Laura Lee Guhrke (26 page)

“Jack wasn’t involved in the investigation, was he?”

“No, sir. Still, I thought you should know.”

“Thank you, Henry.”

Thacker started to leave, but he paused at the door. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“What about Miss Haversham?”

“What about her?”

The sergeant didn’t answer at once. He hesitated a moment. Finally, he said, “Well, sir, there’s been quite a bit of talk this morning about her being at the scene of Jack’s murder. It’s a bit of a fag, I know, but you know how gossip gets around.”

Mick frowned. “What do you mean?”

“With the article in the
Daily Bugle
and all, some of the lads are thinking you’re giving credence to what this girl says.”

“And that bothers them?”

“It does, sir. There’s been some laughing about her, but what’s really on their minds is that one of our own was murdered, and you’re listening to this bird babbling her psychic nonsense instead of investigating her for what she really knows about it all. That’s just some of the talk, sir,” he added. “Not all the lads think you’re believing her nonsense, but some of them do.”

“What about you?” Mick looked at the sergeant with curiosity. Thacker was so impassive that it was hard to tell what he thought of anything. He did his job, obeyed orders, and kept his mouth shut. He was
an exemplary officer. “Do you think I’m starting to believe in psychics?”

“If you are, I’m not sure you’re wrong, sir.” His face flushed brick red. “I mean, there might be something to it. My mother and I went to one of these spiritualists once after my father died. She missed him something fierce, and she wanted to talk to him, you see, so she went to this medium, and I went with her to make sure she didn’t get taken by some swindle. But that woman told us things that she couldn’t have known beforehand. It’s eerie, the things she knew, specific things.”

Mick nodded. “I know what you mean. Miss Haversham seems to know things others don’t, seems to have an ability to see future events. I’ve seen evidence of it myself. Still. . .”

“As you say,” Thacker said with a nod, “she could be a fraud. The theory that she’s protecting someone could be right.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Mick assured him. “We are going to solve this murder, and find out what the truth really is.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you again, about recommending me for detective.” Thacker departed, closing the door behind him. Mick looked down on his desk at the note from DeWitt and shoved himself to his feet with a sigh. He buttoned his cuffs, straightened his tie, and went up to DeWitt’s office. He knew he was about to get a damn good thrashing.

When Mick entered the chief inspector’s office and sat down, DeWitt opened the conversation simply by
tossing the
Daily
Bugle
into his lap. Mick looked up. “I’ve seen it, sir.”

“Have you read it?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“I suggest you do!” DeWitt shouted. “Blasted journalists! Make us look like a pack of idiot dogs who couldn’t hunt down a baby rabbit.” He scowled as he looked across the desk. “As for you, I still don’t understand what the bloody hell you were thinking to bring that woman to the crime scene.”

Mick rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Didn’t we already have this argument last night?”

“We did. And the entire Metropolitan Police Force looks like a group of complete fools, thanks to you.”

Mick knew he had to tread carefully. After a moment, he said, “I have been investigating this woman and her acquaintances for several weeks now.”

“Yes, yes, because of that shot taken at you in the Embankment. I remember. But what does she—” DeWitt paused, ran a hand over his bald head, loosened his tie, and said, “You think the two events arc connected?”

“I do.”

“Why? Because both of you were shot at?”

“Yes, sir. And we’re both police officers. I think it ties up with some past case Jack and I worked on together.”

DeWitt tugged at his mustache. “That’s pretty thin, lad. Pretty thin. What else do you know?”

Mick was not going to get into Sophie’s psychic abilities, especially not in light of the
Daily Bugle
story. He merely said, “The surgeon told me at the scene last night
that the gun used to kill Jack was a .41 caliber, probably a Colt No. 3 Derringer. That’s a pocket pistol, intended to be used at close range. Whoever shot at me was only about a dozen feet away. We are both police officers, and I think the killer’s intent was to shoot me down, then cut my heart out, just like Jack.”

“Yes, it’s clear the heart was some kind of sick, symbolic gesture.” He rubbed his hands across his balding head. “I hope we don’t have another Ripper on our hands, one who’s killing policemen instead of prostitutes. Anything else?”

“Gut instinct.”

“What about the girl? What were you thinking?”

Mick drew a deep breath. He’d hoped not to go down this road. “She didn’t do it, if that’s what you mean. She was with me all clay, up until we saw Jack’s body. She couldn’t have done it.”

“But your theory has been that she knows who did.”

Mick shook his head. “That was my theory, yes, but I’m beginning to think it’s not that simple. I thought that she was involved, and that she came to warn me in advance because she wants to prevent murder while protecting the person responsible. But Jack’s death negates that theory. She didn’t try to warn Jack in advance. Why warn me of my impending death, but not Jack?”

“Plenty of reasons.” DeWitt began counting them off on his fingers. “Maybe she didn’t know about this one. Or, if she was with you all day, perhaps she just didn’t have the opportunity to warn Hawthorne. Or she might have wanted him to die and not you, for reasons we know nothing about. Or maybe she’s what Thacker says she is. Crazy in the head.”

“I’ve been with her quite a bit the past several weeks, sir, and I don’t think she’s crazy at all. Again, that’s my instinct as an officer.”

DeWitt gave Mick a long, hard stare. “Or maybe,” he said, “she’s a very pretty girl that you’ve spent far too much time with, and you’re letting your instincts as a man interfere with your instincts as a police detective.”

With those words, a memory of yesterday afternoon in that carriage with Sophie hit all his senses at once. He could see the dark red highlights in the strands of her chestnut brown hair. He could still smell the scent of her, taste the sweetness of her mouth, feel the silken texture of her skin.

His hands clenched into fists. Was that it? Was he getting so soft about her that he was losing his perspective? Mick knew that right now he couldn’t make sense out of anything involving Sophie Haversham, and that was dangerous.

DeWitt spoke again. “I don’t have to tell you that there’s plenty of outrage about this within the Metropolitan Police. You know how we are when one of our own is killed. The brutality of it will inflame the public. God help us if another officer dies, because then we will have another Ripper, and you’ve already been targeted. This tripe in the
Daily Bugle
doesn’t help. I know the girl says she’s psychic, but we both know you don’t believe such tripe. Why did you bring her to the scene?”

“I wanted to see her reactions to the sight of the murder. That perhaps she would give me some useful information as a result.”

“Lad, the result of it is that the newspapers now believe we arc using psychics to solve our crimes. Psychics, indeed!”

He grabbed the newspaper off his desk and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. Then he stood up, indicating that their meeting was over. “Continue to investigate the girl if you feel it’s warranted, but I damn well better not see another story in the papers about how we’re using her so-called impressions at the scene. And I’d better not find out there’s anything romantic going on between the two of you. She’s a suspect.”

Mick met DeWitt’s concerned gaze with a determined one of his own as he rose to his feet. “Sir, no woman is going to interfere with my job. I don’t give a damn how pretty she is.”

DeWitt continued to study him for several moments more. Then he slowly nodded his head. “Very well. I’ll let you go on with this. Put a team together to work on it, and I’ll meet with the lot of you in a few days to see how you’re getting on. And everything thus far indicates you’ve been targeted by this maniac, so watch your step. I’d like to play this close to the vest, so no press interviews. Your answer to any journalist’s question is, ‘No comment.’ If, God forbid, we have another officer killed, it’s going to be chaos.”

Mick, who felt that journalists were only slightly above leeches in the natural scheme of things, was in complete agreement with his superintendent. “Yes, sir,” he replied and started to leave, but DeWitt’s voice stopped him at the door.

“Mick, I have one more thing to say. If I see that this girl is interfering with your judgment in any way that
affects your job, I’ll pull you off this case in a heartbeat. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear, sir.”

Mick walked out of DeWitt’s office. Closing the door behind him, he leaned back against it and drew a deep, steadying breath. He had to stay objective. He was not going to let lust for a woman get in the way of solving this case. Her long legs, ripe-cherry lips, and the erotic scent of her skin be damned.

Fourteen
 

During the fortnight that followed, Sophie saw so little of Mick that he might have been a ghost rather than a real person. He left before she woke in the morning and returned long after she went to bed at night. There were many times, Hannah told her, he didn’t come in at all. She knew he was working hard on the Jack Hawthorne case. He interviewed her twice about the murder, attempting to glean any details she might have missed or forgotten, but Sophie didn’t know why he bothered. It wasn’t as if he believed in her. Whatever his reasons, she did her best to help, but she could not remember anything more, and in the days after the murder, she had nothing new to tell him. She could sense that he was still safe, but she also knew that the situation could change in an instant.

She missed him terribly. Over and over in her mind,
she remembered things. The carriage ride, his fingertips caressing her throat.

Can you read my thoughts right now?

His hands on her, undoing her buttons this time instead of fastening them, touching her hare skin, his lips against the swell of her breasts above her corset, making her shiver and burn all at once. The feel of his body beneath her, his knee between her thighs, and the explosive sparks inside herself she’d never imagined anyone could feel. She closed her eyes, remembering him, remembering
that
, at least twenty times a day.

She kept remembering that night in the conservatory, too. Sitting on his lap, curled within the protection of his strength, feeling truly safe for the first time in her life. Without him, she felt desolate, incomplete.

Though she saw little of him, she had some idea of what he was doing. His name was in the newspapers every day. Not that there was much to say. No one at Scotland Yard was talking, a fact that caused more than one frustrated journalist to insult the capability of the Metropolitan Police.

Sophie had her own problems with the press. Reporters lined up outside her front door every day. She was followed wherever she went, and every move she made seemed to be news. They even lined up outside Madame Giraud’s dressmaking salon when she went there to be fitted for yet another ball gown, and the next morning it was reported that to the Dalrymple Ball, Miss Sophie Haversham would wear a gown of pink-tinged magnolia damask with the new off-shoulder neckline and trimmed in deep rose satin.

Why journalists reported what she wore or where
she went was incomprehensible to Sophie, but she seemed to be a cause celebre.

She wasn’t the only one harassed by the press. They swarmed like bees around any member of the house hold who dared to step outside, and that took a toll on everyone. Grim stock was exhausted from answering the constant rings of the doorbell and stating that the ladies were not receiving visitors that day. Questions were fired at Hannah over the garden wall every time she went out to pick vegetables or herbs for a meal. The colonel buried himself deeper in the
Times
and dominoes, and Dawes, who had failed his June examinations, was forced to study for the autumn tests at coffeehouses and libraries. Even sweet Miss Peabody began to complain about the situation.

Journalists weren’t the only difficulty. The article in the
Daily Bugle
brought ordinary people to Auntie’s doorstep. People with problems, people with missing loved ones, people with dead relatives they wanted to talk to all began crowding around outside Auntie’s house wanting to talk to Sophie the Psychic.

Dear Aunt Violet made the tentative suggestion to Sophie that perhaps she should try to help some of those grieving, unfortunate people lined up outside, but Sophie quashed the notion at once. Her aunt’s response to that—a tear-filled and somewhat accusing gaze-was hard enough, but the sensory onslaught of so many desperate, grieving people asking for her help whenever she walked out the door was more than Sophie could bear. It was like an enormous tide washing over her. If she let it take over, that tide would never ebb, and their pain and suffering would overwhelm her.