His watery gray eyes skipped to his new assistant, then back to Leo. “We have things handled here, my dear.”
She couldn’t tell what that meant. Had Mr. Quinn already spotted his trembling hands? There was no way to discuss it now.
“I’ll return shortly,” she said, then went back to the office to gather her things. Jasper had said his first stop was to be Mr. Stewart’s home. Leo hurried from the morgue, hoping to catch him there.
Chapter Twenty
As it turned out, Emma Bates’s home on Rupert Street wouldn’t take Jasper and Lewis far from their path to the Stewarts’ residence, so they agreed to try there first.
“If she took the kiddies to see their grandparents, what reason does she have to go back to her brother-in-law’s home?” Lewis asked as they strode toward the intersection of Shaftsbury Avenue and Rupert Street.
Reluctantly, Jasper explained that after their visit to Holloway Prison—which Lewis had muttered was a barmy idea to begin with—Leo had divulged a suspicion that the widowed Emma Bates was smitten with Porter Stewart.
“And with her possible relation to the Spitalfields Angels, you think she had access to a bomb and set up Mrs. Stewart to get her out of the way? Come on, guv,” Lewis said with a snorting laugh.
It did seem rather convoluted. If the woman’s maiden surname hadn’t been Paget, Jasper would’ve dismissed Leo’s suspicion. But as the Angels were now linked to both Niles Foster and the case against Mrs. Stewart, he couldn’t set it aside.
“I don’t have the answers yet, but we do know some of the Angels have strong ties to Clan na Gael,” Jasper said, thenlaunched into what Leo had theorized earlier, including the bit about Lester Rice and his deceased brother, Peter. “If Clan na Gael planned to carry out three bombings that day, and the Angels knew about it, they might have forced PC Lloyd to plant Mrs. Stewart’s suitcase so that it would be found amongst the rest of the wreckage.”
He sighed, still wanting more to back up their theory. It was as if the pieces were floating around in his head, out of order, connecting for only a moment before splitting apart again.
Lewis murmured half-hearted support for this possibility, then said, “Tomlin’s going to go to the superintendent. You know that, right?”
He exhaled. “Yes.”
Chief Superintendent Monroe had replaced Gregory Reid when he’d become ill enough to step down. Monroe was an aloof man, tall and imperial, and he would not like that Jasper had disregarded Inspector Tomlin’s findings in the Stewart case. Subversion in any form was more than frowned upon. Jasper would be reprimanded, though how harshly he wasn’t sure.
“I’ll worry about that later,” he said.
At Mrs. Bates’s address, a young maid opened the door and told them that her mistress was out.
“Has she returned here after her trip to Kent?” Jasper asked.
The maid bobbed her head in affirmation, but when Lewis asked where they might be able to find her, she became skittish and quiet.
“Does Mrs. Bates have family in London?” Jasper tried when the maid looked ready to close the door on them. “Other than Mr. and Mrs. Stewart,” he added.
The maid frowned. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Lewis asked.
She pursed her lips and looked back over her shoulder into the house. Then whispered, “Can’t. I don’t want to lose my position. I were just brought on last month.”
Jasper didn’t want to get the girl in trouble, but she knew something, and he wasn’t willing to risk letting it go just to be polite. “Does the name Paget sound familiar to you?”
The maid’s visible fright was an answer. He pressed onward.
“Has anyone by that name come here, looking for your mistress?”
Still miserable, she slipped onto the front step and closed the door all but an inch behind her. “Mrs. O’Toole says we aren’t ever to speak of them. If Mistress has a visitor by that name, they’re to be directed to the back door.”
The tradesmen’s entrance for family? Emma Bates was either ashamed or wished to secret them away for another reason.
“Have any of them come here recently? Within the last few weeks?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Not in the month since I’ve been here.”
Jasper considered asking to speak to this Mrs. O’Toole, who was likely the housekeeper. But then, the maid’s frown pinched even more deeply. “But Mistress did put a letter in the post my first week. I only noticed the name because Mrs. O’Toole had just told me about sending them ones to the back door.”
