”

“Couldn’t you have done something a bit more sensational for your birthday?” Rob asked. “Unmasking one of the Queen’s nieces as a jewel thief would have been better, I think.”

“Rather,” Billy agreed. “Then you might have been in the penny papers.”

“It’ll be in the papers anyway,” Mick assured them.
“When I passed the Boar’s Head on
my
way here, I saw that artist for the
Daily Telegraph
sketching the scene.” He took a hefty swallow of ale and licked the foam from his upper lip. “But enough of that. I want to know about the other.”

“What other?” Rob grinned beneath his graying dark-brown mustache. “You mean you did something else today as stupid as arresting Sir Roger Ellerton?”

“It wasn’t stupid,” Mick defended himself.

“He’s related to the Home Secretary,” Billy told him.

“I know that now,” Mick answered. “But I didn’t know it at the time. Besides, I don’t care who his relations are. He deserved to be arrested for striking a policeman.” He took another swallow of ale, then set his glass down on the table. “Enough about that. I want to know about the woman.”

“What woman?” both men asked at once.

They exchanged glances, then Billy leaned across the table. “You met a new woman? Congratulations!” He slapped Mick on the shoulder.

“God’s balls, Billy!” Mick rubbed his aching shoulder. “Did you have to do that?”

“Shoulder hurts?” Rob looked at Billy. “He’s getting old.”

“Thirty-six is not old,” Mick said and realized he was getting very tired of saying that. “It’s the bullet I took in the Lambeth case, and you know it.”

“Sorry, old chap.” The words and the tone in which he said them made it clear Billy was unrepentant. “Tell us about the woman you met. Are you going to be in love with this one for more than a week?”

“What do you mean by that?” Mick asked, once again diverted from the subject of Miss Haversham.

“He means you fall in love all the time,” Rob told him. “You just don’t stay there very long.”

“I don’t know what you’re blathering about.”

“Yes, you do,” Billy said with a laugh. “You go from woman to woman the way most men go from cigar to cigar. Every day a new one to enjoy. You’re just not a one-woman sort of bloke.”

“That’s not true,” Mick protested, stung. “I just haven’t met the right one yet.”

“That’s a load of sheep dung, that is.” Billy shook his head. “You meet women all the time. Women arc always throwing themselves at you, and I’ll tell you, it’s been a rough go watching it over the years. I’ve been damned envious of you.”

“What?” Mick stared at him. “Katie is a wonderful woman, and you’re lucky to have her. If I had a wife like that—”

“Now that I have my Katie,” Billy interrupted him, “it doesn’t matter to me anymore, but before I was married, seeing the way women fall for you was bloody hard sometimes.”

“But there were some benefits to it,” Rob pointed out. “I spent one or two nights consoling his former sweethearts.”

“True,” Billy agreed. “You even married one of them.”

“Count yourself lucky, Rob,” Mick advised. “If I’d seen what a warm, loving woman Bridget was, I’d never have let her go.”

“That’s just it.” Billy lifted his pint and took a sip.
Resting his elbows on the table, he looked at Mick over the rim of his glass, his expression suddenly serious. “You never see.”

Mick sat back in his chair, too surprised by that statement to answer. But after a moment, he said, “Both of you found the right woman. Each of you knew the moment you met your wife that she was the one. I’m still waiting for that to happen to me.”

“That just won’t go down with us, Micky boy,” Billy told him. “We’ve known you too long. Rob and I have met most of the women you’ve courted over the years, and all of them have been wonderful in their own way, but you don’t see it. You find some unacceptable flaw with each and every one of them. The truth is that you don’t like being tied down, you don’t want our Saturday night poker game to be your only night out, and you certainly don’t want to be faithful to one woman.”

“You’re raving,” Mick told him. “I’d give anything to have the life you two have. A loving wife to come home to at the end of a hard day and a pack of children to take care of. I want to settle down.” He frowned down into his ale, feeling even older than he was. “Honestly, I do.”

“Sorry, Mick,” Billy answered, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it for a minute. You love your life just the way it is.”

“I don’t believe it either,” Rob said. “You like your freedom too much to give it up.”

Mick knew they didn’t understand. “Be damned to you both. My private life isn’t your business anyway.”

“The lad’s a bit hostile, isn’t he?” Rob said.

“It’s turning thirty-six that’s got to him, that’s what
it is,” Billy answered. “Notice he shaved off his mustache?”

“I did notice that, I did indeed. It was going a bit gray, you know. That’s probably why he shaved it off. He doesn’t want the women thinking he’s old.”

Mick didn’t need his two best friends rubbing salt in his wounds today. “Can we get back to one woman in particular, the one I met this afternoon?”

“Go on,” Rob urged. “Tell us all about her. Is she pretty?”

“You should know. You two hired her.”

They looked at him in a bewildered fashion, and Mick continued, “It was a good joke to play for my birthday, but what I want to know is, which of you thought of it?”

Both men continued to stare at him blankly.

“C’mon, lads. Which of you came up with the idea? And where did you find her? She was first rate.”

Billy and Rob continued to stare at him, and Mick felt a sudden glimmer of doubt. It was clear they didn’t know what he was on about. If they had done it, they’d have owned up to it by now. They couldn’t have resisted the temptation to have a good laugh at his expense.

He straightened in his chair and looked from one man to the other. “You mean to tell me,” he said slowly, “that the pair of you didn’t send that woman over to the Yard this afternoon?”

Billy shook his head. “We didn’t send anybody to see you.”

Mick explained his encounter with Sophie Haversham, and though both men found the whole thing
amusing, taking the prediction of Mick’s impending death about as seriously as he did, they denied having anything to do with it.

“If you two weren’t behind it, then what’s it all about?” Mick asked them.

“Maybe she’s just one of the crazy ones,” Rob suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

It could be that. Crazy people that reported imaginary crimes to the police were common enough.

But you hate mutton, don’t you?

Her artless remark came back to him, and Mick frowned, shaking his head. “She was an odd one, but I don’t think she’s mad. Lads, there were things she knew about me, things that she couldn’t have known unless someone had told her.”

Billy shrugged. “Maybe one of the fellows at the Yard is behind it, Thacker, perhaps.”

It could have been Henry. He knew of Mick’s aversion to mutton. Mick decided he’d have a talk with his sergeant first thing tomorrow morning.

Billy stood up, interrupting Mick’s speculations. “I’d best be getting on home.”

“I’m needing to be going as well.” Rob also got to his feet.

Mick looked at both of them in surprise. “So soon?”

Billy gave him an apologetic shrug. “I’m sure Katie’s got dinner near on the table by now. Expecting as she is, she gets upset over the smallest things, and she’ll start crying if the food’s cold when I get there. There’s nothing worse than seeing her cry.” He lifted his glass. “Happy birthday, old man,” he told Mick and swallowed the last of his ale.

Mick scowled. “Good riddance to you, if you keep calling me old.” He looked at the other man. “C’mon, Rob, stay a few minutes and have another pint.”

Rob shook his head. “I’d like to, Mick, but I promised the boys I’d take them down to Lincoln’s Inn Fields before dark and play a bit of football.”

As Mick watched his two best friends depart, he couldn’t help feeling a hint of envy. Each of those men had a beautiful, loving woman, children of his own, and a house that was truly a home. All Mick had waiting for him tonight was a one-room flat and an irate landlady.