Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The first time Leo visited Gleason’s Department Store, she had felt supremely out of place and unfashionable.
The salesclerks, trained to spot those with wealth and those who were merely browsing with dreamy-eyed hope, had quite obviously dismissed her as one of the latter.
However, this time, she arrived better prepared, in one of her nicest ensembles—a green-and-black-striped silk bodice and skirt, complete with a small bustle beneath to give her figure a voguish S-shape.
Leo rarely bothered with such sartorial details; even when she and Jasper had gone out to dine before he left for Liverpool, she hadn’t worn the uncomfortable bustle.
But for this new turn in her investigation into Lydia Hailson’s murder, she’d decided she could not arrive at Gleason’s as the usual Leonora Spencer.
“Are you quite sure about this?” Connor Quinn held Leo’s arm stiffly as they strolled onto the housewares floor.
“Not entirely, but I think we stand a good chance of success,” she answered softly, then pasted on a bright smile as the same housewares clerk from the other day approached her.
If he remembered her at all, he did not show it.
But unlike the last time when he’d given her a once-over and found her lacking, he simpered and sketched a small bow in greeting.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to Gleason’s. How may I be of service?”
The clerk looked to Connor for a reply, but disconcerted as he was by this spontaneous undercover ploy Leo had cooked up within the last few hours, he remained silent.
Leo could understand Connor’s ruffled state.
She had felt the same agitation after leaving Eddie Bloom’s carriage earlier that day.
Once inside the morgue, she’d walked past Connor, who was already at work on the first postmortem of the day, and gone straight to her desk in the office.
There, she sat down and opened Lydia’s folio.
Mr. Bloom had given Leo until later that evening before one of his men came to reclaim the materials, but she would not need that much time.
One thorough read-through of everything, and it would be firmly ingrained in her memory.
Connor had followed her into the office, both concerned and curious as to what she had found at the lodging house.
He’d been shocked to learn that his former betrothed, who had worked as a switchboard operator, had become a reporter.
He’d been even more dismayed that she had been working undercover at the department store at the time of her murder.
Together, they’d gone through the folio, reading Lydia’s notes and a partial first draft of her article.
As Mr. Bloom had said, there was no mention of his name anywhere among her writings.
It seemed she had respected their agreement to keep him out of the limelight.
Lydia’s disjointed notes had proved that she’d not imagined anyone but herself would ever read them, and the partial draft of her article was riddled with lines of ink scratching out words and messy notes made in the margins.
In her journal, fragmented sentences and thoughts had been jotted down, alongside sketches of people and of items. Vases and snuffboxes, pots of creams and cosmetics were drawn without explanation.
One sketch on the final page of notes in her journal was of a fleur-de-lis symbol.
After setting aside the folio and joining Connor to continue the postmortem he’d already begun, the fleur-de-lis had kept niggling at the back of Leo’s mind.
At last, just as Connor was investigating the abdominal cavity of the poor man who had died while traveling to Picadilly Circus on an omnibus, the reason why it was bothering her lit through her.
Now, as the housewares clerk waited for either the gentleman or the lady that had entered his floor space to speak, Leo noted he was as one of the several people Lydia had sketched.
“My husband and I are here to peruse some of your housewares for our new home,” Leo replied to the clerk, her arm squeezing Connor’s a little more intensely.
Suggesting the ruse that they would present themselves as a married couple had made the assistant coroner blush, but she had assured him it was the most practical way to gain the clerk’s trust.
The beak-nosed man simpered again. “Ah, excellent. I believe you will be very pleased with our selection.”
“A dear friend of ours assured us of the same thing, didn’t he, darling?” Leo said, looking toward Connor. “What was it he said? That Gleason’s had superior stock?”
Connor cleared his throat. “Quite right, my dear,” he replied. “Superior.”
Leo watched the clerk’s expression and gave Connor’s arm another squeeze when it transformed with awareness. It had worked.
Among Lydia’s last pages of notes had been a few lines about customers commenting to certain clerks about looking for superior stock. It seemed to be a signal of sorts or a code, Lydia had written. On the same page of notes, the fleur-de-lis symbol had been sketched a handful of times.
The symbol was one Leo had seen marked on a few items the first time she’d visited Gleason’s, when she’d been peering inside cases in the housewares section.
As she was there to see Dita, and the prices written in pencil on the manila price tags had been far too dear, she’d paid no attention to the small symbol of the French monarchy.
It wasn’t until the sketch in Lydia’s notes had tugged at a memory that the image of where she’d seen the symbol had shuffled its way to the forefront of her mind.
With a knowing arch of the clerk’s brow, he canted his head and grinned. “Your friend was correct.” He began to walk toward the same display case of vases and urns that Leo had approached previously. “May I suggest one of these urns, direct from the Orient?”
He opened the case and removed a dual handled jade urn etched with herons. Holding the urn, he presented it to Connor, who lifted the manila tag to read the price. As if the paper had burned him, he let it drop.
“Is there a problem, sir?” the clerk asked.
“No, no, I’m just not certain it is our…preferred style,” Conner replied, though he sounded a trifle nervous. Seeing the price must have set him back on his heels. When the clerk turned to set the urn back into the display case, Leo tugged Connor to the side.
“We aren’t truly buying it,” she said, mouthing the words hardly above a whisper.
“I know, I am stalling for time,” he mouthed back, though he had not yet finished before the clerk turned back to them. He caught their private exchange and raised his brow again, though this time with skepticism.
“I do hope your friend explained that our superior stock comes at an elevated cost?”
“Of course,” Leo said brightly. “Perhaps we could see another item?”
She had every intention of stalling, just as Connor had.
Before leaving for Gleason’s, Leo had sent a message to Roy Lewis at Scotland Yard, telling him of her potential discovery and requesting that he meet her and Connor at the store.
Of course, there was every chance Sergeant Lewis hadn’t been in the detective department when the note arrived and had yet to read it.
It was a risk. But if she’d gone to the Yard in person to ask for his assistance, the sergeant would have never allowed her and Connor to carry out their ruse at Gleason’s.
At least this way, she would have a hand in the operation.
The clerk hesitated, then looked over his shoulder. “Why don’t you come with me, Mr. and Mrs. ...?” He waited for their surname.
Leo, caught by surprise and not having planned to give a name to the clerk at all, stumbled for one now. “Reid,” was the first surname that popped into her mind, and she blurted it out.
The clerk gestured for them to fall into step behind him and started across the department floor.
Leo met Connor’s amused, raised brow as they followed the clerk.
Her cheeks heated in embarrassment as they passed a few displays and two other women being helped by another sales assistant, this one a woman in the standard-issue Gleason’s uniform.
Leo wondered where the salesclerk might be leading them as they passed the sales counter and till, toward a closed door.
There might be a back room with other products marked with the fleur-de-lis tags, but when the clerk opened the door and stepped aside to allow them entry, she saw that it was an office, with a large desk, leather chairs, and a parlor safe set prominently in the corner.
“Do wait here a moment, and someone will be right with you,” the clerk said, then shut the door as he left.
Leo released Connor’s arm, and he shook it out. “You have quite a grip for a woman, Mrs. Reid.”
She groaned. “Don’t tease me, it was the first name I could think of that wasn’t either of our own.”
“The Inspector is foremost in your mind, I see,” he said, then cocked his head and laughed. “What now?”
He walked toward the desk and chairs. It was a masculine space with its abundance of leather and heavy, dark wood paneling.
Perhaps it was the manager’s office. Leo wondered if Mr. Gleason himself would join them.
If opium was being funneled into London via his shop, surely, he must be the one behind it.
“I’m worried you’ve spooked the clerk,” Leo said.
“Forgive me my reaction, but did you see that price tag?” he asked defensively. “One silly urn costs more than I earn in a month. It’s absurd.”
It was obscene, Leo agreed, and as she didn’t wish to criticize Connor’s inability to think on his feet, she let it go.
“He will no doubt send someone in to speak to us,” she said. “Let me do the talking. I’ll think of something.”
Connor whipped off his bowler, agitated. “Sergeant Lewis likely has no idea what we are doing. We’re going to have to extricate ourselves. My God, what was Lydia thinking, going undercover for a story this dangerous. Better yet, what are we thinking?”