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Chapter Sixteen

T he lumps in the armchair kept Leo awake most of the night. So did worry. Though Claude had been certain Jasper didn’t have internal injuries, he’d expressed concern for the state of his head.

“He is in and out of consciousness,” Claude informed her, when she’d reentered Jasper’s bedroom several minutes after leaving hastily.

She wasn’t sure what had come over her, openly undoing his shirt buttons like that.

Even in his deplorable condition, Jasper had known to stop her from undressing him further.

“I don’t believe his skull is fractured, but it is possible his brain might swell if it was injured badly enough in the beating,” Claude explained.

She’d approached the bed, her stomach cramping at the sight of the fresh sutures closing his gashed brow, the purpling bruises on his stomach, and those peeking out from his cotton linen-wrapped chest. The helpless panic was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

“How will we know if that happens?” she’d asked, and the answer—seizures—had only exacerbated her worry.

Claude said he’d check on Jasper hourly throughout the night, but Leo had stayed awake too.

When she’d found her uncle sleeping on the guest bedroom’s slipper sofa, with Flora snoring softly in the bed, she’d decided to keep watch over Jasper herself.

Each time she eased him awake, he’d murmur nonsense, still half asleep even though his eyes were open.

She’d felt his forehead countless times, checking for fever.

Her eyes had grown hot and dry, her mind muddled as she forced herself to stay awake, watching for any sign of a seizure.

At some point before dawn, she must have drifted to sleep anyway. She now shook herself awake at the sound of her name.

“Leo?”

She winced at a crick in her neck and a tightness in her legs as she straightened them. She’d tucked them underneath her as she slept, slumped against the broad wing of the armchair.

Jasper was sitting up in bed, the sheet and blanket around his waist. It was reminiscent of how she’d found him when she’d entered this room a few months ago at dawn, the same muted morning light coming through the gaps in the curtains.

She’d been too single-minded in that moment to allow his undressed state to affect her.

Now, however, the impropriety of it came at her from all directions.

“Did you sleep in that lumpy chair?” he asked, his voice cracking. Mrs. Zhao had left some water in a glass by his bed. He reached for it, groaning as he did.

“I didn’t intend to.” She got to her feet, blinking rapidly and trying not to stare at his bare skin. Especially not at the scar on his upper left pectoral. She’d inflicted it long ago with the jagged shard from her china doll.

He lowered the glass and sat back against the headboard, breathing heavily as though already fatigued. His left eye was swollen and discolored, his split lower lip starting to scab.

“How is your head?” she asked, averting her attention from his chest and the welts and contusions on the well-defined planes of his abdomen.

“Ask again tomorrow. I might have a more favorable answer.”

“I’ll fetch my uncle,” she said, eager to leave the room.

“Wait.” Jasper shoved off the blanket and tried to stand.

“What are you doing? Sit back down at once.” She charged toward him as the blanket dropped. At least he was wearing trousers this time.

“I can stand just fine.” He did, though with some assistance; he gripped the edge of his bedside table. “You need to stop looking into anything having to do with the Yard bombing.”

His concern was understandable. His attack last night was a result of their visit to Mrs. Stewart. “But we don’t know if the Angels don’t want you asking questions about Niles Foster, or if they don’t want you asking questions about Mrs. Bates’s connection to them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jasper replied. “I don’t want them paying you a visit the way they did me.”

“I was with you yesterday,” she reasoned. “If they’d wanted to threaten me, they would have by now.”

He gritted his teeth. “Leo. Just…stop. This is serious.”

“I’m aware of that. I did find you unconscious on the kitchen floor, if you recall. And I stayed up all night, fearful that your brain would swell!”

A knock landed on the open door. Claude stood there, peering between them. “I’m quite sure the Inspector’s head could do without you raising your voice, my dear.” He came inside the bedroom. “I’m glad to see you’re up. Leonora, you should have woken me during the night.”

She gathered her temper, sorry that she’d shouted at Jasper. A little, anyway. “I didn’t want to bother Aunt Flora.”

Her aunt had been confused about where they were last evening, even though she’d been to the Charles Street house several times over the years. It wasn’t their regular routine, though. Mrs. Zhao had helped to calm her, and after adding a little brandy to her tea, Flora had fallen asleep easily.

Claude checked Jasper’s head, including both pupils, and pressed lightly on his injuries, eliciting a muffled curse in response.

“You look worse than you are,” her uncle announced. “Your head should feel better in a few days, but with a concussion like that, you’ll need to be cautious not to overdo things. Just go slowly.”

The advice was sound, but Leo knew Jasper wouldn’t heed it. Going slowly and not overdoing things simply weren’t in his blood.

Jasper thanked him, and Claude announced that he would be taking Flora back to Duke Street before going to the morgue. He eyed Leo over the rim of his spectacles. “We’ll wait for you downstairs, my dear.”

She would go with them, of course, as she was still in her dress from the day before.

“You’ll stay at home today?” she asked Jasper after her uncle was gone.

He started toward the tall bureau. “No. I need to get to the Yard and let Chief Coughlan know what happened.”

Leo imagined the whole of Scotland Yard would wish to know why the detective inspector looked like he’d lost a boxing match to an opponent twice his size, which Jasper would loathe explaining.

“You heard my uncle,” she said. “You must take things easy today.” But it wouldn’t change his mind. He was too stubborn.

“I have a murder investigation,” he said, moving stiffly to the wardrobe.

“Your only lead is a man named Olaf, who works for the Angels,” she pointed out. “You truly mean to press forward with contacting them? Jasper, you were nearly killed last night.”

He pulled a pressed and starched white shirt from a hanger. With slow movements, mindful of his injuries, he slid his arms into the sleeves. The sight of him dressing slammed into her with fresh impropriety.

“If they’d wanted me dead, they would have either gutted me or put a bullet in my head. Besides, I have another lead.”

The blithe description of how they might have killed him made her feel ill. But the mention of another lead lit her interest. “What lead?”

Jasper began to do up the shirt buttons. Warmth gathered under her skin. She really ought not to have been watching him dress.

“A bank,” he said.

“Which bank?”

“Despite my being concussed, I’m not addled enough to tell you.” He sent a wry glance in her direction. “But it’s possible Foster visited it shortly before he died, and I’d like to know why.”

Leo wasn’t sure it would lead to anything. The man had been penniless. He’d likely wanted to borrow money. But she kept the pessimistic thought to herself.

“Claude is waiting for me,” she said, moving to leave. “He doesn’t want to be late to the morgue today. He has a new assistant. Mr. Quinn.”

Jasper pulled at his collar. “That can’t be good.”

He knew of Claude’s infirmity and that any assistant would be watching him closely.

“It isn’t. Mr. Quinn is fresh out of medical school and just so happens to be the chief coroner’s grandson.

” The man had been infuriating the evening before, pointing out that she wasn’t being paid and assuming she would wish to work for a wage.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. She did want paid work— at the morgue .

She’d avoided Mr. Quinn for the last few hours of the day, searching the vast crypt for the boxes containing her family’s belongings.

The trouble was that Claude couldn’t quite recall where he’d stashed them.

Leo had gone through piles and piles of detritus before hearing Mrs. Zhao’s voice upstairs, shouting for help.

“Please be careful today,” she told Jasper as she stepped into the corridor. He nodded.

“And Leo?” She glanced back into his room. “Thank you.” He hooked a thumb at the armchair. “For keeping vigil and putting up with that lumpy relic.”

She smothered a grin and went to meet her aunt and uncle in the foyer.

Mr. Quinn attended Claude during three postmortem examinations before noon.

Leo did as well, much to the young man’s discomfort.

During the first, in which she stood unflinching as Claude removed the dead man’s clothing, Mr. Quinn blushed furiously.

He even asked her if she might be more at ease stepping out until the deed was done.

“Mr. Quinn, do you suppose I have never seen a naked dead body in all the years I’ve worked here?” she’d asked, slightly pleased by the additional splotches of red appearing on his cheeks. Mr. Higgins, Claude’s past apprentice, had not been embarrassed by her presence—just irritated.

Mr. Quinn had spluttered, turning a deeper shade of tomato red. “Surely, this poor fellow would not wish for a young woman to look upon him in this state.”

Claude had not been able to interject before Leo replied, “As he is deceased, I’m not convinced he would care who looks at him now, man or woman.”