Sir Eamon loosened his clasped hands now. “A boy, Gavin, aged eleven, and a girl, Paula, the eldest at age fourteen.”
“Isn’t fourteen a little old to be admitted to an orphanage?” Jasper asked. There were plenty of girls and boys that age working in factories or in service, helping their families to make a living.
“It isn’t usual, no. But back then, the orphanage cared for fewer children, and the space was available. Not so anymore. Even after expanding the orphanage to another building nearby, there are more eligible children than there is space.”
“What happens to the children you can’t take in?” It wasn’t necessarily tied to the investigation, but Jasper was curious.
“The fund pays an annuity to the mother every year to assist her in caring for the children at home. It isn’t ideal,” he said with a shake of his head. “But it is better than nothing.”
Gavin Seabright had been invited to the dinner, but when Jasper asked the chief coroner if he’d been in attendance, the answer was no.
“Mrs. Seabright arrived alone. She said her son was indisposed for the evening.” The wry twitch of Sir Eamon’s eyebrow caught Jasper’s interest.
“Do you know Gavin Seabright?” he asked.
“Only what I read of him in the file. A runaway case. Numerous times over the five years he was there, he would disappear. He’d always be brought back by some farmer orshopkeeper after they caught him stealing something.” His mouth turned down at the corners as he recalled additional details of the boy’s file. “Notes about his behavior were troubling, especially one story about the groundskeeper’s dog.”
That sounded ominous. “What happened?”
“He killed it. A lethal dose of chloral hydrate, a sleeping sedative. Gavin claimed it was an accident, that he had mixed too much of the powder into the dog’s food. He was trying to slip past the dog, so he could run away again.”
Jasper took that in with another prickle of interest. So, Gavin had not wanted to be at the orphanage. He might have held some contempt for his mother over it. And last night, he had decided not to attend the dinner.
“And the daughter, Paula?” Jasper asked. “How did she fare?”
“Oh, I think she did rather well. She was only there for two years, then left, went to live with an aunt, and is now married to a successful businessman. Mr. Archibald Blickson, of Blickson Estate Insurance.”
Jasper hadn’t ever heard of it or him but was curious. “She went to live with an aunt? Not her mother?”
“That is what her file said. And from what I heard, Mrs. Seabright and her sister were not on speaking terms.”
Curious. Jasper turned away from the chief coroner toward the window. Outside, a haze of humidity hung in the air, though the stone walls of the Law Courts kept it cool inside the office.
“I would like all the addresses you have on file for the Seabrights, including the aunt,” Jasper said.
Sir Eamon assented and, after calling in his secretary, asked that the addresses to be collected for the inspector.
“Where are you going with this, Inspector Reid?” he asked after his secretary left to see to the task. “The men who invaded my home last night can’t have had anything to do with MarthaSeabright. They were there to steal valuables. The man leading them lost control and shot her. Surely that is all there was to it?”
“Nothing about the leader’s actions seemed out of control to me,” Jasper replied.
On the contrary, he’d been collected. Focused. And Leo had observed that the other men seemed taken aback by their leader’s unscripted use of violence.
Abruptly, more of the fog plaguing him since Leo’s abduction cleared. With belated clarity, Jasper realized something he should have already noted: The leader could have just as easily selected Leo to shoot in the head. He’d gone straight to Martha Seabright instead. Because she was old? Less valuable than a younger woman, perhaps, if one wanted to be callous about it. Or had he had another reason for choosing Martha?
The chief coroner’s secretary returned with the list of addresses and handed it to Jasper.
“Thank you for your time, Sir Eamon. I’ll be in touch,” he said, then started away. There were four addresses on the list. The one closest to the Law Courts was also the one he most wanted to visit. It was time to meet Gavin Seabright.
Chapter Six
Leo stormed out of the detective department at Scotland Yard, and an instant tug of regret beleaguered her. It added weight to her heels, slowing her. She’d overreacted to Jasper’s suggestion that she take the day off, and though she wanted to blame her snap of temper on exhaustion, that wasn’t it entirely.
It was embarrassment.
Leo had already spent an hour that morning at the morgue, typing her witness statement, her eyes drifting to the postmortem room door time and again. The body of Martha Seabright had been delivered overnight, admitted by the night attendant, Mr. Sampson. Leo had never avoided a corpse before. And yet, earlier that morning upon her arrival, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to enter the darkened postmortem room.
The presence of dead bodies didn’t affect Leo; they didn’t turn her stomach, and she wasn’t afraid of them as so many others were. Her friend, Dita Brooks, could not even bear to set foot in the Spring Street Morgue. Yet, picturing Martha Seabright on an autopsy table had put a new, strange chill in Leo’s bones.
