Page 13 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Chapter Seven

A ll Jasper knew so far was that the man lying dead inside Gavin Seabright’s rented room was not the tenant himself.

He had arrived at the address on Dorset Street shortly after leaving the Law Courts.

It was a Friday morning, close to noon, and if Gavin Seabright held down a job, he was more likely to be found at work than at home.

However, after scrutinizing the Metropolitan Police warrant card Jasper displayed while introducing himself, the landlady, Mrs. Beardsley, reported that Mr. Seabright had returned home from work a few hours before.

“Is that unusual?” Jasper asked once he’d been allowed across the threshold to stand in the narrow foyer. “Or does he often return in the middle of a workday?”

With a huff of contempt, Mrs. Beardsley replied, “What do you think I do, Inspector? Prop a chair here and watch the door all day long, then? I got myself ten lodgers to see to and plenty to do without keepin’ tabs on who comes and goes.”

With a weary groan, muttering that these were respectable lodgings and the police showing up wasn’t good for business, she’d gone upstairs to alert Mr. Seabright to his guest. From the bottom step, Jasper heard several knocks, and Mrs. Beardsley’s raised voice, telling her lodger twice that he was to come downstairs to talk to a Scotland Yard inspector.

A few seconds of silence followed her last summons. Then came her shout: “Inspector!”

Jasper took the stairs two at a time to find the landlady staring into the room. “I tried the knob,” she told him. “It weren’t locked.”

By her awestruck expression, he wasn’t surprised to find a body lying upon the floor inside the room.

Mrs. Beardsley propped her work-chapped hands on her hips and, with a crinkle of her brow, announced, “Haven’t the faintest who he is. It ain’t Mr. Seabright, that’s fer certain. But this bloke were here, callin’ on me lodger just before breakfast. I don’t like mornin’ callers. It ain’t polite.”

The dead man was roughly twenty-five years of age and appeared to have suffered a head wound; his temple had an acute depression, and a fair amount of blood had pooled around his head on the underlying carpet.

He’d come to lie next to a small coal stove, which would have heated the room during the colder months.

The finial on top of the stove was a short iron spike, and there were traces of blood on it.

With evidence of a struggle—the shaving stand had been knocked over as well as a chair—Jasper thought the most likely scenario was that the victim, whoever he was, had fallen during a fight and struck his temple on the sharp finial, receiving a killing blow.

Now, nearly an hour later, Jasper stood by the window, impatient for Warnock and Leo to arrive.

He’d finished interviewing the landlady and had searched the small room, leaving him time to second-guess his decision to summon Leo.

Doing so went against Chief Inspector Coughlan’s express order to limit her involvement and Jasper’s own desire to shield her from any more distress.

But in this investigation, there was no time to lose.

There was no question, especially after Jasper had taken a closer look at the victim, that Leo could provide insight about the body.

At the sound of their arrival downstairs, Jasper went to meet them. Mrs. Beardsley led them up to the room and took the opportunity to complain.

“You’ll need to be takin’ him out the back door, Inspector. I can’t have a dead body carted through the front, right, where everybody and their cousin’ll see it.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Beardsley,” he replied. “I might have more questions for you, if you can remain close by.”

The request was met with another aggravated moan, but she didn’t object. Jasper suspected a part of her was enjoying the unusual calamity, as it would give her plenty to carp about for some time to come.

Leo quizzed him with a look as he moved aside to allow her and Warnock to pass into the room.

“Sergeant Warnock tells me you believe I know this man,” she said, going directly to the body and squatting at his feet.

Her dark green dress was the somber, serviceable kind she wore to work, and as she assessed the body on the floor, she did so with the same concentration she would have shown any corpse at the morgue.

“Maybe not his name,” Jasper replied, crouching beside her. He lifted the man’s left hand. “But what about this?”

Leo inhaled sharply when her eyes landed on the long, curved scar on the man’s hand. As he’d hoped, she recognized it. Jasper had noticed the scar while going through the man’s pockets, searching for any identifying documents. He’d had none. But the scar had captured his attention.

“What is it?” Warnock asked, craning his neck. He stood further away, near the window, and wore the queasy look of someone unaccustomed to dead bodies. He would get used to it in time.

“This man,” Leo replied, moving to the side of the body opposite Jasper. “He was one of the intruders from last night. I recognize the scar on his hand.”

She’d included a description of it in her statement. The scar, shaped like a C, ran from the knuckle on the man’s ring finger to the thumb.

“Are you sure?” Warnock asked. “Lots of men have scars on their hands, especially if they’re laborers.”

“She is sure,” Jasper replied, unwilling to explain to the newly promoted detective sergeant about Leo’s flawless memory.

She, too, didn’t like to draw attention to it.

“This room is rented by Gavin Seabright,” he went on, straightening to his feet.

“But this isn’t Gavin. The body has no identification, and the landlady doesn’t know who he is either.

She says he called on Gavin this morning around seven o’clock. ”

Leo canted her head as she inspected the wound at the man’s temple, then peeled off her glove to touch his neck.

“His body temperature is cool but not dramatically so.” Using her fingertips, she opened one of the man’s eyes wider.

“Clouding of the cornea and rigor just setting in around the facial muscles. I’d estimate he’s been dead three or four hours. ”

That would mean he died around eight or nine o’clock that morning.

Jasper called for Mrs. Beardsley. She whirled into the room as though she’d been waiting just outside the door, listening.

“Were you at home this morning?”

She crossed her arms and gave him a look of blamelessness. “I were here some. But I didn’t hear this racket, and I surely would’ve.” She gestured toward the upended shaving stand, the smashed pitcher and basin on the floor, and the overturned chair.

“When did you leave the house?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed in thought. “’Round half seven I set out for the Farringdon Market. I got me six lodgers who pay extra for chop with their tea, and Mondays are the best days for mutton. Must get there early for it. I were back by nine.”

“And when did Mr. Seabright return?” Jasper asked.

“Quarter past ten, I’d say.”

“You actually saw him? Didn’t just hear him come in?”

She sighed and nodded.

Leo moved toward the mess on the floor, crouching down to sift through some of the detritus. “Did you see either Mr. Seabright or this man leave the house before you set out for the market stalls?”

The landlady gave her a curious once-over, as if wondering who Leo was and why she was there. But rather than question her or give some longwinded answer, Mrs. Beardsley gave a pleasantly succinct one: “No.”

“Mr. Seabright must’ve left at some point though, if you saw him come back in just after ten,” Warnock said to Mrs. Beardsley. “Where does he work?”

“Last I knew, he were a caretaker at St. Bartholomew’s.”

Jasper nodded to the detective sergeant. “Go to the hospital and see if he was there at all this morning.”

“He wasn’t,” Leo said, stopping Warnock before he could take a stride toward the door. She was still near the floor and had picked up a brown cologne bottle made of thick glass. She had pulled out the stopper and put her nose to the opening.

“Why do you say that?” Jasper asked.

“Because I believe he broke into the morgue this morning to visit his mother.”

The revelation sent a charge down his spine. “ What? ”

Leo stood and extended the bottle. With the stopper free, the strong odor was detectable from an arm’s length away.

“When I returned from seeing you at Scotland Yard this morning, this same scent saturated the air inside the morgue. The lock on the back door had been picked, and Mrs. Seabright’s hand had been placed on her chest.”

Jasper grumbled under his breath. That was the second time since January someone had picked the morgue’s lock. He was beginning to think he should add the dirt path behind the church vestry to a constable’s regular circuit.

Standing at the entrance to the room, Mrs. Beardsley waved a hand in front of her face. “Oh, aye, that’s his scent. Pours the stuff on.”

Those who didn’t bathe regularly tended to daub perfume on themselves to cover up the odors from not washing.

At lodging houses like this one, laundry services cost extra, as did bath water.

When Jasper lived in bachelor’s rooms on Glasshouse Street prior to moving back to Charles Street, a few of his more frugal fellow lodgers had done the same.

“Thank you, Mrs. Beardsley,” Jasper said, then ushered her back into the hallway and closed the door to the room.

“Gavin Seabright would have been at the morgue right around eight o’clock,” Leo said.

Jasper took the bottle from her and corked it, his nose crinkling in distaste. “All right, then. This morning, one of the men responsible for Martha Seabright’s murder shows up here at her son’s lodgings.”

“In the carriage, this man,” Leo said, indicating the body on the floor, “was hushed up by the leader when he started to question the killing. It wasn’t part of the plan, and he was clearly upset by it.”

Upset enough to seek out the victim’s son?