Page 2 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)
The trouble had started six months ago, in January, when Jasper and Leo exposed the former Met police commissioner, Sir Nathaniel Vickers, as a murderer.
It continued in March, when Jasper had been forced to relinquish a man he’d just arrested, Terrence Nelson, into the hands of another criminal, his cousin, Andrew Carter.
Part of the ruthless gang known as the East Rips, Andrew had held Leo at knifepoint, demanding Jasper’s prisoner be turned over so that he could mete out his own justice for the murder of his bride, Gabriela.
There had been no choice for Jasper; he hadn’t doubted Andrew’s bloodthirsty threat to pluck out Leo’s eye.
But Detective Chief Inspector Dermot Coughlan, Superintendent Clive Monroe, and Commissioner Danvers, had only berated him for having a woman at his side to begin with.
The fact that it had been primarily Leo who could be credited with the capture of Terrence Nelson and with the exposure of Sir Nathaniel’s heinous crimes hadn’t mattered.
The two incidents had left a stain upon Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department.
Commissioner Danvers’s suggestion for Jasper to rub elbows with the higher-ups at the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage benefit dinner had been a barely disguised order—if he wanted to keep his job, Jasper would need to make nice and toe the line.
After several more moments of uncomfortable silence, Quinn craned his neck to peer through the masses in the small parlor. “Ah, there’s Grandfather.” He addressed Leo, saying, “Excuse me a moment, won’t you?” then dashed off.
Jasper frowned as the assistant coroner parted the crowd, moving toward their host. “What are you doing here with him?” he whispered loudly to Leo.
Granted, ‘How have you been?’ would have been more polite, but he’d never had a knack for safe, courteous chatter.
“Mr. Quinn has already explained,” she replied, an edge of irritation in her tone now, rather than its prior coolness.
“He’s introducing you to his grandfather, yes, but why?”
Leo shot him a sidelong glance before facing forward again, giving him her profile.
Jasper followed her cross glare. It landed on Quinn, who had reached Sir Eamon.
The chief coroner looked relieved for the interruption; he’d been in close conference with an older woman, whose plain, somewhat dowdy gown and rough bearing conveyed that she was not one of the privileged patrons in the room.
The woman was clearly upset, her scowl fixed into the lines of age on her face, which was well-worn with that particular expression.
Sir Eamon, however, grinned placatingly and patted his grandson on the shoulder before seeming to make introductions. The woman did not reciprocate. She moved off with the sharp strides of someone unhappy with her lot.
Jasper understood the feeling.
The chill between him and Leo wasn’t something he’d anticipated, especially given the perpetual warmth he’d felt whenever he thought of her. She’d asked for time. He’d given it. And yet, here she was with Connor Quinn, meeting the man’s grandfather.
Hell. Was there something between them?
Perhaps by kissing her, he’d interrupted whatever fledgling trust she’d started to put back into him.
After she’d found out he’d been born into the notorious Carter family, that it had been his family who’d slaughtered hers, and that he had been the one to hide her in the steamer trunk in her family’s attic to save her life, Leo hadn’t spoken to him for two full months.
If the bombing at Scotland Yard that killed Police Constable John Lloyd and implicated one of her acquaintances, Mrs. Geraldine Stewart, a women’s suffrage leader, had not come about, Jasper wasn’t certain she would have broken her vow to never speak to him again.
But Leo had involved herself in proving Mrs. Stewart’s innocence and, in doing so, reluctantly allowed a fragile peace to grow between them.
It hadn’t absolved Jasper from the truth: He’d lied to her, and to Gregory Reid, for sixteen years.
But he’d started to hope that Leo might eventually be able to forgive him.
With no word from her these past four weeks, he’d begun to worry he’d mucked it all up with that kiss—an unforgettable kiss that had been in no way chaste.
Finally, Leo turned to him and lowered her voice to conceal it from those standing around them. “I am here because Connor has seen my uncle’s tremors.”
Jasper pushed aside a prickle of annoyance at the familiar use of the assistant coroner’s given name and focused on what Leo had revealed.
Claude Feldman, a city coroner at Spring Street Morgue, had been suffering from a palsy of his hands for several months.
The affliction had been worsening, so much so that Leo had started to step in and help her uncle with any tasks that required steady hands, such as precise closing sutures.
It was completely unauthorized, of course.
With the appointment of Connor Quinn to the morgue, they’d known concealing Claude’s shaking hands would be impossible.
“Quinn has told his grandfather?” Jasper presumed.
She balked, appearing offended. “Mr. Quinn is a good man, and he likes my uncle. It wasn’t he who told the chief coroner about Claude’s palsy. It was Mr. Higgins.”
Jasper recalled the first medical student who had worked at the morgue—or more accurately, stood around uselessly. He’d had connections to the chief coroner too.
“Has Claude lost his position, then?”
Jasper hadn’t heard news of it, but he had been concentrating on a string of arsons along the waterfront and a counterfeiting operation in Wapping. The two cases had kept him busy and away from the Spring Street Morgue.
“He’s been finished for a week now,” she answered, her voice catching with emotion.
Jasper sighed. “I’m sorry, Leo.”
Claude had to be nearly seventy years old. Shaking hands or no, it was probably high time for him to retire anyway. Not that Jasper would say so; Leo would only perceive the comment as unfeeling rather than logical.
She accepted his condolences with a skeptical nod, then shrugged. “Connor has been promoted, and he wants me to stay on, as his official morgue clerk. He thought an introduction to the chief coroner would be beneficial to my remaining on staff there.”
At that revelation, Jasper wasn’t sure which he felt more keenly: skepticism that she would be given a paid position at the morgue, relief that she would keep the job she clearly enjoyed, or suspicion over why Connor Quinn would go to such trouble on her behalf.
He was still grappling with how to respond without upsetting her when the dinner gong sounded. Finally . The noise in the room grew exponentially as people started for the door. Jasper indicated they should go in too, and they fell into step at the back of the crowd.
“I thought you would apply at Hogarth and Tipson once Claude was gone from the morgue,” he said, referring to the funeral service on Cambridge Circus.
“I will if I must, but I’d much rather stay on at Spring Street. It turns out that Connor and I work well together.”
Jasper clenched his teeth and made no reply, though as they followed the crowd through the parlor’s connecting door to a large dining room, he could not ignore the invisible spear lancing the center of his chest. Damn it all. Though it was rare for him, he knew jealousy when he felt it.
A long table glittered with china, silver, crystal, and flickering tapered candles.
Overhead, a gasolier threw off gilded light on the place settings, each assigned a name placard.
Uniformed servers were helping the guests find their seats, and Jasper and Leo were separated as they were each shown to their seats.
He was placed between a woman and an older gentleman—Mrs. Buckley and Sir Walter Conrad, according to their name placards—and Leo was settled across the table, diagonal to him.
Connor Quinn was to her left, and to her right was the sour-faced older woman who had been conversing with Sir Eamon earlier.
Leo met Jasper’s eyes before Quinn said something to her, drawing her attention away again. Next to him, Mrs. Buckley murmured a polite hello and asked which police force he worked for.
“Scotland Yard, madam,” he replied, to which Sir Walter snorted. Derisively, no doubt. Jasper ignored the man as the hum of conversation began to quiet. Sir Eamon stood at the head of the table, his wife, at the opposite end, and he waited until all eyes were on him before addressing them.
“Welcome, friends, welcome. On behalf of myself and the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage Fund, I thank you for your unwavering support of our truly important work. As you all know, our public servants are the lifeblood of this city, upholding law and order, and?—”
The doors at both ends of the dining room flew open with startling violence, cutting off the chief coroner mid-sentence.
Several men, their faces draped with black cloth, stormed inside.
Each held a revolver. Jasper stood, his pulse streaming out in alarm.
Several more officers around the table pushed back their chairs too, and cries of distress from both men and women resounded.
“Stay in your seats!” a tall man in the group shouted to be heard above the clamor. He leveled his weapon at Sir Eamon. “ Sit down . Everyone! Back into your seats.”
The chief coroner sank into his chair as the other masked men—five in all—fanned out around the table.
Stymied, Jasper, and the others who’d stood with him, returned to their seats as ordered.
Though many of the men were in uniform, they did not have weapons.
As a detective, Jasper had been issued a revolver, but he hadn’t had any reason to carry it with him that evening.
Across the table, Leo twisted in her chair to see the intruders, and in that moment, Jasper wished like hell that he’d been seated next to her. Had he been, he would have put his hand over hers to stop her from slipping the knife next to her plate into her lap, as he watched her do right then.
“Quiet!” the masked group leader shouted. His deep voice silenced the murmurings of confusion and panic almost immediately. “Hands on the table. All of you. Do it now.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Sir Eamon asked from his chair, placing his hands flat onto the table as directed. “How dare you come in here?—”
“Enough,” the same masked man said. “Do as I tell you, and we will be gone within moments. Disobey, and there will be consequences. Am I understood?”
Nervous murmurings ran up and down the length of the table.
A few muted wails of fear came from the chief coroner’s wife and the woman next to her as one of the intruders placed himself behind them.
Another stood behind Jasper’s shoulder, and a third had positioned himself near Sir Eamon at the head of the table.
The tall intruder who’d spoken remained at the backs of those seated on the opposite side of the table, a handful of places down from Leo.
Her hands were now on the table, though the silver knife was missing. She had to have pocketed it.
The fifth masked man had gone to the door leading to the kitchen. He’d locked it and made the two servers in the dining room lower themselves to a prone position on the floor.
The black cloth draping the intruders’ heads had slits cut out for their eyes.
Long beards extended from the bottom of each head covering, and each man wore a brown, pin-striped suit, though a few were ill-fitting.
Their matching appearances distracted Jasper for a moment before the leader spoke again, calmly and clearly.
“Good. Now, ladies, remove your jewels and place them on the table in front of you.”
A robbery. That’s what this was? The women in attendance were certainly wearing their best jewels.
Leo as well. Jasper had noted the string of pearls adorning her neck and the matching pearl earrings.
His father had left them to her in his will, and now, her eyebrows pulled taut as she realized that she was to lose them to these thieves.
He would have wrung all five of their necks if he could, but with weapons aimed at the dinner guests, Jasper could only sit, bristling with fury.
Ladies began to adhere to the command, including Leo, who blinked rapidly as she lifted her gloved hands to remove the earrings.
“This is preposterous,” Sir Walter, to Jasper’s left, said loudly. “Who do you think you are, coming in here and staging this robbery? You have no right!”
The man punctuated his complaint with the slamming of his fists on the table, and then he stood up, kicking his chair back behind him.
Instead of ordering the man to sit down and be quiet, the masked leader paused.
Then, he strode swiftly down the table toward Leo.
Jasper’s heart thudded to a painful stop as the man, without a shred of hesitation, put the barrel of his revolver to the back of the head of the older woman seated to Leo’s right—and pulled the trigger.