“Last year,” Claude answered.
Leo had parted her lips to say the same thing, but her uncle had been listening. He had led Flora to the leather Chesterfield, her hands petting the cover of a book she’d taken from a shelf.
“You recall the case?” Leo frowned. “But it wasn’t reported in the news. At least that is what the agreement in the settlement indicated.”
“No, no, I heard it from Richard Durant, the coroner at Kennington morgue,” he answered, coming closer to the sideboard while casting a look back at Flora to be sure she was settled. “We meet for a pint every now and then.”
Leo recalled him mentioning Mr. Durant over the years. “You met last summer. August, wasn’t it?”
She’d had supper with Flora that evening, just the two of them. Her aunt had been slipping, but not as severely as she was now.
“That’s right,” Claude confirmed, his glass of cordial untouched. Leo knew he was only being polite; he preferred small beer, and that only sparingly.
“It affected him, the death of those two children. We coroners accept the fact that we must deal with dead children and infants, but these two…Richard said the green pigment that stained their mouths and tongues gave him nightmares. He evendecided to hire a man to come take down the wallpaper in his own house. Grandchildren, he said. Didn’t want to risk it.”
“There was no police investigation?” Jasper asked.
Claude shrugged. “The postmortem was straightforward. Arsenic poisoning. Accidental.”
“But the Nelsons may have filed a report with the police,” Leo suggested. “They clearly held Henderson & Son accountable for their children’s deaths and wished to press charges.”
“However, they accepted Henderson’s private settlement of one hundred pounds,” Jasper said. “And a contract of silence as well?”
Leo nodded. If they were a poor family, as Mr. Nelson’s employment as an ironmonger indicated, the sum would be life-changing. However, so would be the loss of their two children.
“The death portrait,” Leo said. Jasper nodded, understanding her suggestion without her needing to say more. The children upon that rocking horse might very well be the Nelsons’.
“Those poor babies.”
Leo’s eardrums buzzed at her aunt’s voice. Their conversation had slowly risen from a whisper as they’d been speaking. Flora, still seated on the sofa, clutched the book to her chest. Her eyes were distant.
“Killed. Murdered,” she said, her voice high.
Claude started back to his wife’s side.
“This was an accident, Aunt Flora,” Leo said, wanting to kick herself. She’d assumed her aunt hadn’t been paying attention.
Her distant gaze sharpened and locked on Leo. “She told me. She wrote to me, telling me about the business. The bloody, bloody business.”
Leo held her aunt’s stare, her curiosity rising. This was something she had never said before. “Who wrote? My mother, do you mean? She wrote to you?”
Not once had Flora mentioned correspondence with Andromeda. Claude had never mentioned letters either. Flora shook off his hand when he attempted to grasp her shoulder and got to her feet with surprising rapidity and balance. “It was you.Youdid it. You killed them!”
The words had been slung at her before, but Leo felt the heat of embarrassment consume her cheeks even more fiercely now that Jasper was listening. Flora continued to mumble the words again and again—You did it. You killed them!—as Claude tried to soothe and distract her. Leo set her cordial glass down, avoiding Jasper’s eyes.
“Mrs. Feldman, why don’t you take the book with you?” he suggested, joining Claude in his efforts of distraction.
She stopped chanting and thanked him profusely before then inquiring where they were and what they were doing there. Leo’s throat cinched up tight as they left the study and met Mrs. Zhao in the foyer to collect their coats and hats.
Jasper pulled her aside after she hastily put on her own coat. She hadn’t wanted him to help her again, as he had earlier. She was too agitated. Too desperate to leave.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Ridiculously, his concern caused her eyes to mist over perilously.
She forced a cheery nod. “Of course. She doesn’t mean what she says.” Leo put on her hat, still unable to look him in the eye. “Thank you for dinner. It was kind of you to invite us.”
Jasper exhaled as if unsatisfied with her response. But he left it alone and said, “I’ll hail a cab for you.”
“That isn’t necessary.” Leo opened the front door. “We’ll go to the cab stand.”
