Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
T he first time Jasper had walked into Inspector Gregory Reid’s office at Scotland Yard, he never imagined it would one day become his own. That first day, and for many more days afterward, he’d been too nervous to speak. Almost too nervous to breathe. He’d been unduly convinced that the Inspector would know who he was underneath the bruises, the split lip, and swollen eye. There was more evidence of the severe beating he’d received underneath his ratty clothes too, but Jasper didn’t regret the injuries. Not one lick. He’d have endured that thrashing again and again if it meant getting away from where he’d been.
All this time, all these years, the Inspector had known the truth. Most of it, at least. And he’d still brought Jasper into his home. Into his life. He’d still given Jasper his name.
Jasper leaned his hip against his desk, arms crossed and looked out the window. He was at a loss. Chief Coughlan had given him a proper dressing down for the mess at All Saints. He hadn’t cared at all that an unauthorized grave robber had gotten there before Jasper and Lewis—all he cared about was that not a bloody thing had been found inside the coffin.
“There might have been something there before,” Jasper had argued.
“But there isn’t now, and you’ve no idea who might have taken what might have been there,” he’d scoffed. “It’s over, Reid. Carter was killed in a housebreaking, Stillman in a mugging, and Miss Barrett was accidentally struck by an omnibus. You’ve no tangible evidence to the contrary, so you are done with it. Move on. Cases are piling up on your desk every day. Do your job and see to them.”
He’d pointed to the door in dismissal, and Jasper had endured Tomlin’s smug grin as he’d returned to his office. He hadn’t been sacked, but Jasper could feel the ground shaking beneath him.
It was going to be a nightmare telling Leo it was over, especially now that they’d come upon a strong theory that Carter had buried photographs, perhaps intended for blackmail purposes. She wouldn’t understand Coughlan’s decision. The woman was so unreasonably stubborn it made his muscles tight with frustration. Why couldn’t she simply be like other ladies? Though as soon as the question fired off in his head, he knew it would be impossible. It wasn’t even what he wanted, really. He didn’t know what he did bloody want, except not to find her in another grave or locked closet.
A knock preceded the opening of his office door.
“You’re going to want to hear this, guv.” Lewis closed the door behind him. Jasper twisted away from the window.
“Not if it has anything to do with the Stillman case,” he said. “Coughlan’s shut it down.”
“Bugger that. You’re going to want to hear it,” Lewis said, though he started speaking more softly. “I was looking for anything we have on Tommy Welch in the convict office, like you asked, when I recalled that Stillman was a ticket-of-leave man. He was due to report in every week after his release from Wandsworth.”
Most convicts released from prison early, usually due to good behavior, held tickets-of-leave, permitting them to live among the masses again and earn a living. But they were required to check in regularly with the convict office, so Scotland Yard could keep tabs on them.
“I asked Constable Fine in the convict office about Stillman,” Lewis went on. “He says he didn’t need to check the registry to recall that he showed up two Wednesdays ago, on schedule.”
Jasper frowned. “All right. What of it?”
“Fine arrived at the office that morning to find a message on his blotter marked for Stillman. When he handed it over, wouldn’t you know, Stillman couldn’t read beyond his own name. So, Fine opened it and read it to him.”
Intrigue straightened Jasper’s back.
“It was a summoning to the Jugger on Friday night at eight o’clock. About some work,” Lewis said, a sly grin forming. “I’ll buy you a pint at the Rising Sun if you can guess who signed the message.”
He didn’t have the patience for games. “I’ll buy you a pint if you’ll just spit it out, man.”
Thwarted, Lewis sighed. “You did.”
Jasper went still. “ I signed it?”
The detective sergeant lifted his palms up in surrender. “Constable Fine will attest to it.”
Jasper slammed his closed fist onto his desk and cursed. What in hellfire was going on here? “I sent no such message. Did Fine keep it?”
Lewis shook his head.
“If it was left for Stillman on his scheduled day to report in at the convict office, the person who wrote it has access to the registry,” Jasper said. The truth settled in like the drop of an anchor. “Someone here at the Yard is behind all of this.”
“That grave was hit right after the chief arranged for a disinterment. Who do you know for certain overheard your request?” Lewis asked.
“Tomlin, of course.” Jasper sighed. “And Wiley.”
The desk constable had been listening at the door. Being a nosy parker, or so Jasper had thought. But then again, Wiley had just happened to be walking past Duck Island when he heard Mr. Gates, the bird keeper, shouting for the police.
Wiley was a peacocking simpleton. But involving himself in murders? Jasper couldn’t imagine to what end. Though, he could easily envision him shoving Leo into a grave and snickering about it as he ran off.
“Send Wiley in. I’d like a word.”
“He’s not at his desk,” Lewis reported.
“Very well, next time you see him.”
The door to his office opened swiftly without a warning knock, and Leo, still wearing her dirt-streaked coat and skirt from earlier at All Saints, whisked inside.
“No Constable Wiley today? I almost missed being scolded and chased.”
The apples of her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glittered with excitement as she opened her handbag.
“We were right,” she continued in a rush, pulling something from her bag and then slapping it onto the desk. When she pulled her hand away, Jasper was left staring at a photograph of two men, both unclothed and locked in an embrace.
Shock crackled through him, traveling like lightning from his skull to his feet.
“What in God’s name—” He snatched up the photograph and stared at her, utterly baffled. “What are you doing with this?”
Lewis frowned. “What is it?”
Grimacing, Jasper handed it to him.
“Blimey,” the detective sergeant breathed, dropping it back onto the desk with the image facing down.
“Honestly, the two of you.” Leo took it up and held the image out for Jasper to see again. “Look at him.”
He did, reluctantly. It was a photograph of the type they’d theorized Carter and Miss Barrett had been engaged in taking. After focusing on the men in the photograph, he understood Leo’s reason for barging in. He took the photo from her.
“This is Mr. Barrett.”
Hannah’s brother was standing with another, unfamiliar man in a pose that could not be misconstrued.
“And that,” Leo tapped the photograph “is the guest bedroom. Miss Barrett and Mr. Carter were secretly taking photographs of her brother and selling them to specialty shops.”
Lewis scratched the back of his head. “Did he know about it?”
“More importantly, did he consent to it?” Leo asked. “Or might he have found out after the fact and tried to recover the photographs and glass plate negatives by any means possible?”
Jasper stuffed the photograph into his waistcoat pocket. “I think I’ll ask him.”
“Coughlan won’t like that,” Lewis said.
“He will if it leads to an arrest,” Jasper replied, taking his coat and hat from the standing rack. But then he stopped. He turned to find Leo nearly upon his heels. “Where, exactly, did you find this photograph?”
She pulled back, her expression becoming opaque. “Does it matter?”
“You were supposed to go to the morgue.”
“I did. Briefly.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “Is there something I can do while you’re out, guv?”
Jasper wanted to ask him to tie Leo to a chair. But, once again, she’d managed to bring in a valuable lead. Coughlan would pitch a fit if he knew it was her lead.
“Search for any records the Met might have on Samuel Barrett. And when Wiley gets in, watch him. Be careful. I don’t know if we can trust him.”
Lewis nodded and left. When Jasper stood in the open doorway another moment, staring at Leo, she sighed.
“I will tell you where I went and how I came to be in possession of the photograph on our way to Mr. Barrett’s.”
Jasper didn’t want to waste time arguing. If he told her to go to the morgue or home, she would just find her way to the Barrett household on her own.
“And if he killed Carter?” Jasper asked. He was beginning to think it was a distinct possibility.
“Then you can arrest him while I fetch a constable.”
“You always have an answer, don’t you?”
Leo lifted a shoulder and walked past him. “You make it sound like a flaw.”
They left the Yard, signaling a cab and giving the address for Great Chapel Street. As promised, Leo explained how she’d found the illicit photograph. Jasper’s stomach sank like a rock with every subsequent word she spoke. Finally, when she described entering the back room with the portraitist to view the offerings, he hinged forward in his seat, unable to curb his tongue.
“Do you have any idea how bloody stupid that was? To put yourself in a room, alone, with a man like that?”
Leo glared balefully at him. “I knew that’s what you would say. I could hear it in my head when he asked me to follow him.”
“Then you should have listened,” he barked before sitting back again.
“Mr. McDaniels might have been a bit slippery, but he wasn’t a threat.”
Mr. sodding McDaniels. Jasper would be looking into this shop and shutting it down.
“Samuel Barrett seemed to despise William Carter,” Leo said, unconcerned about the potential danger she’d been in. “If he found out his private encounters were being photographed and sold, it would give him motive to kill William. But surely, he wouldn’t need to hire anyone to hunt down his own sister and steal her locket. He could have simply taken it from her neck himself.” Leo bit her bottom lip, as though having a troubling thought. “What if Samuel Barrett knew about this operation? What if…”
Jasper picked up on her idea. “What if it was the other man in the photograph who did not know? And he, and others like him, were being blackmailed?”
Leo nodded, but he wasn’t convinced.
“To consent to selling these photographs would be a great risk for someone like Samuel Barrett. If they were to be seen by the wrong person, if he were to be recognized… there are laws against distributing pornographic photos, not to mention engaging in intimacies with a partner of the same sex. He could be arrested.” Jasper shook his head. “I don’t think he knew they were being sold in shops like the one this Mr. McDaniels owns, but he might have participated in a blackmail scheme.”
The photograph in Jasper’s pocket weighed heavy as they rode onward. He wanted to strangle Leo for daring to search out a purveyor of such things by herself. Impulsive and shortsighted, yet bold as brass.
“You should have brought someone with you,” he grumbled.
“Like Uncle Claude?” she asked with a roll of her eyes.
“Like me.”
“You’re a police detective. Mr. McDaniels would have sorted that out the moment you stepped into his shop.”
“I could have waited on the pavement. At least then you wouldn’t have been alone.”
Leo sealed her lips against another retort that was certainly banging to get out. Jasper shook his head and huffed a reluctant laugh, tapping his pocket. “I can’t believe you bought this thing.”
“That reminds me—you owe me two bob.” She tried to suppress a crafty grin. “And what was that back in your office, about not being able to trust Constable Wiley?”
He explained about what had occurred at the convict office with Stillman and the forged message Constable Fine had read.
“That explains it,” she said.
“Does it? Enlighten me.”
“Ticket-of-leave men can be arrested on any charge, or even on suspicion without proof, which would negate their condition for release from prison. That makes them vulnerable. Constable Wiley could have threatened Mr. Stillman with a return to Wandsworth unless he retrieved photographs that Constable Wiley himself was being blackmailed with. Photographs of a sensitive nature,” she said, gesturing to Jasper’s chest and the hidden photograph in his waistcoat pocket.
“You think Wiley was in photographs like these?”
He was aware that people’s proclivities did not always run along standard, socially accepted lines, and he could not have cared less. Wiley’s choices weren’t any of his business. They weren’t anyone’s, and if Carter and the Barretts were exploiting people in this manner, then they were the ones who’d deserved arrest, not the people they tricked.
“It makes sense,” Leo replied. “He could have easily gone through the convict files to find the perfect scapegoat.”
The carriage came to a stop outside Mr. Barrett’s home. Jasper opened the door and descended, then handed Leo down. They started for the black crepe door.
“I’ve been thinking about Miss Barrett giving her notice at the hospital,” Leo said. “The nurse at St. Thomas told me she’d been planning to leave London.”
Jasper brought down the knocker. “Maybe she feared she was going to meet the same fate as Carter.”
“Or maybe she’d decided not to do as he wished. Instead of digging up Mr. Strange’s coffin to recover the photographs, she’d decided to cut and run.”
There was no sound of Mr. Barrett approaching from within, so Jasper brought down the knocker again.
“Maybe he isn’t at home,” Leo said, but as she leaned over a wrought iron handrailing to peer inside the closest window, she gave a cry. “Oh, my goodness. Jasper, open the door. Open it!”
It wasn’t locked, and they rushed inside to find Samuel Barrett sprawled face down at the foot of the stairs.
“Mr. Barrett?” Jasper stepped into the crimson-soaked carpet around him and crouched by the man’s side.
His skin was ashen, and blood leaked from his lips. He was still breathing, though weakly.
Leo crouched across from Jasper. “He looks to have been stabbed in the back.”
Three small slashes in Mr. Barrett’s jacket had bled profusely. Leo met Jasper’s eyes and shook her head. He wouldn’t live. The copious loss of blood wouldn’t allow for it.
Mr. Barrett gurgled a barely audible word—“ Father… ”—as blood filled his airway and sprayed from his lips.
“Mr. Barrett, can you give me a name? Who did this to you?” But Samuel’s labored breaths went silent. His eyes stared, unfocused. Unseeing.
Jasper pressed his hand to the man’s eyes, closing them. “He’s gone.”