Leo’s glistening eyes blinked. “My fatherbetrayedthem? But…how did he even know them?”
After months of wanting to explain to her, he now understood that telling her the truth might feel worse than her avoidance of him had. He knew the answer would be a blow to her. He licked his lips, then answered reluctantly, “He worked for them.”
Shock melted the tension on her brow. She shook her head. “No. You’re wrong. You’re lying. My father wasn’t an East Rip.”
“Not everyone who works for the Carters is an East Rip,” he said quietly, hoping to calm her. “They have a wide network of associates and allies. Hell, not even every Carter is an East Rip. My own father wasn’t. He was Patrick Carter’s cousin. He wasn’t involved, and neither was I until…well, until after he died.”
Leo breathed evenly, shaking her head. “My father was an accountant, not a criminal.”
He didn’t need to tell her outright what she would soon grasp on her own: that her father had been keeping the books for one of the Carters’ many businesses. Some were legitimate. Others, less so.
Leo pressed her fingers to her left ear, as if it was causing her pain. Her chin quivered. “I need to go. I wasn’t ready.” She turned for the door.
“Let me flag you a cab,” he offered, starting forward. She held up her hand.
“I’ll flag one on my own,” she said. “Goodnight, Inspector.”
It prickled, Leo calling him that. “I wish you would call me Jasper again.”
“That isn’t your name though, is it?” She stepped into the hall, and before he could object, she walked away.
Chapter Six
Dawn painted the walls of Leo’s bedroom orange and pink. Since returning from Jasper’s home, she’d lain abed with her mind churning, sleep a distant prospect. Her father had worked for the East Rips. Or at least, Jasper believed he had. Was it possible that he was remembering things incorrectly? He’d been thirteen at the time, after all. Essentially, a child still.
But as night ticked closer toward daylight, Leo couldn’t quite convince herself that he was mistaken. As much as it pained her to admit it, Jasper likely remembered that night just as vividly as she did. It wouldn’t matter that they’d been on opposite sides of the horror.
If the Carter family had decided to punish Leonard Spencer to such an extent, his betrayal must have been extraordinary. The nature of that betrayal could very well have been described in the letters her mother had written to Aunt Flora.The bloody, bloody business,her aunt had mumbled one night, although at the time, Leo hadn’t fully understood to what she was referring.
Leo and Claude had looked through Flora’s things for any letters she’d kept from Andromeda Spencer. They’d searched a cedar chest, the closet, and boxes into which Flora had tuckedtrinkets she thought special enough to cherish: a baby’s bonnet, yellowed by time; an empty glass atomizer that still smelled faintly of perfume; and a brooch Claude believed to have belonged to Leo’s grandmother. But there had been nothing at all from Andromeda.
Restless to begin the day, Leo got out of bed and dressed. Claude joined her in the kitchen shortly after she’d finished cooking the eggs and sausages, both of which emerged from the hob barely charred this time. As her uncle had been asleep at the time of the three bombings the night before, she informed him after they’d sat down to eat. Just as Leo had, he thought the different timing of the bombs and the differences in their construction peculiar.
“Might the two explosions at the Yard be unrelated?” he mused as he added a handful of watercress to his eggs, perhaps to make them more palatable. “At any rate, I’m glad Inspector Reid was unharmed. Am I to assume the two of you are no longer quarreling?”
Claude had given her privacy and hadn’t addressed the distance she’d kept from Jasper over the last few months, but he’d surely noticed it. Especially since whenever Jasper had come to the morgue to discuss postmortem findings with Claude, Leo would close herself in the office or quickly leave on an errand.
“We weren’t quarreling.” To admit they had been would lead her uncle to ask why. The reason wasn’t something she wished to speak of to anyone.
Though Jasper had hurt and betrayed her, and she had moments of wanting to lash out and injure him just as deeply, she couldn’t bring herself to unmask Jasper. Not only would it destroy his career, but it might also draw the attention of the Carters back to him. Somehow, Jasper had come face-to-face with Andrew Carter in March, and the East Rip hadn’trecognized him as any kind of relation. The Carter family tree had roots that were broad and deep in London, with numerous brothers, cousins and uncles. From what he’d said last night, his own father had been a cousin to Patrick and Robert Carter, with Jasper and his mother only being taken in by the East Rips Carters after his father had died. Then, when his mother was killed—something he had only recently revealed during their investigation into Gabriela Carter’s murder—he’d been left alone to stay with his aunt and uncle. What that must have been like for him as a boy was one of the many questions taking up residence in Leo’s mind.
But the answers to the questions she’d asked last night had disillusioned her, and now she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask any more at all.
“Uncle Claude,” she said, piercing her sausage with the tines of her fork. “I’ve been thinking about the letters my mother wrote to Aunt Flora.”
“I do wish we had found them, my dear,” he said.
It wasn’t just the contents of the letters Leo longed to read. She also yearned for the opportunity to see her mother’s handwriting. To hold something that her mother had once touched.
Not long after the murders, Gregory Reid had brought her a few things he’d collected from her family’s home on Red Lion Street: framed photographs, some clothing, her sister Agnes’s rag doll, and Jacob’s pocket watch. Things the Inspector had thought she might want or would eventually come to cherish. At the time, as a little girl who had just lost her family, Leo hadn’t cared about the home itself or anything within it. To her mind, the house was a place of pain, of heartbreak and fear, and she was only grateful to know that she never had to step foot inside it again.
A handful of years passed before she thought to ask Claude what had become of her family’s belongings. He replied that as soon as he and Flora had arrived in London, he’d relinquished the premises back to the leaseholder, along with most of the furnishings. Leo hadn’t been upset. What meaning could sofas and chairs, mirrors and bedsteads possibly have compared to the family members she’d lost?
Now, however, after searching through Flora’s things for her mother’s letters without success, a new thought struck her: What had happened to her family’s possessions that the leaseholder wouldn’t have wanted? Things like mementos, papers, letters, and diaries? She posed the question to Claude, who lowered his fork and wrinkled his brow.
“I haven’t given those things a thought in years.”
“Did you burn them?” she asked.
