Page 5 of Method of Revenge (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #2)

Chapter Five

W istfulness and a touch of unease kept Leo from ascending the half-moon step fronting 23 Charles Street. The last time she’d been here, it had been to say goodbye.

The morning Jasper had arrived at her door on Duke Street to tell her the news of the Inspector’s passing, Leo had quickly dressed and accompanied him back to the house. Once there, they’d entered the Inspector’s bedroom to find Mrs. Zhao seated in a chair next to him, her cheeks wet and eyes shimmering. He had merely looked asleep, though Leo had noted his lividity right away; the cessation of blood flow had paled his skin. And when she’d taken his hand in hers, his cooled body temperature had been consistent with the time of death Jasper had reported on their mostly quiet ride over to Charles Street.

Leo had returned his hand to where it had been, folded over his chest, and had looked at the Inspector’s body, seeing him not as he was then—thin and decimated by disease—but how he’d appeared when she first saw him. When he’d opened that steamer trunk in her family’s Red Lion Street attic, and she’d first looked upon his face, she’d known, straightaway, that he was a kind man. That she could trust him. And when he lifted her into his strong arms and promised that no one was going to hurt her ever again, she’d known he’d meant it with all his heart.

Leo had seen countless dead bodies. But looking upon the Inspector’s, she’d understood, perhaps for the first time ever, what one ought to have felt when looking at the dead: the absence of a life force within and a loss so profound that her insides felt as though they were being crushed by some invisible, giant fist.

Now, as her eyes went to the windows of the study on the first-floor, she felt the compression of her lungs again. Taking several deep breaths, she finally went to the door and brought down the worn brass lion’s head knocker. After the sound of a lock bolt turning, Mrs. Zhao opened the door.

“Miss Leo, how good to see you. Come in, come in,” she said with a happy grin.

The older woman had been the Inspector’s housekeeper since just after his marriage to Emmaline Cowper. When Emmaline’s grandmother had gifted her the house as a wedding present, it had not come with a staff. The couple had found it impossible to hire any servants who would lower their standards enough to wait on a common police inspector. Emmaline had tried to make do with just her longtime lady’s maid, but when the Inspector had met the widowed Mrs. Zhao during an investigation, the two had found a good rapport. Aware that she was in need of work, he invited her to try her hand at being a house servant. Mrs. Zhao and Emmaline had immediately struck up the same good rapport. When her lady’s maid soon complained that she could not work alongside a Chinese woman, Emmaline had told her she would not have to. She gave her lady’s maid a letter of character and sent her on her way.

“I know I haven’t been to see you in some time,” Leo said as Mrs. Zhao collected her things to hang up. “How have you been?”

“Nothing is the same without Mr. Reid,” the housekeeper replied softly. “I always thought he was a quiet man, but now, I realize what quiet truly is.”

Jasper was certainly more subdued than the Inspector, and Leo imagined he wasn’t at home half as much for Mrs. Zhao to dote on.

“Have you found more time to spend with your sister and her family?” Leo asked. The trip to Limehouse wasn’t easy to undertake, and when she went, Mrs. Zhao tended to spend the night there.

“Yes, but I miss staying busy.” She paused. “How is your aunt? Perhaps I could check on her from time to time?”

Claude had hired a new nurse, Mrs. Boardman, to look after Flora each day while he was at the morgue, but Leo found she couldn’t bring herself to refuse Mrs. Zhao’s offer.

“Please do. I think Aunt Flora would enjoy that.”

She would prefer it to Leo’s company, that much she knew. While Flora had always been reserved with her feelings toward her younger sister’s child, it was only as her mind started to deteriorate that she’d begun to show open hostility toward Leo.

It seemed every time Flora now looked upon her niece, she was appalled, even terrified, to be in her presence. She would scream of murder and blood, and worse, she would lay the blame squarely on Leo’s shoulders. Absurd, of course, since at the time she had been a little girl. But Leo had survived when no one else in her family had, and Flora was convinced there was a nefarious reason behind it.

Leo explained to Mrs. Zhao that she’d come to collect a folder from the Inspector’s desk, one that he’d wished for her to have after he was gone. The housekeeper asked no questions; more than likely, she knew all about the file. She welcomed her to go about her business and offered to bring tea shortly.

Whether Mrs. Zhao kept a fire in the grate and paraffin lamps burning in the study out of habit or knew Jasper would come there first whenever he arrived home, Leo was grateful for the familiar comfort as she entered the room. Everything looked the same as when she had last been there. The desk in the corner, by the window; the leather Chesterfield perpendicular to the hearth and across from two leather club chairs; the low mahogany table in between them with the three daily newspapers the Inspector had long subscribed to, waiting for Jasper’s perusal; shelves upon shelves of books against two walls; and just as she suspected, the bottle of Grants Morella she’d given the Inspector in January at the sideboard, among decanters of other spirits.

She went to it and poured a small amount into one of the cordial glasses. Though she knew it was absurd, she turned over a second glass, poured, and then tapped hers against it.

The desk—and its bottom right drawer—loomed large in the corner of the room. She sipped the liqueur on her way toward it, deciding to treat the folder inside as she would any dead body delivered to the morgue: with a fair amount of detachment. She brought out the folder, made of thick manila hemp and worn thin over the years by the Inspector’s fingers, and placed it on the blotter. The Inspector had advised her to only open it when she was ready. Back in January, she’d thought she had been. Once opened, her gumption had lasted all of ten minutes. That night, and many more after it, nightmares followed. The same ones as in the past, though she hadn’t experienced them since she was a child.

The police report, typed by Gregory Reid himself, had laid out the crime in stark detail. Reading it had summoned memories she’d worked hard to bury, including the vivid recollection of being carried down from the attic by the Inspector. Close your eyes, now, little love, he’d said to her, and she had…at first. Oh, how she wished she’d obeyed him. With her chin against the shoulder of his scratchy tweed coat, she’d opened one squeezed-shut eyelid. A blanket, partially covering her brother’s body, had burned into her memory. Jacob’s arm had been visible, the sleeve of his striped pajamas dotted with a spray of blood.

The Inspector’s professional, if dispassionate, reporting had communicated that all four Spencers had been killed with blades. First, stabbed to subdue them. Then, their throats slit. Cleanly done for the most part. Except for her father, who’d received multiple stab wounds—the killing one, to his heart.

In the folder, the edges of a few photographs had stuck out among the papers. Sixteen years ago, crimes scenes weren’t often photographed, but the nearly wholesale slaughter of a family had warranted it. The first photograph she’d flipped to had been of poor quality, whitened at the edges from overexposure. It had been of her father, lying on his side on the sitting room carpet. If not for the dark blood stain on the front of his shirt, he might have looked as if he was sleeping. Black spots had filled Leo’s vision as she’d stared at her slain father. Her head whirled, her lungs emptied of air, and she slammed the folder shut.

Two months later, she still wasn’t ready to open the folder and try again. However, as she sat in the Inspector’s leather swivel chair, which was wide enough for her to tuck her legs up underneath her, she was content to simply look at it.

Absentmindedly, she rubbed her thumb over the scars on her right palm. Tracing them soothed her sometimes when too many thoughts of that night began to creep in. Why that might be perplexed her somewhat, since she’d received the scars the same night as the murders. It should have made her pulse increase, rather than slow, to remember the darkened figure who’d entered the attic in search of her. The one she’d heard coming closer to her hiding spot, where she clutched a shard of porcelain, which had broken off her doll’s leg when Jacob threw her to the floor earlier in the night. It was why she’d gone into the attic to begin with—to be angry and cry alone.

“Little girl? I know you’re here,” he’d whispered. Downstairs in her home, things had gone horribly silent. The cries and screams had ceased.

Knowing the piece of her doll’s leg was sharp and that the shadowy figure would soon find her, Leo made a choice that still surprised her, even all these years later: She’d jumped out and slashed at him with the shard of delicate ceramic. The jagged edge had sunk into flesh, and he’d grunted in pain. But he hadn’t struck back at her.

Instead, he'd told her to hide.

The ridged skin of the two parallel scars on her palm reminded her that she was alive. That the person who had been barely visible in the dim moonlight filtering through the small crescent window could have hurt her, just as she’d heard her family being hurt downstairs. But he hadn’t.

She’d never told anyone about him. Not even the Inspector. For a long while, Leo half-wondered if he had been a figment of her imagination. But the scars were real. He had let her live…but why?

If she’d told anyone about him, they’d have demanded to know why one of the killers had saved her. Guilt over it had eaten away at her for so long, and the more time that went by, the more impossible it became to broach the subject.

Leo drained her cordial glass just as Mrs. Zhao arrived with a tea tray, and on the housekeeper’s heels, entered the new master of the house. Already shed of his jacket and hat, Jasper appeared disheveled. He pulled up short when he saw her at the desk. She couldn’t think why since he’d likely been informed by Mrs. Zhao that she was in the study. Then again, perhaps he didn’t like seeing her in the chair. It was, after all, now his.

She stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m in your spot.”

He waved his hand. “Stay, it’s fine. I don’t sit there.”

Leo hesitated, now understanding his reaction. He’d been accustomed to seeing the Inspector in this chair. Not her.

“I’ll have dinner ready in half an hour,” Mrs. Zhao announced, splitting the tension. “Will you stay, Miss Leo?”

Her eyes clashed with Jasper’s briefly, who seemed to grimace at the suggestion. Before, taking dinner with him would have been acceptable since the Inspector would have been there. But now, just the two of them, alone in the dining room, might be considered improper.

“Thank you, but I need to return home.”

Mrs. Zhao left them to their tea, closing the door behind her. She clearly did not see leaving them alone in the study as anything unseemly. And Jasper, too, discarded propriety as he loosened the knot on his tie and approached the sideboard. He looked tired and cross as she followed his progress across the room, swiveling in the chair as she did.

“Your interviews didn’t go well, I presume.”

He took the stopper from a crystal decanter of whisky. “Carter wasn’t in. I’ll have to summon him to the Yard, which I’d wanted to avoid doing.”

“And Mr. Bloom?”

Jasper poured, replaced the stopper, and took a deep sip, all before turning to spear her with a look. “I can’t discuss the investigation.”

She’d anticipated that response, just as he probably anticipated her pressing him for more information. Instead, she said, “Did you know that Gabriela was the daughter of Jack Henderson? Of Henderson he’d taken them both under his wing and into his home around the same time. But she knew what it felt like to have a brother, and she’d never felt the familial connection to Jasper that she’d felt with Jacob.

She closed the city directory and took the case folder from the blotter. “You’re right. It’s late. I’ll go.”

Jasper stood from the Chesterfield and held out his arm to stop her. “I’m sorry, Leo. That was unfair. I don’t…” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s something Bloom said today. It got under my skin.”

“Something about the case?”

He paused, seeming to falter over whether he should answer. He leaned down to fiddle with the newspapers Mrs. Zhao had fanned out for him on the table. Sliding them into a pile, he pushed them aside and stood tall again.

“Nothing about the case.” Jasper raised his glass to his lips. “He wanted permission to ask you to dance.”

Leo stared, utterly flummoxed. She hadn’t known what she’d expected him to say, but it most assuredly hadn’t been that . “Dance with me? But that is absurd; he isn’t interested in me in the least.”

Not to mention, he was a good decade or two her senior.

“I don’t think he is either.” Jasper’s agreement was a slap of insult, even if it was Eddie Bloom they were speaking of.

She scowled. “Oh, well, thank you very much.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Bloom wanted to needle me and knew to use you to do it.”

“He did see us together in January.” She arched her brow. “You were excessively protective that evening.”

He frowned. “I was not. I was the only one being rational.”

Leo shook her head. “You shouldn’t let Mr. Bloom get to you. Besides, you ought to know I wouldn’t step out with him or anyone like him. He’s a criminal, after all.”

Constable Elias Murray came to mind. She’d stepped out with him once and had all but agreed to do so again. But she bit back the information. There was no reason to share that with Jasper.

He tucked his chin and nodded before draining the rest of his drink. “There. I’ve told you something of my investigation today. Now, what is this thought you’ve had about Henderson they’d been courting for months. But she couldn’t help the twinge of relief she felt. The woman was admirable for her choice to work rather than play at being a high society lady, and yet she was also distastefully superior.

A moment later, Leo found what she was looking for in the directory. “Here it is. Mr. Lawrence Wilkes. And even better.” She thrust the directory into Jasper’s hands and pointed to the listing. “Look at his profession.”

On top of listing addresses and telephone exchanges, the directory also included each person’s occupation.

“He’s a chemist,” Jasper read aloud, the interest back in his tone.

“Gabriela was poisoned,” Leo added. “What if Mr. Wilkes didn’t handle her marrying another man well?”

Jasper sighed and closed the directory. “All right. I’ll track him down.”

She threw up her arms. “That’s it? No thank you, Leo ? What a remarkable memory you have, Leo ?”

Despite his withering glance, Jasper couldn’t quite conceal the twitch of his mouth as he tried not to smile. “Goodnight, Leo.”