“What is it?” he asked.
“Come look,” she replied.
Approaching the panorama, Jasper saw the joined smudges of Henderson’s and Leo’s fingerprints resting at the feet of a woman in the front row. Her dark hair was pulled up into a stylish bun, and her lips were pursed into a straight line as she waited impatiently for the photographer to capture the panoramic image. Jasper’s pulse stuttered. His skin tightened. He knew this woman. She had lingered in his mind, haunting him for the last four weeks.
“Will someone bloody well tell me what is going on?” Mr. Henderson’s voice sounded far away under the rush of blood swirling through Jasper’s ears.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson,” Jasper said. “But your son’s secretary didn’t just quit. She was killed.”
The Jane Doe he’d been investigating, found bludgeoned to death a month ago, now had a name: Miss Regina Morris.
Chapter Eleven
Leo placed the small, green enamel cup in front of Miss Geary. The black tea inside sent up a cloud of steam. The secretary had been pulling a thick folder from one of Mr. Henderson’s office shelves when Jasper announced Miss Morris had been killed. The folder had slapped onto the floor, papers spilling free, as the secretary, already frazzled by her employer’s curt demands, lost her grip. Her palms had flown to her cheeks, her shock unchecked. Such a strong reaction could only mean one thing—she’d been close to Regina Morris. Perhaps even a friend.
Jasper had quickly explained about the young woman found dead, killed by a severe blow to the skull, roughly four weeks ago. They’d been unable to identify her and thus, unable to arrest a suspect, but thanks to the photograph in the frame, he could now reopen the case. “I’m going to need to speak to your son,” he’d told Mr. Henderson.
Even more inflamed than before, the man stormed from his office. Dita had immediately gone to help Miss Geary, who was crouching to pick up the contents of the dropped folder. Pausing next to Leo’s shoulder, Jasper had leaned close, lowering hismouth to her ear. “The secretary,” he’d whispered. With a prickling down her back and along her scalp, she’d nodded in understanding.
As Jasper followed Mr. Henderson from the office, Leo asked Miss Geary if the factory had a canteen where she might be able to sit and have a cup of tea to calm her. With trembling hands, the woman gave the recovered folder to Dita and led them deeper into the building. The workers had a lunchroom near the production floor, where the drone of machines could be heard printing wallpaper. The tangy, mixed odors of oil, smoke, and paint threatened to make Leo’s head dizzy as they took seats at one of the four long wooden tables in the room. A hatch in the wall opened to a small kitchen, where Leo purchased a pot of tea for the three of them from an unsmiling older woman in a headscarf.
Now, Miss Geary held the cup between her palms and breathed evenly. “Yes, I knew Regina. Not very well, but we were friendly,” she said, answering the first of Leo’s questions.
Her inquiries were lined up, ready to fly, and yet Leo knew she was in a precarious spot. Jasper expected her to come away with helpful information from Miss Geary; if she succeeded, perhaps he would be less inclined to complain and stonewall her whenever she offered to lend a hand. That meant she needed to proceed with patience and care.
“You worked with her for two years?” Leo asked, recalling the length of time Mr. Henderson said Miss Morris had been employed.
“No, just these last six months that I’ve been here.”
Dita crossed her arms over the complaints folder and listened intently, her dark brown eyes meeting Leo’s with awareness. She knew what Leo was doing.
“She left her position rather abruptly,” Dita commented. “It must have surprised you.”
“It surprised everyone,” Miss Geary replied. “Mr. Henderson, especially. The younger, I mean. David.”
“Do you think it had to do with Gabriela winning Mr. Carter’s affections?” Leo asked, thinking of the element in the Jane Doe case that had most affected Jasper: she’d been with child. Leo hadn’t understood why he’d been so disturbed by this finding; they’d both seen their share of dead children. Including babies. It was always heartbreaking, and yet this Jane Doe had shaken him more deeply when he’d come to view the body and discuss the autopsy findings.
Miss Geary nodded. “It must have. I didn’t realize Regina had been seeing one of the Carters, but when rumors struck up that Gabriela had ended her engagement and was marrying Andrew Carter instead…well, Regina was inconsolable.”
Taking into consideration the approximate gestation of the unborn baby—between thirteen and fifteen weeks at postmortem—it was possible Andrew Carter had been the father. Had Regina only discovered she was expecting after he’d become engaged to another woman? It would be a strong motive for wanting to be rid of Gabriela—but as she had been dead for over a month now, Regina could not have poisoned her, nor could she have been the woman in the hooded cloak at Striker’s.
“I should tell you that he was here,” Miss Geary sighed resignedly. “Yesterday, in fact.”
Leo blinked. “Mr. Carter was here?”
At her nod, a spate of cold dread spiraled from Leo’s chest down into her stomach. Just the thought of Andrew Carter seemed to affect her with an uneasy chill.
“He asked to see Regina,” Miss Geary said. “I told him she quit a month ago, but he didn’t believe me. I finally had to ask Mr. Henderson—David, that is—to come confirm it. Only then did he leave.”
Leo bit the inside of her cheek. As she and Jasper had, Mr. Carter must have believed Regina was the woman who’d sat with his wife at Striker’s. If he was searching for her, he didn’t yet know she was dead.
“Miss Geary,” Leo said, inching forward with a question, afraid of revealing too much, but also of holding back. “Regina was…in the family way,” she said softly, aware that there were other factory workers seated at the tables around them: a few men in greasy coveralls, and three women in utilitarian dresses and patterned kerchiefs tied up in their hair to keep the strands safely tucked away from spinning machine parts.
Miss Geary’s expression of astonishment, then another one of sadness, were genuine. She hadn’t known. “Oh, no. Oh, how awful.” She covered her mouth with quivering fingers, her nails trimmed short, her knuckles chapped.
Dita turned to Leo. “You said she wasn’t very visibly pregnant?”
She’d mentioned the Jane Doe to Dita in passing after the corpse first arrived in the morgue, but as usual, her friend couldn’t stand to hear about dead people—she found it almost as nauseating as seeing them in person. So, it was a bit surprising to know Dita had remembered this detail.
