Claude’s bushy white brows rose in half-moons over his eyes. “She didn’t say, but I know my niece, Inspector. When she first saw this man’s face…” He nodded toward Niles Foster. “She recognized him.”
Chapter Ten
When Leo finally arrived at the morgue after being sprung from Scotland Yard, grating thoughts of Inspector Tomlin and the humiliation of being held overnight so preoccupied her mind that she’d paid little attention to the body her uncle was standing over in the postmortem room: the dead man Jasper had discovered floating in Lord Hayes’s duck pond.
After assuring Claude she was perfectly well after her ordeal, he’d turned back to the task of removing the corpse’s clothing. It was then that Leo saw the dead man’s face. Immediately, her memory brought forth another image—one of this same man, identified as Niles Foster, though in her memory, he’d been very much alive. Leo had seen him before inside Eddie Bloom’s club, Striker’s Wharf.
She’d held her tongue, but after noting the gash on the man’s cheek, his bruised left eye and ligature marks on his wrists for the coroner’s report, Leo had made a hasty exit from the morgue. She’d cited hunger and a longing for clean, fresh clothes as her reasons to return to Duke Street. And she had indeed gone there for those things. But she had swiftly departed again, this time heading for Dita’s home.
Dita and her father, Sergeant Byron Brooks, resided on a working-class street in Covent Garden in a terrace house that had always seemed warm and cozy. Several years before, when Leo had been on her way to visit Gregory Reid at Scotland Yard, she’d witnessed a constable outside the carriages department stepping into the path of a young, brown-skinned woman. She hadn’t known Dita back then, and later, Leo learned that Dita had been attempting to deliver her father’s forgotten flask of tea when the constable had started to harass her. Without hesitation, Dita had opened the flask and splashed it onto the hems of his blue woolen trousers. He’d shouted, calling her alunatic coolie, but Dita whisked past him and into the building without batting an eyelash. Leo had waited for her to reemerge from the building, and when she did, she’d approached her.
“Was that tea you splashed onto that horrible constable’s trousers?”
Dita had grinned impishly. “Yes, though I wish it had been whisky so that his superior might smell liquor on him and give him the sack.”
Ever since then, they’d remained close friends. Most mornings, Dita would collect Leo on her walk toward Whitehall Place and Scotland Yard, and whenever she could, she convinced Leo to go out to a music hall or assembly room. Striker’s Wharf was their favorite haunt, and she, Dita, and John Lloyd had gone there often together.
Now, what Leo wanted to know was if Dita recalled Niles Foster from the club and if he’d somehow been acquainted with her beau.
Nearly a full minute passed after Leo knocked on the Brooks’ front door. Finally, it opened, and her friend let her inside. Dark smudges under Dita’s eyes and the red tip of her nose underscored her grief, as did her sluggish movement as sheclosed the door behind Leo. It was as though all the lively fire that always filled Dita to the brim had drained away entirely.
She returned to what looked to be a well-worn spot in the corner of the sofa. The sitting room was draped in shadows, the curtains drawn to block out the sunlight.
“I should have come before now,” Leo said, realizing her misstep in staying away to allow her friend privacy to mourn.
But Dita shook her head, her fingers already grasping a linen handkerchief and pressing it to her nose. “I didn’t wish to see anyone. Not even you. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
It didn’t. Leo understood the desire for solitude with grief. After the Inspector died, she’d craved the time to be alone, if only so that she would not have to speak of her feelings of loss. Mere words could not do it justice. And after learning that Jasper had been the boy in the attic who’d hidden her and that he’d kept the truth from her all these years, she’d closed herself off wholly. Not just to him, but to anyone who might have noticed their strained distance. That had been a different type of loss. Jasper was still alive, of course, but he would never be quite the same again. Not in her eyes, at least.
“Perhaps we could take a walk along the Strand?” she suggested. Fresh air and sun might help lift her friend from some of the fog of heartache, although Dita would have to exchange her paisley dressing gown for proper clothing.
Dita shook her head. “I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Father forced me to at least make it to this room before he left for his shift today.”
Leo stood. “Then I’ll make us tea.”
She went to the kitchen, a room she was familiar with by now, and put the kettle on the hob. Normally, Dita would not have allowed her to do any such thing. But several minutes later, when Leo reappeared with two beakers of strong black tea, herfriend was still curled up in the corner of the sofa, her expression slack, her eyes distant.
She placed the cup in Dita’s hand and sat beside her again. “There is something I need to ask you.”
Holding the cup to her lips, letting the steam drift in front of her face, Dita’s attention sharpened for the first time since Leo had arrived. “The answer is no. I still refuse to believe John would have carried that bomb toward Scotland Yard. I don’t care what the evidence shows; I know him.” She took a shaky breath and turned her face into the steam. “Knewhim.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” Leo said.
Dita’s smooth brow crinkled. “It wasn’t? Forgive me. My father has been relentless. Though not half as relentless as Inspector Tomlin.”
Sergeant Brooks must have been acutely mortified that his daughter’s beau stood accused of being a traitor. And Tomlin was a tactless brute.
“No, I wanted to ask if you recognize the name Niles Foster.”
Dita blinked and tucked her chin. Before she could answer, a heavy rapping on the front door interrupted them. Leo set down her tea. “I’ll see who it is.”
She had every intention of turning away the caller, but then she opened the door. Jasper loomed over her on the front step, his expression stern.
“How do you know Niles Foster?” he asked, forgoing a greeting altogether.
It appeared he’d been to the morgue and that her uncle had observed her reaction to the body and mentioned it to Jasper.
Leo stepped aside, allowing him in. “How did you find this address?”
