Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Acacophony of shouting, whinnying horses, and the stricken cries of onlookers swirled around Jasper as he crouched to see beneath the carriage where Frederick now lay, sprawled on the cobblestones.
The next minute was a blur of commotion as Jasper directed the driver to carefully pull forward so that they could access Frederick’s body.
He hoped like hell the man wasn’t dead. He wanted to arrest the bastard, not see him put in the ground before a conviction could be levied.
“Stand back, now, all of you!” A few constables on foot patrol had run to the scene and now held out their arms to keep back a surging crowd of gawkers.
Once he was able, Jasper knelt next to Frederick’s unmoving body and pressed his fingers against his neck. He closed his eyes and concentrated, desperate to feel a pulse. There it was—a weak, thready throb against the pads of his fingertips.
“Oh, good heavens!” a familiar voice cried out.
Jasper glanced over his shoulder to find Nivedita Brooks being blocked by a constable’s outstretched arm.
“Let her through,” Jasper commanded. “Constable, fetch a wagon to transport this man to St. Thomas’s Hospital. Hurry!”
The officer darted away toward the bustling Trafalgar Square, blowing sharply on his police whistle. Jasper stood straight to meet Miss Brooks as she inched forward hesitantly. She turned her face away from the broken angles of the viscount’s son’s legs and the bloody mess of his head.
“Where is Leo?” Jasper asked, his concern mounting. He’d expected her to join him shortly after he’d gone in pursuit of Frederick.
“She’s with Mr. Quinn,” Miss Brooks answered. “He brought her into the morgue to look at the wound on her neck. He wanted to be sure a vein hadn’t been nicked.”
“A vein?” Jasper had seen the blood dribbling from the slice to Leo’s neck, but she’d assured him she was fine. He started away from Frederick’s sprawled form, only wanting to be at Leo’s side.
Miss Brooks held up her hands to stop him. “Leo says she will meet you at the hospital. If—” Her lashes fluttered rapidly as she tried to look toward Frederick Cowper but couldn’t quite succeed. “If he is still alive?”
“He is, though barely.” And probably not for much longer. Jasper cursed under his breath. As the viscount’s heir had confessed to two murders, Jasper had a duty to stay with him, even if he lay half dead in the street.
“Fine,” Jasper finally relented. “Just make sure Quinn takes care of her. If he doesn’t, he’ll have me to answer to.”
With a nod, Miss Brooks turned to scurry away from the gruesome scene.
A paraffin lamp guttered in the corridor outside a surgery theatre at St. Thomas’s Hospital.
Jasper paced the tiled floor, his impatience—and trepidation—climbing.
Frederick Cowper had been rushed inside more than a half hour ago.
Since then, a few nurses had come out of the surgery, blood smeared over their pinafores, but none had answered his inquiries as to whether the patient would live or die.
Jasper took his watch from his waistcoat pocket, and when he read the time, his nerves crackled.
Where the devil was Leo? She was supposed to have met him here.
Unless something had happened. Had Quinn met with some complication while assessing her neck wound?
Jasper whisked off his hat and raked his hand roughly through his hair.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. He whirled away from the closed surgery doors, only wanting to see one person.
“Inspector Reid.” Jasper masked his disappointment at finding Sergeant Warnock before him. “A reply telegram has come from Harrow. Viscount Cowper is on his way.”
Jasper had directed a constable to Scotland Yard earlier, to send word to Cowper Fields about Frederick’s accident.
He did not look forward to explaining to Lord Cowper what had happened to his heir, or what Frederick had done to his own nephew and niece.
But then, it was possible the viscount may have already suspected.
Francine Stroud may have as well, considering she had not welcomed either her father or her brother to the reading of the will.
“Thank you, Warnock,” Jasper replied. “Have you heard anything regarding Miss Spencer?”
The young sergeant crinkled his forehead. “I just saw Mr. Quinn in the lobby. He informed me that Miss Spencer is with a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?” Ice, followed by heat, flushed through Jasper’s limbs.
“Yes, sir, that is what he said—”
“Stay here,” Jasper ordered and then started at full speed toward the doors at the end of the surgery corridor. He burst through them into another corridor, where he stopped the first doctor he saw.
“Leonora Spencer,” he barked. “She is here seeing a surgeon. Where can I find her?”
The startled doctor adjusted his spectacles. “I do not know, sir. You’ll have to inquire with the admitting nurse.”
The doctor continued on his way, and with escalating irritation, Jasper stopped three more nurses before he finally got an answer: Leonora Spencer was in Room 12 on the next floor up.
He dashed there, heart racing, and when he finally came upon the closed, white-painted door, he didn’t bother to knock.
He burst into the pocket-sized room, and Leo, reclining in the narrow hospital bed, vaulted upright.
“Jasper!” She clutched at her chest. “You startled me. Whatever is the matter?”
He took in the sight of her—her neck wrapped in linen gauze, the collar of her white blouse stained with blood—as he strode to the bedside.
“Warnock told me you were in with a surgeon,” he said, his thudding pulse still sounding in his ears.
“I was,” she replied. “Connor wanted a second opinion on the sutures he’d placed in the wound to be sure all was well. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but when Dita relayed your warning, he was quite intimidated.”
“My warning?”
Leo smirked. “The one in which you threatened that should anything happen to me he would have to answer to you.”
“Ah. That warning.” He felt a bit sheepish now, but seeing her smile melted some of the tension from his body. Jasper sat in the wooden chair next to the bed. “So, you’re going to be all right?”
She leaned forward and reached for his hand. “I am. The cut from the paper knife was deep enough to require several sutures, but Connor said it missed the external jugular vein by a good two millimeters.”
Hell. “That’s a fraction of an inch, Leo.”
“I know what two millimeters is,” she replied tartly.
“It was too close.”
She didn’t argue with him, likely because she knew he was correct.
Thank God he’d listened to his intuition earlier.
Had he not decided to check in at the morgue rather than go to Duke Street, or even Paddington Station with Warnock and Price, Leo would have been killed.
Frederick Cowper had likely been but a few moments away from slitting her throat with that paper knife when Jasper had come upon the open back door to the morgue.
The tumult inside had reached his ears, and he’d drawn his Webley.
But of course, he had been unable to use it with the bastard using Leo as a shield.
His thumb brushed over her knuckles, her palm dry and cool in his.
“Tell me what you need,” he said. “Are you in any pain? I’ll fetch the doctor.”
Leo tensed her fingers around his. “I’m perfectly fine. I’m only waiting for the doctor to officially discharge me.”
It wasn’t often that Jasper was overcome with emotion, but in that moment, he let go of restraint.
He gathered her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips against her knuckles.
His eyes locked on hers, as he whispered against her skin, “I keep picturing Frederick with that knife to your throat. You shouldn’t have been in that position. I cannot lose you, Leo.”
She took a breath, her lips quivering and eyes softening. “You aren’t going to.”
He nodded, though he knew neither of them had any control over such a thing. Fortune and circumstance too often outmaneuvered intention. But to dwell on it wouldn’t do either of them any good.
“How is Mr. Cowper?” she asked hesitantly.
Jasper lowered her hand but kept it in his. “He was taken into surgery, but his condition is grim.”
“He won’t live?”
“If he does, it will only be to hang,” Jasper replied, knowing he sounded harsh but also not caring at all. The man was a murderer, not to mention his twisted feelings for his own blood relation.
“Mr. Cowper must have taken the phaeton and horse from the stables that night,” Leo said. It brought Jasper a bit of comfort to hear her discussing the case. It was a bit of normalcy and proof that she was, as she claimed, perfectly fine.
“He was back by breakfast,” Jasper nodded. “But by then, the stable hands were awake. He hadn’t wanted to give away that he’d been out overnight.”
“You think he stashed the horse and phaeton on the property somewhere?” Leo asked. Then, her eyes opening wider with zeal, she added, “One of the unused outbuildings, like the barn where Helen and Stephen Decamp would meet.”
Jasper had considered that too and would have Constable Wiggins conduct a search. “He might have turned the horse loose or, if he was smart, exchanged it for another either in London or on the road back to Harrow.”
There were any number of livery stables along the route where he might have done so.
“Has Stephen Decamp been found yet?” Leo asked.
Jasper frowned and explained what he’d discovered at Stephen’s home, as well as the person he’d placed under arrest for the crime.
“Helen’s maid staged it to appear to be a suicide?” Leo asked.
“Not very well. The crime scene looked off,” he said, thinking of how he’d questioned the positioning of the body at the table. “It would have been good to have you there to lend your opinion on the matter.”
Although pleasure lit her eyes, she shrugged lightly. “You didn’t need my opinion. You figured it out.”