Page 40 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)
Chapter Twenty-One
J asper sat on the edge of the bench seat inside the hired coach, every muscle in his body coiled. He’d been to the Blickson residence, where Paula’s husband had confirmed that Leo had already come and gone that morning.
“A very odd young woman. She was quite forthright with her questions,” he’d said, then shrugged. “However, as she is working with Scotland Yard, I suppose that is required.”
At this, Lewis and Warnock had flicked Jasper questioning glances. He’d ignored them and asked if Mr. Blickson knew where Leo had gone after she’d left his residence.
“She was searching for my wife, as you are,” he’d replied. Jasper had waited impatiently for him to continue. “But when I mentioned Mrs. Blickson’s cousin, Felix Goodwin, she took a larger interest in him.”
If Leo had taken an interest in Felix, there must have been good cause. And when the older gentleman had finally come around to telling them that Felix was the manager of a theatre, Jasper had understood exactly what Leo had deduced.
“The beards,” he said to Lewis.
The detective sergeant had cursed. “The masked men that night…you don’t suppose they were actors from this theatre?”
After another minute of struggling to wrangle the location of Felix’s theatre from Mr. Blickson, they had departed with all haste. Stanley and Oliver Hayes had been waiting on the pavement outside.
“Well? Is George here?” Stanley asked as he craned his head toward the front door to see.
“No,” Jasper reported, then, without pause, climbed back into the waiting coach. “Follow us,” he commanded them.
Now, several minutes later, as they came upon the Epoch Theatre, Jasper’s raw nerves jumped.
If Leo had come here, entering the theatre by herself would have been asinine.
She’d have recognized the danger of it, surely.
She must have put together the possibility that Felix Goodwin was the leader of the masked men; she was far too perceptive not to have done.
He leapt down from the coach and went straight to the front door. It was locked.
Oliver and Stanley’s carriage drew to a stop along the curb. “Why have you led us here?” Oliver asked as he descended to the pavement.
“I have reason to believe Paula Blickson is associated with this place,” Jasper explained as he peered through one of the theatre’s filthy windows. He couldn’t see far inside but made out a ticket booth, queue posts, and ropes.
“Help! Somebody! Police!”
Jasper turned away from the window to see a woman running out of the alley next to the theatre—it was Paula Blickson. And with her was an adolescent boy.
“George!” Oliver shouted, breaking into a run toward them.
Paula’s chin quivered. Reluctantly, she released George’s arm so he could hurry to meet his cousin, and then, as Stanley shot like a bullet from the carriage, his father. As relieved as Jasper was to see the boy unharmed, the knot of dread in his stomach remained.
“Where is Miss Spencer?” he asked Paula as he took swift strides toward the corner of the building.
Paula’s tear-filled eyes were wide with fear as she pointed toward an open alley gate. “In the theatre, under the stage. I’m supposed to be sending a constable. I’m so sorry. Felix, he’s in there too, and my aunt has a gun, and?—”
“Lewis, with me. Warnock, detain Mrs. Blickson in the carriage. Oliver, stay with George,” Jasper ordered before darting through the alley gate.
“He’ll have gone in through the rear door!” Paula called after him.
Jasper would sort out why the woman was helping him later, but clearly, it was Felix Goodwin and his mother who were the dangerous parties. Jasper sprinted down the alley, Lewis’s footfalls directly behind him. They came first to an open door in the side of the building.
“Go in through here. Find your way to beneath the stage. We’ll come at him from two sides,” Jasper told the detective sergeant. “Have your Webley at the ready. And watch out for the old woman.”
Lewis withdrew his police-issued revolver and disappeared into the building.
Jasper kept moving to where the alley forked, his revolver already drawn.
As Paula had advised, he found another door at the back leading into the theatre.
It had been left wide open. Jasper approached, and an indiscernible voice emanated from within.
He crossed the threshold into a narrow corridor, his revolver raised; to his immediate right, a stairwell of curving steps led down into a darkened space.
“I shouldn’t have been so generous the first time we met, Miss Spencer.”
Felix Goodwin was down below. No reply came. Jasper deduced Leo was either incapacitated or hiding.
Light from the open rear door poured down the stairwell, but it wouldn’t stretch far. Descending the steps would put Jasper directly into view, making him an easy target for Felix. But he could not stay up here when Leo was in danger down below.
“Imagine my surprise when I saw you at Scotland Yard,” the man continued, his voice having drifted further away. Leo was hiding, Jasper was now certain.
He drew a deep breath and started down the spiral stairs. He kept his footfalls as light as possible to prevent the iron steps from announcing his presence.
“My mother warned me. Said you were meddlesome,” Felix called out, masking an errant squeal of the iron steps.
“You may as well come out from wherever you’re hiding,” he went on. “I know I am close. I can trace your scent. Honeysuckle, is it?”
Jasper reached the bottom of the staircase, still bathed in light from the open door above.
His eyes latched onto movement ahead—the back of a man’s head and shoulders, the rest of his body blocked from view by a couple of stacked crates.
As if sensing another person’s presence in the space below stage, Felix whipped around to see Jasper, already aiming his weapon.
“Hands in the air, Goodwin!”
The man darted from his view. Jasper sprang forward in pursuit, though as he left the pool of light from above, he knew the dark would be dangerous. Felix was familiar with this space; he would know where to hide or how to escape.
“The theatre is surrounded, Goodwin,” Jasper called loudly. “We have Paula and George in police custody.”
He stepped carefully, slowly, toward what appeared to be a two-person sleigh.
The stage grates above allowed in some light from the main house, but more light came from farther ahead.
The guttering light of a gas lamp. Felix’s figure darted from behind a large object and toward this source of light.
“Goodwin, stop!”
He didn’t—not of his own volition, at least. Jasper heard a resounding crash, followed by a cry of anguish.
Rushing forward, he found Felix trapped beneath what appeared to be a heavy, wooden hearth mantel.
Repurposed as a stage prop, it had been tipped over.
On the floor, a handful of yards away, was the gas lamp.
The place where the mantel had been stored stood empty.
It seemed unlikely the mantel had fallen over on its own, but Jasper didn’t have a moment to spare thinking on it.
Beneath the stage prop, Felix Goodwin moaned and stirred.
“Guv, have you got him?” Lewis called from the top of the other circular staircase that led below stage too. Lewis tapped down the iron steps quickly, shaking the whole thing and making a ruckus.
Jasper holstered his Webley and removed the pair of handcuffs he always carried in his coat pocket. “Have you seen the old woman?”
“No one’s up here. She must have done a runner. Where’s Miss Spencer?”
That was the question still kinking Jasper’s gut.
“Give me a hand,” he said as he grasped the edge of the toppled mantel. Together, they hefted the heavy wooden prop off Felix. The man groaned and tried to shove up onto all fours, but Jasper jammed his knee into the middle of his back. He went down flat again.
He locked Felix’s wrists into the cuffs. Before he could stand and yank the man to his feet, the telling click of a revolver’s hammer being cocked sounded from behind him. Lewis reached for his holstered weapon, albeit too late.
“Don’t, detective,” came a calm female voice. “Raise your hands high.”
Lewis did, though reluctantly and with a grimace of disgust—perhaps for himself, since he hadn’t seen her sooner.
“And you, Inspector, remove those irons from my son’s wrists.”
Esther Goodwin. Bloody hell.
“I’m not going to do that, Mrs. Goodwin,” he replied, his spine rigid and nerves skittering at knowing a gun was trained on him. “Your son is a murderer, and I am arresting him.”
“Mother, shoot him,” Felix grunted from where the side of his face was pressed to the floor. Jasper’s knee still pinned him in place.
“She won’t.” Jasper twisted his knee, eliciting a squeal of pain from the man he’d pinned. “You’re the killer here, not her.”
Behind him, Esther rasped, “I will do what it takes to protect my son.”
“Is that so? Why, then, didn’t you lead the group of masked robbers into the benefit dinner and shoot your sister in the head?” Jasper queried. “And why didn’t you travel to Twickenham to stab Nurse Radcliff in the back? By the way, Goodwin, you killed the wrong nurse.”
Under Jasper’s knee, the man went notably still.
“You could have spared your son the noose by doing it all yourself, Mrs. Goodwin, but you sent him instead,” Jasper said.
“Loving mum that you are,” Lewis tacked on, his hands still raised in the air.
“But what happened in Gavin Seabright’s room, I wonder,” Jasper mused. “That Harry fellow was pushed. Hit his head. That doesn’t seem like your usual method, Goodwin. But in the end, what’s another murder charge after two?”
“That wasn’t him,” Esther said, her voice no longer calm. It shook.
“Be quiet, Mother,” Felix said, sawing out the words through the pain and humiliation of being pinned to the floor.