Page 17 of Method of Revenge (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #2)

Chapter Seventeen

A n exodus was underway at the wallpaper factory when Jasper and Lewis arrived. Employees spilled from the factory yard into the street, their workday completed. There were no constables present to keep out reporters, but from the look of it, no reporters were angling to get in either. A woman’s body had been found that morning, and yet, time had already marched on.

The front door was locked, so they went into the factory yard, moving against the tide of employees. The foreman, Mr. Bridges, was conversing with a few lingering men but waved them off when he noticed him and his detective sergeant approaching.

“Is there something more, detectives?” he asked. “As you can see, the workers are dispersing. If you want to speak to them, they won’t be back until the start of next week.”

“We’d like another word with David Henderson,” Jasper said.

The foreman waved them into the factory with a nod. “He’s in his office, as far as I know.”

Jasper and Lewis passed through a storage room that was chock-full of cylindrical containers prepared for shipping and delivery.

“My wife says she wants new coverings for our walls,” Lewis remarked as they moved out of the room into a long corridor.

“So long as you avoid those papers with Scheele’s green pigment in them,” Jasper warned, passing the canteen and turning up a set of stairs toward the office where he’d spoken to David Henderson the previous day.

“Too posh for my purse anyhow,” Lewis replied. “And after all that about the poisoned kiddies, I wouldn’t trust the wall coverings around my own little ones.”

On the way to Wapping, Jasper had informed the detective sergeant about the Nelsons and their possible connection to Gabriela Carter’s murder. Possibly because the idea had originated with Leo, Lewis seemed less convinced that Miss Geary was, in fact, Mrs. Nelson. But he agreed that the Nelsons had strong motive to avenge their children’s deaths.

Briefly, he and Lewis had stopped in the telegraph room at Scotland Yard before leaving for Henderson now that Jasper had seen him, he’d been able to provide a description of the suspect as well.

“I’ll stick to a clean limewash,” Lewis went on. “Nothing wrong with?—”

At the sound of a thud, then a muffled cry, Jasper held up a hand. Lewis went silent.

“Stop! I’m telling you, that’s not how it is!”

David’s panicked voice reached through the door to his office just ahead. Jasper rushed toward it while reaching for his revolver holstered at his ribs. Without knocking, he barged in.

Andrew Carter was leaning against David’s desk, his arms and ankles crossed, while one of the men he’d bought to Scotland Yard for his questioning pinned David’s arms behind his back. The second hired man whirled toward Jasper and Lewis, his meaty fist clenched and streaked with blood. David’s lip had been split, as had his brow.

“Inspector!” he wheezed, as though trying to recover from a punch to the gut. “Thank God, Inspector, tell them. Tell them I had nothing to do with it!”

“Release him,” Jasper ordered, his palm on his police-issued weapon. He watched for any movement from Andrew or his muscle men, but all the East Rip did was grin and snap his fingers.

David collapsed to the floor, landing on his knees as the man holding him backed away.

“What in hell are you doing, Carter?” Jasper asked, not yet convinced it was safe to remove his hand from his Webley.

Andrew pushed off the desk to stand tall. “Just some family business with my brother-in-law. Nothing to concern yourself with, Inspector Reid.”

“I am concerned just the same, so explain yourself,” he said.

David staggered to his feet and scurried to the other side of his office. “He has it in his warped mind that I had something to do with my sister’s murder.”

“Why would he think that?” Jasper asked.

Andrew ambled toward his two men, joining them perhaps to have their protection. “It’s simple,” he said smoothly. “Gabriela told me her brother was having an affair with his secretary and that she’d threatened to tell his wife unless he put an end to it. Now I hear his secretary is dead.”

“Is this true?” Lewis asked David. His hand was also still resting on his weapon, which he kept holstered at his hip.

David’s expression folded. “Yes. Gabby knew, and she did say I needed to end things, or she would tell Celia, but I would never have killed my sister?—”

“No, just your mistress when she revealed she was carrying your child,” Jasper said.

Slowly, he took his hand from his revolver. He didn’t trust Andrew Carter or his men, but they were here on the same task, it seemed.

“Never! I didn’t kill Regina!” He gripped the edge of his desk, leaning upon it for support. “And I didn’t know she was carrying my child. She left a note on my desk, which said she could no longer work at her position here, and I never saw or heard from her again. I certainly had no idea she was dead!”

Andrew took slow steps back toward the desk. “What happened, David? Did Gabriela know what you did? That you bashed in Regina’s skull to keep her from going to your wife?”

David scuttled further behind his desk, stammering a denial. “No, she knew nothing because I had done nothing!”

“Stand down, Carter,” Jasper warned. Andrew raised his hands, as if to say he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

But he’d almost certainly come here to force a confession from his brother-in-law, then mete out his own punishment. Jasper would make sure that didn’t happen.

“You admit to the affair,” he said to David, who nodded. “Were you aware that Andrea Geary suspected the affair too?”

David closed his eyes, and exhaling, nodded again. “Regina and I, we were here late one evening. We thought everyone had gone for the night, but on her way out, Regina ran into Miss Geary and a man. A beau, Regina thought.”

Jasper wondered about this beau. Might it have been Mr. Nelson?

“Why would seeing Regina have been suspicious to Miss Geary?” Lewis asked.

Shamefaced, David answered, “She alerted Regina to the fact that her blouse’s buttons weren’t properly aligned.”

Observing that Regina had stayed late with her employer and afterward appeared rumpled, Miss Geary had made the correct assumption. However, Leo said Miss Geary confessed to seeing David refresh a vase of flowers every few days on Regina’s desk; she hadn’t made a peep about this much more obvious after-hours encounter.

“Two mornings later, Regina left her note,” David said with a helpless shrug. “I didn’t see her again.”

“And now, this other secretary’s turned up dead,” Andrew Carter said, his tone sharpening. “Bashed-in skull, just like Regina’s. And only one day after Scotland Yard came here asking questions. Admit it, Davy, you panicked.”

David slammed his hands flat onto the desk he hid behind. “No! I haven’t bashed in any skulls, and I didn’t poison my sister!”

Andrew made a whirling motion with his fingers, and the two hired men bristled to attention. “I don’t believe you.”

“Tell your brutes to stand down,” Jasper ordered, his palm going to his Webley again. “I’m investigating these murders, Carter, not you. I’m aware they’re connected, but I don’t believe your brother-in-law is behind them. Not anymore.”

He had, especially when David lied to Lewis about being at dinner with his father for a short while the previous evening.

“Mr. Henderson, what can you tell me about Terrence Nelson?”

David stared blankly at Jasper. “Who?”

“The father of the two tots who sucked on your company’s wallpaper and died,” Lewis said. “Arsenic poisoning.”

His expression soured. “My goodness. Why do you ask about that horrid business?”

“Because I have reason to believe Andrea Geary was, in fact, Mrs. Evelyn Nelson, the mother of the toddlers,” Jasper answered.

David’s squinting eyes grew round and large, while Andrew Carter whistled, as if amused. Jasper’s irritation with him only increased.

“Why would… No, that’s impossible. Miss Geary, she…she wasn’t married,” David said, tripping over his words.

“I’m betting Mr. Nelson was the beau Regina Morris saw on the night she stayed late,” Lewis said as he caught on.

“He didn’t like being seen,” Jasper said, nodding. “Maybe he thought Regina had heard or discovered something she shouldn’t have.”

“Like their plan of revenge,” Lewis concluded solemnly. “He believed he had to get rid of her.”

David raised his hand. “Revenge for what? Father settled their claim. I was there. The man received one hundred pounds, a princely sum for a man of his class.”

Jasper nearly recoiled. David spoke as though the children of certain men were less valuable than others. As different to his father as David Henderson had seemed to be, he was still very much cut from the same cloth.

Andrew Carter scoffed. “Their tots were still dead though, weren’t they? I’d stuff my pockets full of your daddy’s money and still slit his throat.”

“No, it wasn’t enough for Jack Henderson to suffer his own death,” Jasper said. “The Nelsons wanted him to suffer what they had—the deaths of his children. David, I’m assuming you and your father dealt solely with Mr. Nelson, not his wife?”

He confirmed it with a nod. “But Miss Geary? Truly? She tricked her way in here to…to kill Gabby and me?”

Andrew rolled his neck, stretching it side to side in the manner Jasper had seen boxers do in the ring before a fight. “That’s devious. If my wife hadn’t been the target, I’d appreciate that level of treachery.” He walked toward a sofa and a table of decanted spirits nearby. It would be where David sat down with other businessmen, plied them with liquor, and made all sorts of deals. It might have even been where Mr. Nelson sat when he’d signed away his right to ever seek justice for his children’s deaths.

“If the woman wasn’t already dead, I’d do the honors,” Andrew said, picking up a glass decanter and pouring himself a liberal splash. “As it is, I’ll have to settle for her husband. Inspector, I trust you’ve reached the same conclusion as me: Nelson was the one dressed in Bloom’s livery that night.”

He was big , Andrew had said, his recollection of the waiter vague. His hands barely fit into the white gloves. Jasper shifted his sore jaw. Terrence Nelson’s hands matched that description well.

He agreed with Andrew, but he refused to utter it aloud.

“I’m arresting Mr. Nelson and sending him to trial,” he said instead. “He’ll hang for his crimes?—”

“I’ll gut him before he gets to Scotland Yard,” Andrew said, raising his glass in a toast.

The door to the office suddenly burst open, and Jasper’s hand went to his Webley again. He swore under his breath as he saw Leo standing within the frame, her hand still on the knob.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he thundered.

“Thank goodness,” she breathed heavily, flushed as if she’d sprinted to the factory all the way from Spring Street. “We must leave the building—now! I found a confession in Mrs. Nelson’s bodice.”

“A confession to what?” Lewis asked.

But Jasper was more interested in the reason for Leo’s frenzied state. “Why do we need to leave the building?”

“She didn’t want to kill Gabriela and David; that was her husband’s plan. She argued against it, saying they needed to destroy the wallpaper , not two people who had nothing to do with their children’s deaths. The book on her bedside table, Jasper!”

He vaguely recalled it. “A guide of some sort,” he said. “About mining?”

“A guide to handling dynamite for coal miners, yes. I overlooked it at the time because I cared more about the photograph you found between the pages. But now it makes perfect sense. Hurry, we need to leave before?—”

A deafening roar silenced Leo and shook the floor. Jasper’s legs disappeared from underneath him as a cracking blast shuddered through his teeth and wiped out his hearing. He reached for Leo, but the ceiling came down, and she was gone.