Chapter 19
Leo stared at Mr. Barrett’s still figure. One moment, he’d been breathing. The next, he was dead. She’d seen countless corpses at the morgue, but she’d never actually witnessed someone’s moment of death. The enormity of it sealed her to the spot.
Jasper, however, was not so immobilized. He drew his revolver from the holster under his coat as he shot to his feet.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her shock severed.
As he stepped around Mr. Barrett’s body toward the sitting room, his revolver extended before him, she answered the question for herself: Whoever did this might still be present in the house.
Standing straight, Leo stole a look into the sitting room. The trinkets and picture frames that had been on the mantel had all been swept to the floor; the furniture overturned and slit open, stuffing torn out; the carpet shoved aside and left in a heap.
“It’s just like Mr. Carter’s studio,” she whispered. “They were looking for something.”
“Stay right next to me,” Jasper ordered as he continued down the short hall to the kitchen in the back. This, too, had been razed, with cabinets open and cleared, and drawers and their contents scattered onto the floor.
“Mr. Barrett might have bled for some time,” Leo said as they moved back toward the base of the stairs. “The lacerations on his back align with his spine and lungs. He may have been incapacitated while the killer ransacked his home. I highly doubt they’re still here.”
Jasper lowered his weapon and went to the front door to close it, to deter passersby from looking in. “He was calling for his father. I thought he’d said their father died when they were young?—”
A sudden sound upstairs, like the clinking of glass, sent a bolt of alarm through Leo. Jasper raised his weapon again.
“ Stay here ,” he mouthed as he started up the steps, revolver in front of him.
She gripped the banister’s lower spindles, her pulse picking up speed. Jasper reached the landing and rounded on the open door to the left. He entered the room, disappearing from view. The moments stretched for ages. But then he reappeared, his weapon still raised. Jasper went to inspect the other two rooms—Hannah’s and the guest room.
Leo waited, her worry mounting as no sound came from upstairs.
“Jasper?” she called.
He arrived at the top of the stairs, his revolver now lowered. “You should see this.”
Leo didn’t hesitate. She rushed up the stairs and followed him into the room to the immediate left. It was a workroom, though an unmade bed was tucked into a corner. There were metal tools and boxes of locks and all manner of hardware that she did not know the use of scattered over the floor.
“He explained he was a locksmith and kept his workroom in the house,” she said.
“He kept something else in here.” Jasper stood by a tall stand of shelves, all cleared of their contents. The shelves had been built into the wall, and they also appeared to be a front for a hidden door.
Leo pulled to an abrupt halt. It was a closet, big enough to walk into. The floor was covered in debris. A table had been overturned, boxes torn down from the closet shelves, but none of it had anything to do with locksmithing. There were photographs and mounting cards, along with what appeared to be glass plate negatives, some smashed, though others intact. That must have been the sound of clinking glass they’d heard; a few plates had shifted and fallen. Cording was strung between shelves, and while no developed photographs were clipped to it, attached were small metal clasps that would have once held them.
Leo stayed on the threshold, reluctant to enter any small space. She’d always hated them, ever since spending those interminable hours in the dark trunk in that attic. So, she crouched and reached for a stack of photographs and one of the glass plates. Nearby, a collection of bottles had been smashed, spilling a pale-yellow, sand-like substance. She read the label.
“Silver bromide. Isn’t that a chemical used to develop photos?”
“His fingertips were discolored,” Jasper said.
“Anyone working with silver or metal would have a grayish tinge to their fingers and under their nails,” she said, thinking of how she’d ruled out the silversmith C.S. Longberger as being the John Doe whose bag Stillman had stolen. “I’d thought it was from his locksmithing business.”
She stood. The phantom-like image on the glass plate in her hand displayed yet another intimate encounter, though thankfully the exposure didn’t allow for a detailed image.
“You were right. Samuel Barrett was part of the scheme,” Jasper said. “He developed photographs in this secret room. Which his killer then rooted out.”
“Or he allowed William Carter to use this space,” Leo said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to risk Mrs. Hogarth or Mr. Tipson finding his work at their studio.”
“But why would the killer come here today? He’d already dug up the coffin at All Saints.”
She flipped through the photographs. “Mr. Carter buried something there. Though I wonder if something more had still been in this closet.”
Jasper reached for the photographs in her hand. “You shouldn’t look through those.”
Leo whirled away. “I’m not that delicate, Inspector Reid.” But then, her arm muscles locked, and a short gasp shuttled down her throat. “Oh, my.”
She turned the photograph outward for him to view. He grimaced, as if seeing a woman in the nude was offensive. Perhaps it was, but it wasn’t her lack of clothing that bothered Leo. It was her face.
“This is Hannah Barrett,” she said. She’d only ever seen the young woman in death, but Leo wasn’t mistaken about who the woman in the photograph was.
Jasper took the photograph. It was of three people. Two men and one woman. Truly, Leo’s stomach cinched tight as he observed the image. What must he think of it? Goodness, what did she think of it?
Jasper tapped the photo. “This is William Carter.”
Leo looked again at the young man with dark hair and an impressive, though ghostly pale chest. “How do you know it is Mr. Carter?”
The question lingered in the air, unanswered. Jasper shrugged belatedly. “Scotland Yard keeps its eye on the East Rips and the Carter family.”
It made sense, but she also recalled Mr. Barrett’s comment that William had never been arrested or jailed. Too slippery for that, he’d said. But she let it go in favor of a more pressing quandary.
“If Hannah and William are both in the photo, who is taking it?”
“Her dear brother, I imagine,” Jasper replied.
Her brother had watched her with these men? The turning of Leo’s stomach made her feel ill.
“Gracious.” She handed Jasper the photo, eager to relinquish it. “I know I’m rather unworldly about such things, but I can’t understand why anyone would wish to expose themselves in such a way.”
He pocketed the photo. “It might not have been a wish. Sometimes people get caught up in things they regret afterward.”
Jasper watched her for a moment and seemed to want to say more. But then, he cleared his throat. “I need to summon some constables. And you need to leave. I can’t have the chief learning you were with me when I found Barrett’s body.”
Groaning, Leo followed Jasper from the room, down the stairs and back to the entrance hall. She didn’t want him in trouble with Chief Inspector Coughlan, but she also despised being told where to go and what to do.
“I take it I’m to return to the morgue,” she said as they again looked down upon Mr. Barrett’s inert form.
A white piece of paper, sticking out from the breast pocket on his coat, was beginning to absorb some of his blood from the carpet.
“I’ll come by later to let you know—” Jasper stopped speaking as Leo crouched, then balanced herself against the newel post to reach for the paper. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking.” She pulled the paper free.
“That is, in fact, touching.”
It was a business card for a Mr. Fordham Graves, a reporter at The Times . Leo had read his columns before, including one last week about the misuse of force by some constables in Blackfriars that resulted in the death of a suspected pickpocket. Up close, she noticed the card hadn’t been absorbing blood from the carpet; rather, the blood had been pressed into the paper by bloody fingertips, leaving behind ridged swirls.
“Mr. Barrett was already bleeding when he reached for this card,” Leo said, showing it to Jasper.
“What was he trying to do?” Jasper murmured, then looked up. Leo followed the direction of his eyes. They’d landed on the telephone, installed in the rear of the front hall.
“Mr. Graves’s exchange number is printed on the card,” she said. “Did he hope to place a call?”
“At the moment of his death?” Jasper took off his hat and scrubbed a hand through his hair.
She hardly ever saw him with his hat off, but each time she did, the shimmering golden streaks scattered through his dark blond hair drew her eyes. The fair strands didn’t suit his somber disposition. He met her gaze, his dark green eyes piercing.
“This is becoming far too dangerous, Leo. I’m worried the man who did this,” he gestured to the body, “is the same man who pushed you into the grave this morning. Which means he knows you’re involved and that you know things he would rather you didn’t.”
A sensation crawled over her back, like there were eyes in the walls, another peephole perhaps obscured by the busy wallpaper pattern.
“If this person thinks I know too much, why was I pushed instead of stabbed?”
Jasper growled and stood. “I don’t know. But for now…” He sighed, as if conflicted but resigned. “I want you with me.”
Leo straightened with an odd uncurling in her stomach. He must have been truly worried for her safety if he wanted to keep her close more than he wanted to send her away. “Even if that means Chief Coughlan learns I was here?”
He scowled. “I’ll handle it. And afterward, we’ll go see Fordham Graves.”
The Times , like many of London’s other dailies, was located on a busy, industrial stretch of Fleet Street. It was nearing early evening by the time Leo and Jasper arrived. While waiting for Detective Lewis and a few of the constables to come to Great Chapel Street to see to Mr. Barrett’s body, Leo had sent a messenger to the morgue to inform Claude that she was going to be away for the rest of the day. Her uncle would not resent her absence, though she did feel a pinch guilty for not being there, yet again.
However, if one of the last things Mr. Barrett wanted to do as he lay dying was call Mr. Fordham Graves, it was imperative they find out why. And if Jasper wanted her to stay at his side, well, she wasn’t going to argue.
The man at the front desk of The Times took one look at Jasper’s warrant card, tucked inside its black leather case, and leapt up to show them the way to the news department. The large room was filled with tobacco smoke, the blare of typewriter bars, and the dinging bells of carriage returns. There wasn’t a female in sight, even though Leo had expected to see some lady typists. This was where Miss Hayes was employed, after all. But perhaps the society pages were typed elsewhere in the building.
The man leading them pointed out Mr. Graves. The reporter was hunched over a typewriter, furiously banging at the keys, while a cigarette smoldered in an ashtray by his elbow.
“Fordham Graves?” Jasper asked as he and Leo reached his desk. He’d raised his voice above the clamor of the newsroom and still barely caught the man’s attention.
When Mr. Graves did look up, he was less impressed by the warrant card than the man at the front desk had been.
“What’s this about, detective? Is there a problem with something I printed?”
Jasper put away his identification. “I’m not familiar with your work.”
“I read your piece last week,” Leo said. Graves looked pleased, so she clarified, “I thought it heavily biased. You cast quite a villainous light on the officers you accused of brutality, yet you painted the pickpocket suspect as a saint.”
“Not a saint.” His expression hardened. “Unfairly persecuted. He was just fourteen years old and dead before he even reached the police station. And there’s been trouble with those same officers before. Two months ago?—”
“I’m not here about any of that,” Jasper interrupted. He held up the bloodied business card. “I want to know how you’re acquainted with Mr. Samuel Barrett.”
“I don’t know a Samuel Barrett.”
“He’s five-foot-eight, about ten stone. Wears spectacles. He’s a locksmith,” Leo said. Then, thinking the reporter might have read the obituaries, she added, “His sister, Miss Hannah Barrett, was struck and killed by an omnibus just a few days ago.”
Mr. Graves shot up from his chair, startling her. “I see.” He gestured for them to follow him. He led the way into a small interview room, turning up the gas wall bracket and closing the door behind them.
Leo drew in a steadying breath. The room wasn’t much bigger than a coat closet, and without a window, the air was stuffy and stale. For the second time that day, she was reminded of the hours she’d spent inside the steamer trunk in her family’s attic on Red Lion Street. Sealed inside, she’d only been able to hear her own breathing, the slamming of her heart, and, for a handful of minutes, the voices of the men who’d just been downstairs, killing her family.
“Stay still. Don’t move a muscle. Breathe through your mouth. Whatever you hear, don’t come out.” It was all the whispered instruction he had given her before shutting the lid.
Leo never saw his face; she’d blown out the candle when the attic door opened, and a pair of soles started scuffing up the steps. At first, she thought it might be Jacob coming to rescue her. But when she’d heard an unfamiliar voice whispering, “ Little girl? ” she’d known it wasn’t her brother. She’d crouched on her knees, but her foot had moved, striking the tray holding the tea party set she’d been arranging for her doll, Miss Cynthia.
“He calls himself John Smith,” Mr. Graves said, drawing Leo back into the present. The reporter looked suspicious. “Why are you asking about him?”
“He’s dead,” Jasper answered bluntly. It wasn’t meant to be insensitive, just straightforward. It was the best way to deliver difficult news, as Leo had long since learned from her uncle.
Mr. Graves sank down into a chair, nodding solemnly. “I was worried they’d get to him.”
“They?” Jasper crossed his arms but didn’t sit. Neither did Leo; her legs were far too tense to bend. “Whom do you refer to?”
“I can’t give you names because I don’t know.”
“But you thought he was in danger?” Leo asked. “Why?”
“Because of what he wanted to sell me.”
She exchanged a hopeful glance with Jasper, who asked, “Which was?”
“Photographs. The explicit kind,” he answered with a furtive, apologetic glance toward Leo. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t see them. He wouldn’t show them to me until we settled on a fee, which I couldn’t do.”
“Why not?” Jasper asked.
Mr. Graves flipped up his palms. “My editor refused. Said our paper was too respectable an institution to run tawdry illustrations based on whatever the photographs would show.”
Leo thought she knew why Mr. Barrett would have chosen Fordham Graves. “You write the police beat for the paper.”
“And I’m happy to do it. The people of London are tired of the corruption and double standards at Scotland Yard.”
Jasper’s glare intensified. Leo had been privy to too many conversations with the Inspector over the years to be ignorant about police corruption. Some officers dipped their fingers into many pots, and that was just the way of it. Jasper’s fingers were clean though. She trusted that, without question.
“Mr. Barrett approached you because the photographs were of someone associated with the police force,” she guessed. He nodded.
“When was this?” Jasper asked.
“Last Saturday. I was here writing an article when he showed up. He said his sister had gotten involved in some blackmail scheme with her betrothed, but they had chosen the wrong person. The fiancé had gotten himself killed, and Smith worried he and his sister were next.”
“Why not leave London? Why try to sell you the photographs?” Jasper asked.
“Smith said they were leaving. He hoped if the person was exposed publicly, it would create a distraction and give them some time to get away. But then, he came in a few days ago and told me his sister was run down. I got concerned. I couldn’t buy the photographs, but there are others who might. I told him he had to be careful and that he should move the photographs and glass plate negatives to a safer location. He said they were already split up.”
Leo frowned. “Split up? What did he mean by that?”
“The fiancé had put the glass plates somewhere safe. Smith—or Barrett, as that was his real name—had the photographs somewhere else.”
Two different locations. She turned to Jasper. “That’s why Mr. Barrett’s house was ransacked even after Mr. Strange’s coffin was dug up. The killer had found one set but not the other. And he would need both the negatives and the developed pictures to be safe.”
“A coffin was dug up?” The reporter sat up straight. “This sounds like a good story.”
“It isn’t,” Jasper said, then moved toward the door. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Graves.”
“He wouldn’t have had them in his house,” he said as Jasper opened the door. “I told him anywhere but the house. Especially after his sister was killed.”
Leo and Jasper walked back through the smoky clatter of the newsroom.
“If he took Mr. Graves’s advice, then the photographs weren’t in Mr. Barrett’s hidden closet,” she said as they exited and left the racket behind.
“Or maybe he didn’t take the advice, and the killer now has both the plates from Strange’s casket and the photographs.” Jasper grimaced. “If so, he’s certainly destroyed them by now. There goes the evidence.”
“We cannot give up,” Leo said. “There is a chance Mr. Barrett did move them from the house. If so, where would he have hidden them?”
“A place he would have had access to. A place he could easily return to,” Jasper mused. “I’d say his work, but as his locksmithing business was at home?—”
A locksmith. Leo paused on a step as they made their way to the ground level. “If he was a locksmith, well then, he could pick any lock he wished.”
Jasper took a step back up toward her. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about the back door to the morgue. I found it open after returning from Striker’s Wharf, remember? Someone was in the back room. I saw him run out the door, into the cemetery. What if it was Mr. Barrett finding a place to store his photographs?”
Jasper came up another step and now stood directly below hers. “Why would he choose the morgue?”
The answer dropped into her mind as if gifted from some magical source. “Because I gave him the idea.”
He quizzed her with a look, but before she could explain, a voice carried down the stairwell. “Jasper?”
Coming from an upper floor, Miss Constance Hayes slid her gloved hand along the wood railing as she descended. Her large blue eyes jumped with dubious curiosity from Leo to Jasper, and then back again.
She was the picture of perfection, with rose-tinted lips, a fashionable dress and matching shoes, a wide-brimmed Gainsborough hat dressed in plush, velvet ribbons, and a small, embroidered handbag looped in the crook of her arm. She practically radiated wealth and elegance and would draw eyes anywhere she went. It made her presence at a drab newspaper office all the odder— and interesting. Leo was certain she was not the only one affected by the heiress’s choice to shun her rightful place in society to work instead. In fact, it was just about the only thing Leo liked about her.
“Constance.” Jasper took a few steps up, passing Leo as he went to greet her. He kept his hands in his pockets until she held out her hand to him. He quickly grasped it and led her down the rest of the stairs. Leo turned first to head them off.
“I didn’t realize you were going to be here,” Constance said, her voice echoing through the stairwell.
“We’re following a lead for an investigation,” Jasper explained.
She canted her head and peered at Leo. “You’re following a lead with Miss Spencer?”
“It involves the morgue,” she explained, secretly enjoying the bilious press of Constance’s lips.
“Does it? How unpleasant.” She linked her arm with Jasper’s and angled herself away from Leo. It was as effective as a door shutting in her face. “I’m off. Will you call on me tonight?” She rose onto the tips of her toes and whispered something into his ear.
Jasper listened intently, then nodded as she dropped back to her heels, still clinging to his arm. Leo fought a roll of her eyes.
“I’ll come by after I call on my father,” he told her, and it must have pleased her because she simpered before carrying on and exiting through the lobby doors.
“I’m not going to ask what she whispered into your ear,” Leo said as they followed Constance’s lead and exited onto Fleet Street.
“Good, because I’m not going to tell you.” He tugged his coat collar up against a spitting rain.
Leo slowed as a familiar figure descended from a nearby carriage onto the pavement. Sir Nathaniel came toward them, his gait limping. The weather must have been getting into his bones , as he called it, his old injury from Africa making itself known. He tipped his hat to them.
“Ah, Miss Spencer and Inspector Reid, what brings you to Fleet Street?”
“Commissioner,” Jasper greeted in return, his eyes skating toward Leo. She could read his reticent expression perfectly: He wished Leo wasn’t with him.
“I’ve been following a lead on another murder connected to William Carter and Clarence Stillman,” he answered.
I, when he’d just told Constance We . Leo bristled, even though rationally, she knew he could not credit Leo as a partner. She wasn’t that anyway. Jasper had allowed her to accompany him because he feared for her safety. To tell the commissioner that would lead to the story about Leo being at All Saints and getting pushed into an open grave. So, she kept her lips sealed.
“Is this the Barrett fellow I heard about at the Yard just now?” the commissioner asked. Then, with a careful look at Leo, he added, “There is some…talk about what was found in an upstairs closet.”
Remaining quiet would only lead the commissioner to believe such topics affronted her, when the true affront was being considered too delicate to be spoken to plainly. “Yes, Samuel Barrett and William Carter may have been blackmailing people with indecent photographs, taken without permission or knowledge,” she said.
The commissioner swung a startled look toward Jasper. “Do you have evidence of this, Reid?”
“We’re close.” His short reply was laden with irritation. For Leo, no doubt.
Sir Nathaniel peered at her. “And how are you involved?”
She didn’t have an excuse ready. Neither did Jasper, apparently. At their stumped silence, Commissioner Vickers raised a brow.
“It appears Gregory’s penchant for solving a good tangle has been passed on to you as well, Miss Spencer.” He tucked his chin. “However, there is no place for a woman inside the Met. You must allow Inspector Reid to conduct police business alone. Am I clear?”
The burn of insult and humiliation crept up her neck toward her cheeks. To be spoken to like she was a little girl, pestering Jasper to include her!
“Now, I’m late to my meeting with the publisher at the Daily Chronicle . The papers are either our friends or our enemies. Best to stay in their good graces.” He sighed. “Keep me abreast of what you discover, Reid.” He tipped the brim of his hat again toward Leo. “Miss Spencer.”
And then, he was off.
“The utter gall,” she hissed once he was out of earshot. “No room in the Met for a woman! As if I did not already know as much.”
Of course she couldn’t be a detective. She couldn’t be a coroner either, though both of those positions suited her far better than any other available to women. She most certainly couldn’t be like Miss Constance Hayes, typing society pages. She was gregarious and sociable, and always grinning. There was too much darkness in Leo for that. She could feel it sometimes—the burden of that darkness.
“You couldn’t expect him to be pleased,” Jasper said. “He isn’t going to coddle you the way the Inspector has.”
She turned her glare onto Jasper next. “I do not require, nor do I want, coddling.”
He continued toward a cab stand. “Just tell me how you gave Mr. Barrett the idea to hide his photographs at the morgue. If they’re there, we need to find them.”
“Oh, it’s we again, is it?” At his befuddled expression, she shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll tell you on the way to Spring Street.”