Thief of Hearts (44 page)

"Never mind, you have to go. We'll talk again soon."

Milly stood up, and Anna gave her an impulsive hug. "Oh, I wish you didn't live here, I wish you would come and live with me!"

"How delighted your dear aunt would be."

"I don't care, Milly, not anymore. I honestly don't."

"I think you mean it. I hardly know you anymore, Anna. And I thank you, but I'll stay here. I'm growing rather fond of the place, to tell you the truth. I never knew how lovely it could be to live alone. If you will come to see me every now and then, I'll have everything."

They walked to the door together, arm in arm. "I have something to tell you, too," Anna said quietly. "Not today, but soon."

"I know."

She looked up. "You do?"

"I know something's troubling you. Is it Nicholas?"

Anna leaned her head back against the doorpost, poised on the edge of laughing and crying. She closed her eyes and nodded. "What I have to tell you will take a very, very long time."

"Is he treating you badly? I thought" She hesitated. "It's just that at the picnic he was so nice, I liked him better than I ever have. I'm surprised."

She took a shaky breath. "Oh, Milly." So it was to be crying. "I'd better go."

Milly held her arm. "Listen to me. I don't know what the matter is, but please don't make the same mistake I did."

"What did you do?"

"Because I didn't want to face it, for the longest time I talked myself into believing nothing was wrong between George and me."

"I don't think I'm doing that."

"Listen to your heart, not your head," Milly insisted, hardly hearing. "It's wiser. And it doesn't lie." Her grip on Anna's wrist was almost painful; her dark eyes glittered with intensity. "Do you understand what I'm saying? protect yourself. Believe your feelings and act on them."

Anna looked away. "If I were to act on my feelings… " she began with a half-laugh.

"What?" Milly prodded.

"I would go to him now," she breathed, realizing it as she said it. I would tell him it doesn't matter about the money because I love him, I forgive him, and somehow I still believe he's a good man. Oh, but why did he have to take the money?

"Then go to him," Milly said firmly, smiling. "Is he still at home, still not feeling well?"

"No, he was going to go to work this afternoon." Something she would not have known if she hadn't overheard him saying it to Stephen this morning. She'd wondered why he was going back; was it to see his friends one last time? Tomorrow was the fourth of August.

"Go and see him there, then."

"Oh, but I don't know—"

"Go. Trust yourself. Don't waste time, like I did. Then in a few days, come and tell me what happened."

The carriage let her down in the north yard. Two forty-five, her watch told her. Would he be in his office or somewhere on the docks? And what would she say when she found him? She set off purposefully, deciding she would figure that out when the time came.

A man was coming down the brick steps from her building, walking toward her. She blinked in disbelief and missed a step. It was Horace Carter. What in the world?

"Hello!" he called, catching sight of her, too. They moved toward each other. "How d'you do!" he said heartily, seizing her hand in his beefy paw and shaking it. He was already perspiring in the warm August sun. "Didn't expect to see you today," he added, before she could say the same thing to him. He mopped his face with a huge handkerchief and led her by the arm to the patch of shade the building cast. "Things are moving along real well, Anna, smooth as silk."

"They are?"

"Yes, indeed. They'll go even faster now with your contribution. I've got to tell you, little lady, I like your style."

"Our what? What contribution?"

"Why, your fifty thousand pounds! What is that in dollars, anyway? Notice I didn't say 'in real money.' Ha ha! Dora finally broke me of that."

"What?"

"Matched with our fifty, it should make for a nice, smooth planning phase. I can't foresee any problems at all! Your husband's got as good a head for business as you do, and that, my dear, is a high compliment." He grinned engagingly. "I like the sound of this new kind of engine he and his engineers have been tinkering with, too. I don't see why" He stopped, finally noticing her shock. Then he turned sideways and swore under his breath, turning red. He slapped his massive forehead twice with the heel of his hand in energetic chagrin. "Damnation! I forgot it was supposed to be a surprise, and here I've gone and spoiled it. Nick was going to tell you tomorrow.
Now
I remember! Listen," he said conspiratorially, looming over her, "he'll kill me if he finds out I let it slip. Do you think you could manage to act surprised?"

Anna was leaning on the wall for support. "Horace."

"Ma'am?"

"What exactly is the surprise?"

He grinned his big-toothed grin. "The surprise is" he held out his hand again, "we're partners."

"Partners." She shook weakly.

"In Carter-Jourdaine Lines. We decided to put Carter first because it's alphabetical." He winked broadly, cackling. "But the first liner to come off the ways is going to be called
Anna
, we put that in the contract. It was Nick's idea. Hey, what are you doing?"

"Crying." She found her own handkerchief in her pocket and wiped her eyes. She couldn't get her breath, and she wanted so much to shout out loud and laugh for joy.

"Well, do you think you can?"

"What?"

"Act surprised."

She smiled shakily. "Oh, Horace, I don't think so. I think it would be best if I talked to him right away. Now, in fact." A giddy laugh bubbled up. She put her arms around his thick neck and hugged him. His startled look tickled her so, she planted a big, noisy kiss on his cheek. "Excuse me, I have to go now." And she darted away, leaving him staring.

"Is Mr. Balfour in or out, Jim?" she asked the porter at the front door.

"Haven't seen him go out, ma'am, so I expect he's in. Nice to see him back!" he called to her as she dashed up the steps.

She'd have taken them two at a time if her skirts had allowed it. She was breathless when she reached the top. Please be in,
please
, she prayed, trying to see through the frosted glass of his door at the end of the hall. She didn't knock. She threw open the door and swept in.

And halted in her tracks. Brodie rose from a crouch in the center of the room. The slanting sun glinted on the paperweight in his right hand. One drop of blood fell from the glass ball or was it his fingers onto the corpse at his feet. Martin Dougherty's skull was crushed and he was bleeding all over the carpet.

Brodie dropped the paperweight and started toward her. She took a fast step back. He saw fear in her eyes. "You think I killed him," he said.

At first she couldn't speak. Then she said, "No."

But all he heard was her hesitation. He shouldered past her and charged out into the hall. She heard him call to Aiden, then to the porter downstairs, shouting at him to run for a constable because a man was dead. In the seconds before the room filled with people, she found herself staring, past rigid fingers that covered her face, at the broken body sprawled on the floor. The familiarity of that leaden, intense, unreal stillness sliced through the curtain of forgetfulness she'd drawn months ago to conceal the full horror of Nicholas's murder. Through the jagged tears, memory shot back in blinding bursts, searing and burning, transfixing her. People jostled past; dimly she heard exclamations of shock and revulsion around her. The intensity of a stare brought her back, and she raised her head. Brodie watched her from the other side of the room, over the corpse. In his eyes she read bitterness and disillusionment and the beginnings of a terrible acceptance. She stepped toward him, drawn by a compulsion to console. She stopped when he moved sideways, literally recoiling from her.

At that moment O'Dunne put his hand on her arm and turned her. Over his shoulder she saw Stephen, white-faced, hanging back in the doorway, unwilling to come closer. "Are you all right?" asked Aiden.

"I... yes, I'm fine. I just got here. N-Nicholas found him."

O'Dunne's head swiveled toward Brodie, who was wiping blood from his hands on a handkerchief. The two men exchanged short, unreadable stares. "Come outside," O'Dunne urged; "you look as if you're going to faint."

She could have said the same to him. She looked back at Brodie. He'd turned his back to her and was talking in a low voice to Nigel McGrath and Tom Shorter. With a shiver of panic, she let O'Dunne lead her out of the room and into her own office next door. He spoke to her quietly, reassuringly, but she didn't hear. Brodie's face blazed in her memory, branding her mind's eye and blinding her to everything else, even the dreadful fact that a man was dead and someone had murdered him.

"Take this at once," she heard Aiden say to the boy who ran errands in the office; he handed him an envelope, and she recollected that a moment ago Aiden had been scribbling something on a piece of paper at her desk. "Number 19, Queen Street. Do you have that?"

"Yes, sir," answered the boy, and darted away.

"What is it? Who are you writing to, Aiden?"

O'Dunne hesitated a second, then said, "Dietz."

"Why? The police are coming. What does this have to do with him?"

"Stay here." He started for the door.

She stepped in front of him. "Tell me! It's about John, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it'll be all right. Dietz has to know."

She made a grab for his arm. "But why? Aiden, you don't think he did this!"

"I don't know."

"He didn't! He couldn't have! For what reason?"

"Stay here," he ordered, and left her.

She obeyed, for five minutes. But then she couldn't bear it and went into the hall to look for Brodie. She saw him in the open door to Stephen's office. She started toward him at the moment she heard the tramp of half a dozen heavy feet on the stairs. The police had arrived.

Confusion ensued for the next two hours. People continued to mill about, speaking in hushed voices at first, then louder as shock wore off and excitement set in. Two policemen questioned her. She told them what she'd seen, and heard the implication of her own words with a lurch of alarm. Where was Brodie? Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of him, always far away, always in a crowd, but he would never look at her. Once she found him alone, holding onto the railing over the second-floor staircase, staring down at the dark well below. She went to him quickly. "We have to talk," she said in a low, fierce voice. "Will you please talk to me?"

His eyes were empty this time, even of regret. "No," he said quietly. Politely. And he walked away from her into a room full of people.

Dietz came, with another man, one she'd never seen before, whose job seemed to be taking notes and not speaking. She led them into her office, where Dietz asked her all the questions the police already had. Then he asked them over again. "And you heard no voices, no sounds of arguing as you approached the door?"

"No, I've told you. The man was dead, John found his body."

"Mm," he said, and she was growing sick of the sound. His words and manner were noncommittal, but his very reticence terrified her. He crossed his long legs and smoothed back the iron-gray hair at his temples. "And how do you know that for certain, ma'am?"