Page 37 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Chapter Nineteen

J asper’s body buzzed with impatience the entire train ride back to Westminster. The cars cut along the tracks with more speed than any horse-drawn coach could have done, but it still felt as if they were curling through the countryside no faster than a stream of honey.

“You’re driving me barmy with that leg bobbing, guv,” Lewis said more than once as they traveled.

The detective sergeant pointing it out had not cured him of fidgeting, however, and when, at last, their train pulled into Charing Cross Station, Lewis leapt to his feet to disembark almost as quickly as Jasper.

Once they were outside the station, they easily spotted DS Warnock and PC Drake.

They stood with Oliver Hayes, next to one of the waiting carriages lining the street.

Before leaving Twickenham, Jasper had asked PC Landry to telegraph the Yard with their train’s expected time of arrival and a request for Oliver, Warnock, and Drake to meet it.

“What has happened since last night?” Jasper asked as soon as he and Lewis reached them.

Usually, Oliver was well put together, his collar starched, his clothing creaseless, his dark hair perfectly combed and pomaded. But not today.

“Nothing promising,” the rumpled viscount answered. “The Hampshire County Constabulary says George has not arrived at Beechwood. My aunt has been made aware of what is happening and is returning to London today.”

Stanley Hayes stepped out of the carriage, and if possible, he appeared even more haggard than his nephew. “I must have George back before my wife arrives in London, Inspector. I fear for her health.”

Jasper suppressed a growl of annoyance. “Don’t you mean Edward Seabright, Mr. Hayes?”

The man did not even have the decency to look ashamed.

With an impatient wave of his hand, he dismissed the truth about George as a trifling fact.

“Yes, yes, I have confessed it all, thanks to bloody Miss Spencer. What happened back then is in the past, and it does not change the fact that I need you to find my son now .”

Jasper’s tolerance for the arrogant man had already been wearing thin, but at the mention of Leo, it deteriorated entirely. As if sensing it, Lewis interrupted.

“Guv, you still want me to head over to the Blicksons’ home?”

On the train, they had planned for Lewis to go with Constable Drake to Park Crescent.

Somehow, Paula had learned that Edward had been given to Stanley and Melanie Hayes to raise as their own son.

How she’d come to know, Jasper wasn’t sure, but as George was now missing, and Paula had always believed Edward was still alive, she was almost certainly involved in his disappearance.

Lewis was to take her into custody, should she be at home. If not, he was to track her down.

Meanwhile, Jasper and Warnock would go to Gunnerson’s Rest Home.

When he’d sent Leo to interview Esther Goodwin, he’d considered it a relatively simple and safe task.

He’d regretted his decision, of course, because he’d led Leo to believe she might assist him in future inquiries.

But her report detailing the interview gained in magnitude as he’d traveled back to London.

It was plausible Paula had shared her theory about Edward being alive with the two people whom she vastly seemed to prefer to her mother and who had taken her in after she’d aged out of the orphanage.

During Jasper’s interview with her, Felix had expressed his clear dislike for Martha Seabright.

The fact that he’d come with Paula to the Yard rather than Paula’s own husband had also been curious.

The two cousins were undoubtedly close. If Paula had something to do with George’s disappearance, there was a good chance her aunt and cousin knew about it.

However, before he could instruct Lewis and Drake to set out for Marylebone, Stanley inquired, “Blickson? Not Archibald Blickson, surely?”

Jasper turned sharply toward him. “Yes. How do you know him?”

“How is Archie involved?” Stanley asked.

“Answer my question, Mr. Hayes,” he barked, drawing the attention of multiple passersby. He did not care. “How are you connected to Blickson?”

Stanley glowered at him. “The man is my property insurer.”

The link tolled through him, clear and palpable. This was it. “Paula Blickson’s maiden name is Seabright,” he supplied. The color drained from Stanley’s face. “She is Edward’s sister.”

The older man clutched the edge of the open carriage door. “That is… No. Impossible. I had them to dinner last month. How could I have known?”

He couldn’t have, and Jasper was willing to wager the chance meeting had been the catalyst for everything involved with this case.

“Blimey,” Lewis hissed. “Did Mrs. Blickson meet your boy at the dinner?”

At Stanley’s distracted nod, a deluge of answers fell into place. Answers, and yet more possibilities too.

Jasper signaled a nearby driver of a coach waiting for hire.

“Lewis, Warnock, with me. Drake, return to headquarters and request a judge’s warrant to search the Blicksons’ home. We’re going there now, but I want a warrant in case we are blocked from entry.”

They would search every nook and cranny of that home for George.

“I’m coming with you,” Stanley said as he started to climb back into his carriage.

“I cannot prevent you from following us, but you will stand back and allow me and my officers to do our jobs when we arrive.” Jasper speared him with what he hoped was a warning stare. Stanley flared his nostrils in contempt, then disappeared into the carriage.

“Jasper.” Oliver stopped him before he could join Lewis and Warnock, who had already piled into the hired coach. “I think you should know that last night, Miss Spencer mentioned Paula Blickson.”

“She suspected Paula knew her brother had not died,” he replied. “It seems she was correct.”

“That isn’t all,” Oliver said with some urgency. “She mentioned that it would be beneficial to call on Mrs. Blickson. I said I would pass along the suggestion to you, but her expression was…well, I can only describe it as impatient .”

It took no effort for Jasper to picture that expression of hers. And knowing Leo, her impatience could have led to injudicious action. Like calling upon a woman he now suspected of kidnapping. Perhaps even murder.

He rushed to join Lewis and Warnock, praying Leo had not already found Paula Blickson and whatever danger came with her.

Leo slowed her gait as she strolled past the Epoch’s main entrance on Whitfield Street.

She’d been moving at a leisurely pace, hoping to appear casual, and now stopped to read the theatre bill pasted to the sooty limestone facade.

A production of The Pirates of Penzance was set to debut in a week, though the derelict state of the theatre—its darkened, smudged windows, the limestone in dire need of a new coat of whitewash—left her doubting that the play would be of good quality.

It was barely noon, however, so the darkened windows weren’t too out of the ordinary.

She contemplated trying the handle on one of the front doors but refrained.

Going inside the theatre alone would not be wise.

On her short walk to the area around Fitzroy Square, she had thought plenty about the false beards the masked robbers had all worn the night of the dinner.

A theatre could provide access to such stage props.

And a trained actor would have a commanding, yet mellifluous voice—just as the brutal leader of the intruders had possessed.

Her pulse spluttered when she considered Paula’s cousin, Felix Goodwin.

She had only seen him in passing at the CID, but as Leo continued past the entrance to the theatre and across the street, she fetched the memory of that encounter effortlessly.

The details of Paula’s mourning gown and her stylish black hat with the tulle veil attached to its brim, fluttering as she passed Leo, were all crystalline in her mind.

Though she’d paid him less attention at the time, the details of the man escorting Paula were etched in Leo’s mind as well.

His estimated height and weight, and his inflexible bearing were hers again to scrutinize.

But more importantly, she recalled the small bob of his head, in acknowledgment, as he passed her, and his alert, dark, sapphire-blue eyes.

Held up in comparison to the pair she’d seen through the slits in the black cloth covering her abductor’s head, Leo shivered. They were the same. Felix Goodwin had murdered his aunt, Martha Seabright, and he’d been the one to abduct Leo and later release her.

Across the street from the theatre, she paused at a news stall. The older man working the counter finished a transaction with another customer before turning his attention to her.

“ The Morning Chronicle , please,” she said, placing her coin on the counter. “And might you know when the Epoch opens today?”

The man handed her the newspaper and scoffed. “Won’t be openin’. Closed down fer good.”

“Closed?” Leo jolted with surprise. “The theatre bill says a play is opening next week. What happened?”

He gave an uninterested shrug. “One o’ the actors wot come around me stall says the manager pulled the rug out from under everyone. He’s movin’ up ter Scotland.”

Leo murmured her thanks as she rolled her newspaper and stepped aside.

She glanced toward the theatre again, and its shuttered air made sense.

With the production so close to its debut, everything at the theatre would have been arranged for weeks.

The actors had practiced and memorized their lines, the stage design would be complete, the costumes nearly, if not already, finished.

The funding for the play would have been in place too.

For Felix Goodwin to have shut it down at the last moment like this was more than just suspicious.

He was fleeing, and Leo had an excellent idea as to why.

Thwarted, she lingered by a lamppost while deciding what to do.

She could not, under any circumstances, enter the theatre on her own.

Jasper was endlessly complaining that she was too reckless, thoughtlessly putting herself in danger to follow some lead.

Right now, however, she had no intention of risking her neck by chancing a meeting with Felix Goodwin.

There was a very good chance Felix and Paula had already left for Scotland, with George in tow.

That image, however, did not sit right with her.

A boy of thirteen could certainly have put up a fight if he didn’t wish to go with them.

And why would he choose to run away with people he did not know well, to a life that would be far less advantageous and comfortable than the one in which he had been raised by Mr. and Mrs. Hayes?

Of course, at his age, George might not be thinking judiciously of the future, reacting out of anger and injury over having been lied to his entire life.

But the possibility that Felix might do George harm if the boy put up a fight sat foremost in her mind.

There was no other choice now: The only thing Leo could do was to go directly to Scotland Yard and speak to Jasper.

He would be furious that she’d gone to the Blicksons’ home, but it didn’t matter.

She would endure his scolding if it meant that he and his fellow detectives were finally put on the right path toward finding George Hayes.

Leo tucked her issue of the Morning Chronicle under her arm and started toward the end of the street where she had seen an omnibus stand.

She didn’t have much money in her purse, but she could not walk the distance to Westminster again; the blisters from yesterday’s trek still rubbed against the heels of her boots.

She was reaching into her purse for the sixpence it would cost when the driver of a dray shouted for someone to watch out.

Leo looked up to see a woman in a dark purple skirt and short jacket crossing the street in a hurry.

If not for her black hat, draped with a lace veil, Leo might not have looked twice at her.

Paula Blickson had her head down, her veil drawn aside, and she was walking quickly toward the Epoch.

Leo stopped and stared as the woman passed the front door and continued toward the side of the theatre, where a narrow alley divided the Epoch from the neighboring building.

In her gloved hands, she carried a small carpetbag, and in a blink, she disappeared into the alley.

Without stopping to think, Leo crossed the street again.

She followed in Paula’s steps to the edge of the theatre.

Peering around the corner into the alley, she saw a tall gate made of weathered wooden slats a few yards ahead.

It was most likely there to keep theatregoers from accessing the back doors of the Epoch. Paula was no longer in sight.

If she had not yet left the city, then neither had George. Had the theatre been shut down and the actors dismissed to conceal that he was being kept here?

Leo took a few cautious steps into the alley. At first, the gate appeared to be shut. But coming closer, she spied a brick on the ground, wedged to prop the gate open an inch. Enough to keep it from latching shut.

She should not go any farther, and truly, in her heart, she knew peeking past the propped gate would be deemed highly reckless by a certain Scotland Yard detective inspector.

Still, she pulled on the gate, slowly and carefully, listening for the squealing of rusted hinges.

It was silent, however, and when she peered into the gated half of the alley, it was empty.

No farther, Leo came Jasper’s stern voice in her mind.

Leo pulled back, allowing the gate to rest against the brick again.

She’d been so focused on whether the gate’s hinges would make noise and give her away that she had not considered any sounds might come from behind her.

Too late, her instinct sensed a presence at her back. As before, with Gavin Seabright, a hard object nudged her between her shoulder blades. This time, however, Leo knew it was not the harmless neck of a glass beer bottle.

“I do wish you would have ceased your investigating, Miss Spencer. This is going to be quite unpleasant for us both.”