Page 21 of Method of Revenge (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #2)

SNEAK PEEK AT SPENCER & REID BOOK THREE

Chapter One

London

May 1884

Leonora Spencer hurried through the busy corridor at Scotland Yard, determined to be invisible. It was a risk for her to be within its walls and in the middle of the day, at that. But there had been no messenger boy hanging about, waiting to be hailed, near the Spring Street Morgue, and the deadline for unidentified corpse descriptions for The Police Gazette was noon sharp. As the top of the hour had neared and her agitation increased, Leo determined she would simply have to deliver the latest description to Constable Elias Murray at the news office herself.

It wasn’t the constable whom she was attempting to avoid, even though a few months ago, he’d confessed to being the anonymous reporter who’d profiled her in The Illustrated Police News . They’d dined out once, while he’d pretended to have a romantic interest in her, but he’d only been gathering information for his article. It had been disappointing to realize he’d had an ulterior motive, but she no longer carried a grudge against him. Elias Murray hadn’t wounded her irrevocably.

Unlike someone else. A man she’d once trusted beyond measure.

However, discovering the identity of the Jane Doe lying in her uncle’s morgue took precedence over her own discomfort, so Leo had gathered her mettle and set out for the Metropolitan Police headquarters herself.

At the front desk, Constable Woodhouse greeted her with some surprise before allowing her to pass through to whichever part of the building she intended to go. If the startled glances she received in the narrow corridor and stairwell were any evidence, her recent absence from the Yard had been noted.

Constable Murray shot to his feet when she knocked upon the open door to his cramped office. “Miss Spencer.” His lips gaped. “I…I didn’t expect to see you.”

Leo overlooked his disconcerted state and handed him the typed description: a woman in her late sixties, found on the mudflats under Westminster Bridge. Her neatly trimmed nails, expensive silk petticoats, and her velvet dress from a high-end boutique on Oxford Street, had led Leo to believe that she was a woman whom someone, somewhere would be missing.

“There was no messenger boy today, or you wouldn’t have seen me,” she replied. It was honest, if somewhat rude. With Constable Murray, she no longer cared to be polite.

He took the typed description. “Thank you. You know, twelve bodies have been identified since we started running these descriptions in the Gazette .”

“That’s wonderful.” The positive outcome was worth a bit of awkwardness, she supposed.

With a glance toward the wall clock, the sensation of ants crawling up her legs jolted her. Leo had been in the building for five whole minutes. Every additional minute she remained was another in which she might be seen by the one person she’d vowed never to see or speak to again. It was a vow she was determined to keep.

“Until the next John or Jane Doe then,” Leo said before retreating into the corridor.

Unfortunately, Constable Murray followed. “Miss Spencer, I wanted to express to you, again, how sorry I am for my dishonesty. I think I convinced myself that ultimately the article would be of assistance to you, a way to shine some light on your stimulating work.” He still gripped the typed description of the Jane Doe in his hand, but in his nervousness, he had crumpled it. “However, I’ve come to accept that I was merely doing a service for myself—and I genuinely regret it.”

A few months ago, had she not been so disconcerted by Constable Murray’s unexpected interest in her, she might have guessed at the truth. He’d expressed a far greater interest in newspaper reporting than in policing, which should have been a glaring clue. However, her resentment toward him had long since fizzled out. Even the handful of additional articles printed about her in various London newspapers, describing the role Leonora Spencer, ‘ the female morgue worker-turned-detective ’ had played in solving a murder inquiry a few months ago—all of which Constable Murray swore he had no hand in writing—had failed to truly distress her.

“Thank you, Constable. Let’s call a truce, shall we? Now, I really must go,” she said and again turned to leave.

The longer she lingered, the greater the chance that she would cross paths with a certain detective inspector she’d been sidestepping since early March, when she’d learned he wasn’t who he’d claimed to be for the sixteen years she’d known him.

Jasper Reid was not even his real name.

Because of her unusual memory, which captured images in minute detail and allowed her to return to them no matter how much time had passed, the sharp details never fading, Leo repeatedly had experienced the world-bending moment in which he’d confirmed her suspicion, the blade of his betrayal slipping between her ribs and into her heart again and again, taking her breath away each time.

His given name was James. James Carter. His family—his real family—ran the notorious organized crime syndicate known as the East Rips. And sixteen years ago, on the night Leo’s family had been brutally murdered in their home on Red Lion Street, he had been the boy who’d come into the darkened attic looking for her. Jasper had been the shadowy figure she’d puzzled over ever since that night, half believing he was a figment of her imagination. Because instead of killing her, he’d hidden her in a steamer trunk to save her life.

“You seem particularly rushed today,” Constable Murray observed.

Leo gritted her molars. He had followed her toward the stairs.

“Is it the date?” he asked.

The question was curious enough for her to stop and peer at him. “What is important about the thirtieth of May?”

“The way you’re rushing to leave, I presumed you knew about the warning Clan na Gael sent back in the autumn. We’re to be on alert today.”

Leo didn’t like the sound of that. Clan na Gael had come to power a few years ago when the Fenian Brotherhood, a militant political group seeking Irish independence from Britain, disbanded. The two groups were essentially the same, however, and had been waging a dynamite war on London for the last decade, attempting to instill terror among the British.

In the previous year alone, there had been explosions at The Times , at government offices at Whitehall, at Charing Cross railway station, and in a cloakroom at Victoria Station. A planned explosion on the London Bridge went awry when it detonated early, killing the bombers themselves. Had it gone according to plan, innocent people would have been killed.

“What warning was this?” Leo asked.

He gave a small shrug. “Nothing to take very seriously, I’m sure. They threaten to bomb the city all the time but hardly ever carry the blasts out. I won’t trouble you further with it.” He tipped the brim of his hat. “Good afternoon, Miss Spencer.”

Unsatisfied with his response, Leo watched him return to his office. Men’s voices echoed up the stairs and along the corridor, giving her what felt like a nudge in the back. She descended the stairs, her fingers clenched as she hoped to clear the building without seeing Jasper—or James, if that was how she should be thinking of him now. That name felt entirely wrong though, as did the cinch of her stomach and the ache of her heart whenever she thought about him. Paired with the boiling of her blood, the mixed emotions never ceased to confuse her.

He had tried to speak to her several times since that morning two months ago, when Leo let herself into his home on Charles Street. She’d surreptitiously entered his bedroom to see the old scar on his chest, of which she’d caught a glimpse the night before, after Jasper had been injured in an explosion at a wallpaper factory. Only after a sleepless night had Leo realized why the scar bothered her so deeply. The shape of it perfectly matched the shape of the porcelain shard broken off from her old china doll’s leg, the very shard a young Leo had used to stab the mysterious boy who’d found her in the attic the night of the murders. It was how she had received a pair of parallel scars on the palm of her right hand.

Jasper had followed her from his bedroom after she’d stormed out, a bedsheet clutched around his waist—the only thing concealing the rest of his naked body. But Leo had not paid any attention to his undressed state. It was a minor scandal compared to what he had just admitted to her.

“Wait, Leo. Wait, please, let me explain.” He’d taken the stairs after her but abruptly stopped when she’d opened the front door. For her to be seen leaving his house just past dawn would have spurred rumors. For Jasper to potentially be seen in nothing but a bedsheet coming after her would cement Leo’s ruin.

She had not allowed him to explain, as he’d begged, and had slammed the door behind her. Predictably, he’d come to her home on Duke Street later that morning, but she’d instructed her Uncle Claude to send him away. The next day Jasper had shown up at the morgue. Leo told him that unless he left the premises right then, she’d upend a bucket collecting run-off from one of the autopsy tables all over his shoes.

When Jasper met her on the pavement outside her home the following day, he’d asked whether she would at least give him five minutes to hear him out. She’d held her temper and calmly stated, “ I cannot even look at you right now. Please, just give me space.” Reluctantly, he’d nodded and left.

She hadn’t spoken to him since.

Not thinking about Jasper—or James— hadn’t been as easy as avoiding him. Unless she occupied her time with other things, it was all she found herself doing: thinking of his lies and all the unanswered questions that cluttered her brain but were too unwieldy to unpack.

So, when her friend Nivedita Brooks invited her to a meeting of the Women’s Equality Alliance, she had jumped at the chance. Not only did Leo believe in the cause, but focusing on the dearth of women’s rights in England, especially the right to vote, gave her another injustice toward which to direct her anger. One that had nothing to do with Jasper Reid.

The women at the WEA meetings were forward-thinking and bright, and most had accepted Leo even after learning that she worked as an assistant in her uncle’s city morgue. Some, of course, kept their distance, choosing another row in which to sit, but it hadn’t offended her much, and it hadn’t bothered Dita at all. Most of the WEA members, including their president, Mrs. Geraldine Stewart, were welcoming. In the past few months while she’d been attending meetings, her uncle had supportively pointed out that it was good for her to be a part of something that wasn’t connected to either the morgue or the Metropolitan Police.

As she reached the doors to the entrance lobby , Leo turned her mind to the WEA meeting that she and Dita were to attend that week. But as one of the doors opened, her legs and heart came to an abrupt stop.

Detective Inspector Jasper Reid and Detective Sergeant Roy Lewis entered the lobby of Scotland Yard together. Jasper locked eyes with Leo, and whatever he was in the middle of saying to the detective sergeant fell off. He stopped moving, and Leo’s throat cinched as she took in the sight of him. His hooded dark green eyes, his slightly rumpled clothing, and the dark blond stubble on his cheeks and chin. He’d either forgotten to shave that morning or he was beginning to grow a beard. A sense of helpless misery pierced her chest.

Sergeant Lewis tipped the brim of his hat to her before moving past them and further into the building. At the clearing of Constable Woodhouse’s throat from where he stood behind the reception desk, Leo’s sudden paralysis ended. Her heart thrashed against her ribs as she averted her welling eyes and stepped forward again.

“Leo, wait.”

“I’m in a hurry, Inspector.”

“I suspect you’re only in a hurry to avoid me.”

The accusatory tone brought her to a standstill. She whipped around, the coals of her temper stoked to life. “Yes, I am, although it turns out that it’s been a complete failure.”

Jasper glanced toward Constable Woodhouse, who was openly listening to their exchange, then stepped toward Leo and lowered his voice. “It has been months, Leo. We need to talk.”

Leo squared her shoulders as fury prickled under her skin. “I’m not ready to talk to you.”

The muscles along Jasper’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t think it possible to underestimate your propensity to be mulish, but it seems I have.”

Her lips parted on a gust of disbelief. “You have no right to be upset.”

She barely suppressed kicking him in the shin before she turned for the doors again.

“Leo,” Jasper pleaded. “I’m asking you to stop.”

She didn’t know why she complied. Maybe it was because, as furious as she was with him, as intent as she’d been to uphold her vow to never speak to him again…she missed him, which only made her more upset. Although this time, with herself .

He whisked off his bowler and, more quietly than before, said, “I think it is high time we spoke. Not here, of course?—”

“No, not here.” Leo struggled to keep her voice equally soft but managed to whisper, “If anyone here found out why I haven’t spoken to you in two months, you’d be sacked, wouldn’t you? You’ve lied to everyone, not just to me.”

He pressed his lips thin, his expression injured and subdued. Her eyes, already brimming with tears, began to sting. Blast! She needed to get out of there before they fell.

Leo rushed outside, into the courtyard behind the building. She filled her lungs with warm, late spring air and blinked back hot tears. What she’d said was true: Jasper hadn’t just lied to her. He was related to one of the most powerful crime families in London, and surely, if anyone within the Met were to learn of it, he’d be released from duty at once.

How Jasper had managed to come face-to-face with Andrew Carter in March during the investigation into the murder of his wife, Gabriela, and not be recognized was beyond her comprehension. Had Andrew known who he was? Or had Jasper changed so drastically since he was thirteen years old that his own relative did not know him?

It was just one of the dozens of questions she’d been stewing over. Another was whether the late Chief Superintendent Gregory Reid had known the truth about him. The Inspector had rescued Leo from the attic and taken her in as a ward while searching for her aunt and uncle, Flora and Claude Feldman. At that time, Jasper had been a runaway from the East End, who’d been arrested for thievery. But after a show of heroics at Scotland Yard—stopping a drunkard from colliding with nine-year-old Leo—he piqued the Inspector’s interest, and Gregory Reid had taken in Jasper as well.

He welcomed Jasper into his home, into his life, and loved him like a son. Leo couldn’t bear the thought that Jasper might have lied to the Inspector too.

The courtyard buzzed with commotion. Officers, both in uniform and plain clothes, were arriving and departing, and hansom cabs were lined up, ready for hire. Scotland Yard was a hub of activity, and in the past, Leo had always felt a pinch more alive whenever she was there. Now, however, it was a place she only wished to evade. Jasper was the reason, and she bitterly held it against him. She increased her pace, eager to return to the morgue. There, the next postmortem report would distract her, and she could push Jasper and his lies from her mind. For a little while, at least.

Up ahead, a familiar constable crossed under the arch that led into the courtyard behind headquarters. For several months, Police Constable John Lloyd had been courting Dita, and Leo would often join them when they went across the river to Striker’s Wharf, a nightclub and dance hall. John was an affable fellow and usually had a smile for Leo whenever he saw her. But now, as she walked toward him, tension creased his brow.

A fresh bruise discolored his swollen left eye, and gashes on his cheek and bottom lip were crusted with dried blood. Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing his policeman’s uniform. His civilian clothes appeared rumpled, and in his left hand, he carried a brown leather valise. Leo slowed. It looked to be a lady’s valise, adorned with floral embroidery. Only about ten or fifteen yards separated them, but Constable Lloyd had yet to see her. Leo lifted her arm to hail him, and his attention clapped onto her.

He stopped walking as abruptly as if he’d smacked into a wall. Then, he spun on his heel and started away in the direction from which he’d come.

“Constable Lloyd!” she called, worry mixing with curiosity. What on earth was he doing?

Beyond the archway that led into the yard, a man wearing a brown wool cap pushed off from the iron hitching post he’d been leaning against and stood to attention. His scowl was fierce, Leo noticed, and he seemed to be directing it straight at Constable Lloyd. The man shook his head, as if to say, “ Don’t .”

Before she could think twice about the man, a pulse of light blinded her. A violent, crushing blast lifted her feet from the ground. Heat raced over her skin and through her hair, and the brutal percussion of an explosion thudded through Leo’s chest. The strike of it emptied her lungs even before she landed hard on her back, cracking her head against the ground.

The world went dark and still and silent.

She came to—how much later she was unable to tell—with a shrill chime filling her ears, followed by a burrowing pain. Slowly, Leo lifted her hand to her throbbing left ear. Acrid smoke filled her nose and throat, and she coughed as her eyes fluttered open. A river of smoke flowed over her, with pockets of blue sky cutting through it, then disappearing again as the black haze blotted them out.

Bomb.

It was a bomb.

Muted shouts filtered through the strident ringing in her ears. And then, Jasper was hovering over her. He was all she could see, his lips forming her name, his eyes filled with stark panic. She tried to sit up but found it impossible. In the next second, she was in the air again, this time, firmly locked in Jasper’s arms. As he carried her back toward the building, her vision swam, and a surge of nausea gripped her. For over his shoulder, sprawled upon the ground, lay Police Constable John Lloyd.

Or what remained of him.