Page 38 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Chapter Twenty

“ O pen the gate,” the smooth voice behind her commanded. The deluge of shock that coursed from the top of Leo’s scalp down the back of her neck to her spine kept her from complying immediately. The gun’s muzzle between her shoulder blades nudged harder.

“Do not think I am playing, Miss Spencer. The gate. Now.”

Cursing herself for her heedless curiosity, Leo obeyed. She opened the gate, the newspaper she’d tucked under her arm coming free and fluttering to the ground. With another jab of the muzzle, Leo stepped through.

The gate closed and latched behind them without the weapon being removed from her back. Leo peered over her shoulder at her assailant.

In her first meeting with Esther Goodwin, the older woman had been seated on a settee, her choice of dress cumbersome enough to conceal that she was, in fact, quite tall.

Taller than Leo, at any rate. Esther had exuded soft grace and elegance, and a slight degree of frailty.

However now, her callous expression made it perfectly clear that she was, like her son, a proficient actor.

She urged Leo toward an open back door leading into the theatre. “Inside,” she ordered, her tone no longer timorous as it had been at Gunnerson’s Rest Home.

The darkened mouth of the open doorway swallowed them, and when the door shut, Leo could no longer see.

At the soft hiss of gas igniting, a flare of light brightened where they stood in a narrow backstage corridor.

Here, numerous shipping crates, folded swathes of painted backdrops, racks of costumes, and all manner of stage props such as chairs, a dining room table, and divan, were all shoved aside to create a thin passageway for the actors to traverse.

“Don’t tarry, Miss Spencer,” Esther commanded, giving another thrust of the revolver into her back to prompt Leo to move.

As she walked ahead, the danger of the situation pressed in on her from all sides. No one knew where she was. She had no weapon to defend herself. And she presumed she was about to meet again the man who’d abducted her a few days ago.

Defeatism and panic weren’t going to help her, however. Leo had been in a few tight spots before, and she’d managed to use her wits to ease herself out of them. Then again, during those times, she had been with Jasper.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked Esther, if only to escape her own spiraling thoughts.

They’d reached the stage, where wine-red brocade curtains had been drawn together to hide a view of the house seats.

Esther didn’t answer. Instead, once they’d crossed the stage to another narrow back corridor, Leo was ordered to turn right.

Straight ahead, the opening to a spiral stairwell led down to the pit under the stage, she presumed.

To the left, a door was open to another room, already bright with lamplight.

Esther shepherded her into this room, which appeared to be an office.

Inside, they joined Paula Blickson and George Hayes.

The latter, Leo assessed quickly with a spring of her heart.

The boy was seated on an old sofa, his eyes slightly unfocused as he peered at her.

He did not flinch when Esther slammed the office door shut behind them.

“George? Are you all right?” Leo went toward him, but Paula, who’d been at the desk counting a stack of bank notes, darted forward.

“Stay away from him!” she shrieked.

Leo pulled back, and Paula sent an alarmed stare toward Esther. “Aunt, what are you doing? Who is this woman?”

“Did you dose the boy with laudanum?” Leo asked. To subdue him, perhaps? To keep him from running away.

“This is the nosy woman detective I told you about,” Esther replied, remaining in front of the closed door. “I saw her through the lobby windows while I was waiting for you to return. She recognized you and followed you to the alley gate.”

The little flutter of pride that Esther Goodwin had referred to her as a detective was poorly timed, but Leo felt it, nonetheless.

Paula’s wide brown eyes looked pointedly at the revolver in her aunt’s hand. “But why did you bring her in here? And what are you doing with that thing?”

“I couldn’t allow her to leave, could I?” Esther hissed. “She found you. Followed you.”

Paula had yet to remove her hat and gloves, and there were three large carpetbags in addition to the smaller one Leo had seen her carrying outside on the street. It was into this smaller bag that Paula stashed the thick pile of bank notes. They were leaving London, and very soon, it appeared.

On the sofa, George shifted forward, elbows coming to rest upon his knees. “Is that a gun?”

Esther lowered the weapon to her side, hiding it behind her skirt. She was holding it with her left hand. The masked leader of the robbers had been left-handed as well.

“Felix is left-handed too,” Leo said, recalling his shooting hand from the benefit dinner. She met Esther’s eyes. “Is that the weapon your son used to kill your sister?”

The older woman’s hateful stare scalded Leo.

She started to raise the revolver, no doubt to aim it at her.

After flicking her gleaming eyes toward George on the sofa, however, Esther tucked it back behind her again.

Her hesitation spurred on Leo. It wouldn’t do to back down now.

The few times Leo had been in treacherous situations, she’d had to be bold.

She’d had to take chances. This time would be no different, even without Jasper close at hand.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” Esther said tersely.

“I believe I know quite well.” Leo looked toward Paula. She stood protectively next to the sofa, where George still sat, his interest in the situation visibly battling the administered laudanum dose.

“Mrs. Blickson, when did you learn that your mother had sold Edward to Stanley Hayes? I’m guessing it was shortly after you met George at the dinner Stanley and his wife hosted for your husband and you.”

Paula’s mouth opened, then closed again. Her stunned reaction quickly melted into tight-lipped fury.

“You went to see Martha,” Leo went on. “And she what? Confessed?”

“Stop speaking this instant, Miss Spencer!” Esther ordered, but Leo had no intention of obeying.

This woman planned to kill her. Being accommodating would get her nowhere.

Besides, George’s presence was a layer of protection.

Esther did not want him to view her as a killer. She wanted him to like her. Trust her.

Leo believed she knew why.

“She laughed.” Paula’s voice trembled. “My mother laughed and said I was overreacting. She insisted that I’d known about the adoption all along, and if I hadn’t, then I was stupid.”

“You did suspect he was taken, though,” Leo said.

“How do you know this?”

“Your brother, Gavin. I spoke to him.”

Paula fluttered her lashes shut and shook her head. “Yes, I suspected it, but what could I do? Edward was gone. There was no proof of what had happened to him. But she had no right to give him away!”

“No, she didn’t have the right, did she?” Leo said. “Because Edward wasn’t her son to give away. He was yours.”

Tears rushed to Paula’s eyes, and her lips quivered.

Martha had not possessed a mole on her face like the one Paula and George shared, and siblings generally did not share matching birthmarks. That left only one possibility.

“Edward.” George blinked slowly. “That was me. I was stolen.”

These weren’t questions, but rather they were statements. The boy knew the truth. Had he come here with them willingly, then?

“You were adopted, yes,” Leo said. “And I am working with your father to find you and bring you home.”

“That man is not his father!” Esther snapped, her teeth practically bared in a snarl. “Paula, take Edward into the alley. Wait for me there. I won’t be long.”

Indecisiveness swept the tearful anger from Paula’s face. She didn’t move to follow her aunt’s order.

“Nurse Radcliff arranged for the adoption of Edward by the Hayeses,” Leo continued, needing to keep Paula here.

“Edward was only a few months old. You were still nursing him at the orphanage, I suspect, so the nurse knew the truth. And she and your mother decided that your baby would be better off with another family.”

At just fourteen years old, Paula had certainly not been prepared to mother a child. But the cruelty of having her son taken away, of being told that he had died, must have been crippling, even for a girl of her young age.

“She didn’t want him,” Paula cried, her voice strident as she battled a sob. “She didn’t even want me and Gavin. When she put us in that place, she promised I’d be able to take Edward with me when I left. I had two years. Just two years, and then, I could be his mum.”

On the sofa, George buried his forehead in his hands as though wanting to rub away an ache. They must have given him just enough laudanum to keep him compliant while they traveled from London to Scotland.

“When I discovered the truth and went to her, do you know what that hideous woman told me?” Paula demanded, voice trembling. “She said she’d done me a favor, and now that I’d married rich, I should pay her back .”

Money seemed to have been Martha Seabright’s prime obsession.

She’d been blackmailing Stanley Hayes for years, after all.

How bitter she must have felt when Paula married a man of high social standing and considerable wealth.

Especially since, without Martha’s decision all those years ago to sell her son, Archibald Blickson never would have considered Paula a suitable wife.

“There is no need to tell Miss Spencer any of this,” Esther said, her pinched scowl deepening. “It is none of her business.”

“It became my business when your son murdered a woman sitting next to me at the benefit dinner. He then threatened to do the same to me,” Leo replied sharply.

“Murdered?” George tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. The boy fell back onto the cushions, Paula catching his arm to steady him.