Chapter 6
Chapter Six
T he hired coach that Lewis had taken to Charles Street set out for Duck Island, a small promontory on the lake in St. James’s Park. It would be a short drive, giving Jasper little time to regret agreeing to Leo’s company. When she’d suggested it in his father’s study, his first reaction had been to say no.
“But I can identify him on the spot, if it is indeed the intruder,” she argued, and Jasper hadn’t been able to refute her reasoning.
So, while Leo fetched her coat and hat, he’d asked Mrs. Zhao to signal a messenger boy. He would, once again, need to postpone his dinner with Constance. He tried not to think about what her reaction would be or Leo’s comment that he didn’t seem enthusiastic about his evening plans. He enjoyed Constance’s company and looked forward to her cheery disposition. It was so different from his own. Whenever he was with her, he could usually set aside whatever case he was investigating. For a short while, at least.
Lewis took furtive glances at Leo, seated next to him on the bench, while he gave the details he knew so far. The body had been discovered by the resident bird keeper on Duck Island, which had long been a haven for birds and waterfowl, organized by the Ornithological Society. While taking his nightly stroll around the island, he’d come upon a man, lying face down in a patch of shrubs near the water‘s edge. As quickly as he could, he’d rushed toward nearby Downing Street and flagged the first constable he’d seen.
“Don’t you think it odd that the morgue intruder would be found dead such a short distance from Spring Street?” Leo asked as the driver brought his horses to a stop on the promontory causeway.
“If it’s even him,” Jasper reminded her, though he did think it odd. The morgue was no more than a ten-minute walk from Duck Island.
Lewis opened the door of the cab and descended, and Jasper followed. He turned back around and held his hand out for Leo. She’d no more than put her foot on the step when he lowered his voice and said, “You are accustomed to dead bodies but not to crime scenes. So please, stay back and do as I tell you.”
He heard his condescending tone even as he spoke but refused to apologize. The idea of bringing a woman to the scene of a murder—even if that woman wasn’t likely to faint or have a fit of the vapors—set his teeth on edge. Leo ripped her hand from his as soon as the soles of her boots hit the ground. Other than a harsh glare, she made no reply as she followed Lewis toward the grove of trees on the promontory.
There were no gas lampposts beyond the bird keeper’s cottage, but a constable was waiting with a lantern by a pair of police wagons. After greeting them, the constable led the way across the man-made causeway onto the wooded island, the cool, earthy scent of trees and underbrush greeting them. St. James’s Park and the large lake centering it had been carefully designed to give the impression of being in the countryside, instead of a few skips away from the Houses of Parliament. In the past, gentlemen would shoot game here or ride along the wooded acres of The Mall, and earlier in the century, before it became illegal, a great number of duels were held here for the privacy it afforded.
The bird keeper himself joined their party.
“I take a stroll around the island every night,” he informed them as they followed a well-worn path, his walking stick stabbing the ground as they went. “I won’t have no rough sleepers bedding down here, nor any indecent transactions, if you take my meaning. Once, I found two young lads sleeping in the hollow of a downed tree.” He shook his head as if the discovery had disgusted him.
Homelessness was a blight on the city, but Jasper could understand the draw of a dark, quiet stretch of woods for someone wise to the dangers of their fellow drifters. When he’d been young and in that same position, he’d selected the boughs of a tree in Green Park, off Piccadilly. He’d climbed up into it past dark so that he might not be seen and used a length of rope to tie himself to the trunk, preventing him from tumbling to the ground as he slept. Jasper could easily recall the crick in his neck each morning and the bruises on his backside from the unforgiving tree limb. But at least he hadn’t been set upon in the night as he might have been in some alleyway.
“Did you come through here during daylight hours today, Mister…?” Jasper asked.
“Gates. Billy Gates. And no, I was at my brother’s in Hammersmith.”
“And does the island receive many strollers during the day, Mr. Gates?” Leo asked. Jasper sent her a quelling glare, but she was pointedly not looking at him.
“Not this time of year. Maybe one or two come past the cottage each day, if that.”
Ahead, four more constables were gathered. They’d placed their lanterns on the ground, just off the path. Together, the lanterns shed light over the prone figure of a man, face up, in the low-lying shrubs that were leafless due to the time of year. He would have been easy to spot during daylight hours.
“Inspector,” they chorused as Jasper joined them. He saw then that one of them was Constable Wiley.
“What are you doing here, constable?” Jasper nearly barked. As a desk officer, his duties didn’t include a patrol beat.
“I happened to be walking nearby when I heard the police rattle,” he answered. Jasper nodded, though he was uncertain what Wiley might have been doing in Westminster. There wasn’t much in the area for nighttime amusements, and any residences were strictly upper-class.
“The victim looks to have been dragged off the path after he was attacked,” Wiley went on with an air of importance. “There’s some blood just here.” He pointed to another lantern on the path, lighting some dark spatter on the ground.
“I thought Detective Lewis said he’d been found face down,” Leo said as she stepped into the lantern light.
Constable Wiley’s expression darkened. “What is this woman doing here?”
“I’ve come to identify the body,” she answered, then reiterated, “He isn’t face down.”
Jasper recalled Lewis’s claim as well. If the constables had followed proper protocol, they would have stayed out of the shrubs, away from the body.
“Did you turn the body over, Mr. Gates?” Jasper asked. The bird keeper tucked his chin into his neck as if repulsed.
“You couldn’t have paid me.”
Jasper then caught Wiley’s guilty expression. He merely stared at the constable until, finally discomfited, Wiley smoothed his mustache and shrugged.
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
The inept excuse was even more infuriating.
“It matters,” was all he said in reply, even though he was tempted to upbraid him for the mistake.
Leo took a step into the shrubs, but Jasper caught her arm and held her back.
“Stay where you are for now. I don’t want the scene disturbed any more than it already has been.”
He alone took careful steps toward the circle of lantern light. A smattering of footprints on the ground had been made soft and muddy from the recent rain. Several smaller limbs on the shrubs and pricker bushes had been snapped and now hung broken. Dark smears, most likely blood, could be seen alongside two long ruts in the ground—made by the heels of the dead man’s boots while he’d been dragged off the path. Those boots had been removed from his feet and left on the ground.
“Mr. Gates, other than the change to this face-up positioning, was he like this when you found him?” Jasper asked. “Did you move him at all? Remove his boots?”
“Move him? Not on me life.”
It wouldn’t have surprised Jasper to discover that Mr. Gates had gone through the man’s pockets and boots before fetching the street patrols. But he did appear genuinely disturbed at the thought of touching a dead body. Jasper sank into a crouch and, picking up the closest lantern, held it to a defined boot print. He drew his fingertip around the outline. A man’s shoe, size nine or ten. The toe was slim, and the heel print was deep, indicating a taller heel. Not the heavy workman’s boots the victim had been wearing. A pair of Prince Alberts, perhaps.
“Have you found anything?” Leo asked.
Jasper stood with the lantern still in his grip. “No, but we might find more when the sun is up. I want two constables to stand guard here the rest of the night. No one is to enter this area.”
“May I have a closer look?” she asked. Jasper waved an arm, gesturing her forward.
Leo gathered her skirt to step high over the prickers and shrubs. Coming into the light, she gave a decisive nod. “It’s him. That’s the intruder.”
He again sank into a crouch and held the lantern over the body. “You’re certain?”
“You know I am. He was wearing a kerchief over most of his face, but his eyes and receding hairline were distinguishable.” Leo reached out toward his chest but didn’t touch. “Look here. It looks like a gunshot wound.”
The man’s coat was unbuttoned and opened, exposing his shirt. In the upper center of his chest, there was a small hole in the blood-soaked fabric. Jasper removed one of his gloves and ran his fingers over the shirt. “The blood isn’t fresh.” It had dried and stiffened the material. “He’s been here for some time.”
“How long do you think, guv?” Lewis asked as he stepped gingerly through the shrubs.
“May I?” Leo asked, as she, too, removed a glove. Jasper clenched his jaw but nodded.
She pressed her fingers against the exposed skin around the dead man’s neck. “I don’t have a thermometer to be certain, but I’d estimate his body temperature to be well under sixty degrees.” Leo lifted his arm and manipulated it, bending it at the elbow and wrist.
“You’re letting her touch the victim, Inspector?” Wiley asked as he rustled through some prickers, swearing under his breath as they caught his trousers.
“Stand back, constable. I’d like to preserve what I can of the scene for when we have better light,” Jasper said, irritated. Lewis had probably also questioned his decision to let Leo handle the body, but at least he was wise enough to keep his lips sealed.
“I am determining how long he’s been deceased,” Leo explained, as she continued to move the man’s arm. “Rigor mortis has almost entirely passed, which, paired with his lowered body temperature, means he’s been dead for at least twenty hours.”
“Did Claude teach you that?” Jasper asked.
“He did. It was one of the first things, in fact.”
With Leo holding the man’s arm at a ninety-degree angle, the cuff of his sack coat slipped down, exposing his forearm. There was a dark marking on his wrist.
“What’s this?” Jasper pushed the cuff lower, and Leo brought the lantern closer.
Black ink had been pricked into the man’s skin in a design he’d seen before. An inverted triangle with a hand clenched into a fist in the center.
“He served time at Wandsworth.” Jasper pointed to the poor depiction of the closed fist. “An organized gang inside the prison gives these tattoos to its members.”
Leo lowered the limp arm to the ground again. “Considering it’s been about twenty-four hours since this man broke into the morgue, it’s reasonable to say he was killed shortly after leaving Spring Street.”
Behind them, Wiley scoffed at her deduction. Jasper ignored him. “Lewis, you found nothing on him?”
“Nothing, guv. But his trouser pockets were turned out.”
Moving the lantern, Jasper saw it was so.
“Coat pockets are empty too,” Lewis added. “And the boots removed.”
Leo stood from her crouch. “He had a slip joint pocketknife at the morgue.”
Jasper flipped the man’s coat panels open further, searching the waist of his trousers, then maneuvered him onto his side. When he didn’t find anything, he picked up one of the boots; underneath it, a closed pocketknife lay on the ground. Jasper held it to the light and flicked the blade open. It was clean.
“The killer appears to have removed the boots and upended them after shooting his victim,” he said. “He was looking for something.”
“Not the knife, if it was left on the ground,” Lewis observed. “This bloke didn’t even bother to have it out to defend himself.”
“He was either taken by surprise, or he knew his killer.” Jasper folded the knife and stored it inside the boot. It would be catalogued at the morgue, along with his other effects.
“So presumably, he stole the bag from the morgue, dumped it near Carlton Terrace, then continued on his way here to meet someone he knew,” Leo said. “Perhaps that someone was waiting for him to arrive with something.”
Jasper looked up from the body to find Leo prodding the ground with her pointer finger. “What have you found? You shouldn’t touch evidence.”
“I’m not. It’s just a strange indentation.” She shifted herself to the side and reached to another spot. “There are a handful of them, all around here.”
Jasper joined her, keeping the lantern low. Leo pointed out the holes, all of which were perfectly round, about an inch in diameter, and pressed an inch deep into the ground. He closed his eyes and held back an oath.
“Mr. Gates.” He got to his feet and stared down the bird keeper, who’d been waiting with Wiley and the other constables on the path. “Did you come over here and walk around the body? Turn out his pockets?”
“I’ve already told you I didn’t get nowhere near the bloke,” he answered, voice pitched high in self-defense.
“There are indentations on the ground here that look to have been formed by the point of a walking stick.” Jasper gestured toward the one in Mr. Gates’s hand.
The bird keeper goggled. “I’m telling you the God’s honest truth. I didn’t go near him!”
There was something shifty about the bird keeper, but for now, Jasper let it go. He directed the constables to bring the litter forward to load the body and then deliver it to the Spring Street Morgue.
“The night keeper isn’t on duty until ten o’clock,” Leo said. “But I can let them in.”
As the constables moved toward the body, Jasper led Leo back to the path. She lowered her voice. “Do you believe Mr. Gates?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. He seems genuinely appalled at the idea of going near a corpse, but those indentations look like those of a cane.”
“If the intruder still had Hannah Barrett’s locket in his possession, it is gone now,” Leo said. “What if Mr. Gates is only acting appalled and, in fact, took it?”
“Miss Barrett, the omnibus victim?” Lewis asked as he joined them. “What’s this about her locket?”
Jasper groaned. The locket was becoming the bane of his existence. Quickly, he explained to his detective sergeant about the necklace going missing from Miss Barrett’s body and that Leo suspected the intruder had taken it during the break-in.
“Not only that,” she continued, “but I think this man came to the morgue for the necklace specifically. He took the bag as a decoy and put me in a closet where I couldn’t see him take the necklace. He tried to cover up the fact that he took it at all.”
“So you’re saying he knew Miss Barrett’s body was at the morgue and that she would have this necklace that he wanted?” Lewis asked, readily going along with the theory. Jasper wished he wouldn’t, but Leo seemed pleased.
“Yes, he must have. But I don’t understand how. She’d only been there a few hours.”
“Not to mention it’s a lot of trouble to go to for what Miss Spencer has described as a tarnished gold locket,” Jasper added. “Items like that don’t fetch more than a few guineas at a pawnbroker. No seasoned convict would risk it for such a slight reward.”
The earrings on Miss Barrett’s lobes would have fetched far more. Yet, he’d left them behind. Perhaps there had been something special about the locket, as Leo suggested. However, showing interest in her speculation would only spur her on.
“Well, he couldn’t have fenced it between Spring Street and here,” Lewis said. “There isn’t a pawnshop along the way.”
“Whoever killed him might have taken it,” Leo suggested. Her eyes slid toward the bird keeper. Jasper didn’t think Mr. Gates had anything to do with the murder, but he shared her skepticism that he hadn’t leaned on his walking stick while checking the man’s pockets.
“We still have no evidence he even had the necklace to begin with,” Jasper said. “Considering it is nowhere to be found, there is nothing more we can do. For now, we concentrate on identifying the intruder. Lewis, go through the convict books for Wandsworth, starting from ten years ago. We’re bound to find his photograph. Once we know his name, we question his known associates.”
It was clearest path forward.
Lewis left to assist the constables in removing the body. A breeze swept through the wooded island, blowing some raindrops from branches and pine needles. Leo shivered as she breathed hot air into her steepled palms.
“I’ll have a constable bring you ahead to the morgue,” Jasper offered, but she shook her head.
“That isn’t necessary. I’ll be fine traveling with the body. Jasper…” She turned to him. “Did the officers attending Miss Barrett’s accident interview witnesses?”
He stood back at the question. “That would be standard practice, yes. Why?”
“I’d like to look at the file.”
He took her by the elbow and led her a few paces away from the others. “I can’t give you a case file, even if I wanted to—which I don’t. Leo, you are not a detective.”
“What if our convict here was at Trafalgar Square at the time she was struck?” Leo went on, ignoring him as she was wont to do. “Let’s say he saw her go down, and that’s how he knew she would be at the morgue.”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, suddenly exhausted.
“Consider that he deliberately led us down the wrong path by taking that bag,” she continued. “He didn’t want us following up on anything having to do with Miss Barrett’s death because there is more to it than just an omnibus accident.”
“That is pure conjecture,” he argued. “And there is no us .”
“If I could just see the case file?—”
“ No .”
Leo’s eager expression crashed, and she stared balefully at him. With a twist of guilt that he stoutly shoved aside, Jasper set his shoulders and returned her stare. He would not roll over for her the way his father once might have done. She assisted Claude with his work, but Jasper would not allow her to assist him with his.
Without any more argument, she turned on her heel and started away.
“Lewis,” Jasper called. The detective sergeant came over. “Go with the body and Miss Spencer to the morgue.”
Lewis started away with his task, but Jasper called for him to wait. He spoke softly so Leo wouldn’t overhear. “And fetch me the attending constable’s report on Miss Barrett’s accident.”