Chapter 2
Chapter Two
J asper stood aside, and Leo darted out from the closet. Though she kept her chin high, he sensed her disgrace at having been found in such a helpless state. She’d always been proud and distinctly cold in her demeanor, so the unusual flush of her cheeks brought him a bit of pleasure. He smothered his grin, no longer worried as he’d been while running toward Spring Street.
“How did you know there was trouble here?” Leo asked as she took measured steps toward the autopsy table and the poor sod who occupied it.
“PC Warnock caught me on my way out of headquarters,” Jasper answered as she swiftly brought up the sheet. To cover the half-closed sternum, no doubt. “Someone reported seeing a man with a knife running from the Spring Street Morgue. What happened?”
Warnock and another constable, PC Drake, each took discomfited glances toward the sheeted corpses. Morgues had bothered Jasper when he’d been new to the job, but now, he paid the bodies no mind. Neither did Leo, which struck many men at Scotland Yard as peculiar. Unnatural even. Most disapproved of her presence at the morgue, but no one said anything. To do so would have been going against the opinion of Chief Superintendent Gregory Reid, and no one on the force would do that. The old man was too beloved. Too respected. And if he was of the opinion that Leonora Spencer could work alongside her uncle in the morgue, well then, she could.
Leo crouched to pick up a bowler hat from the floor and put it back on the dead man’s pile of clothing. “A man came in, demanding this gentleman’s bag. He wasn’t asking nicely.”
Her cool composure was another thing that unnerved plenty of officers. That type of seriousness was better suited to men or wizened crones, not young ladies.
“You’re unharmed?” he asked.
“Yes, thankfully.”
Jasper nodded to the two constables in dismissal. They fled with more alacrity than necessary. The morgue wasn’t all that unsettled them; it was Leo herself. Her family’s murder, specifically. The story had dominated newspaper headlines throughout London sixteen years ago, and plenty of people still remembered the gruesome tale of Leonard and Andromeda Spencer and two of their young children. For those who didn’t remember, gossip and speculation still lingered to enlighten them.
Leo smoothed the sheet over the body, tugging out a crease. She peered after the quickly departing constables. “You don’t think they’ll say anything, do you?”
Jasper sighed. “You admit to it then?” He’d noticed the shaking of Claude’s hands over the last few months, and he’d suspected Leo was helping in some impermissible way. But they’d yet to speak of it frankly.
She gave a nonchalant shrug. “I admit to nothing. However, it might have appeared…questionable.”
“I doubt either of them looked long enough to notice the incision wasn’t fully closed.” Jasper shook his head. “Where is Claude?”
“Aunt Flora needed him.”
He wanted to be understanding, as he was aware Leo’s aunt wasn’t well. Still, there were rules. “He really ought to have stayed to finish this.” Jasper gestured toward the sheeted body. “If anything, just so that you wouldn’t have been found alone with it.”
He was obligated to report the violation. Leo, as intelligent as she was, was not a trained surgeon or medical doctor. Should she ever be found out, any death inquest report that she’d participated in would be questioned. Even invalidated.
“You know that Claude is the only one who can soothe her,” Leo said. “It’s only sutures. Coroners employ their assistants in this way all the time.”
“Male assistants,” he reminded her, then ignored her unimpressed glower.
“Would you like a description of the man with the knife?” she asked, moving on. She was a master at evasion, after all. Secretive to a fault too, though he couldn’t entirely blame her for it.
“Go on,” he said.
“An inch shorter than you; high widow’s peak hairline, graying blond hair; blue eyes, milky. Some sort of cataract disease, probably. Sounded like a Liverpool accent. If I had any artistic talent, I’d draw a likeness.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”
Knowing her steel trap of a brain, she’d have drawn the burglar down to the last wrinkle on his face.
“And all he wanted was the bag?”
“It was all he asked for.”
“What was in it?”
“Nothing of value,” she replied. “A tatty coin purse containing three shillings, six pence, and two Luden’s throat lozenges. A few other normal things like yesterday’s Telegraph , reading spectacles, a half-eaten hand pie wrapped in brown paper, and a case for business cards, though it was empty.”
Jasper frowned. “So, no identification and nothing worth stealing.”
She shook her head as her attention drifted toward the other two bodies draped with sheets.
A fluffy gray cat darted toward him, the little bell on its collar chiming. Jasper stepped back as Tibia affectionately rubbed up against Leo’s skirt hem. The animal couldn’t be trusted; it had scratched at his shins one too many times, though it was docile enough for Leo and Claude. She stooped to pick the thing up and scratched between its ears while walking toward the other bodies.
Jasper followed. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure. After the man locked me in the closet, he didn’t leave straightaway. It sounded as though he came over here.” She stopped abruptly next to one of the bodies and cocked her head. “This sheet wasn’t like this before.”
“Like what?”
“Bunched up.” She ran her palm over a rumpled edge of the sheet near the head, and then, without warning, tossed it back.
Tibia yowled at the sudden motion and leaped from Leo’s arms. Jasper couldn’t blame the cat for its reaction. He grimaced at what was underneath; the woman, still clothed, looked fresh into the morgue. Before he could avert his eyes, he noted the damage to her skull. It had been crushed. Her dark brown hair was matted in blood and what he presumed to be brain matter.
He groaned, his stomach churning. “Christ, I didn’t need to be put off my supper.”
In little more than one hour, he was to collect Miss Constance Hayes at her boardinghouse and bring her to the Albion in Covent Garden. They dined at least once a week, though now his appetite was scuppered.
Leo ignored his complaint. “Why would the intruder look beneath this sheet? Wait.” She touched the high collar of the woman’s dress, her fingers running over black lace and jet buttons. “Her necklace is missing. She was wearing a locket when she was delivered here earlier this evening.”
“Are you certain?” When she hiked a brow, Jasper conceded with a nod. He knew better than to ask her such a question.
Now that the shock of the woman’s crushed skull had settled, he stepped closer to the table. Her dress was made of black crepe and lace. She’d been in mourning. His attention caught on a pair of amethyst and diamond cluster earrings in her earlobes.
“Why peel off with the necklace but leave these?” he mused, then looked over at the other morgue resident. The white sheet appeared smooth, not hastily drawn up as this one had been.
“And why ignore that body entirely?” Leo asked, having made the same observation.
“The intruder might have believed his time had run out,” Jasper suggested. “Decided that to look wasn’t worth the chance of being caught.”
Leo tugged the sheet up again, covering the woman’s ruined head. In a quiet show of respect, she took care to flatten out the wrinkles. “I suppose it’s possible.”
She didn’t sound convinced. Neither was Jasper. But as the intruder was now gone, there was no way to know for certain. At least Leo hadn’t been harmed during the incident.
Jasper opened the cover of his pocket watch. He was going to be late meeting Constance. “From now on you should lock the lobby door after hours.”
“Yes, yes, I will,” she said, but she wasn’t listening. She was too busy stepping in front of him to block his way toward the exit, hands clasped behind her back. It was a position she struck when about to ask him for something. “Will you please not tell the Inspector about this? I don’t want to worry him.”
Although Gregory Reid had not ranked at the inspector level for several years, he would always be the Inspector to Leo.
Jasper snapped his watch shut and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. “He’s going to find out anyway.”
His father might have left the force several months ago after his health began to fail, but he still had friends there. Over the course of the summer and autumn, he’d received several visitors a week, some of whom were inquiring about his recovery, back when they’d optimistically thought his illness was temporary. Others had come asking for advice or opinions on different cases. More recently, the visits had fallen off as it became clear he would not be getting better.
“I’d best tell him myself then, so none of the details become overly embellished,” Leo sighed as she went into the closet and retrieved an apron from the floor, where she must have tossed it. She slipped it on again.
“You cannot finish this John Doe,” Jasper said with an exasperated gesture toward the partially closed body on the table.
She tied the strings at her back then tucked a loose curl of her dark sable hair behind her ear. “You’re right. I can’t. Especially if you continue to stand there.” Leo drew back the sheet and picked up the curved needle. She peered at him, waiting for him to leave.
The woman was impossible. Indulged and spoiled to a fault. Not just by Claude but by his father too.
“There is no need for you to go to Charles Street. I’ll stop in on my way to dinner and tell him before he hears about it from anyone else. Just finish up here quickly and get home,” he said. “But I warn you, Leo, you’re playing with fire, and I won’t let it pass again.”
A flicker of apprehension lit her hazel eyes before Jasper turned and left the postmortem room. She knew exactly what could happen if she were caught. She probably also knew that he wouldn’t follow through with his threat. Jasper wouldn’t have been able to bear his father’s disappointment if he did.
To Gregory Reid, Leo would always be the little girl he’d found tucked away in the attic inside a house full of horrors. The little girl who’d spent a few months at his home, as his ward, during which time her aunt and uncle had been sought on the Continent and informed of the dire situation. She would always be the little girl he’d have very much liked to continue raising, if only to fill the gaping void left behind after his own daughter’s death.
But family was family, and when Claude and Flora Feldman arrived on the Inspector’s front step, he’d had no choice but to send Leonora off with them. Shortly afterward, he’d made sure Claude, a surgeon, was given a nearby position as an assistant city coroner at the Spring Street Morgue. Jasper imagined that no matter what Claude’s profession had been, his father would have lined up some employment to keep the Feldmans and their niece close at hand.
Charles Street wasn’t far from the morgue. A five-minute walk at the most. A fine rain dampened the pavements and cut through the brume of the raw January night. It had been a mild winter. Rainy and dreary, without even a speck of snow. Shrugging down into his coat collar, Jasper picked up his pace. He’d been planning to call on his father the next afternoon; going tonight instead wouldn’t be a burden. Even though his caseload had become a mountain on his desk at the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, Jasper made certain to stop in at least two or three times a week. With his father’s heart growing weaker by the day, he didn’t like to wait too long between visits. He hadn’t just taken Gregory Reid’s name for convenience; the man was as much a father to him as anyone had ever been. Never had Jasper met a kinder, more generous man. He had no memories of his real father, and he wished like hell he could say the same about those he did have of his mother, and of his uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The other Met officers had often joked that Reid was in line for sainthood after taking in both Leo, for a time, and then Jasper, a thirteen-year-old guttersnipe arrested for thievery and who probably should have been sent away to a workhouse. But the Inspector had seen something in Jasper. Some promise. At least that’s what he said to anyone who inquired. Although Jasper suspected there was another reason he’d taken him in. One that had to do with Leo Spencer.
He thought of her now in the morgue, finishing up the closure of the John Doe. It was the oddest thing, for a woman to be at ease working with the dead. He often wondered if her interest in Claude’s vocation had grown out of genuine interest, or if she only felt indebted to the old man for giving her a home. Perhaps she’d seen Claude’s infirmities sooner than anyone else and had decided the only way to help was to step in herself. Any other woman attempting to work in a morgue would have been turned out on the spot, but not Leonora Spencer. Exceptions were made for her, and all due to the Inspector’s lasting affection.
Jasper climbed the few limestone steps to the front door of 23 Charles Street, a fine terrace home in an upscale part of London. No man on a Met inspector’s salary, or even a chief superintendent’s, would have ever been able to afford a home like this. However, when he’d been younger, Gregory Reid had the good fortune of falling in love with a viscount’s daughter, the Honorable Emmaline Cowper. He’d had the even better fortune of winning her love in return. When they’d married, Emmaline brought with her a generous dowry, and her grandmother had gifted them the home in Mayfair.
Jasper brought down the knocker and waited. He had his own key, but ever since he’d moved into bachelor’s rooms on Glasshouse Street, he hadn’t felt comfortable just barging in as he once had. The shadow of Mrs. Zhao’s slight figure grew large through the frosted glass, and then, he heard the lock being thrown back.
“Mr. Jasper,” she said, her smile welcoming as it always was. She stepped aside, allowing him into the foyer. The carpet was faded, the wallpaper too, but despite some of the dated touches, the home was neat and refined. The Inspector had never been inclined to update the decor after his wife’s death. His children’s rooms on the second floor remained untouched too.
“I’m sorry for stopping in, Mrs. Zhao. I would have sent a note ahead, but it was a last-minute decision,” he said as she took his hat and overcoat, both of which were damp.
“You never need apologize,” the housekeeper said with a shake of her head. “This is your home, and I am happy to see you in it.”
It wasn’t at all common to have a Chinese housekeeper, but when Greg and Emmaline had married, it had been difficult for them to find anyone in service who would stoop to serving a common police officer. Surely the story was more complex, but all Jasper knew was that his father had met Mrs. Zhao during an investigation in which she was a witness. When he learned she was looking for employment, he and Emmaline had given her an offer. She’d been his housekeeper ever since.
“Is he awake?” Jasper asked. The downward quirk of Mrs. Zhao’s lips was his answer.
“He’s had a difficult day,” she whispered. “Doctor Bishop left not long ago. He says Mr. Reid needs rest.”
Jasper could well imagine what his father’s response had been to the doctor’s advice: that soon enough, he’d have all the rest in the world.
“Did you need to speak to him about something important?” Mrs. Zhao asked while also pointedly eyeing the cuffs of his tweed suit jacket.
A few threads were loose, and she’d been waiting patiently for Jasper to ask her to mend them. Not wanting to impose on his independence, she wouldn’t offer outright. However, he’d not asked. Worn cuffs were commonplace among the other detectives at the Yard. He was already suspected of having risen in rank due to his last name and connection to Greg Reid. He didn’t want to look overly polished too.
“No, it can wait.” He was grateful he wouldn’t have to inform his father about the break-in at the morgue or of Leo being locked in a closet. His heart and lungs were already failing, and considering the upcoming date—January 15—any stress might push him over the edge.
Gregory Reid never bore that day well. This January 15 would mark seventeen years since the ice on the pond in Regent’s Park broke, plunging skaters into the frigid water underneath. They’d mostly been women and children, out for a pleasant and curiously sunny winter’s day. Forty had perished, among them Emmaline and their two young children, Beatrice and Gregory Junior.
Now, it was only a matter of time before he would see them again.
“I’ll stay here, tonight, Mrs. Zhao, if you don’t mind.”
He’d catch his father first thing in the morning, when he usually had more energy.
“Good,” she said. “Your room is always prepared.”
He thanked her, then stepped out again to whistle for a messenger boy. Plenty would be roaming the street this time of evening, hoping to be dispatched. Given the hour, Constance would be at her boardinghouse, pacing and glimpsing the clock on the mantel as she waited for Jasper to arrive—something he would not be doing after all.