Chapter 23
The wide leather swivel chair creaked as Leo spun languidly in half circles. On the desk in front of her lay the thick file the Inspector had compiled on the Spencer family murders. She stared at the worn, closed cover, her arms wrapped around herself and her legs tucked up underneath her in the seat. The nerve to open the file still felt miles away.
She’d come earlier in the evening after having dinner with Claude and Flora on Duke Street. Leo spent an hour at the Inspector’s bedside, reading aloud from last week’s Illustrated Police News . Reading this week’s edition was out of the question, as it was full of the commissioner’s fall from grace—and his symbolic suicide. A soldier’s honorable death, the ridiculous author of the article had written.
It hadn’t been honorable. It had been the mark of a coward. His final act had been one of pure selfishness, falling on his sword to avoid facing the consequences of his actions and the annihilation of his career and reputation. He’d chosen to leave his beloved daughter to face the destruction of her own reputation alone. And he’d ended his life in full view of two people who had cared for him. Leo would never be able to sponge the image from her mind. It would always be there, in vivid detail. She wondered if she would ever stop questioning if there had been anything she could have done differently, said differently, to prevent him from doing what he had.
In the hours afterward, following the arrival of several constables, Chief Coughlan, and even Superintendent Monroe, Jasper and Leo had been separated. They’d each needed to give their statement of events to account for the death of the police commissioner. Their statements matched, of course, though the scrutiny had been intense. When Leo had been released from an interview room at Scotland Yard, she’d found her uncle and Dita waiting for her. Leo had refused to go home until Jasper, too, had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
By then, Benjamin Munson had done exactly as Jasper had intimated, confessing in full and pinning the blame wholly on Sir Nathaniel. It turned out, the commissioner had held a secret over Munson’s head since their time together in Africa. Sir Nathaniel had discovered Munson attempting to desert during the skirmish against the Boers. Panicking, Munson fired his rifle, striking Sir Nathaniel in the leg. In a show of protecting Munson from a court-martial and perhaps even execution for attempted desertion, he lied to cover for him. But Sir Nathaniel made it clear that Munson was beholden to him for it, and ever since, he’d been his pawn of sorts.
When William Carter approached the police commissioner with one of Elsie’s illicit photographs and demanded a princely sum of five hundred pounds, he turned to Munson. The offering of Elsie’s hand in marriage had been extra incentive for Munson as well as punishment for Elsie.
The commissioner’s death needed all the corroboration possible to make sense to the rest of the Met and to the ravenous public. When his leased rooms had been searched thoroughly, Hannah Barrett’s locket had been found among Munson’s belongings. His confession to the murders of Carter and Stillman, paired with Elsie’s tearful confirmation after she’d learned of her father’s suicide, closed the investigation with finality.
Reluctantly, Jasper submitted the blackmail photographs of Elsie Vickers to Chief Coughlan. He’d had no choice, Leo knew. Burning them to protect Elsie would only corrupt him, as Sir Nathaniel had been, at least to some degree. Chief Coughlan promised that he would do everything within his power to keep them private, but Leo hadn’t been surprised when an illustration including details that only someone with access to the photographs could have had, ran alongside the Illustrated Police News article. Corruption was rife at the Yard, and she was sure someone had made a neat profit by giving an illustrator access, if only for a quick look.
So, she’d read the previous week’s edition of the Illustrated Police News to the Inspector, happy to pretend none of the recent events had ever occurred. He hadn’t opened his eyes more than once during her visit. Leo chose to believe he could hear her though, and before leaving, she’d taken his hand to give it a gentle squeeze. He’d applied the barest amount of pressure in return. He was still there. But quickly fading.
“You don’t have to go through that.”
Leo looked up, coming out of a daze. Jasper entered the study. Once again, he was wearing a fine evening suit. His hair had been neatly combed, though a gilded honey-blond lock of hair still sprung free from his attempt to pomade it back into place. It hung over his forehead, holding her attention for a fraction too long.
“Stopping in on your way out for the evening?” she asked, lowering her feet to the floor.
“Oliver is hosting a dinner party,” he answered on his way to the desk. “I’m fetching Miss Hayes soon.”
“Of course.” She puzzled at the thorny irritation in her chest. A terrible mood had gripped her these last few days. She blamed the aftermath of the commissioner’s suicide, instead of the mention of Constance Hayes.
“How is your shoulder healing?” she asked.
He rolled it. “Fine. The blade didn’t cut deep.”
No, it had been Sir Nathaniel’s betrayal that had truly injured him. Leo had seen it in the deadened expression he’d worn for the rest of that awful night.
Jasper tapped the file and repeated what he’d said before. “He left it for you, but you’re not obligated to go through it.”
She ran her fingers over the worn spine of the folder. “If I don’t, do you think he’ll be disappointed in me?”
The Inspector had invested so much of his own time into the case, and he’d done it for her. Not for himself, or for accolades. He’d done it to give Leo answers.
“He could never be disappointed in you. Besides,” Jasper arched a brow, “doing something just to please another person never ends in satisfaction.”
Leo stood from the chair. “I won’t tell you that you’re right; it would go straight to your head, and I imagine you’ve been the object of enough praise this week.”
He grumbled under his breath as he cut a path toward the sideboard of decanters. “You are wrong. If anything, I am the object of contempt. The Met was already suffering from bad press, and now, with the commissioner’s scandal aired, it’s only worsened.”
“I can’t believe they would have rather let a case go only partially solved.”
He reached for his favored whisky. “They were more than ready to pin everything on Munson. Chief Coughlan suggested I was too ambitious during the course of the investigation. Less is more, and all that rot.”
Leo gaped. “That isn’t fair.”
Jasper poured his drink, then reached for the bottle of Grants Morella, which Leo had brought the Inspector the previous week. He overturned a small cordial glass.
“Fair doesn’t exist,” he said while pouring her a drink. “And if you chase it?—”
“You’ll be running forever,” she said, finishing one of the expressions the Inspector had so often used.
Leo accepted the small glass from Jasper, who raised his to her in a silent toast before taking a long sip. She put her nose to the rim and inhaled the sweet scent of the cherry brandy liqueur. The strangest sense of loss came over her. It was absurd, considering they’d found the killer. Mr. Munson would go to the gallows for his crimes. How could she feel crestfallen knowing how close they’d been to becoming two more of his victims? Jasper didn’t seem to be affected. He was, after all, about to dine out for the evening.
“I suppose things will go back to normal now,” she said. “That must make you happy.”
“I’m not sure happy is the word for it. But if by normal, you mean a new case will appear on my desk in the morning, and a new body—with any hope, one that hasn’t been murdered—will show up in the morgue, well then, yes.”
Crimes and dead bodies certainly seemed to be their sort of ‘normal’.
Leo had assisted her uncle in the postmortem of Samuel Barrett’s body, and predictably, he’d been stabbed three times by a short sword, perforating his left lung and nicking his heart. Thankfully, Sir Nathaniel’s body had not been sent to the Spring Street Morgue. Jasper said it had been taken to the police hospital, where the police surgeon had seen to it.
“Have you spoken to Elsie?” she asked.
He frowned into his drink. “She didn’t wish to see me. Her housekeeper said a cousin in Wales is taking her in. She’s already left London.”
It was the only way forward for her. Staying here would be out of the question. The newspapers would eventually begin to print the next story and scandal, but hers would not be forgotten. Leo knew that from experience. Even sixteen years after her own unwanted fame in the city’s newspapers, people remembered her. Or at least, her story. Finally, she sipped her cherry cordial.
“I think the Inspector would be proud of how you stood up to the commissioner,” she said. “Though, I am glad he won’t ever know what his friend did.”
Jasper was aware the Inspector wasn’t responsive. According to what Mrs. Zhao had told Leo, for the last two days, he’d come to sit at his father’s bedside for a short while each evening and morning.
After another sip of his whisky, Jasper met Leo’s eyes. “He isn’t waking up, is he?”
She shook her head. The doctor had come to the house on Charles Street a few times over the past week. He’d confirmed that the end was near.
“He’s made his peace with it,” she said, the taste of cherry cordial lingering on the back of her tongue. It reminded her of him, and she thought it always would. “He wants to be with them again.”
Jasper nodded, but then his mouth twisted. His brow puckered. “I’m not ready to lose him.”
Leo’s eyes stung; the suddenness of it surprised her. She knew of Jasper’s love and deep affection for the Inspector. But this was the first time he’d ever shown such vulnerability. He was about to lose the only father he’d ever known.
She reached for him, settling her palm on his forearm. “I’m not either.”
But whether they were ready or not, changes were coming. Considerable changes. Once the Inspector was gone…what then? He had always been Leo’s connection to Jasper, and his to her. She supposed, for a while, they would mourn him together.
But afterward, what then?
Her palm was still resting on his arm, the fine black wool soft and buttery, when the clock chimed the hour. Leo dropped her hand, and Jasper stepped to the side.
“You’ll be late fetching Miss Hayes,” she said, sipping the cordial again. She savored it as she blinked away the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m not in the mood for a party,” he sighed after tossing back the rest of his drink. Nonetheless, he started for the door.
“Don’t do something you don’t want to do just to please another person,” she said, echoing his own advice from before. “It rarely leads to satisfaction, or so I hear.”
He swung a teasing glower over his shoulder. “I don’t think Miss Hayes would agree. But I won’t stay long. I’ll spend the night here. In case.”
Leo scrunched her nose as it tingled. “I’ll keep watch until you return.”
Jasper allowed a rare, lopsided grin, then bid her a good evening. His attention drifted toward the thick file on the desk before shutting the door behind him. She took another look at it.
Jasper had said the Inspector would never be disappointed in her if she chose not to look through the file. She believed he was right. However, she might, in the end, be disappointed in herself.
She went to the desk and sat down again. She wasn’t ready for so many things. To lose the Inspector, or for Claude to lose his position, or for Flora to lose her mind. But those things would all come to pass. It was all inevitable. So was this.
Leo finished the cherry cordial and swallowed hard, wincing at its sweetness. She set the glass to the side and reached for the file.
Thank you for reading Shadow at the Morgue , the first Spencer & Reid Mystery.