Page 26 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

If he did, he would have to take the train.

It would be several hours of travel. However, he needed to speak to Mrs. Hayes; he needed to know what she was doing in Martha Seabright’s house, and if the argument the servants overheard had anything to do with why they did not attend the benefit dinner.

“Your mother may have information that is crucial to my inquiry,” he said, “so if I must go there, I will.”

Constance relented and gave him the address in Hampshire and directions.

“Jasper,” she said, slowing him as he reached the front door. “Are my parents in any sort of trouble?”

He held his tongue against the truth: He was becoming ever more certain that they were.

The last thing he wanted was to give Constance a reason to send a telegram ahead of him, alerting her parents to his interest in them.

It was what he would have done if his father were alive, and a police inspector came calling.

“I only want to put some questions to them,” he said, then tipped his hat and left.

The day’s hazy sky and oppressive heat broke as Jasper was stepping down from a cab outside Scotland Yard. The windows in headquarters were bright with gaslight, the warm glow welcoming as rain began to fall in earnest.

Jasper started for the doors, and as he went, he swept a look around the courtyard for the stranger in the orange bowler.

There was no sign of him, and he could only hope that would remain the case when he went to pick up Leo for their evening out.

However, with or without Leo, should Jasper set eyes on the man again, he would confront him, come what may.

He rushed inside the lobby as the storm intensified with a reverberating clap of thunder.

“A lad delivered a message for you, Inspector,” Constable Woodhouse said from his place at the front receiving desk.

Jasper took the familiar buff-colored envelope, sealed with black wax—stationery used by the Spring Street Morgue. He was walking toward the CID while breaking the envelope’s seal when Sergeant Warnock came upon him.

“Frank’s Best Livery and Cab was shuttered a few years back,” he said, his excitement evident. “Francis, or Frank as he was known, was the original owner, and when he died, his son, Philip, inherited the business but closed the place almost immediately, according to neighbors.”

Jasper lowered the envelope. Philip Green, the server who ran from the dinner.

“He’s our link. Philip provided the getaway carriage and was the inside man at the dinner, informing the robbers of the details they would need.

” He clapped the sergeant on the shoulder, impressed again by Warnock’s good police work.

“Put out a notice for Philip Green’s arrest, then go to the catering service again.

Get people talking. Someone may know something about Philip that could lead us to him. ”

Warnock dashed off toward the telegraph room, where the operators would send notice to all divisions, along with a description of the suspect.

Jasper returned to opening the envelope, elated by the break in the case.

As he took out the notepaper folded within, however, his pleasure dipped.

For a bare second before reading the inked handwriting, he wondered if Leo had changed her mind about having dinner with him.

But then, he stopped in his tracks as he read the note: Come to the morgue. G.S. was here.

He crushed the paper in his hand and swore under his breath.

G.S. Gavin Seabright. Turning around, he pulled up his coat collar, passed Woodhouse, and went straight back outside into the rain.

Without an umbrella, his coat and hat were soaked by the time he arrived at the morgue.

He entered through the front lobby door, setting off the bell that hung attached to it.

“Is that you, Jasper?” Leo called, her voice raised to be heard from within the postmortem room.

He pushed open the door and slammed into a wall of stink. The day’s heat had quashed the scant cool temperature the vestry held onto during the summer. The warm weather had sped up the decomposition of corpses, and the resulting odors were more than a little unpleasant.

Leo stood at a large steel sink, rinsing a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves he’d seen Claude use during examinations. A calico kerchief, tied at the back of her head, covered her nose and mouth. She twisted to see him.

“Oh, good, you received my note,” she said with perceptible cheer.

Leo usually only sounded cheerful when she’d figured something out and was eager to tell him.

He took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and placed it to his nose. It didn’t help much. “When was Gavin Seabright here?” he asked, then looked around the large room. “And where is Quinn?”

There was no sign of the new coroner.

“Gone for the evening,” she replied as she shook off the rinsed gloves and clipped them onto a line of wire for drying. “And Gavin was here earlier, just after I left you at the Yard.”

“Were you here alone with him?”

“I was perfectly safe,” she said, goading him with a crafty glance over her shoulder. “He isn’t a murderer.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes. He didn’t do it.” She wiped her hands on her apron as she explained, “The John Doe’s given name is Harry, surname unknown, and he was a stranger to Gavin.”

Leo removed her apron and hung it on a hook, then smoothed her skirt from her hips down. Jasper followed the motion, and his pulse kicked into a rapid tattoo.

He cleared his throat, which suddenly felt like a cord had cinched it tight. “What did he say to you?”

“That Harry promised to confess the name of the man who killed Gavin’s mother in exchange for money and a way out of London,” she replied. “Gavin doubted his mother was dead, so he came here to see for himself.”

“He knew her body had been sent to Spring Street?” Jasper asked, wondering how.

But then thought of Philip Green. He’d disappeared in the commotion after the shooting, but he might have stayed long enough to have heard where Martha’s body was to be taken and conveyed the information to the other members of the group, including Harry.

“Yes, somehow,” Leo said. “But what is important is that Gavin was going to agree to Harry’s demands. Unfortunately, he was killed while Gavin was at the morgue. Gavin ran, knowing how bad everything looked for him.”

With one party dead, there was only Gavin’s word for it. “You believe him?” Jasper asked.

She nodded firmly. “I do. It aligns with how Harry acted in the carriage with the other masked intruders. He was upset and nervous about Martha being killed that night.”

Jasper grimaced at the reminder that Leo had been abducted that night as well, if only for a short while. He wondered if the memory would ever fail to affect him this way.

The fetid odors of rotting flesh had seeped through the weave of his handkerchief. “Do you mind if we go to the office?”

She nodded, her own kerchief still in place. Once they had left the postmortem room, closing the door behind them, they lowered their linens and drew in breaths. The air was only marginally better here.

“Where is Gavin now? He should have come to Scotland Yard and pled his case to me, not you.”

Leo moved toward the desk, where the gray tabby morgue cat had draped itself across the blotter. “I suggested Gavin do just that, but he became spooked and ran off.”

Tibia mewed when Leo scratched her fingers into its neck fur.

“What spooked him?” Jasper asked.

She scratched the cat’s neck another moment, then answered, “I think it was the mention of his sister, Paula Blickson. It turns out she was the dark-haired woman Mrs. Beardsley saw.”

That caught his interest and his suspicion. He took a step toward the desk but stopped when Tibia hissed at his approach. “When I interviewed Mrs. Blickson this morning, she claimed she hadn’t spoken to either her mother or Gavin for a long time.”

“And yet, she was the one who asked him not to attend the benefit dinner. She said he would be a traitor if he did go.”

Paula had mentioned nothing about this earlier.

Though he hadn’t been able to say why, there had been something disingenuous to her wearing mourning black, her dramatic black lace veil, and the trembling of her hand when she touched the handkerchief to her nose.

Her red, glassy eyes had been real, however, and so Jasper had left his suspicions alone for the time being.

“Why would he be a traitor?” he asked Leo.

She pressed her lips together, as she did whenever she was about to say something he might not like. “That is why I sent for you. It couldn’t wait. I think I’ve figured out how Mrs. Hayes is connected to Martha Seabright.”

He braced himself.

“It’s Edward,” she went on. “The baby.”

“I remember. What about him?”

“According to Gavin, Paula never believed that he died of a fever. She was convinced that her infant brother was instead taken.”

A large morass seemed to grow inside Jasper. The death of the baby brother had prickled through him with some sense of significance when he learned of it, but he hadn’t understood why or if he’d been reacting out of pure pity.

“Taken by whom?” he asked, even though an instinctive answer was already there, waiting to be pulled forward. Leo did just that.

“I believe by Mrs. Hayes.”