“They all look to be pale and smooth,” she said. “So, they’re old scars.”
“By a decade, at least,” Connor confirmed.
The parallel lines of scarring on the palm of Leo’s right hand were also white with age, and though they were still raised, the two weals had started to smooth over, as most scars did over time. Her memory brought forward the scar on Jasper’sleft pectoral chest wall, inflicted by the same shard of porcelain that had cut Leo’s palm. His scar hadn’t healed as well as hers probably because he hadn’t tended to it as carefully as the Inspector and Mrs. Zhao had done for Leo’s. He’d hidden it under his shirt, knowing that it marked him as the boy whom Leo had stabbed in the attic.
Although she’d come to terms with the truth of his identity, and it no longer felt as massive a betrayal as it had at first, pangs of sadness still stroked through her chest when she thought of Jasper’s deepest secret. One question that continued to nag at her was if he would have ever come forward with the truth if she had not discovered it on her own. Would he have drawn her close and kissed her, if she’d still been living in ignorance about the boy who had saved her from certain death that night?
The question was one of many that had held her back from seeking out Jasper since the night in his study.
Leo jotted down the number of burn scars, their placement on the corpse’s body, and their exact measurements as once again, her mind returned to the few moments she had been in Jasper’s arms four weeks ago. Even though Jasper had escaped the Carters, had renounced them, it didn’t change the fact that his blood relations had murdered her family. Kissing Jasper had felt incontestably right, and yet, the smallest sliver of betrayal had lodged under her skin afterward. A sliver that had continued to grow since that night.
What would her parents think of her? Her brother and little sister?
Right then, the bell in the morgue lobby pealed, distracting Leo from her dismal, guilty thoughts.
“I’ll see who it is,” she said, hoping it would be someone to do with Mrs. Seabright. Her body would need to be formally identified and claimed, and perhaps her family would have some idea about who had come to pay her body an early morning visit.
As Leo approached the door to the lobby, it opened. Stephen Warnock of Scotland Yard peered into the postmortem room, then pulled to a stop, hesitant to enter any further. She looked past him, expecting Jasper to enter next. But the officer was alone.
“Constable,” she said, unable to mask her surprise. “How can we help you?”
Belatedly, he doffed his hat. “It’s detective sergeant now, miss. I’ve passed my examinations and had a promotion,” he corrected, his pride shining through.
“Congratulations, Sergeant Warnock. It’s well deserved, I’m sure.”
She wasn’t truly certain, but it seemed an encouraging thing to say. Besides, Warnock had never been rude toward her, as some of the others at the Yard had been.
“I’ve had a message from Inspector Reid. He’s asked me to meet him in St. Bride, and I’m to bring you with me.”
That sounded serious. She crossed a look with Connor, who had started to place closing sutures, before turning back to the sergeant. “Why? What has happened?”
“He’s found a body,” he answered. “And he wants you to have a look at it.”
Chapter Seven
All Jasper knew so far was that the man lying dead inside Gavin Seabright’s rented room was not the tenant himself.
He had arrived at the address on Dorset Street shortly after leaving the Law Courts. It was a Friday morning, close to noon, and if Gavin Seabright held down a job, he was more likely to be found at work than at home. However, after scrutinizing the Metropolitan Police warrant card Jasper displayed while introducing himself, the landlady, Mrs. Beardsley, reported that Mr. Seabright had returned home from work a few hours before.
“Is that unusual?” Jasper asked once he’d been allowed across the threshold to stand in the narrow foyer. “Or does he often return in the middle of a workday?”
With a huff of contempt, Mrs. Beardsley replied, “What do you think I do, Inspector? Prop a chair here and watch the door all day long, then? I got myself ten lodgers to see to and plenty to do without keepin’ tabs on who comes and goes.”
With a weary groan, muttering that these were respectable lodgings and the police showing up wasn’t good for business, she’d gone upstairs to alert Mr. Seabright to his guest. From the bottom step, Jasper heard several knocks, and Mrs. Beardsley’sraised voice, telling her lodger twice that he was to come downstairs to talk to a Scotland Yard inspector. A few seconds of silence followed her last summons. Then came her shout: “Inspector!”
Jasper took the stairs two at a time to find the landlady staring into the room. “I tried the knob,” she told him. “It weren’t locked.”
By her awestruck expression, he wasn’t surprised to find a body lying upon the floor inside the room.
Mrs. Beardsley propped her work-chapped hands on her hips and, with a crinkle of her brow, announced, “Haven’t the faintest who he is. It ain’t Mr. Seabright, that’s fer certain. But this bloke were here, callin’ on me lodger just before breakfast. I don’t like mornin’ callers. It ain’t polite.”
The dead man was roughly twenty-five years of age and appeared to have suffered a head wound; his temple had an acute depression, and a fair amount of blood had pooled around his head on the underlying carpet. He’d come to lie next to a small coal stove, which would have heated the room during the colder months. The finial on top of the stove was a short iron spike, and there were traces of blood on it.
With evidence of a struggle—the shaving stand had been knocked over as well as a chair—Jasper thought the most likely scenario was that the victim, whoever he was, had fallen during a fight and struck his temple on the sharp finial, receiving a killing blow.
Now, nearly an hour later, Jasper stood by the window, impatient for Warnock and Leo to arrive. He’d finished interviewing the landlady and had searched the small room, leaving him time to second-guess his decision to summon Leo. Doing so went against Chief Inspector Coughlan’s express order to limit her involvement and Jasper’s own desire to shield her from any more distress. But in this investigation, there was notime to lose. There was no question, especially after Jasper had taken a closer look at the victim, that Leo could provide insight about the body.
At the sound of their arrival downstairs, Jasper went to meet them. Mrs. Beardsley led them up to the room and took the opportunity to complain.
