Margo let out an astonishing sound and clutched at Malcolm’s arm. “Oh, God, poor Benjamin . . .”
“There, there,” Mr. Shannon soothed, wiping his sticky hand on a kerchief, “it’s most like the blagger wot attacked ‘im, ‘oo bled on these ‘ere cobbles. Police took ‘is body away to the morgue, so it’s not like as to be Mr. Catlin’s blood. Not to fret, Miss, we’ll find ‘im.”
Miss Shannon said, “Alfie, seek!” and the dog bounded across the road and headed down a drizzle-shrouded walk which passed beneath the graceful colonnaded facade of the Royal Opera House. The dog led the way at a brisk walk. Malcolm and Philip Stoddard, escorting Margo and Shahdi Feroz solicitously, hastened after them. The darkened glass panes of the Floral Hall loomed up from the damp night. The high, domed roof of the magnificent glasshouse glinted distantly in the gaslights from the street, its high, curved panes visible in snatches between drifting eddies of low-blown cloud.
The eager Alsatian, nose casting along the pavement as the dog traced a scent mingled with thousands of other traces where gentlemen, ladies, horses, dogs, carters, and Lord knew what all else had passed this way today, drew them eagerly to Russell Street, where Alfie cast sharp left and headed rapidly away from Covent Garden. They moved down toward the massive Drury Theater, which took up the better part of the entire city block between Catherine Street and Drury Lane. The drizzling fog swirled and drifted across the heavy stone portico along the front, with its statue at the top dimly lit by gaslight from hanging lamps that blazed along the entrance. Malcolm worried about the scent in weather like this. If the drizzle turned to serious rain, which rumbled and threatened again overhead, no dog born could follow the scent. The deluge would wash it straight into the nearest storm sewer. Which, upon reflection, might be why the dog was able to follow Catlin’s trail so easily—most of the competing scents had been washed away, by the night’s earlier rainstorm.