Mr. Hayes brought his crossed leg down to the floor and sat forward. “What questions could you possibly have for me? I was not in attendance last evening.”
“Precisely. However, your name, along with that of Mrs. Hayes, were on the guest list my constables were given. Why did you choose not to attend?”
“How is that your concern?”
“I need to speak to all guests on the list, regardless of whether they attended or not,” Jasper explained.
“The guests are victims of this band of ruffians. A woman was murdered.” Mr. Hayes got to his feet. “I do not see the rationale in questioning the guests as iftheyare suspects. In fact, it is damn insulting.”
Jasper did not flinch. He’d had plenty of experience questioning belligerent people. As with them all, Stanley Hayes’s complaints would not cause Jasper to rescind his questions.
“I mean no offense, Mr. Hayes, but the rationale for questioning guests is for me to determine, as I am the one investigating the crimes committed,” he said as evenly as he could. “Now, you can explain while I’m here why you did not attend the dinner last night, or we can meet at Scotland Yard to discuss it.”
Mr. Hayes appealed to the chief coroner with an imploring look. But like Jasper, Sir Eamon only waited for the man’s answer.
With a huff, he finally said, “My wife was feeling ill last evening. That is why we did not attend. Is that an adequate response for you, Inspector Reid?”
“It is,” Jasper answered with a false grin. “Thank you. I can turn my questions now to the chief coroner.”
He scoured Jasper with another look of loathing, then said a terse “Good day” to Sir Eamon, shutting the door forcefully behind him.
“Well, Reid, I would say you’ve made yourself an enemy,” Sir Eamon commented as he walked back toward his desk. He sounded amused rather than upset.
“A daily occurrence, I’m afraid,” Jasper replied, and it earned him a chuckle. He wouldn’t share why Stanley Hayes had been predisposed to disliking him. “When was Mr. Hayes involved with the orphanage?”
“I’m rather new to the Board. Been on it five years now. But I believe Stanley was one of the original governors when the orphanage opened. At first, it was just a fund, with charity being divvied out to officers’ widows, but the governors soon realized an orphanage would alleviate the widows’ financial worries more effectively.”
By taking on the day-to-day care and expense of keeping the children fed and healthy, Jasper presumed.
“What questions do you have for me?” he asked as he snuffed out his cigar. He seemed direct and efficient, and Jasper was glad for it.
“I observed you in a tense discussion with the victim, Martha Seabright, before dinner,” he replied.
The chief coroner sighed, as though he’d known the question would come up. “Yes. I rather think several people witnessed that conversation.”
“About what were the two of you speaking?”
Sir Eamon pulled out the wheeled leather chair at his desk and sat. He leaned back and raised his hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “Honestly? I’m not sure. Mrs. Seabright tried to take me aside a few times during the gathering before dinner, but as you can understand, as host, I needed to welcome guests to our home and circulate.”
Jasper could understand it, though not by experience. He couldn’t think of anything more repellant than hosting a dinner for thirty or more people in his home. His address on Charles Street would have accommodated the numbers, but the place wasn’t nearly fashionable enough inside to host the sort of people the chief coroner had invited.
Jasper’s father had bequeathed him the home, which was far too large and in too well-heeled a neighborhood to keep up easily on a detective inspector’s wages. He’d come to a hard decision recently: He would have to sell his father’s house. How Gregory Reid had managed it all these years still baffled him. It wasn’t something he and Jasper had ever discussed, and though Jasper had questioned it, he’d never asked his father directly. When his father had fallen terminally ill, the upkeep of the house was the last thing on Jasper’s mind.
“How did Mrs. Seabright seem to you?” he asked after pushing away the drop of his stomach; it happened whenever he thought of leaving 23 Charles Street.
“Distressed,” Sir Eamon answered. Then, more thoughtfully, he said, “Panicked, I would say. When she finally did waylay me, she asked the oddest question. She wanted to know if a certain nurse was still employed at the orphanage.”
“Which nurse was she curious about?”
Sir Eamon, still frowning at the memory, replied, “A Nurse Radcliff. I answered that yes, she still worked at the orphanage, but Mrs. Seabright didn’t say why she wished to know. She simply…stormed off.”
There was no obvious reason why Mrs. Seabright’s question should have lifted the small hairs on Jasper’s arms, however, they stood on end. It was instinct, and it was how he knew this detail was important to the case.
“Do you know of any problem Mrs. Seabright had with this nurse back when her children were placed at the orphanage?” Jasper asked. That had been thirteen years ago. The Seabright children were grown now, presumably.
Sir Eamon sat forward in his chair and propped his forearms on the desk. He clasped his hands in a tight grip. “I read Mrs. Seabright’s file the last time I was in Twickenham, after the Board decided to highlight some of the first beneficiaries of thefund.” He squeezed his grip, the tension whitening his knuckles. “There were a few things that stood out to me. The youngest child, a little boy about four months of age, died of a fever shortly after arriving. I wouldn’t have brought that up in my speech, of course, but…these things happened on occasion.”
“She had three children placed at the orphanage,” Jasper said, recalling the constables’ report. “Tell me about the other two.”
