“Has Chief Coughlan arrived yet?” Jasper asked, eyeing the dirt left behind on the blotter.
“Come and gone, though I’m sure he’ll be back.” Lewis grimaced and quirked his brow. “You look like shite.”
The hammering and clinking of bricks and metal outside burrowed into Jasper’s ears. “I am aware, thank you.”
He started to shed his coat, belatedly recalling the knife holes in the back.
“Listen, guv, there’s something you should know,” Lewis began.
Jasper rubbed his temples. They throbbed, and a gnawing pit had replaced his stomach. It seemed the early morning commotion at Hayes Manor was finally catching up to him. As soon as the chief arrived, he’d inform him of Niles Foster’s death and request to lead the investigation. Then, he’d go home, bathe, and feed his hangover with a finger of whisky. A little hair of the dog was the only thing that would work to steady him.
“Tomlin’s made two arrests in the Lloyd bombing,” Lewis continued.
Jasper nodded. “Good.”
It wasn’t his investigation, as he’d told Leo several times already. The apparent drowning at Hayes Manor, however, might be, if Coughlan thought him impartial enough.
“A suffragist,” Lewis said. That grabbed Jasper’s attention.
“Not a member of Clan na Gael?”
His sergeant grimaced as he shook his head. “Tomlin also nabbed someone else.” He squinted as if preparing to be dealt a blow to the face. “It’s Miss Spencer.”
Everything in Jasper went still. His hearing muffled as he tried to make sense of what Lewis had just said. Tomlin had arrestedLeo?
For the second time that morning, the hangover he well deserved drained away to be replaced by clear-headedness and biting urgency.
“Where is she?”
Lewis turned his eyes toward the ceiling, indicating the upper floors where the matrons guarded the women and children being held at the Yard.
Bloody hell.
Jasper grabbed his coat and stalked from the room without another word.
Chapter Eight
Leo paced the pale blue carpet in the small room. Inside, it was stuffy and hot, the window having been nailed shut long ago as a preventative measure, though that seemed utterly absurd. No rational woman would jump to her freedom from three floors up, for heaven’s sake. Her limbs ached with restlessness even as she moved, charting the room from one corner to another and back again. She’d been there all night and into the morning, and so far, she’d only been brought a single cup of water to quench her thirst. Her stomach rumbled fiercely, but her anger was doing well to snuff that out.
After being handcuffed in the Stewarts’ home and led out to the back of the police wagon, she’d settled on the bench next to Geraldine. The woman had been stark white, her eyes round in disbelief. “They think I’ve murdered a man. That I set off a bomb!”
Leo had tried to ignore the cold, surprisingly heavy iron cuffs around her wrists. Inspector Tomlin would be forced to release her swiftly, she’d reasoned, as he had nothing to charge her with and no evidence at all to point to her involvement withthe bombing. But Mrs. Stewart was facing a much more serious plight.
“Did you know Police Constable John Lloyd?” she asked the woman.
At the rapid shake of Geraldine’s head, Leo explained what had unfolded the previous day and who the victim had been.
“Miss Brooks was to marry him?” At this, Mrs. Stewart’s eyes shone with tears. “The poor dear. I’m so very sorry for what she is going through, but I had absolutely nothing to do with his death.”
Leo believed her. However, there was the matter of the valise that John had been carrying. Inspector Tomlin had confirmed that it belonged to Mrs. Stewart, and when Leo described the case that had housed the device, the WEA leader had gaped.
“Yes. Yes! That is my valise. I’ve had it for a handful of years, ever since our trip to France after Porter and I married. But it should be in my attic, not blown to pieces by a bomb!”
Leo considered what Inspector Tomlin had said while making the arrest. “Lord Babbage was to visit Scotland Yard that afternoon. It seems they’ve concluded that he might have been the intended target. And you, Mrs. Stewart, have been quite vocal about your dislike for him.”
“Of course I have been,” she replied. “The man is infuriatingly prehistoric in his views of women. It is no secret we dislike each other, but I would not try to kill him!”
Babbage had recently been quoted inThe Times, calling Geraldine and all women like her “bratty shrews.” They were no better than whining children who’d been given too many sweets before bedtime, he’d added.
