The Vanishing Thief(56)

At least I didn’t have long to wait before the train arrived. I was fortunate to find a seat, wedged between a woman with a holdall on her lap and a man trying to read a newspaper. The windows were closed. With luck, no one would open them until we were aboveground and in the countryside. The white smoke from the engine hid the tunnels in a fog that broke apart as we sped along the tracks, but we couldn’t escape the stench of sulfur seeping in from the train’s boiler.

Once aboveground, passengers opened the windows and fresh air replaced the stale. The Heston and Hounslow station wasn’t far from London, but it still retained its soot-free village skies along with its village appearance. I walked along Hounslow’s main street searching for a hansom cab. When I didn’t have any luck by the time I reached the Hanworth Road, I turned in at a stable.

“Hello?” I called out, walking forward. The stable seemed to be empty except for two horses.

“Looking fer someone?”

I turned around and found my retreat blocked by a short man holding a pitchfork. His clothes were battered and dirty from his cap to his boots, except for a clean, light blue woolen scarf wrapped around his neck.

I backed up a step, keeping my gaze on the scarf rather than the menacing pitchfork. I hoped someone else was nearby. “I’m looking for a conveyance to take me to Nicholas Drake’s house about a mile and a half to the south.”

“You want a conveyance?” He cackled with mirth. “What’s wrong with your feet?”

“Nothing, but I don’t wish to show up muddy at my brother’s house.” Until that moment, I hadn’t decided who I was going to be and how far from the truth I planned to travel.

“Drake’s your brother?”

“Yes.”

“If it’s Drake you want, you’d best go down the street to the police station.”

What was this odd little man up to? “Has Nicholas been locked up? What’s the charge?”

“You might say that. And it’s a charge we all have to face.” Chuckling to himself, the man shoved the pitchfork into the hay in an empty stall.

I hurried outside, afraid I’d feel the tines in my back at any moment. The police station was two blocks back up the road I had followed from the railway platform. I walked at a quick pace to the redbrick building and entered the lobby. The sergeant’s counter was across a well-scrubbed pine floor from the door. A gray-haired uniformed constable leaned on the other side of the barrier.

“I’ve been told you’re holding Nicholas Drake here,” I began.

“You’ve come to collect the body?” the man asked, straightening.

“What? Nicholas Drake is dead?” Was it an accident, or had his abductor succeeded?

I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because the constable called for one of his mates and came around the counter to me. “Are you all right, miss?”

“What happened to Nicholas Drake?” I demanded.

“Are you Mrs. Drake?” he asked.

“No. I’m his sister.”

“We didn’t have any leads on his family, so it’s a good thing you came by here today.”

I had failed. The Archivist Society had failed. But how did Drake die? I wanted to beat the information out of the constable, who was asking more questions than giving answers. “What happened to Nicholas?”

“If you’ll come back here with me, we’ll find you a cup of tea and talk about this,” he said in a soothing voice, but he watched me warily as if he expected me to become hysterical.

I nodded and followed him to an office down a long corridor. He had me sit on a hard wooden chair while another uniformed constable brought me a hot cup of tea. I took a sip and found there was too much sugar in the tea for it to be an unfortunate accident. They must have feared I’d wail and cry copious tears, but I’d already decided I’d learn more by being calm.

“Are you all right, miss?” the first officer asked.

“Quite. What happened to my brother?” They needed to tell me this instant what had happened or I’d scream, and not from grief.

“There was a fire in his house last night. Since his house sits on its own, well, no one could reach the building until it was burned through and ready to collapse.”

“You found his body inside?”

“When we could get into the rubble this morning, we found the body of a man. We believe it’s your brother.”

“You believe?”

“The body was burned beyond recognition. The doctor says it’s a man in his thirties and about Mr. Drake’s height. Nicholas was in the Red Lion last night until closing time, when he headed home. The fire occurred not a half hour later.”