Chapter 3
Chapter Three
L eo set the rack of toast onto the table and the crock of butter beside it. The air inside their kitchen on Duke Street was filled with its usual odor of charred eggs and sausage, but at least she hardly ever burned the toast. Cooking wasn’t an undertaking she’d ever perfected, and thankfully, neither Claude nor Flora berated her for it. Probably because they, too, were terrible cooks. It was a wonder the three of them had survived for this long.
Sunshine streamed in through the windows, highlighting floating dust motes. The terrace house was small and modest, but tidy, in large part thanks to Mrs. Shaw. Though she was officially Flora’s nurse, she usually kept the house neatly swept too. However now, she had given her notice.
“Was there no talking her out of it?” Leo asked as she sat adjacent to Claude. He slathered butter on a slice of toast, which he then placed on Flora’s plate.
“None,” he answered with a sad sigh. “But she said she’d stay on for a week to give us time to find someone new.”
Leo dropped a cube of sugar into her tea, then a splash of milk while her aunt spun the buttered toast around and around on her plate. She’d been quiet this morning, however last night, Claude reported that he’d heard her shouts from down the street on his way home. When he’d walked into the house, Mrs. Shaw had been crying out of frustration—and perhaps a bit of fear. Flora had been chanting at the top of her lungs that Mrs. Shaw’s family would “perish painfully of poisoned pie.” Alliteration had become a quirk of hers, especially whenever she became upset. Part of Leo wondered if her aunt had selected this ominous chant with the express desire to drive Mrs. Shaw away. But how much of Flora’s mind was still aware? Sometimes, she seemed perfectly fine. Then, in a blink, she’d be gone again.
On her walk home last night—after finishing the closure, feeding Tibia a skewer of offal meat she’d purchased from the butcher that afternoon, and locking up the morgue—Leo decided the story of the intruder could keep until morning when she and Claude would be refreshed. Besides, the danger the intruder had imposed wasn’t her main concern any longer. It was the necklace missing from the omnibus accident victim, Miss Hannah Barrett.
The oval locket, roughly two inches long and an inch wide, had been tarnished gold, and the face engraved with a design of lilies. Why the intruder took it, but not the much more valuable amethyst and diamond earrings, continued to perplex her over the short distance to Duke Street.
Jasper’s warning for her to stop assisting with closing sutures had also weighed on her. She didn’t think he would tell the deputy coroner…but Jasper was strict about rules, and ever since he’d been promoted to Detective Inspector at the C.I.D., he’d been more austere than usual. Then again, she’d hardly seen him over the handful of years he’d been at the Tottenham Road Police Station, earning his stripes, so to speak. Maybe this somber and disapproving man was just who Jasper had turned out to be.
In all honesty, he’d been solemn even as a boy, right from their first meeting at Scotland Yard. Even if Leo’s memory had not been photographic, as it was sometimes called, she would have recalled that moment perfectly.
For the first four days after losing her family, Leo had been kept under guard at the Yard. Not in a holding cell, but in a room that had once been a bedchamber in the old Palace of Whitehall. The former royal residence had been destroyed by fire, piece by piece, over the centuries, until all that remained was a collection of buildings that had eventually been turned into the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police. The bedchamber had been outfitted with a cot for her, and the Inspector had brought in pillows and a thick quilt from his own home, so that she’d be warm.
A constable’s wife had been assigned to watch her. At the time, Leo hadn’t known why, but now she understood the Inspector was being cautious. He believed her family had been targeted and that once whoever did it learned a child had been overlooked, they might try to finish the job. So, Leo had remained under police protection.
On her fourth day in custody, the constable’s wife was walking Leo back to her room after meeting with the police surgeon. Her palm was healing from the gashes she’d given herself that horrible night in the attic, from a shard of her broken porcelain doll, and the doctor had rebandaged her hand. Too busy wincing from the tight, itchy sensation of her stitches, she hadn’t seen the unruly drunkard barreling toward her at first. He’d broken away from a constable bringing him in, and the chase had driven him straight toward Leo and the constable’s wife. But then, a gangly, flaxen-haired boy darted into his path, intercepting him. The surprise collision took down both man and boy, and the pursuing constable was given a chance to catch up.
Once the boy was on his feet and dusted off, his bruises had been visible. Leo had stared, aghast. Some bruises were fresh, others were fading, and they riddled his face to a grotesque state. When another constable scolded the boy and grabbed him by the arm, it became clear that, though just a few years older than she, he’d been brought in under arrest. The boy had held Leo’s stunned stare a few moments longer before the constable unceremoniously yanked him away.
Even then, Jasper’s dark green eyes had been the gloomy color of the Thames on an overcast day.
“I’ll place an advert in the Telegraph for Mrs. Shaw’s replacement,” Leo told her uncle as she sipped her tea. Now didn’t seem like the right time to tell him about the intruder in the morgue, especially as she watched him scoop up a forkful of burnt eggs and feed them to Flora, his hand tremoring slightly. But she knew she must. Briefly and straightforwardly, she explained what had unfolded the evening before. Claude sat back in his chair and pushed his wire spectacles higher onto the bridge of his nose.
“My dear, you could have been harmed. I should have been there.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want you to feel sorry. I’m perfectly fine. But unfortunately, Inspector Reid now knows that I assist you at times.”
Claude waved it off. “The boy won’t say anything.”
“Jasper hasn’t been a boy for a while now, Uncle. Unfortunately, he’s a detective inspector and terribly pedantic.”
“Well, he does have quite the pair of shoes to fill, doesn’t he?” Claude said, fixing his own plate now that he’d taken care of Flora’s.
He made a good point. To no one’s great surprise, Jasper had followed in the Inspector’s footsteps. He must have felt immense pressure to uphold the well-respected reputation of the Reid name. Perhaps especially so, considering he’d not been born with the name, but had it given to him.
Across the table, Flora, her expression devoid of any emotion these last many minutes, brightened. The lines around her mouth creased as she grinned. “Such a sweet boy, that Jasper. Isn’t he a sweet boy, Claude?”
He sat forward again, visibly pleased for her moment of lucidity. It would be brief, but it was a gift just the same. “Yes, my darling, a very sweet boy.”
Flora’s longstanding soft spot for Jasper was baffling. She wasn’t motherly in the least. Not toward Leo anyway.
Three quick knocks on the front door alerted her to the time.
“I’ll be at the morgue a little later than usual,” she said as she drained her teacup and plucked a slice of toast from the rack.
She could tell Claude wanted to ask where she was going, but he’d become adept at holding his tongue. Now nearly twenty-five, Leo no longer needed to answer to him. Still, he’d never been overly restrictive, and so she didn’t feel the need to be secretive.
“I’m going to walk with Dita to the Yard and stop in to see Jasper,” she told him as she pushed back her chair, stood, and stooped to kiss the top of his head.
Her friend, Nivedita Brooks, was a matron at Scotland Yard, and most mornings, she and Leo walked the quarter hour or so it took to reach No. 4 Whitehall Place together. Dita had been granted the position the previous year, the first in which the Met had started to employ women to watch over the children and ladies taken into police custody. Most matrons were relatives of police officers, and that was true for Dita as well. Her father, a sergeant in the Public Carriage Office, had been with the Met for nearly twenty years.
Leo opened the door for her friend while putting on her coat, gloves, and hat. Dita grimaced as she looked her over.
“Please, tell me you aren’t wearing that tonight when we go to Striker’s Wharf.”
Leo shepherded her outside and shut the door. “I’m not wearing this to Striker’s Wharf because I’m no longer going. I’m sorry,” she said as they started for the Strand.
Dita might not have looked like a woman of style, dressed as she currently was in her crisp, blue wool skirt uniform, half cape, and hat, with a pair of tall black boots to cover her ankles. But outside the Yard, she wore only the most fashionable clothing, and she was eternally pleading with Leo to branch out from her favored utilitarian dresses. The morgue called for subdued colors like muted green, dark blue, and charcoal gray, and it wasn’t practical for her to wear anything but tweeds, twills, and cottons. Besides, while bright silks and satins looked splendid against Dita’s darker complexion, Leo’s own pale skin turned jaundiced against them.
“Is it John?” Dita sighed. “You know I’ll tell him he can’t come if it bothers you to be the odd one out.”
Dita had been courting John Lloyd, a police constable, for a few months, and now whenever they went across the river to the dance hall on Striker’s Wharf, he usually accompanied them. There was nothing Dita enjoyed more than dancing, and while Leo liked the club, she much preferred sitting at a table, listening to the band, and watching the revelry of the crowd.
“It’s not that,” Leo said. “It’s Aunt Flora. You see, Mrs. Shaw has quit.”
Dita, aware of Flora’s condition, put an arm around Leo’s shoulders and gave her a bracing squeeze. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“That’s very kind, but there isn’t much to do other than place an advert for a new nurse.” Again. Mrs. Shaw had lasted six months. Miss Baxter before her had stayed but a fortnight.
Dita hooked Leo’s arm through hers and pulled, slowing her pace. “Why are you walking so quickly? You can’t be that eager to open the morgue this morning.”
“I’m coming with you into the Yard,” she explained. “And since you’ll likely hear all about it today, I’ll be the first to tell you.”
She quickly went over the event of the morgue intruder, the missing locket, and, albeit reluctantly, the fact that she’d been locked in a closet for a short while. Dita knew her well enough to understand which part of the incident Leo was least willing to discuss, and as any good friend would, Dita refused to let her ignore it.
“That animal put you in a closet? Weren’t you terrified?”
“It was just a closet,” she replied.
“A confined space just the same.”
Every enclosed space would transform in Leo’s mind into the steamer trunk in the attic of her old Red Lion Street home. She’d huddled for hours in that trunk, all the while knowing her family had been hurt. And yet, she’d been too frightened to come out and see for herself.
“The closet was the least interesting part,” she assured Dita. “It’s the locket I am interested in speaking to Inspector Reid about.”
Miss Hannah Barrett’s body had been delivered to Spring Street close to five o’clock the evening before, and Leo had immediately catalogued the departed’s personal effects. A letter in her handbag had pointed to her identity, and the constable had left with the task of contacting her family. When they arrived today, Miss Barrett would not be wearing the necklace she’d come in with. If it was a family piece, the loss of it would be noted, and that would reflect poorly on her uncle’s morgue. While that had bothered her all night, so had something else about the necklace.
Within the locket had been two more items that she’d logged into the possessions register: a clipping of dark hair bound together with a thin blue ribbon, and a very small, folded piece of paper with some confounding writing upon it: Strange Nun B17 R4. The contents of the locket might not have any relevance to why it had been taken, but Leo would at least tell Jasper about them. The night before, she’d overlooked reporting those details to him.
She was also a bit curious as to how his conversation with the Inspector had gone.
“I must say, there are times I envy you,” Dita said as they approached the courtyard behind police headquarters. It was the very name of this courtyard, Scotland Yard, that had given the connected buildings the same moniker.
Leo peered sideways at her friend as they passed the horse stables and approached the main entrance. “I can’t understand how that could be. You won’t even set foot inside the morgue.”
“Oh, no, I refuse to be around corpses,” Dita said with a shudder. “But you seem to take it all in stride. Whereas I could barely sleep last night thinking about the poor children I watched over yesterday. They were found inside a photographer’s studio, barely dressed. It seems he’d been keeping them dosed with laudanum and using them to pose for lewd photographs.”
Leo’s stomach cramped. It was cruel what some people could do to others. Especially to children, the most vulnerable of them all. No corpse, no matter how mangled, could affect her as keenly as an innocent child harmed.
“Do they have homes to return to?”
Dita shook her head. As Leo had suspected, these children had likely been lured off the street with the promise of treats or money. From the Yard, they’d go to an orphanage or workhouse.
“But never mind all that,” Dita said as they nodded hello to the officer in the lobby, Constable Woodhouse. He knew Leo and let her pass; all other visitors would be required to stop and state their business. “I don’t intend to remain a matron for very long,” Dita whispered, then grinned, her dark brown eyes glittering with mischief. “If John steps up to the mark.”
She wanted to marry, of course, and start a family. And apparently, with Police Constable John Lloyd.
They parted ways at the stairs, Dita going up while Leo continued down a hall toward the detective department. She held her chin high, having learned long ago to pretend to have horse blinders on and pay no attention to those in uniform, or in plainclothes, like those in the C.I.D. She was eyed with everything from curiosity to displeasure whenever she would visit Dita on the matron’s floor for tea or a chat. Lately, she’d had no reason to call on the detective department as often as she once had, what with Gregory Reid no longer being there. Only a handful of times since Jasper’s promotion to detective inspector had she hand-delivered requested copies of death inquests or a victim’s personal effects.
The hallways were narrow and busy with passing constables, sergeants, detectives, and clerks, some of whom tipped their hats and gave her a wide berth, and others who scowled and brushed a shoulder into hers in an attempt to intimidate her. Women usually only came here to file complaints, and all too often, they were turned away, accused of being silly or hysterical. Leo had witnessed one too many officers do this, even the affable Constable Woodhouse, and it maddened her to no end. However, it was Constable Horace Wiley in the detectives’ central office who was by far the worst offender, and so as she entered the department, she marched straight past the front desk where he sat, toward the back of the large room, where Jasper’s office was located.
“Now, wait just a moment!” He leaped from his chair, scraping the legs back on the wood floor.
“Good morning, constable,” she greeted as she kept walking.
“You aren’t allowed back there,” he said, following her. Leo picked up her pace.
“Inspector Reid is expecting me,” she lied. Several central office detective sergeants and constables glanced up as she passed them by, but none attempted to intercept her. They only raised their brows, then looked back to what they’d been doing before.
Constable Wiley must have broken into a run, for he overtook her in the last moment, holding out his arm and blocking her from reaching for the doorknob to Jasper’s office. Red-faced and narrow-eyed, he looked ready to arrest her on the spot.
“You are required to present yourself to the front desk constable just like everyone else, Miss Leomorga .” He’d thought the ridiculous name so very clever when he’d first come up with it.
“But I do not wish to speak to you, Constable Wiley,” she said as placatingly as possible. “I wish to speak to Inspector Reid.”
The door to Jasper’s office swung open as if on cue, and there he stood, his hand braced against the jamb. He cut Leo an exasperated look.
“She says you’re expecting her, sir.” A drop of sweat from the short chase rolled down Constable Wiley’s temple.
Jasper, dressed in a slate gray wool suit, sighed heavily. “I certainly should have been.” He stepped aside and gestured for her to enter, and after Leo did, he closed the door on the constable’s scowl.
“Why do you insist on making an enemy of that man?” he asked, heading back toward his desk. It was piled with folders and papers and forgotten beakers of strong black tea. A half- eaten Cornish pasty on a piece of butcher’s paper sat in the middle of it all.
“Because he’s an arrogant toad,” she answered. Then, “Did you stay at Charles Street with the Inspector last night?”
She’d recognize the golden crust on that Cornish pasty anywhere. Mrs. Zhao knew how to make a mouth weep for her cooking. Leo’s stomach growled; the burnt eggs and sausages and cold toast were appalling in comparison to Jasper’s delectable breakfast.
“I did,” he answered from where he stood behind his desk, his arms crossed over his chest. “And no, I couldn’t speak to my father. He needed rest.”
Leo nodded, grateful the Inspector hadn’t learned about the break-in from Jasper, but also concerned. He’d started feeling ill last spring but pushed on with his duties as chief superintendent for a while. Eventually, he’d had no choice but to give it up. His health had faded rapidly after that, and the last few times Leo had called on him, she’d sensed the end was near. Thinking of it opened a swirling abyss inside her chest. It frightened her, that dark, unknown space. She dealt with death every day; but it had been a long time since she’d dealt with grief.
“Was that why you pushed your way in here?” Jasper scrubbed a hand over his chin. The golden bristle on his usually clean-shaven cheeks and chin gave him a slightly rumpled look.
“No. I wanted to give you more detail on the locket that was stolen from the omnibus victim. I thought a description of it could be placed in the Police Gazette .”
The daily paper printed descriptions and sketches of stolen property as well as the names of wanted criminals and people of interest. Copies were distributed to all division stations throughout the city.
“Perhaps a description of the bag he took and of the intruder himself could be included,” she suggested.
Jasper frowned. “That isn’t necessary.” He reached behind him and took something from his chair. When he dropped it onto his desk, Leo’s mouth popped open. It was the John Doe’s leather bag.
“Where did you find it?” Then, with a surge of hope, “Has the intruder been arrested?”
“No. A constable on his beat off Carlton Terrace found it on the pavement. He’d heard about the commotion at the morgue and thought it might be connected.”
Leo took the bag and opened it. “That’s close to Spring Street,” she murmured.
“If your recital of the contents last night was thorough, there is nothing missing,” he said. With a knot of confusion in her stomach, she picked up the tatty coin purse and counted the money inside. She met Jasper’s raised brow with one of her own.
“Nothing has been taken.”
“As I just said,” he muttered.
“Then what was the point of stealing the bag?”
“Maybe he didn’t find what he wanted inside, so he tossed it,” Jasper suggested, though he didn’t sound as if he cared one way or another. He was no Constable Wiley, but sometimes, Leo thought he could be a little unimaginative.
“Any self-respecting thief would have at least taken the money,” she said, rattling the coins in the purse before putting it back into the bag. “And I still can’t understand why he’d take the necklace from the omnibus victim. Not only that, but he covered the woman’s face afterward, as if to make it look like he hadn’t done anything at all.”
Jasper groaned and picked up the pasty. “The man is a thief. He was checking around to see if there was anything else worth stealing.” He took a large bite, thumbing away a flake of crust from the corner of his mouth as he chewed. Leo tried not to be jealous of his meal.
“How do you explain the earrings being left behind, then?”
“I can’t explain it, Leo, and it doesn’t matter. The intruder has likely already fenced what he took,” he said with marked impatience. “You said you wanted to give me more detail on the locket?”
She went to the coal brazier in the corner of his small office to warm her hands and quickly explained about the lock of hair and the writing on the piece of folded paper she’d found tucked inside. He stopped chewing and set the pasty back onto the butcher’s paper.
“The woman was wearing mourning clothes,” he said. “The lock of hair is likely a keepsake from whomever she buried.”
“Yes, I figured that much too. But it’s the writing that has my attention. Strange Nun B17 R4. ”
“What about it?”
“Aren’t you curious as to what it means? And it’s an odd thing to keep in a locket, isn’t it?”
Jasper rubbed his forehead. “My larger concern is finding the man who broke into the morgue and held you at knifepoint. Identifying the John Doe could help us find out who might have wanted his bag.”
“Have you identified him?” Leo asked, though now she doubted the intruder had, in fact, been there for the leather bag. Why discard it moments after running away and even before investigating the contents?
“We have an idea as to who he is,” Jasper replied, then sealed his lips.
“You aren’t going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m following protocol. Something I suggest you do as well,” he said with a pointed look. He was speaking of her assistance with the sutures on the John Doe. “I don’t want to see anything happen to Claude. Or to you.”
She parted her lips, speechless for a moment. His concern set her back onto her heels. But then, he returned to his usual prickly self.
“After everything my father did for you and for Claude and Flora, the strings he pulled and the favors he called in, imagine how he’d feel if you jeopardized it all.”
She hardened, hitching her chin and narrowing her eyes. “I need no reminder of everything the Inspector has done for us.”
She also needed no reminder of how much Jasper had always seemed to frown upon his father’s affection for her. The most obvious reason for it would be jealousy, but Leo had never truly believed that. Jasper simply had too much confidence in himself to be the jealous sort.
“Is that all, then?” He picked up a stack of folders, then let them drop back onto the desk. “As you can see, my hands are full at the moment.”
Disappointment filled her. She should have known he’d brush her off. He might have taken the Inspector’s last name, but that didn’t mean he’d adopted any of Gregory Reid’s best traits. Jasper was still just as abrupt, serious, and unyielding as ever.
“That is all,” she said as she went to the door. But then she stopped and turned back. “Oh, and please tell me you don’t think the John Doe is C.S. Longberger ?”
By the softening of his brow, she could see that he did indeed think it. She shook her head. “The inscription on the inside cover of the empty silver card case may say C.S. Longberger, but it is a craftsman’s signature, not our John Doe’s identity.”
Jasper crossed his arms. “How can you be sure?”
“I’ve already checked the city directory. Christian Smith Longberger is a silversmith out of Lambeth. Silversmiths tend to have their fingertips stained black or green from the silver oxidizing as they work their craft. Our John Doe’s fingers are calloused but not discolored in the least.” Leo shrugged, then opened the door. “Good day then, Inspector Reid.”
A twinge of pleasure shot through her as she shut the door on his scowl.