Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
T hey arrived at the cemetery just under an hour later. The ride in the hired coach had been mostly quiet, with the Inspector’s attention distracted as he gazed through the window. Leo could understand his silence, though she wasn’t certain he was only thinking about his late wife and children. She’d interrupted something in the dining room when she’d entered; there had been a shine in both the Inspector’s and Jasper’s eyes that she was accustomed to seeing in those who came to the morgue to view their loved ones. They’d been having an important conversation, and she wished she hadn’t trodden upon it.
As they’d wended the roads north of Hyde Park, the Inspector attempted to pull himself from his reverie by asking about the dead morgue intruder. After a fleeting glimpse toward Jasper, Leo decided not to mention anything about the paper found underneath Mr. Stillman’s tongue. Today was not the day to introduce a fine mystery. There was an intensity to this visit to Kensal Green. This time last year, the Inspector had not been ill. He’d been a man in his early fifties who still believed he had a few decades to endure before meeting with his beloved family again. Now, that had changed. He was closer to them than he’d been before.
The parklike cemetery was one of the Magnificent Seven, a fashionable place to be interred, and as the daughter of a viscount, Emmaline and her children had been buried in a section where they were surrounded by relatives. The Inspector used a cane as they walked over the wide dirt lanes cutting through the plots, with headstones, mausoleums, and statues, all spread out around them in blocks bordered by trees and hedgerows. Leo and Jasper stayed a few steps behind him. The Inspector wanted their company, but he also enjoyed his solitude when visiting the graves.
“Claude will perform the postmortem this morning,” she said softly to Jasper. “Our neighbor, Mrs. Gareth, offered to sit with Flora.”
“That’s kind of her.”
“It is, especially since the whole street has heard her screaming blue murder lately.”
She half-wondered if they suspected her and Claude of abuse. Or worse, if they would grow weary of Flora’s screams and call for a police officer to investigate the situation. A medical officer could force her admittance to an asylum, if he saw fit.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. Jasper was usually reserved, but like the Inspector, he seemed distracted.
He snapped to attention and nodded. “Everything is fine,” he said. But then, he slowed his pace and touched her elbow to hold her back. “Have you heard about Elsie?”
“What about her?”
“She and Mr. Munson are to be betrothed soon.”
Leo’s first reaction was to cringe. “Elsie is far too young to marry. And to Sir Nathaniel’s assistant? He’s so much older than her.”
Jasper agreed with a discontented crinkle of his brow. “She didn’t appear happy when I saw her this morning. They were leaving the Inspector when I was arriving.”
“I’ll see if I can speak to her. Perhaps she didn’t know how to turn down the offer.”
“All she had to say was no ,” Jasper said with a soft laugh.
Leo bit back a retort that he was being simplistic. Instead, she explained her meaning. “Mr. Munson is her father’s close friend and assistant. She may have feared rejecting his offer would cause trouble between the two men.”
“So, she felt obligated to accept,” Jasper worked out.
“I’ll speak to her,” Leo said again. “I don’t have any experience rejecting unwanted offers of marriage, but I am quite adept at doing what others wish I wouldn’t.”
Jasper laughed lightly again. “I won’t argue with that.”
They’d arrived at the peaceful, secluded end of the path, where a small mausoleum stood between a pair of oaks. After the accident, the viscount had spared no expense on its construction. Leo had only met the viscount once. Jasper had been away at Cheltenham, so on that particular January 15, Leo and the Inspector had marked the day with a visit to Kensal Green on their own. When they’d arrived at the granite monument, a tall man in an expensive suit had been standing there, gazing at the edifice. He’d been older with snow-white hair and a pair of incisive eyes that attempted to flay skin from bone when he turned them upon the Inspector. Without a word in greeting, he’d walked away.
The loss of his daughter and two grandchildren had been an enormous blow to Viscount Cowper, the Inspector had explained to Leo afterward. He thinks I should have been there with them, he’d said. To rescue them. Instead, he’d been at work—something true gentlemen of quality did not do.
Leo had investigated the Regent’s Park ice disaster after that, furious on the Inspector’s behalf that the viscount would hold him responsible. Saving his wife and children would have been next to impossible, she’d determined. The ice had given way, and nearly one hundred skaters had plunged into the deep water. It had been pure chaos afterward, with those who hadn’t gone in trying to either escape the ice or rush toward those who’d fallen in, to help. With heavy skates attached to their feet, people sank rapidly, and by the end of it, forty people had died.
The Inspector climbed the mossy, Portland stone steps to the mausoleum door and placed his palm to the oxidized bronze. Winged angels with bowed heads flanked the sealed door, and above it, the names of his wife and children had been chiseled into the granite mantelpiece. There was a blank, smooth surface just above his daughter Beatrice’s name, waiting for another to make the family mausoleum complete. Leo’s throat cinched tight.
After taking a moment alone at the door, he retreated to a bench underneath the boughs of one of the oaks. Leo and Jasper joined him there.
“There is some comfort that I feel,” he said after a few moments, a small grin bowing his lips, “knowing that I will see them again much sooner than I expected.”
Leo settled her hand on his shoulder as an ache expanded deep in her chest. He longed for them, just as Leo had once longed for her own family. The years had dulled that longing, and she felt a touch guilty for it. Especially since the Inspector’s longing had only seemed to increase with time.
He covered Leo’s hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to sit here for a short while, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
It was his way of saying he wanted a little time alone, so she and Jasper stepped out from under the oak and continued along the path. Most of the headstones and statuary were familiar to her. The passing seasons had dulled the engravings and allowed moss to accumulate. Other stones, however, were polished and new. An onyx marble angel, the carved details incredibly lifelike, hadn’t been there last year.
“Some of these are quite beautiful,” she said.
“And expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of that one matched a full year of my wages,” Jasper said, nodding toward another plot that had been fully encircled by alabaster Corinthian columns, each one topped by a different animal carving—a hare, a stag, a swan, and so on.
Leo shrugged. “Funeral services can be lucrative businesses.” She thought of William Carter and his position at Hogarth and Tipson.
Awareness fired through her, and her feet dragged to a halt along the gravel. “ Dig it up .”
Jasper stopped. “Pardon?”
She met his perplexed stare, a notion unfurling. “He worked for a funeral service.”
His brow smoothed. “You mean Carter.”
“Hogarth and Tipson arrange for everything from embalming to interment. If Mr. Carter organized burials?—”
“He could have put something into a casket that was then interred,” Jasper finished.
She felt giddy as a second notion spiraled through her, lifting the small hairs on her arms. “Jasper! Not ‘Nun’. It was an abbreviation. For Nunhead !”
Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? All Saints Cemetery in Nunhead, located a short drive south of the River Thames, was where her family had been buried, after all. “But what could Strange, and the letters and numbers mean?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go to Hogarth and Tipson and see what they might know about Carter’s burials shortly before he died. But first, Lewis and I are calling on Stillman’s wife.”
“I can go to Hogarth and Tipson while you question Mrs. Stillman,” she said, but to no great surprise, he was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking.
“There’s no call for that. I will get the information without you.”
Frustration brimmed. Leave it to Jasper to take the revelation she had made and dismiss her with all haste.
“As my uncle and I have worked with Mr. Tipson and Mrs. Hogarth numerous times, they will be much happier to speak to me than they might be to you, inspector. I can give you a full accounting when I’m done, and it will be more thorough than any police report you’ve likely seen.”
He exhaled, his breath clouding the air. She practically shuffled her feet with excitement at his expression of resignation. “Fine. Go,” he said, grinding out the words. “But I’m warning you, Leo—don’t become accustomed to this.”
Her gratification dimmed somewhat with that high-handed counsel; however, she wouldn’t let him see the effect his words had on her. She turned back toward the mausoleum. “Whatever you say, Inspector Reid.”
On the drive back to Charles Street, the sun disappeared behind a solid banking of clouds. Rain began to spit as Leo and Jasper walked the Inspector to his front door. Mrs. Zhao had prepared for their somber return, offering tea or something stronger, in the study. But the Inspector’s vigor had faded on the ride home, and he needed rest. He kissed Leo on the cheek and said his goodbyes before slowly climbing the stairs.
“I’ll come by tomorrow,” Jasper said softly to Mrs. Zhao as Leo returned to the pavement. Rain pattered the top of her velvet-lined bonnet and darkened the shoulders of her cloak. She signaled an approaching hansom with a lift of her hand, torn between going to Spring Street first to check in on Claude, or directly to Hogarth and Tipson off Cambridge Circus. But she knew if she went to the morgue, she would likely find a reason to stay and help her uncle. So, she decided on the funeral business.
“You’ll tread carefully?” Jasper asked as he joined her on the pavement. It was less of a question as it was an order.
“I won’t cause a commotion, if that is what worries you.”
“That’s not what worries me. If Carter’s home was turned over, his killer was looking for something. Probably the item he had already buried. I don’t want anyone knowing that you’re looking for it too.”
Leo hadn’t considered that angle before now. If the killer was still searching for the buried object, it wouldn’t do to be obvious about their own search. The killer wouldn’t want the competition, to be sure.
She nodded. “I’ll be discreet.”
He gave her a doubtful look but didn’t comment. Instead, he opened the door to the cab that had pulled along the pavement and handed her in. Leo called out the address for Hogarth and Tipson, and the driver set off. After the long ride to and from the cemetery, her tailbone felt bruised and her spine out of joint by the time the driver delivered her to the funeral service.
The corner entrance to the shop was a melancholy affair with black painted steps, a black door, and a bow window dressed in somber crepe and black, white, and purple silk flowers. An ornate coffin was open, to display what looked to be a comfortably cushioned final resting place.
Inside, the scent of lilies permeated the air. She couldn’t understand why people chose them for funerals. The sickly sweetness of the beautiful flowers reminded Leo of death and rot. A single whiff would instantly transport her back to her family’s funeral. Most of the time, she was able to put the vivid memories from her mind, but there was something about lilies that wrenched them out of the dark corner where she kept them.
After Leo’s family had been killed, and Claude and Flora had not yet been located as her next of kin, the Inspector had worked with her father’s solicitor to help arrange for the service. Four plots inside All Saints Cemetery had been selected, as had four coffins: two standard coffins and two shorter ones, for Jacob and Agnes. Mrs. Zhao had dressed Leo all in black for the day, even giving her a black lace veil to bring down over her face. Mostly, it was to protect her from the hordes of newspaper reporters and gawkers who turned out to view the funeral procession. The Inspector and some of his Met friends helped keep them away from the cemetery for the interment. She’d paid no attention to the priest speaking over the open graves; the breeze was lifting the scent from the lily bouquets placed on each coffin and hurling it up her nostrils, making her feel ill.
Leo clasped her hands now, rubbing the scars on her palm through the glove she wore. It didn’t eliminate the sweet, cloying scent, but it did lower her skipping heart rate.
“Why, Miss Spencer, what a delightful surprise it is to see you.” The pudgy-cheeked Mr. Tipson joined her, grinning, but then drew back with an expression of alarm. “Or have you come on some grave personal matter?”
He was likely thinking of Claude, whom he’d met numerous times when he’d come to the morgue for a collection.
“No, all is well, Mr. Tipson, I assure you.” His grin slid back into place. “I’ve come to inquire about one of your former employees.”
To this, the middle-aged man wrinkled his brow in interest. “I hope none of them have put a toe out of line at your uncle’s morgue.”
“Not at all. Everyone I’ve met from Hogarth and Tipson have been nothing but professional and courteous.” Pleased by the praise, he gave a nod of acknowledgment. She continued, “I’m only curious about Mr. William Carter. I’ve learned of his murder.”
He put a hand to his heart, his silver and gray three-piece suit appropriately bleak for his role. “Mrs. Hogarth and I are devastated,” he said, mentioning his widowed sister, with whom he partnered. She was a short woman, stout and hard-nosed, and was much better left to the sundry details of a funeral than to dealing with a grieving family. Mr. Tipson had a softer, warmer nature about him, which suited him well to that task.
“Were you acquainted with William?” he asked.
“Only through an acquaintance of my own,” Leo said, the fib slipping out with ease. “Miss Hannah Barrett.”
The funeral director smiled warmly. “A lovely young woman. We were very sorry for her loss.”
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t sound as if he knew of Hannah’s death. Leo dealt the blow, and Mr. Tipson braced himself against a table display of silk-flower coffin sprays. “No! Miss Barrett? That cannot be.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
Only then did Leo realize that Mr. Barrett had not secured Hogarth and Tipson for the funeral as he had for their mother. Mr. Tipson seemed to come to that point much faster.
“I wonder why her brother didn’t call on us.” He looked bewildered rather than affronted. “We arranged for his mother’s service, you see.”
Leo took in a long breath. The moment had arrived for her to play her hand.
“Mr. Tipson, I’m afraid there was some concern over a family heirloom belonging to Miss Barrett. Mr. Carter had taken her mother’s gold locket to have it polished, but unfortunately, he misplaced it. There was quite a row between him and Mr. Barrett over it, as you can imagine.”
Mr. Tipson blanched. “You don’t suggest William stole it?”
“I don’t want to suggest anything. I’m only here on Mr. Barrett’s behalf, as he’s far too distraught to come himself. I thought I’d see if I might find the locket among Mr. Carter’s things here. I understand he kept a photography studio on the premises?”
It was all a rather muddled explanation, and Leo was grateful Mrs. Hogarth was not present. She would have sniffed out the lie in a trice. Mr. Tipson, however, was not as discerning.
“Yes, though without William, we’ve had to pause that service.” He gestured for Leo to follow him toward the back of the room. “My sister and I haven’t gone through his things yet. We’re rather hoping another photographer might make use of them as soon as we advertise for the position.”
“What other services did Mr. Carter provide?” Leo asked. “Just the photography?”
“Oh, no, he worked closely with Mrs. Hogarth on planning the burials. Plot purchases, casket and headstone selection, the arranging of ephemera. He didn’t have the stomach for the embalming process, so he left that to us, but he was a pair of strong arms for any heavy lifting.”
He would have certainly had ready access to a casket if he wanted to slip something inside. Leo entered the back room behind Mr. Tipson. Heavy velvet curtains blocked the bleak winter light from entering, cloaking the small room in shadows, but as he turned up the gas jets, destruction came into view.
A damask settee with gold braid had been overturned, the fabric slit open, and the stuffing pulled free in tufts. A black tapestry arranged behind the settee as a backdrop had been knocked over, and a large urn had been tipped onto its side; the silk flowers that had been arranged within, were strewn on the floor nearby. The photographer’s set, where Mr. Carter had carefully arranged the deceased to appear lifelike, had been tossed about, and so too had been the various footstools, bolsters, boards, ropes, and even a paint set that he would have used to paint pupils, irises, and eyelashes on closed lids.
“My goodness!” Mr. Tipson stared around at the mess with a grimace. “It wasn’t in this ransacked state the last I saw it.”
“When was that?” Leo asked as she walked deeper into the room, stepping around a pile of blank mounting cards spilled across the rug. She crouched to pick one up. Developed photographs would have been mounted to these cards, which were pressed with a gold-foiled scrollwork frame.
“It had to have been the day after William’s death. Yes, my sister and I heard the news from a police inspector, who’d come here to ask questions. It was a housebreaking and murder, after all. I showed the inspector into the studio and haven’t been in since.”
She dropped the mounting card and stood. “Do you recall the inspector’s name?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he answered. “I was much too shocked to think straight. But I do know the room was just as William had left it. Not like this.”
Mr. Carter’s home had also been turned inside out, its belongings tossed about as the housebreakers searched for something. Leo resolved to ask Jasper what the police file said about the investigating officer, but for now, it was obvious someone had broken into the studio and searched madly for something: Whatever Mr. Carter had wanted Hannah to dig up, she suspected. For all she knew, Mr. Stillman had made this mess. It would have had to have been Saturday or Sunday night, as Mr. Carter was slain Friday, and Hannah, the following Monday.
She crouched again to pick up a hand camera that had been left on the floor. The contraption was much smaller and lightweight than a larger bellows camera. One of those had been knocked to the floor too and looked to have split apart. Made of wood and brass fittings, the hand camera had one main lens flush to the box, and next to it, a smaller lens. Leo peered at it and thought of the strange peephole in Miss Barrett’s bedroom wall. The side-by-side lenses looked as if they could have lined up well with the hidden oval-shaped opening. Miss Barrett had been spying on someone inside the guest room. Had she also been taking photographs ?
Whether she had been or not, Leo still needed information on Mr. Carter’s last burial at All Saints. Quickly, she changed course.
“Mr. Tipson, do you think this could have been done by someone upset with the services they received here?”
The notion utterly shocked him. “No, never! Our customers are only ever satisfied.”
It was an odd thing to consider, that one would find satisfaction in the funeral of a loved one.
“Are you quite certain?” Leo asked. “Perhaps Mr. Carter’s last client had some grievance you’re unaware of. Who might that have been?”
It was not smoothly done, but she’d instilled enough doubt in the undertaker to give him pause.
“No, I know for certain Mrs. Strange was quite content with the services we provided for her husband. I just received a letter of thanks, in fact. Kind, really. Most don’t think of that.”
The small hairs along Leo’s arms stood on end. Strange. It was a name . “When was Mr. Strange’s burial?”
He blinked. “Early last week. Why? Is it of interest?”
“Mr. Tipson, I know this is going to sound like a very odd question, but can you tell me what plot Mrs. Strange purchased for her husband at All Saints Cemetery?”
He frowned and pulled in his chin. “How did you know he’d been buried there?”
“A lucky guess,” she said, impatient to know if her theory was correct.
He goggled at her irreverent answer but left the destruction of the photography studio to return to his desk at the front of the shop. Murmuring that he couldn’t begin to know why she would wish to know such information, he flipped through a ledger.
“Yes, here it is. Barnabas Strange. Block 17, row 4, plot 8.”
A strike of victory lit the ends of Leo’s nerves, and she nearly hopped with excitement.
B17. R4. She couldn’t wait to tell Jasper what she’d discovered.