“Admit it, Leo. You were being stubborn,” he said.
Her patience snapped, and Leo pinned him with a glare. “I did not need to be rescued. Not by you.”
Guilt instantly doused her temper, which had kindled far too quickly. Jasper moved from the threshold onto the front step, his expression flattening. She nearly parted her lips to apologize when he tipped the brim of his bowler hat and replied, “That’s not what it looked like this morning.”
He turned on his heel and walked away, and Leo slammed the door.
Chapter Eleven
Detective Sergeant Lewis had already returned from Niles Foster’s bachelor’s rooms when Jasper arrived at the CID. The laborers rebuilding the wall in the department had stopped their work for tea, giving the cramped space, still dusted by rubble and debris, a respite from all the noise.
“What did you find?” Jasper asked as he tossed his bowler onto the shared desk. His nerves were still bundled tight from his visit with Leo and Miss Brooks. Not only was there now a strong link between John Lloyd and Niles Foster, one that centered around gambling at Striker’s Wharf, but Leo’s waspish irritation with him was truly starting to get under his skin.
Yes, he deserved her anger. He’d concealed a vital piece of the truth surrounding the most significant event of her life from her. A moment in time that had haunted her as well as him. Jasper knew there was a good chance she would never forgive him.
Buthell. He was not ready to give up.
“Learned some interesting things at Foster’s rooms,” Lewis answered.
He was seated at the desk, a half-eaten cheese sandwich in newsprint open before him. His wife sent him with a bite to eat with tea every day, but Jasper had yet to meet her or their two little boys. A part of him wondered if it was because Lewis did not truly like him and was only cordial since they worked together. It was also possible the detective sergeant simply wanted to keep his family shielded from his work. That would be understandable; he dealt with criminals and murderers every day, the real bottom-feeders of London.
“His landlady had warned him last week she’d give him the toss if he couldn’t pay his yearly lease,” Lewis said.
The man’s bachelor’s rooms weren’t far from the Thames and Houses of Parliament. In that busy part of the city, there were plenty of men looking for lodging. A landlady couldn’t be faulted for evicting a lodger who couldn’t pay.
“How much was the lease?”
“Fifty pounds,” Lewis answered.
Jasper nodded, the row between Oliver and Foster now becoming clear. “He asked Lord Hayes for that amount last week, which the viscount refused.”
“It isn’t cheap lodgings, but a single man with a good paying job shouldn’t have been so hard up,” Lewis commented as he picked up his sandwich and looked at it with lackluster interest.
“According to Hayes, Foster was an inveterate gambler.” Jasper hesitated to share what Leo had imparted, but his sergeant needed every bit of information if he was to be truly effective. “Miss Spencer recognized his body. She’d seen him at Striker’s Wharf previously. It appears he was tossed out of Bloom’s back room, which is reserved for gambling.”
Lewis chewed his sandwich, his forehead creasing. Once he swallowed, he said, “Miss Spencer witnessed this?”
Jasper nodded, and before anything more could be said about Leo and her frequenting a criminal’s nightclub, he asked, “What more did you learn from the landlady?”
Lewis dropped his sandwich to the newsprint and brushed his hands together, dislodging crumbs. "It was her daughter who had something more interesting to impart. She caught me on my way out. It seems she and Foster had a…beneficial arrangement.” He tucked his chin and winked to indicate this arrangement was of an intimate nature.
“And?”
“Foster appealed to her when her mum told him to pack his things. Claimed that he’d come by some information that was going to make him a small fortune.”
Jasper braced his hands against the desk’s edge. “What information?”
“She didn’t know. He never said. But if it was information he had, he probably planned to use it to blackmail someone.”
Jasper agreed. “What did you find among his belongings?”
“Nothing much. Clothes, a few photographs, some folios and papers that looked to be from his work. I’ve sent Price and Draketo collect the boxes containing Foster’s possessions.”
He anticipated the tedious work of poring through those boxes later, perhaps well into the evening. Jasper had no other plans, though. It was curiously freeing not to have to worry about whether he’d given enough time to Constance. Odd, how only now could he clearly feel the weight of that struggle no longer resting on his shoulders.
Lewis finished his lunch and drained his beaker of tea. “What’s next?”
“I suppose I should tell you that I’ve found a connection between John Lloyd and Niles Foster.”
