Page 19 of Method of Revenge (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #2)

Chapter Nineteen

“ Y ou better have a damn good explanation for that woman’s presence.”

The vein bisecting Detective Chief Inspector Dermot Coughlan’s forehead bulged as he glared daggers at Jasper and Lewis. They stood within the chief’s office, boots planted to the floor, bracing themselves for more of his wrath.

By the time they had returned to the Yard, Coughlan had already been apprised of the explosion at Henderson & Son. But when Jasper explained, in as few words as possible, each one dislodging from his throat with effort, that their main suspect had been apprehended at the hospital, only to escape several minutes later, the chief had gone stone-faced with his fury.

And at the mention of Leonora Spencer, Chief Coughlan’s flinty eyes had blazed.

“Miss Spencer found a letter of confession tucked into Mrs. Nelson’s clothing at the morgue,” Jasper began. “She then came to the factory yard to warn us about the bomb Mrs. Nelson had planted there before she was killed. After the explosion?—”

“You should have sent her home!”

Jasper bucked his chin, as if it had received a blow from the chief’s white-knuckled fist. In the detective department beyond the walls of the chief’s office, all was silent as the other officers, along with the Special Irish Branch, listened. After what had happened, it promised to be an explosive telling-off. They might even be waiting to hear the chief sack Jasper entirely. That most of them wanted that outcome was another stake to Jasper’s chest.

But Coughlan was right. He should have sent Leo away. She shouldn’t have been at the factory in the first place. She hadn’t rushed there only to warn the workers or David Henderson. She’d known that he and Lewis were there, and she’d put her own life in danger by entering the building and seeking them out.

Additionally, her bravery had made a difference in saving the life of Jack Henderson’s son at the hospital.

“If not for Miss Spencer, David Henderson would be dead right now,” Jasper replied, challenging the chief with a direct look. “She is the one who stopped Nelson from poisoning him.”

Turning in a frustrated circle, Coughlan crossed his arms. “Yet, she is also the reason you were forced to hand over your prisoner to another criminal.”

“You would have had me stand by and watch Carter pluck out a woman’s eye?” Jasper shot back. Had Andrew Carter done more than nick Leo’s skin, he would have stopped at nothing to kill him. Even that minor injury made Jasper’s rage tight as a fist inside his chest.

“Not just any woman. Leonora Spencer,” Chief Coughlan spat out her name. “She has been a pox on this department, and don’t think I haven’t read the little story about her in the Illustrated Police News . Assisted in an investigation, did she? Do you know how that makes us look, Reid?”

Next to him, Lewis shifted his footing and tucked his chin. Christ . The detective sergeant probably wished for Jasper’s sacking too.

After Carter and his thugs disappeared with Terrence Nelson, Lewis had drawn his cart to a stop, demanding to know where the devil their prisoner had gone. The only thing Jasper could think about then was how to mitigate the disaster. But that would be impossible. There could be no fixing what had happened.

Nelson was a deranged murderer who’d wanted his revenge so fiercely he’d lost all perspective, all sense and logic. He deserved to die—but at the end of a rope after a judge sentenced him to death. Andrew Carter had usurped the law, taking it into his own hands and delivering his own justice.

And it had made Jasper look like an incompetent police officer in the process.

“A warrant for the arrest of Andrew Carter has already gone out to all divisions, although, unless we find Nelson’s dead body in his presence, we’ll never be able to prove he did more than interfere in an arrest,” Coughlan scoffed. “You’re off this case, Reid. You as well, detective sergeant. I’m handing it over to Timson.”

Jasper withheld a groan, though just barely. The Special Irish Branch detective was a pompous ass and would gloat over his appointment to the case.

“I will not warn you again,” Coughlan went on. “Unless you cease associating with Miss Spencer, you will be dismissed. And not just from the C.I.D. There will be no place for you anywhere within the Met, Reid. Am I understood?”

With a rock settling into his gut, Jasper jerked his chin in a nod.

Coughlan dismissed him and Lewis, and they exited his office into the department room. There, looks of sympathy mixed with cold glowers.

“I’m sorry, Roy,” Jasper said to his detective sergeant, who had taken the chief’s verbal thrashing without a single word spoken in his own defense. “You didn’t deserve to be in there. This is all on me.”

Lewis shrugged, scrubbing a hand along the back of his still-tender head. “I figure Carter could’ve just as easily held me or another officer at the end of his blade, and you would’ve made the same choice.”

It was true. Hypothetically . Though Jasper doubted he would have felt the same precipitous plunge of his stomach as when Andrew’s knife was pressed against Leo’s cheek.

“She’s smart, your Miss Spencer. Smart and plucky, I’ll give her that,” Lewis said. “But the chief’s right. She’s a liability, and if you’re not careful, she’s gonna get you sacked one of these days.”

Jasper made no reply. Lewis deserved to give his opinion without challenge, especially after today. He hadn’t suffered bloody gashes from the explosion at the factory as Jasper had, but he’d taken a wallop on the head from pieces of the falling ceiling. Such an injury could have been deadly.

Besides, Lewis wasn’t entirely wrong about Leo. She was untrained, intractable, and reckless. Yet, she had also been unquestionably integral to deciphering who had poisoned Gabriela Carter and why. Without her, Jasper might not have solved the Jane Doe case or discovered Andrea Geary’s true identity.

“I owe you a pint at the Rising Sun,” Jasper said to Lewis.

He laughed. “Make it two pints and another night, guv. The only place I’m for is home and to bed.” Lewis started away. “And you should have your back looked at.”

Jasper nodded, waving him on toward the department exit. The blood from the gash along his shoulder and back had dried, sealing his shirt to the wound. It pulled painfully, but there hadn’t been time at the hospital to allow the nurse to finish tending to it. Certainly, Mrs. Zhao would be willing to help once he returned home. It was the least of his worries right then.

The other officers were beginning to file out of the Yard for the evening, none of them making eye contact with him as they went. He didn’t mind. He’d never cared to be popular. But he did care to be respected, and there wasn’t any question that today, there had been a setback in that area for him.

He was on his way to the lobby when a familiar officer emerged from a stairwell, coming into Jasper’s path. It was the Gazette constable, Murray. The man saw Jasper and halted, standing to attention as he had outside Leo’s home the other evening.

“Detective Inspector,” he said.

“Constable,” Jasper replied. He wasn’t inclined to say anything more and merely wished to carry on and go home. But apparently, Murray didn’t feel the same.

“I hope it wasn’t out of line for me to walk Miss Spencer home the other evening,” he said.

Jasper drew a long breath, his instant dislike for the man doubling. “Why would it have been, Constable?”

He floundered, color touching his lily-white skin. Did the man never step foot outside his office to see a blasted ray of sunlight?

“I know that you and she are close. Like family. Or at least, she and your father were close, and…” He floundered some more, and Jasper found he didn’t mind seeing the constable discomfited. He merely arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to complete his thought. “And now from what I hear, she is assisting with some investigations, so?—”

Jasper sharpened his stare. “Where did you hear that?”

He expected to hear that the article had given him the information. But it wasn’t that.

“From Miss Spencer,” he answered quickly. “We dined out a fortnight ago.”

Two reactions gripped Jasper. The first, an unexpected streak of envy. The second, a flash of suspicion.

“You dined together two weeks ago?” he repeated. Constable Murray nodded.

“I asked her to a chophouse,” he said with a faltering smile.

Jasper’s mind clicked forward along that track of suspicion. “I imagine she told you about herself and her work at the morgue.”

“Well, yes, she spoke highly of her work?—”

“What about her family? Did she tell you what happened to them?”

A light of understanding flickered within the constable’s irises, and Jasper knew he’d guessed correctly.

“No. I…already knew about that.”

Jasper cocked his head. “Enough to write about it?”

Constable Murray licked his lips. “I don’t…I don’t take your meaning, Inspector.”

“For sixteen years, not one story has been printed about the Spencer murders, and yet, less than two weeks after your dinner out with the one surviving member of that family, an article shows up.”

Guilt was an interesting expression. It never failed to transform a face in the same ways. A softening of the brow, a tightening of the mouth. The flare of nostrils and the hard swallow of panic, or perhaps resignation.

Constable Murray’s expression hit every tell appropriately.

“You fancy yourself a writer, do you?” Jasper asked now that he was certain. “Keeping your ears open for a good story to sell?”

The man didn’t reply but at least had the good sense to appear mortified.

“Did you only approach Miss Spencer because you intended to write about her?”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. It wasn’t my intention, but once she began to tell me about herself, I suppose…I was fascinated.”

Jasper’s temper spiked. “You betrayed her trust and exposed her in one of the city’s largest newspapers because you were fascinated ?”

“I thought it would be beneficial to show the world what a modern young woman is capable of,” he said, stammering as he flushed more deeply.

At the lobby receiving desk, Constable Woodhouse pretended not to be looking on or listening, and a few passing officers also tried not to show their intrigue. Jasper lowered his voice.

“Bollocks. You wrote that article to benefit one person: yourself. And if I hadn’t just had my own arse handed to me by my chief, warning me to be on my best behavior, you can trust that I’d be sending your teeth straight down your throat.”

He stepped away from Jasper, who for several seconds considered making good on the threat anyway. The urge subsided, though only by a sliver.

“You owe Miss Spencer the truth. Am I understood, Constable?”

Constable Murray nodded tightly, shamefaced and unable to meet Jasper’s fulminating stare. It was on the tip of his tongue to also order him to stay a far step away from Leo after he’d made his confession. But Jasper didn’t want her to accuse him of interfering. Besides, there was no chance she would have anything to do with Murray after this.

Jasper turned and left the lobby, catching Constable Woodhouse’s approving smirk as he went.

The kettle on the hob inside Mrs. Zhao’s kitchen steamed. The housekeeper picked it up and sent Jasper a chiding frown.

“You should have stayed in hospital.” It was at least the third time she’d said it in the half hour since he’d arrived home.

He sat at the table in the center of the kitchen, surrounded by bowls of peeled potatoes and carrots, a chopped leek, rising bread, and a crock of potted beef. She’d been preparing supper when he’d come in, his clothing bloodied and torn, and she’d dropped everything to tend to him. For Mrs. Zhao, that meant scolding him for his poor choices.

“I was occupied,” he replied, also for the third time.

Jasper, straddling one of the cane chairs at the table, had removed his ruined shirt to give her access to his back. Mrs. Zhao poured the steaming water from the kettle into a bowl of vinegar and honey, then dipped a square of clean linen into the liquid.

“Hold still,” she said. “This will hurt.”

Hurt was an understatement. It felt as if the claws of several feral cats were attacking his shoulder and upper back as she dabbed the deep gash along the breadth of his shoulders. A piece of David Henderson’s falling ceiling had inflicted the wound, and it had pained him then. But now, the agony of it was settling in. He leaned his forehead against his arms, which were crossed on the back of the cane chair, and endured it.

He was exhausted. His whole body hurt. And there was an unbearable kink in his stomach when he thought about Leo and that deceptive fool, Murray. Why would she have agreed to dine with him in the first place? The sodding constable didn’t even walk a police beat or assist in the detective department. And now, the idiot might have reawakened interest in the Spencer murders and in the survivor the killers had not intended to leave alive.

At the front of the house, the brass knocker came down twice in quick succession. Mrs. Zhao stopped dabbing Jasper’s wound. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No. Send whoever it is away,” he mumbled.

She left the kitchen, and as he waited, sleep pulled him closer. The bite of cold air against the throbbing of his back was all that kept him from dropping off.

The door to the kitchen swung open again.

“Who was it?” Jasper murmured, still resting his forehead against his crossed arms and speaking toward the floor.

“I thought you were going to come take my statement.”

He straightened in the chair at Leo’s voice but moved too quickly. Flaring pain rippled down his back, and he groaned in protest. She stood at the entrance to the kitchen, her coat and hat having been collected in the foyer. Belatedly, her attention shifted toward his exposed torso. Her lips parted, and she blinked rapidly as though dust had caught in her lashes.

Jasper took his shirt from where he’d tossed it onto the table and sought the sleeves. “Forgive me, I wasn’t expecting company.”

He hastily pulled on the shirt and buttoned it.

“Mrs. Zhao said your injury is quite serious.” Leo had averted her eyes, but her cheeks were pink. The blush was rather fetching, he had to admit.

“I’ll be fine.” He finished with the buttons and tucked the hem into his trousers. “Mrs. Zhao, can you bring tea to the study?”

“I can’t stay,” Leo said firmly. “I just wanted to give you my statement.”

Though he was now dressed, she still avoided looking him in the eye by opening the kiss lock on her handbag and taking out a sheet of paper. “I’ve already typed it for you.”

She set the single sheet on the table. Jasper couldn’t read the typed words from where he stood, but he did note that there weren’t very many.

“That is your statement?” he asked. “It’s two paragraphs, at the most.” She couldn’t possibly have described everything that occurred that day and why within two paragraphs.

Leo hitched her chin. “I kept it short, as I know my involvement in the case will only cause you more trouble with your superiors and the rest of the department.”

He grimaced. He needed to tell her what Coughlan had demanded. “Leo—” Faltering, he stopped and turned to his housekeeper. “Mrs. Zhao, can you give us a few minutes alone?”

Her indefatigable raised brow expressed that she was not pleased one jot to be asked to leave her own kitchen. But she merely sighed. “Help yourself to some potted beef and bread.” She then removed her apron and left through the door that led to her rooms.

Once they were alone, the tension spread quickly and grew thorns. Jasper picked up the typed statement. There was mention of Mrs. Nelson’s confession letter, the bomb, the explosion, and Leo’s coming upon David Henderson and Terrence Nelson at the hospital. The details were sparse, which must have pained her, and when she wrote about the exchange of prisoners, her account simply stated that Jasper had no choice but to relent or risk the life of an innocent woman.

He set the paper on the table. “Coughlan has given his final warning. I am to cease associating with you, or I’m finished at the Met.”

Silence followed. He waited a moment before looking up at her. Leo had her eyes pinned on the bowls of chopped vegetables, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. She lifted the cover on the crock of potted beef. Setting it aside, she started to fix herself a plate, as Mrs. Zhao had invited her to do. He watched her slice through the loaf of bread on the table, spread the potted beef on it, and then pull out a chair.

“Leo?” He released a pent-up breath. “Say something.”

She took a bite and, only after a measured swallow, said, “Chief Coughlan is resting the blame on me.”

Flipping his chair around, Jasper sat in it properly instead of straddling it. “It isn’t your fault. If you hadn’t been there for Carter to threaten, he would have found another way to get to Nelson.”

“Perhaps. But you needed that arrest,” Leo said.

“Yes. I did.” He sighed, despising the feeling of futility. Everything in him fought against it. “But even without Nelson in hand, the murders are solved. Including one that I’d given up on.”

“Regina Morris.” At his nod, she added, “I’m glad you found answers for her. Her murder affected you. I could tell.”

The question she wanted to ask was evident, even if she wasn’t asking it outright. “You’ve wondered why.”

Leo took another bite of bread, her gaze expectant. She waited for him to go on. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, and yet he found himself speaking anyway.

“She reminded me of my mother.”

Leo forgot the potted beef. She sat taller, her attention riveted now. He thought he knew why. He’d never spoken of his mother to Leo except to say that she was dead.

“Did she…look like Regina Morris?” she asked.

“No. She died like her.” Jasper cleared his throat, realizing he was being too vague. Leo wouldn’t allow for that. “My mother was beaten to death, and at the time, she was carrying a child too.”

“Oh, Jasper,” she whispered, sorrow stealing over her expression. “I’m so sorry.”

To his relief, it wasn’t pity he saw as she searched his face, her lips parting with soft concern. It was her more typical curiosity.

“How old were you?”

Of all the questions she could have asked first, she had chosen one about him rather than the murder itself. He shifted in his seat. “Ten.”

“Did they find the person who did it?” she asked next, and Jasper smiled. That was more like it.

However, telling her the truth—that the police had never investigated—would be a mistake. She would dwell on it. Question why not. And that was an answer he could never part with.

“Yes,” he said. It wasn’t a complete lie. People had known who’d done it. Hell, even Bridget O’Mara had known the truth.

After a moment, Leo picked up her bread and potted beef and took a small bite, looking pensive. “This is the first time you’ve ever said anything about your life… before the Inspector.”

“I’m not going to make a habit of it,” he said, maybe a little too brusquely. But she forgave him with a small grin. Then to his relief, she did not press him for more details. Instead, she spun their conversation on its head, whirling back to that moment in the hospital alleyway.

“I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Carter was bluffing, and if you might have been able to keep Mr. Nelson and avoid censure from your chief.”

Jasper cringed, seeing again the point of the blade so close to the white of her eye. “Your safety is more important than anything having to do with my work.”

Leo buried a smile with another nibble of bread and potted beef. He was becoming hungry, watching her eat.

“You put your life in danger today,” he said. And she had done so for him.

“Your life was in danger too,” she replied blithely.

“Danger is to be expected in my line of duty.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It’s what I signed up for. It’s what every police officer knows is possible. So, from now on, please, you must stay away from the Yard. Coughlan demands it. I demand it.”

The warm tenderness she’d shown him iced over in a blink. “Very well. Then I make the same demand of you.”

Rising from her chair, Leo took her plate and started toward the sink. Jasper got to his feet. “What demand is that, exactly?”

“To stay away,” she said. “It’s only fair we be equal in our neglect of each other.”

She dropped her dish into a pail of soapy water. Next, she lifted a cloth as though intending to scrub with it.

“You should be aware that even if you wash your dishes, Mrs. Zhao will still wash them again.”

She ignored him and set to her task.

“Would you please stop?” he said.

She kept her back to him and continued to wash her dish. Then, she set it on the rack to dry and reached for another one in the basin.

Provoked, Jasper went to her side and stilled her arm. “Stop being fractious and look at me.” He peeled from her hands the cloth and the bowl she’d been pointlessly washing and moved her away from the sink.

“You’re being a bully,” she said. Sudsy dish water dripped onto his hands as he held her wrists up between them.

“You cannot come to Scotland Yard any longer, Leo, nor can you insert yourself into any of my investigations. But I will not stay away. And we don’t need to cease speaking altogether.”

She stared up at him, but the fire for an argument left her eyes.

Her wrists were still in his hands as he lowered their arms. She didn’t move to pull free. Jasper slid his hold from her wrists to her hands. As one second fell into the next, he became less and less inclined to relinquish them.

He lost track of how long they stood there in suspended silence. Leo’s gaze drifted from his eyes to his collar, then down to where their hands were joined. As though possessing a different mind than his own, his thumbs moved, circling the centers of her palms. Her skin was impossibly and stirringly soft—except for one spot on her right hand. His thumb met with the raised ridges of her scars. A memento of the night she lost every person she’d loved as a child. Feeling the scars now sent a jolt through him as effectively as an electrical charge.

He dropped her hands, and Leo caught her breath, her cheeks beginning to glow pink again. Clenching her fists at her side, she retreated a few strides.

“Claude will be wondering where I am.” She opened a space between them, and Jasper was, at once, grateful and bewildered. A hot coiling in his chest centered around his left pectoral muscle. Distractedly, he rubbed it through his shirt.

He shouldn’t be feeling this.

He had no right to feel it.

“I’ll summon a cab,” he said. But she shook her head.

“No, I’m only walking to the morgue. Claude and I will go home together.” She went to the swinging door and pushed it open, so disconcerted that she forgot to say anything more as she left.