Page 5 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)
Chapter Three
L eo shoved open the door to the police station and staggered inside. The small constabulary had been her destination as soon as she realized where the criminals had let her out: within the vast cricket lawns and woods of Battersea Park.
The storm winds had brought pockets of briny air, so Leo had known she was close to the Thames.
Walking past a boating lake and well-manicured cricket and croquet grounds, she’d come to guess her location.
Then, upon clearing the wooded perimeter of the park and coming out onto Albert Road, her guess was confirmed.
Battersea was part of Division V, something she knew thanks to the Metropolitan Police divisions map she’d seen on countless occasions in the Inspector’s office at Scotland Yard—and something she recalled easily due to her peculiar memory.
As with nearly everything Leo viewed, the framed map that had hung upon Gregory Reid’s office wall had been stored in her mind as an exact image.
Once she realized she was in Battersea, she pulled up the image of the map and looked at it once again, the details as clear and precise as if she were standing before the real thing.
There were times when her photographic memory could be overwhelming, and times when it made her feel somewhat of an oddity.
But as she used the map’s guidance to point her in the direction of the closest constabulary station, that on Battersea Bridge Road, Leo was grateful for her brain’s uncommon quirk.
It didn’t solve the problem of her empty pockets though.
She hadn’t even a halfpenny to hire a cab to get her to the constabulary station.
Nothing but a dinner knife in her pocket, which she kept her fingers wrapped around as she walked through the ceaseless rain and wind toward the busier streets of Battersea.
It was mostly middle-class there, so Leo didn’t feel particularly threatened, but the few times she hailed a passing cab, the drivers had either passed her by or demanded she show them the fare upfront.
Her sodden appearance had surely left them in doubt that she would be able to afford it.
When she tried to explain her situation, they drove on.
Now, as the station door shut behind her, Leo felt like collapsing in exhaustion into one of the vacant chairs pushed against the wall. However, given the gaping looks she received from the two officers on duty, she stayed on her feet.
“Good evening,” she said. They continued to stare, agog.
She did appear rather alarming. The hem of her gown sent rivulets of water onto the tiled floor; her shoes were encased in mud and utterly ruined; her hair, which had been pinned up into a fashionable twist, now hung in dark, sopping hanks around her shoulders.
At least the blood that had sprayed her face when Mrs. Seabright was shot, had likely been cleansed away in the rain.
“What’s happened to you then, miss?” one of the officers asked as he stood. He’d been lounging in his chair, boots up on the desk.
“It’s a long and complicated story, but I need you to wire Scotland Yard,” she said, jaw chattering. Despite it being late June, the temperature had fallen since sunset. Drenched as she was, the night air left her cold.
The two police officers—a constable and a sergeant by their uniform insignias—exchanged a look of amusement. The sergeant crossed his arms over his chest. “Scotland Yard, is it? Are you sure you don’t need me to wire Buckingham Palace, too, while I’m at it?”
The two men shared a chuckle. She’d expected she might face some questioning and remained calm.
“I understand it’s an unusual request, but I assure you, the police are looking for me.
” At the new arching of their brows, she explained, “I was taken from a benefit dinner where a woman was killed. There were Met officers in attendance and city police, too, and they will be out searching for me right now. Please, if you’d wire Scotland Yard?—”
“I think you’ve tipped back a few too many glasses of sherry tonight, miss. Why don’t you take a seat over there and calm yourself,” the sergeant said, gesturing to one of the chairs against the wall.
Leo glared, insulted. “I am not intoxicated, Sergeant. If you wire the Yard, you will find that what I’m saying is true.”
As the constable, still lounging at his desk, snorted a laugh, and the sergeant rolled his eyes, a surge of helplessness descended over her.
At Scotland Yard, there were plenty of officers who did not like her or approve of her presence.
However, at least there, she never would have been dismissed so cavalierly.
It made her feel utterly powerless. And that was unacceptable.
Leo clenched her hands into fists and squared her shivering shoulders. “You must wire Detective Inspector Jasper Reid at the Yard. Tell him Miss Leonora Spencer is here at your station.”
The sergeant gave a weary sigh. “Oh, I must? And why is that?”
If the truth wasn’t going to sway him, perhaps a lie would. A bold one. She set her chin. “Because I’ve killed someone, and I’d like to confess to the murder.”
The musty blanket was thin and riddled with holes, but it was at least dry and would help ward off the chill.
Leo pulled it tighter around her shoulders as she sat on the wooden bench in her cell.
All in all, the Battersea station prison wasn’t the worst place Leo could have spent the night.
It was vastly preferable to being outdoors in the wind and rain, for instance.
After the police sergeant locked her inside a small cell, the rain had intensified, pelting the roof relentlessly.
Rolling thunder shook the skies, and lightning flashed, illuminating the slim corridor outside the cell.
There were only two holding cells in this small constabulary, and thankfully, there was a solid stone wall between hers and the one next door. Unfortunately, it wasn’t vacant.
“Who we got there, eh?” a man had slurred as the sergeant escorted Leo toward her cell.
“Mind your tongue, Ralph,” the sergeant replied.
But as the officer was under the impression that Leo was a murderess, he didn’t admonish Ralph, who appeared to be soused, for the whistles and love ballads he commenced singing.
Hours passed. Leo sat restless, in mounting doubt that the sergeant had telegraphed Scotland Yard as she’d requested. He’d asked whom she’d killed, but she replied that she would not speak to anyone but Detective Inspector Jasper Reid of Scotland Yard. It hadn’t made him happy.
She whiled away the time by thinking of the letters she’d been writing.
One was to her good friend, Nivedita Brooks, who’d left London for the summer to stay with an aunt in Birmingham.
Leo missed her terribly but understood Dita’s need to grieve the loss of her beau, Police Constable John Lloyd, in solitude.
He’d been killed in the bombing outside Scotland Yard in May.
The second letter had been to Mrs. Geraldine Stewart, who had also left London for a while, though Leo suspected she would not return.
Her women’s suffrage group, the Women’s Equality Alliance, had dissolved after she’d been wrongfully accused of murder, and it had not recovered even with her release from police custody.
The scandal had cost her husband, Porter Stewart, his reputation too, though Leo reckoned his bribing a member of Parliament into supporting his bid to run for MP had been the real reason for his ruin.
Geraldine’s choice to stay with her husband had baffled Leo; he’d deceived her in more ways than one.
But she had kept up correspondence over the last few weeks from their country home in Kent, and Leo supposed her choices were her own to make.
Leo’s clothing had started to dry, as had her hair, but she was still freezing. After fighting the urge for a while, she was forced to relieve herself in the crude bucket placed in the corner of the cell, the blanket held up in front of her for some semblance of privacy.
Ralph’s muttered songs and loud belches had softened to drunken snores, and the thunder and rain had tapered significantly, when a commotion resounded from the front of the station.
Leo sat taller, listening. A man’s familiar deep tenor fired up her spine, and she shot from the bench toward the bars of her cell door.
Two months ago, when she’d been held overnight at Scotland Yard by a truculent Special Irish Branch detective inspector, Jasper had been the one to free her then; as the voices and footfalls approached the back corridor of the Battersea station, she was both humiliated and relieved that he had come for her now too.
The sergeant appeared in the corridor, jostling a lantern and a ring of keys. Jasper was close on his heels, his suit from that evening rumpled, his tie loose, and his expression tight with fury. When he saw her, he exhaled visibly and closed his eyes.
“Thank God,” he breathed out. “Sergeant, open that door.”
“But, sir, she’s confessed to a murder.”
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Leo told the officer, shivering again. “It was the only way I could get you to contact the Yard.”
“ Sergeant ,” Jasper barked. He didn’t need to say anything more. The sergeant found the key and unlocked the cell door, its hinges groaning as he swung it wide.
Leo hadn’t taken two steps out before Jasper gripped her arms. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, but again, her teeth had started to chatter.
“You’re freezing.” He spun to glare at the sergeant. “Is this how you treat your prisoners? By throwing them into a cold cell and leaving them to catch their death?”
Leo touched Jasper’s elbow. “As much as I’d enjoy listening to you scold the sergeant, I’d much rather go home.”
Jasper kept his arm around her as he pushed past the stunned policeman, now appropriately cowed, and swiftly led her from the station.