“Actually, Mr. Quinn, I enjoy the work,” she said. “And I plan to continue with it.”
He frowned. “But as Mr. Pritchard has said?—”
“Mr. Pritchard stated that he wanted a suitable clerk for this morgue’s increasing number of cases,” Leo cut in. “As he has had no complaint with my work for nearly five years, I believe I am quite suitable.”
Her anger was driving her to be purposefully obtuse. This wasn’t about wanting better work or more competence. Mr. Pritchard simply wanted a suitablemaleclerk.
Amusement crossed Mr. Quinn’s face. It was smug and condescending, and his eyes, which were the light brown color of weak tea, conveyed disbelief.
“Are you paid for your work here, Miss Spencer?”
She pressed her shoulders lower at the unexpected question. “That is none of your concern.”
“I’ll take that to mean you are not. So may I ask why you would wish to continue working for no pay?”
In the closet, her uncle’s whistling stopped. Leo’s cheeks warmed. The truth was, as soon as her uncle was let go from his position, she would no longer be able to afford to work for free. She would need to support him, Aunt Flora, and herself.
She was grateful for Claude’s timely return, carrying a lab coat, apron, and appropriate boots for his new assistant. Overwhelmed by the feeling of being thwarted, Leo would not be able to stomach showing Mr. Quinn around the morgue with her uncle.
“I’m going to start going through those boxes you mentioned were stored in the crypt,” she told Claude. She’d not yet had a chance to search for her family’s few possessions that he’d stored there, and now seemed to be the perfect time to begin.
“Ah yes, let me show you where they are,” he said, latching onto the excuse to step away from their unwanted guest.
As Mr. Quinn donned his garments, they stepped into the back office, out of sight.
“What now?” Leo whispered. “There is no chance Mr. Quinn isn’t going to notice your hands shaking. And he won’t hesitate to tell his grandfather, I would guess.”
Claude rubbed his palms together, looking down at them as if they had betrayed him. With a sad shake of his head, he sighed. “I’m sorry, my dear.” He gripped her arm and gave it a light, reassuring squeeze. “I fear my time has come. And I don’t think there is anything we can do except to let it.”
Chapter Fifteen
After leaving Leo at Trafalgar Square and returning to Scotland Yard, Jasper tried—and failed—to forget the return carriage ride from Holloway Prison. The boxes of items collected from Niles Foster’s rooms provided a good attempt at a distraction, but as he joined Lewis, who’d been sorting through the clothing, legal texts, ledgers, and folios that Foster had presumably brought from Parliament to his rooms, Jasper’s thoughts continually crept back toward his conversation with Leo.
He didn’t know if they’d made any strides toward a truce or if he’d only pushed her further away. She hadn’t missed the way his attention slipped to her lips. And he hadn’t missed the blush staining her cheeks. What they’d learned from Mrs. Stewart about her sister-in-law should have been of more consequence than those few beguiling moments in which Jasper had suppressed a crushing desire to move across the carriage and seat himself next to Leo. She would have been appalled, he supposed. So, he tried to pretend the urge had not tempted him at all and instead kept the disconnected threads between his own case and Inspector Tomlin’s foremost in his mind.
“His handwriting is something awful,” Lewis complained, paging through papers in one of Foster’s folios. He slapped them onto the desk and shoved them aside. “I can’t understand half of what he writes, can you?”
Jasper had put away a stack of papers and started to go through a box of clothing. The hemlines of Foster’s trousers pointed to them having been purchased secondhand. The cuffs and collars he’d attached to shirts were frayed from overuse, and his stockings had been darned several times over.
“No, but I was hoping for a financial ledger of some sort. You’ve seen nothing?” Jasper asked. Lewis shook his head.
The laborers had left a short while ago, the rain having slowed their progress on rebuilding the corner wall, and other officers in the CID had also started home for the evening. Lewis was likely eager to return to his family too.
“Foster must have kept a desk outside Sir Elliot’s office at Parliament,” Jasper said. “Go there tomorrow and have a look. I’ll work on hunting down Olaf to inquire about the altercation at Bloom’s club.”
That would mean approaching Barry Reubens. It wasn’t an enviable task, and the crinkling of the detective sergeant’s forehead spoke to it. “I should come with you for that. Me and a few constables.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I’ll take Drake and Price with me. Go on home, now. I’ll finish with this box.” Jasper lifted out a black frock coat showing signs of wear in the threading around the shoulders.
Lewis stood and stretched his back as Jasper turned out the pockets. A scrap of crumpled paper fluttered to the floor. Retrieving it, then flattening it out, he read an address:7 Lisle Street, Leicester Square.
The writing resembled Foster’s own from what he’d seen among the man’s belongings. Jasper turned the scrap of paperover, but there was nothing else written upon it. Leicester Square wasn’t far; it was likely nothing, but to disregard it would be madness, especially when they had so few other leads. He decided to go by the address before heading home for the evening.
Jasper rummaged through the boxes until he found the framed photograph he’d seen earlier. In it, Foster was standing behind a man and a woman, presumably his parents. He took the back off the frame and slipped the photograph into his coat pocket.
Jasper went north on foot from Whitehall Place. The tapering rain didn’t bother him; Mrs. Zhao might complain that he was damp through and through, but her scolding would bring some normalcy back to the day.
The visit to Holloway Prison had only further muddled the connection between Niles Foster and Constable Lloyd. Inspector Tomlin hadn’t been in when Jasper returned to the Yard that afternoon, but he would be there tomorrow. He couldn’t avoid bringing up the possibility their cases were linked for much longer, but at least his temper had cooled somewhat regarding Leo being held overnight without cause.
