Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
It was pure good fortune that Leo did not topple to the office floor when she was shoved from behind.
Had she fallen, she had little doubt that her attacker would have pounced.
Instead, she caught herself by grasping the corner of a low bookshelf next to the door and whirled to the side, out of reach.
The back door slammed shut, severing the minuscule amount of light that had been coming in from outside. Connor had not yet returned from his pint with Dita, and so, not a single bracket gasolier or lamp was lit, leaving the office drenched in darkness.
But even blind, Leo knew who had shoved her from behind.
“You recognized the fabric, didn’t you, Mr. Cowper?” she said, chilled air filling her lungs as she dragged in breath.
She backed up toward her desk, where she knew she would find a paper knife in the drawer. Besides the scalpels stored safely away in the postmortem room, it was the sharpest object she could think of.
Ahead of her, she saw the barest slip of movement through the dark.
“You did not notice the tear along your jacket’s cuff when you arrived to breakfast the morning after the storm,” she said. Even Leo had not noticed it at the time, but she’d been able to peruse the details her memory had stored of their momentary meeting.
In that one image, she had noticed things she’d not paid attention to previously: a footman, lifting a silver cloche cover to reveal a plate of sausages for the viscount; the scowl upon the viscount’s lips when he saw Jasper and Leo leaving the dining room; and the way Frederick had been straightening the cuffs of his jacket when he’d nearly collided with them in the doorway.
“My guess is that you didn’t realize you’d torn your cuff at all until I picked up that scrap of fabric in the evidence box,” she added. Belatedly, she realized the look that had filled Frederick’s eyes when he’d seen it had not been one of confusion, but fear.
Her hip brushed the edge of the desk, and her hand fumbled toward the knob of the center drawer.
“This gives me no pleasure, Miss Spencer,” the viscount’s heir replied, and with a rush of alarm skittering through her limbs, Leo realized he’d nearly reached the desk, too. “I wish you did not possess the sort of memory you do.”
She certainly wished that Nadia had kept her mouth shut about it.
Leo opened the desk drawer and, knowing precisely where the paper knife was, gripped its ebony handle. She held it before her, wishing her vision would hurry up and adjust to the dark.
“You put your fist through the pane of glass at the Craven Hill house,” she said, backing up again, the blade she used to open letters poised before her. “You found Helen in the upstairs bedroom, and you killed her.”
But why? And what could he have possibly wanted with Helen’s tear catcher?
“Except for you, no one can place me there,” he said, his voice oddly calm.
“When matched to your torn sleeve, that scrap of fabric will,” she replied.
“Not if the jacket burns as soon as I return to Harrow.” A shape moved to her right—and Leo’s skin jumped as the loud, yowling hiss of a cat rent the air.
Mr. Cowper had trodden upon Tibia’s tail in the dark, she realized.
Using the moment of distraction, Leo rushed for the door to the back lane.
She flung it open and was one foot outside when a hand grabbed her arm and hauled her back into the office.
This time, Mr. Cowper’s thrust succeeded in throwing her to the floor, but when Leo rolled onto her back and saw the black stamp of his figure looming over her, she didn’t hesitate—she plunged the paper knife’s blade into the body part closest to her: his calf.
He cried out and staggered away, while Leo bounded to her feet and ran again, this time toward the postmortem room door.
She punted it open, but the wretched man again caught her, slamming into her back and wrapping his arms around her.
He propelled them both into an unoccupied autopsy table.
With the wheels locked, the table only screeched across the floor, but the edge of it rammed painfully into Leo’s ribs.
She’d kept hold of the paper knife, rather than leave it lodged in his leg, but now, Frederick’s hand smashed hers against the table once, twice, until pain radiated through the bones of her wrist and caused her fingers to open involuntarily.
He wrenched the paper knife from her and, pinning her arms with his, brought the flat side of the blade against her collarbone.
The pointed tip aligned with the base of her neck.
Frederick held her in a merciless squeeze, and suddenly, they were both still. His heaving breaths gusted against her ear, his face cradled by the curve of her neck.
“I didn’t expect Helen to be there,” he huffed, his breath hot against her skin. Leo’s stomach swirled with both disgust and fear. He aimed to kill her, just as he’d killed Helen.
“You both wanted the tear catcher,” she said, her own breaths fast and panicked. “But why?”
How had Frederick known where it was? And why would he have rushed there, just as Helen had, to find it?
“Because it would implicate him in Theodore Stroud’s murder.”
The stalwart voice emanated from across the postmortem room, and an overwhelming surge of relief throbbed through Leo, from her chest to her limbs.
Tears pricked her eyes as the gasoliers overhead rushed with flames.
The sudden light brought the room—and Jasper—into view.
He stood within the office entrance, his police-issued revolver in his hand, though not raised.
He would not aim his weapon at her, she knew.
His eyes assessed Leo, his mouth taut with fury as he saw the paper knife’s blade at her throat.
“When I asked why you had scolded Ursula outside the billiards room, you claimed that she was being a gossip,” he began.
“But it was more than that, wasn’t it? The maid had confessed what she’d read in Francine Stroud’s letter.
That Theodore was found dead with a glass vial clutched in his hand.
” Jasper took slow strides into the room, his grip on his revolver firm.
“Ursula explained that she’d told Helen of the letter’s contents, and so you knew that your niece would suspect the trinket was, in fact, her tear catcher.
” Jasper held still. “The very one she had given to you shortly before her brother’s fall. ”
Over her pounding heart and racing pulse, Leo tried to follow what Jasper was saying. Helen’s tear catcher had been in Frederick’s possession at the time of Teddy Stroud’s death.
“You pushed Teddy,” Leo said, her voice a rasp thanks to the man’s grasp around her ribs.
“You were on the roof the night of his fall,” Jasper added. “You were wearing the tear catcher, and in your struggle with him, he ripped it free from your neck.”
Leo’s ribs already ached from Frederick’s clamped arms, but now he constricted them tighter. It forced even more air from her lungs and an involuntary yelp from her throat.
“Release her,” Jasper ordered, his eyes bobbing to the paper knife. “There is no reason to silence Miss Spencer any longer, Mr. Cowper. You’ve been found out.”
Frederick didn’t obey and, instead, dragged Leo back several steps toward the lobby.
“Why were you on the roof that night?” Jasper asked, stalking toward them. “What did Theodore see?”
“He shouldn’t have been up there.” Frederick’s blunt voice rumbled against Leo’s eardrum.
“The roof was where Helen and Stephen Decamp would meet,” Jasper said. “You knew as much, I presume. It was why you were there. To spy on them.”
Though the postmortem room was icebox-cold, a fine perspiration had built up on Leo’s chest and back. Her breathing turned ragged as she tried to wriggle free from Frederick’s hold. The tip of the paper knife poked her skin, and she went still again.
“I couldn’t be with her,” Frederick whispered, the words a strident whine, as though squeezed by emotion. “But Stephen could. I knew it was wrong, but it was the closest I could come to having her for myself.”
He’d wanted to watch Helen and Stephen together. Leo’s stomach pitched.
“Helen knew how you felt,” Jasper said. “She’d given you her tear catcher as a token of sorts.”
“She felt the same,” he said, shaking now. With Leo’s back sealed against his body, the tremors vibrated through her as if they were her own. She swallowed, the blade pressing harder against her skin now, aligning with her trachea.
They’d been so close in age, more like cousins or friends than uncle and niece. Understanding seeped through Leo, oily and cold, at what must have happened on that roof.
“Teddy found you watching them,” she surmised.
“He couldn’t understand,” Frederick admitted. “And he wouldn’t shut up. He was whispering question after question, but he was getting louder and…”
“And you had to silence him, so he wouldn’t give you away,” Jasper said. “And when Helen learned her mother had found a glass vial that had belonged to her in Theodore’s dead clasp, she went to Craven Hill, to the spot where her mother had hidden it, to reclaim it.”
Jasper took another step toward them, but Frederick dragged Leo closer to the lobby door. She took a shaking breath as Jasper held his free hand up, palm shown, as if to calm Frederick.
“Had I or Miss Spencer found the trinket, as Francine wanted, we’d surely ask questions,” he said.
“Helen had been on the roof that night, as had Stephen, and yet neither of them had ever admitted to being there. She knew we would suspect them. Telling us that she’d given you the tear catcher would sound desperate, and besides, you could have easily denied it. ”
“But you couldn’t allow Helen to even try to accuse you,” Leo said, her peripheral vision focusing on an autopsy table they were nearing, topped by the corpse of a sheeted man.
“So, you took the phaeton and horse from your father’s stables and went to London, not knowing Helen would already be there. ”
And when she confronted him, he’d silenced her, just as he had Teddy.
“Enough,” he hissed in her ear. “I’m taking Miss Spencer with me. Don’t follow, Inspector, or you know what will happen.”
“You are going to release her now,” Jasper replied. “And I will give you a ten-second head start. It is a generous offer, Mr. Cowper; I suggest you take it.”
With ten seconds to flee before being pursued, Frederick could disappear into the bustle of Trafalgar Square. At night and in the rain, the poor light would make it difficult for Jasper to hunt him. He might never return to Harrow and his family; he might be lost forever.
Leo knew what she risked, but she also felt braver with Jasper so close.
As Frederick dragged them closer to the lobby door, the occupied autopsy table she’d been eyeing came within reach—of her legs, at least. Burying her fear, Leo raised her right leg, planted her foot against the table’s leg, and shoved hard against it.
The sudden motion drove her back, even harder against Frederick’s torso, and as it caught him off guard, it also unbalanced him.
The postmortem room erupted with sound as the autopsy table clattered to the floor, and Frederick roughly tossed Leo to the side. She landed on the floor, breath driven from her lungs and her vision whirling. But she still saw Frederick tearing through the lobby door as he fled.
Jasper was crouching at her side in a blink. “Are you injured? Christ, Leo.” He touched her chin to lift it, and pain flared along the left side of her neck. “You’re bleeding.”
She reached for the spot and felt the unmistakable viscosity of blood. There wasn’t a profuse amount, however, and Frederick was getting away.
She waved Jasper off. “It isn’t dire. Go, hurry!”
He straightened and disappeared through the lobby door without another moment’s hesitation.
Leo’s vision swam as she got to her feet and followed Jasper, her legs feeling more like two columns of warmed jelly than anything made of bone, muscle, and tendon.
She opened a linen cupboard in the postmortem room and, with trembling hands, snatched out a clean towel.
Pressing it to her wound to staunch the bleeding, she hurried into the lobby.
The door to Spring Street was wide-open, and outside, Jasper’s shouts for Frederick to stop echoed.
She reached the front step in time to see their two darkened figures rushing toward Trafalgar Square.
“Leo, what is happening?”
She spun around at the sound of Dita’s voice and, in the dim light streaming from lampposts, saw her friend and Connor Quinn approaching the morgue.
Connor increased his pace when he saw the linen she held pressed to her neck. “Have you been hurt?”
“I don’t think the cut is very deep,” Leo answered. “Can you summon a constable? Jasper is—”
“Watch out!” The bellowing cry came from the terminus of Spring Street, toward which Frederick Cowper and Jasper had been running.
Leo spun back around in time to see a fast-moving, horse-drawn carriage collide with a man in the street. Her heart stuttered to a stop as the viscount’s son disappeared beneath the carriage’s wheels.