Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
With October nearing its end, and the sun slipping below the horizon earlier every evening, Leo arrived home just as shadows began to lengthen along Duke Street.
This time of year, sunsets tended to be dull and fast, as if not wanting to give anyone a reason to stay out in the chilly evening air any longer than necessary.
Leo’s mind had whirled since leaving Oxford Street, and even more so after stopping in at the morgue to divulge to Connor what she’d learned on her outing to Gleason’s.
When she’d told him of Dita’s suspicion of a liaison between Lydia and Mr. Gleason, he’d been adamant that she would never have engaged in an affair with a married man.
“But perhaps that is why she was so nervous that day,” Leo suggested gently. “Maybe she had heard that Mrs. Gleason had hired a private agency to look into her husband’s affairs.”
But Connor had refused to believe it, and Leo had decided not to push the idea further, especially when he was already so upset.
Besides, Dita had only been theorizing; there was no proof of anything.
What Leo wanted to do next was see where Lydia had been living and speak to the people she’d known well—outside of Gleason’s.
Considering she had been killed while still wearing her work uniform, Leo would remain cautious about questioning anyone else at the department store.
Light glowed in the sitting room window inside the small but tidy row house on Duke Street, and as she climbed the front step and let herself inside, Leo looked forward to warming herself by the coal fire that Claude would have stoked.
After hanging up her coat and hat and leaving her gloves and handbag on the hall table, she stepped into the front room—and came to an abrupt stop.
Jasper and her uncle stood together in front of the fireplace, each holding a glass of whisky.
Claude hardly ever drank, except for a half-pint of ale from time to time, and she most certainly had never seen him having a drink with Jasper.
The men were utterly quiet, as if they’d cut off their conversation upon hearing her come in through the front door, and their expressions were furtive.
Leo sensed that she’d interrupted something serious.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, suddenly worried. “Is it Aunt Flora?”
Her uncle startled. “No, no. Your aunt is well. She and Mrs. Zhao are in the kitchen.”
It had been one of Claude’s days to work at Tate’s, she realized, and Mrs. Zhao would have come to stay with Flora.
“In fact, I should go check on them. Mrs. Zhao has made a lovely roast for our supper,” her uncle said, setting his untouched glass of whisky on the occasional table.
As he walked toward the door where she still stood, he met Leo’s curious gaze. And then winked. She had no idea what to make of it as he left the sitting room.
“How is Quinn?” Jasper asked before she could ask what he and Claude had been discussing. She shook the cold from her skirt as she walked toward the coal fire, then picked up her uncle’s abandoned whisky. There was no reason to put it to waste.
“Still upset,” she answered, although she had no intention of letting Jasper steer her away from what she wanted to know. “What were you and my uncle speaking about just now?”
“He wanted to know more about the house on Craven Hill.” Jasper’s answer was too quick, too relaxed, to be believed completely. He was holding something back. But just as she had with Connor earlier, she let it go.
Leo sipped the whisky, and while it wasn’t sweet like the Inspector’s favorite cherry cordial that they used to share, Jasper’s preferred spirits were beginning to grow on her.
It might have been because of Jasper himself, and of how the taste reminded her of him.
She sat on the sofa, and he took the cushion next to her.
“I haven’t really given the house much thought,” Leo confessed. “It doesn’t feel real yet that it’s ours.”
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his thighs, and scrubbed a hand over his cheek bristle. “We don’t need to think about it just yet. I’d like to arrest someone for Mrs. Dalton’s murder first.”
“Did you speak with her maid?”
“I did.” He sat back against the cushion and shifted toward her. “Helen was having an affair with the viscount’s steward, Stephen Decamp.”
“Decamp? A relation of the butler’s?”
He nodded. “Son. The maid delivered a note from Helen to Stephen the afternoon of the storm, after the reading of the will. He sent along his written reply.”
Leo leaned back, drawing her leg up underneath her. “To meet at their spot. So, it was he who took the phaeton and drove them to London. But where is Stephen Decamp now?”
“I sent a wire to Paddington Division for them to take him into custody,” Jasper said, taking a sip of his drink. He shook his head. “But I had word before coming here that they couldn’t locate him.”
“He might have stayed in London.” It would explain why the horse and phaeton had not been returned to the stables at Cowper Hall. “If he did kill her, he could have fled the country by now.”
“I want Stephen Decamp found so I can question him, but I’m more apt to believe he is the person who came upon Helen after her blood had pooled,” Jasper said.
“Helen put that glass tube into her hair to hide it quickly. If Stephen drove her to London, she must have told him why she was in such a hurry to get here.”
“To find the tear catcher,” Leo said, understanding his thinking. “There would be no reason for her to hide it from Stephen.”
When he’d found Helen dead, he probably panicked.
Knew he’d be accused of her murder if it came out that he’d driven her to London from Harrow in the middle of the night.
So, why not drive the phaeton back to Cowper Hall as fast as possible before anyone could notice it missing?
Leo posed this question to Jasper, who was considering it when she added, “Unless he didn’t think he could make it back in time.
Stable hands rise early, often before dawn.
A witness seeing him return, with a muddy phaeton and a fatigued horse, would be damning. ”
The possibility that he’d fled England was now looking more likely.
“I interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Perry, Helen’s friends with whom she’d stay whenever she came to the city,” he said, his tired eyes drawn to the coal fire. “They didn’t see her, of course, and they claim not to have seen Stephen. But they knew about him.”
“Did they know about the baby?” Leo asked.
“No, though Mrs. Perry said Helen had recently been talking about taking an extended trip to France or Italy.”
To have the child, Leo imagined. Whether she would have given up her infant and returned to her husband afterward was a mystery. And maybe it didn’t matter.
“Mr. Dalton seemed genuine in his surprise earlier that his wife was having an affair and that she was pregnant,” Leo said. “I don’t think he killed her, though he would have had motive to.”
“I agree. He didn’t care about her enough,” Jasper said.
It was a sad thought. “I wonder if he ever did, or if it was only after his riding accident that he stopped loving her.”
Mr. Cowper had accused him of pitying himself and thinking nothing of Helen and what she had lost from the riding accident as well. The intimacy of having a husband, the possibility of having a child.
As Leo took another sip of whisky, Jasper leaned his head against the back of the sofa, his eyelids half shuttered.
In the soft light of the paraffin lamps and the coal fire, he looked starkly handsome.
Somehow, the golden bristle around his mouth accentuated his full lips.
At first, she reined in her longing to touch him.
But then, recalling their kiss at Cowper Hall, Leo knew it would not be unwelcome.
So, she reached for his hand, which was resting on his thigh.
He lifted his head and turned his tired eyes onto her, his palm flipping over to grasp her hand more fully.
“Have you slept at all?” she asked, though she suspected the answer. He’d been to Harrow and back during the night and then been bogged down in the investigation all day.
“No,” he confirmed. “I’ll get a few hours before I leave for Harrow again tomorrow morning.”
“Again?”
“I want to search Stephen Decamp’s home and interview his father. Depending on how close they are, the butler might know where his son has gone.”
Tomorrow would be his last day on leave from Liverpool. Leo didn’t know if he would leave straight from Harrow or come back to London first.
“I could come with you,” she offered, though she didn’t think Connor would appreciate her taking another day off. Already that afternoon, he’d let her leave early so she could visit Dita at Gleason’s.
Jasper lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed it, his beard tickling her skin. “I’m taking Constable Price.”
In case he needed to make an arrest. Of course. She felt a twinge of disappointment but was enjoying the feeling of her hand in his too much to withdraw it.
“I would be vexed if I wasn’t already preoccupied with an investigation of my own,” she said lightly.
His fingers tensed. “What investigation is this?”
She tried to read Jasper’s expression, but as usual, it was inscrutable.
“I’m helping Connor look into Lydia Hailson’s murder,” she confessed. “I started by speaking to Dita, as I told you I planned to do.”
He released her hand and sat forward, skewering her with a wide-awake stare. “I thought Quinn was going to hire a private agency.”
His terse voice revealed that he was, indeed, upset. She should have expected as much, though she hadn’t really stopped to consider how he’d react.
“He was going to, but we agreed that first, I’d see what I could discover from speaking to Dita,” she explained.
It didn’t alleviate an ounce of his irritation. He stood and paced away from the sofa, putting a distance between them that she regretted.