Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
L eo was grateful when, not five minutes after Jasper and Miss Hayes departed, Constable Drake and Dita’s beau, Constable Lloyd, suggested rather strongly that they leave Bloom’s club. It was one of Dita’s favorite places for a night out, but as much as Leo enjoyed listening to the music and watching the dancers on the floor—whom she never joined—she hadn’t been overly thrilled when John had shown up with his fellow officer in tow.
“I thought you might like the company for once,” Dita had explained earlier when the two men had gone to fetch them drinks. “I’m always dancing with John and leaving you here at the table, alone.”
“I like being alone,” had been Leo’s ill-mannered response, and though Dita didn’t believe her, it was true. She’d have much rather sat alone while everyone else danced and laughed than endure Constable Drake’s discomfiting comments and glances. He’d asked too many questions about the morgue and her duties there, and his attention had drifted from her hair to her bosom to her obscured ankles.
She’d had the sinking feeling all evening that Drake was the sort of officer who found her pretty, but strange. Leo wasn’t blind to the looks of interest she received from some of the men at Scotland Yard, most of them new to the uniform. However, once they learned who she was and where she spent her days, most of them inevitably stopped paying her attention. Others continued their interest, though mostly, they were interested in her eccentricity, in her not being like the other women of their acquaintance. It had taken one overly forward sergeant the previous spring for her to see the truth clearly: because they did not think her conventional, they might also believe she would allow liberties when other, more ladylike women would never dream of it. She had set that sergeant right, crushing the bridge of his foot under her bootheel, and ever since, he’d given her a wide berth.
Constable Drake had pulled his chair too closely, and after he’d dared settle his hand upon hers, she’d quickly peeled it out from underneath his sweaty palm. Had he attempted it again, Leo would have employed the tines of her fork to deter him. She’d almost been relieved to see Jasper and Miss Hayes approaching their table—even with Jasper looking as if he’d swallowed a brazier full of glowing coals.
Now, after Lloyd and Drake had seen Dita and Leo off in a hansom outside Mr. Bloom’s club, Dita threw up her hands. “Why would that silly woman bring a detective to a criminal’s club?”
Though Leo didn’t care much for Constance, she defended her. “She probably had no idea who Mr. Bloom was or that he owned it.”
Most likely, she’d read about the flaming blue drinks that had been featured in one of the issues of the Illustrated London News . After a woodcut print depicting the bartender making the drink ran in the popular weekly paper, Striker’s Wharf had been overrun with ladies and men from more affluent parts of London.
“At least we can be at ease knowing Inspector Reid won’t ever return,” Dita said. Then, with a crinkle of her pert nose, she apologized for arranging for Constable Drake to come.
“The next time John wants to bring a friend, I’ll ask you first,” she added. “You might get on better with someone who isn’t a police officer.”
Leo murmured her agreement but wished her friend would let it rest. Dita, two years younger than her, was eager to marry and start a family. Her civilian position as a matron at the Yard was only temporary, until she wed. Though she was patient with Leo’s lack of interest in romance and marriage, she refused to give up trying to find a suitor for her. But Leo was too busy to think about romance, what with Claude’s tremors, Flora’s addled mind, and the Inspector’s illness.
Leo called for the hansom driver to stop at Trafalgar Square and, after saying goodnight to her friend, walked to the morgue. There was no pressing reason for her to be there at this time of night, but after their call on Mr. Barrett earlier in the day, she’d been unable to stop stewing over the many complicated pieces of a puzzle that may, or may not, fit together. Jasper didn’t want her involved, but her brain wouldn’t allow the confounding case to rest.
All afternoon, she’d alternated between typing notes and staring at Clarence Stillman’s dead body, impatient for Claude to return so they could perform the postmortem. Her uncle managed a brief stop near the end of the day, while Flora took a nap and a neighbor, Mrs. Gareth, agreed to keep an eye out for her. But there hadn’t been time for the postmortem.
Leo’s mind was still humming and restless. If she returned home to Duke Street now, she wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours yet. It would be a better use of her time to finish typing some reports, organize the files on her desk, or do some cleaning…anything to tire herself.
The back door to the morgue faced the gardens and burial ground behind St. Matthew’s Church, and Leo fetched her key from her handbag as she approached. It was still a bit early for Mr. Sampson, the night attendant, to have arrived for his shift. He usually spent it sleeping at the desk, his boots propped up on the blotter—Leo had never caught him doing so, but the dirt and debris left behind were evidence. It would be a terribly dull job; if any corpses were delivered overnight, all Mr. Sampson needed to do was admit the body and leave it for the coroner. Then, he could return to his slumber.
However, as she reached for the handle, she saw a gap between the door and the frame. It was already open by an inch.
“Mr. Sampson?”
Leo stepped inside. But the back room was dark. Mr. Sampson would have at least turned on one of the gas wall brackets had he been there. With a knot of doubt in her stomach, she walked into the raw cold of the postmortem room next. Stained-glass windows, relics from when the morgue had been a church vestry, let in some moonlight. Leo had never been frightened of the morgue or the prospect of dead bodies, but in the low light, the sheeted bodies lain out on tables were a bit eerie.
She’d most certainly closed and locked the doors when she’d left. She’d had to have done. It was habit now, routine. But then again, the day had been an odd one. From Claude being unable to perform the postmortem on Mr. Stillman, to her argument with Jasper in the carriage, to the unsettling discovery of the peephole in Miss Barrett’s bedroom, Leo had to admit, her mind had been preoccupied.
She crossed the room to the turn on the gasoliers overhead. The hiss of the gas was loud in the quiet, but not loud enough to muffle the familiar groan of a rusty hinge on the back door. Leo twisted toward the office. She had shut the door behind her, of that she was absolutely certain. Swallowing a knob in her throat, she returned to the office. The back door was again open to the moonlight. She hurried outside to the dirt lane that ran between the morgue and the small burial ground out back. In a break of clouds, the clear moonlight—a rare thing on a London winter’s night when coal chimneys pumped smoke into the air—showed a figure running through the grounds, between ancient headstones. It disappeared when the clouds knitted back together again. Her heart pounded. Someone had been inside the morgue when she’d arrived, hidden in the office. They’d waited until she was in the other room to make their escape.
Movement in her side vision spiked her pulse again. At the head of the dirt lane, another figure was walking toward her. But this one, she recognized.
“Jasper?”
“I saw the lamps on,” he said. “Why are you out here at this late hour?”
She jumped as Tibia raced from the burial ground, through the open back door, and into the office. The tabby must have snuck out earlier, when the door had been left ajar.
“Leo?” Jasper touched her elbow, calling her attention when she still hadn’t answered.
“I…” She didn’t want to tell him. Knew he would only overreact. But she also couldn’t keep it a secret. “There was someone in the morgue when I arrived. He must have broken in by picking the lock. I didn’t see who it was, but he took off running, that way.” She waved a hand toward the church’s burial ground.
As expected, Jasper started forward into the graveyard, as if he planned to rush after the intruder.
“He’s gone,” she said to stop him. “And if he wanted to harm me, he could have. If it even was a man . I only saw a black outline.”
Jasper relented and ushered her back into the office. She turned on the wall brackets this time.
“Is anything missing?” he asked, sounding just as furious as he’d been at the club.
“No.” Things looked the same as she’d left them earlier. “But don’t you think it a bit coincidental that the night Mr. Stillman’s body is lying in repose in this morgue, there is another break-in?”
Jasper, still dressed in his evening clothes, tugged at his ascot to loosen it. “Damn it, Leo.”
“Don’t be angry with me. I didn’t invite him in!”
“I’m not angry with you.” He rolled his shoulders, attempting to calm himself. “I would just like to know what in hell is going on.”
He stormed into the postmortem room, and after closing and locking the back door this time, Leo followed.
“Mr. Stillman is just as I left him,” she said. The sheet covering him was still perfectly smooth.
“All of his belongings are at the Yard, so there is nothing the intruder could have taken from him,” Jasper noted. “Though, it’s possible someone believed his possessions would still be here.”
He circled the table, crossing his arms over the breadth of his chest and glaring at the covered body, as if hoping he could determine something more from it. Underneath his open frock coat, he wore a fine black wool suit, complete with a silk waistcoat, a high collar shirt, and an ascot. She’d noticed the suit at Striker’s Wharf. It was different from the one he’d worn the previous evening, and Leo wondered how many he owned.
“Where is Miss Hayes?”
“I brought her home.” He shifted his glare onto her. “And no, she had no clue that club was owned by a crime lord. You, on the other hand, cannot claim such ignorance.”
Leo shrugged. “The music is superb, and Dita loves to dance. There’s never been any trouble at Mr. Bloom’s club while I was there.”
“There is always a first time for everything,” he retorted with a shake of his head as he kept circling the body. “The Inspector would have a lot to say about it if he knew.”
It was petty and annoying for him to bring his father up. “And you’re going to snitch and tell him?"
“No, of course not. He’s better off thinking the most illicit thing you’ve ever done is sip cherry cordial before dinner. So am I, for that matter.”
She laughed. “Going to a club is hardly illicit. Besides, coming over when you did was good timing, even if you were sour.”
He stopped circling the table and faced her, brow taut. “Was Constable Drake giving you any trouble?”
“No, not really. He was only being…” She stopped herself from saying too forward , as she wasn’t sure how Jasper would react. “Tedious.”
He grunted and then turned back toward the sheeted corpse.
“What did you find on William Carter’s housebreak?” she asked, hoping to move away from their run-in at the club.
“The rooms had all been turned over, as if the thieves had been looking for something,” he answered gamely. It surprised her. She’d been certain he would continue to tell her to mind her own business.
“Housebreakers? There was more than one?”
“A witness saw two men hurrying away from the home in a suspicious manner. She couldn’t see them well enough to describe them, but they gave her a bad feeling, and when she checked on Carter’s welfare…” He shrugged. “Found him dead among the wreckage.”
“So, there is no evidence they robbed Mr. Carter,” she said. “Just that they were furiously looking for something.”
Jasper nodded. “As there have been a few home burglaries in that area over the last few months, the police presumed it was a standard housebreaking.”
Leo sighed. “And I imagine the fact that the victim was a Carter weighed against their decision to investigate further.”
Just as Commissioner Vickers had advised be done with Mr. Stillman’s case. Why waste resources on the death of a criminal when there were innocent victims more deserving of police time and effort?
“That is my guess.” Jasper stepped away from the table, wandering toward the stained-glass windows. Images on the leaded panes depicted a battle scene from the Bible. Some book and verse that Leo had never studied. As Claude was Jewish, she’d not gone to church after coming to living with him and Flora, and he wasn’t active at synagogue either.
“According to the death report, Carter was shot in the chest,” Jasper said, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
Leo stood at attention. It was where Mr. Stillman had been shot. “The same killer?”
“Possibly. I’d like to look at the bullet collected by the coroner who worked on Carter and compare it to the one in Stillman. I need the postmortem completed. Will Claude be here tomorrow?”
Leo bit her bottom lip and nodded. She would have to stay with Flora and endure her accusing glares and screams of terror, but it couldn’t be helped. Her uncle needed to work. She only hoped he would be able to control the tremors in his hands for the procedure. As usual, frustration gripped her. If only she could perform postmortems herself. She’d observed them countless times and had read the texts her uncle had given her more than once. But she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t put her uncle’s position at risk to prove a point.
“Have you found anyone to claim Mr. Stillman’s body?” she asked.
“Not yet. Lewis is working on it. When we do, we’ll have a better idea of who Stillman might have been associating with after his release from Wandsworth.”
Jasper took his fob from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. It had to be nearing ten o’clock, and the night attendant would be arriving soon. “Are you certain nothing is missing?”
“Nothing obvious at least. Why?”
“I can’t help but think this new intruder was here for something having to do with Stillman. The man hunts down Hannah Barrett, possibly chasing her into the street where she is struck and killed. Then, he steals the locket from her body and makes his way to Duck Island, where he is killed. But there’s no trace of the locket anywhere. A locket that had inside it a mysterious message that Mr. Carter gave to Hannah for safekeeping the night before he died.”
Leo was gratified, and relieved, to hear Jasper finally accepting that there was something complicated at play among the three separate deaths.
“Do you think Mr. Stillman was hired to steal the locket?” she asked.
“He was no mastermind, if his file was correct about him. So yes, I think he must have been.” Jasper came back toward the table. “He took the locket and brought it to Duck Island, where he’d arranged to meet someone.”
“The person who hired him?”
Jasper nodded. “Precisely.”
“A person with a walking stick,” Leo added, thinking of the many impressions in the ground around the body. But Jasper grimaced his doubt.
“Not necessarily. Mr. Gates, the bird keeper, had a cane. I think he went through Stillman’s pockets before summoning the police.”
“So maybe he has the locket? We should go to his cottage,” Leo said, eager to be off. It was late, but perhaps that was the best time to catch someone out in a lie. Startling him from his bed at a late hour could be to their benefit.
Jasper held up his palm. “No, I don’t think Gates does. Whoever killed Stillman would have taken the locket, if it was on his person. And we don’t need the locket anyhow. We know what was in it.”
That did make more sense. Leo sighed out of frustration. “If Mr. Stillman did as he was hired to do, then why was he killed?”
An answer came to her as soon as she’d posed the question. Jasper, too, for they both spoke at the same time.
“He didn’t hand it over,” he said, just as Leo said, “He tried asking for more money.”
They both smiled, though the expression was a strange feeling on her lips. Jasper, too, rarely grinned, and she noted the inward turn of one of his top incisors. They both became serious again.
“What if he kept the piece of paper, which must have been what the killer was after?” Leo mused.
Jasper continued with her theory. “Stillman knows he has something valuable and asks for more money. The killer decides he’s not worth it. Shoots him, then searches the body for the paper, but when he doesn’t find it?—”
“He comes to the morgue tonight, thinking Mr. Stillman’s possessions are still here, and maybe he’ll have another, more thorough look?”
If that were true, then she’d been in close quarters with a killer. He could have easily attacked her the moment she walked into the dark office. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d run away.
“If any part of our harebrained theory is correct, and it likely isn’t,” Jasper said, “then the question remains: Where is the paper? If it wasn’t in Stillman’s pockets or in the locket, where did he put it?”
If his demands for more money had been met, he’d have needed to produce it quickly— if that was the scenario.
Leo viewed the sheeted body again. Underneath, Mr. Stillman was as naked as the day he was born. In a postmortem, he would have been thoroughly examined, but that had not yet happened. An idea spiraled into her mind, one that was too simple, too obvious to be correct, surely. But Leo still reached for the sheet and drew it back. The man’s ashen face seemed to exacerbate the lines of age on his skin. He’d led a rough, likely thankless life. But he’d been crafty. He’d needed to be to survive.
“There is a place I might hide something at the last minute,” she said. “Especially if I thought my pockets might be turned out.”
She stepped away from the table and went to the shelves along the wall that held Claude’s tools. Leo took up a clean pair of vulcanized rubber gloves.
“What are you doing?” Jasper asked, sounding wary.
“Nothing illegal, I assure you.”
Carefully, she inserted a gloved finger into Mr. Stillman’s mouth and pressed down on his bottom teeth to unhinge his jaw. She took shallow breaths through her mouth rather than her nose, as the corpse’s unwashed body had already been fragrant and had now turned more so as necrosis advanced.
As she glanced up at Jasper, his twisted grimace caught her off her guard. They’d been so freely discussing theories that she’d imagined he’d still be intrigued. Instead, he seemed appalled to see her handling a dead body. Leo clamped down on a sudden surge of hurt and focused on what she was doing. She lifted the tongue—and the muscles along her shoulders and spine tingled with victory.
The small, folded piece of paper rested underneath.