Her meaning was clear enough. Martha Seabright had prostituted herself, and when Gavin learned of it, he’d left.
“I see.” Leo imagined such a revelation might have angered him. But that had to have been roughly eight years ago now. “Did he keep in contact with her after that?”
“Here and there, I believe.”
What more Leo could ask eluded her. It didn’t shock her that Martha would have turned down the path of prostitution,not really. If her surname was still Seabright, that indicated she hadn’t remarried. She would have needed to support herself somehow. Leo couldn’t fathom such a route for herself. But then, she’d always had Claude and Flora for support. She’d had the Inspector too. And of course, Jasper.
In the fall of silence, she turned to peer around the room. The fireplace mantel held a few framed photographs; one was of a much younger Esther and a man who was not her equal in looks but had a kind smile. Her husband, perhaps. The two others were of a little boy in a sailor’s suit, posed next to a chair, and of a young man seated with his elbow propped on a desk. They appeared to be of the same person; in both photographs, his bright-eyed stare seemed to burrow through the photo paper and challenge Leo.
“That is my son,” Esther explained, having followed Leo’s gaze to the photographs. “Felix. Handsome, isn’t he?”
“Very. Do he and his cousins get on at all?” Leo asked.
“Only with Paula. She’s like my daughter now,” Esther answered, again cheering visibly. She gestured to the room around them. “All this is thanks to her. My own husband, well…he was a shopkeeper. A good man, but never rich. Paula, however, married a man who could provide.”
And he’d apparently provided well for Esther too.
“Blickson, is that right?” Leo asked.
“Archibald Blickson,” she said with a proud nod.
He must have been very well off indeed to have afforded her rooms at Gunnerson’s Rest Home. Leo wondered if Jasper might permit her to visit Paula next. Right then, however, she was supposed to be gathering more information about Gavin.
“Before I leave you, Mrs. Goodwin, I was hoping you might know where the police could find Gavin to inform him of his mother’s death,” Leo said, the fib light and hopefully believable.
Esther’s expression returned to the shadowed one she wore when speaking about her nephew. “Last I knew, he had lodgings in St. Bride.”
“We have the address for those and that of the hospital where he works, but the police couldn’t find him this morning. Is there anywhere else he might go?”
The woman looked baffled and lifted her shoulders. “I’m afraid I’ve no idea. Like I said, I don’t see him often.”
“So, you wouldn’t know if he was seeing a lady friend?” Leo asked, thinking of the woman Mrs. Beardsley had mentioned. The one who’d picked him up in a hired hack.
“I’m sorry, no,” Esther replied.
Leo stood from the chair, her legs stiff from having sat so tensely. “Thank you for speaking to me, Mrs. Goodwin.”
At the top of the stairs, Irene was waiting to see her out. She followed the nurse to the front door, which was shut practically on her heels once she was out on the stoop.
Leo breathed in the warm, mineral scent of a coming rainstorm. A drop of rain struck the bridge of her nose; the clouds would soon break open. She hurried from the manse toward a cabstand. She’d been away from the morgue all afternoon, and Connor must certainly be wondering what had become of her.
Chapter Nine
Rain drove toward the pavements outside Scotland Yard in sheets and pelted the window of Jasper’s office. His coat and bowler hat hung drenched on the stand, a puddle forming on the floor beneath. The storm had caught him outdoors, capping off a wasted trip to Marylebone, where Paula Blickson lived on the edge of Regent’s Park. The upscale residence on Park Crescent was the sort that would have rather seen police officers go down to the servant’s entrance, and the maid who’d answered his knock on the front door scowled when he’d held up his warrant card. Mr. and Mrs. Blickson were out, he’d been informed, and when she’d shut the door, he’d gritted his teeth at the wasted trip.
Jasper stood at his office window, rubbing his eyes from fatigue and thinking of Leo. She said she’d report back by the end of the day, and she wasn’t one to not see something through to completion. He only hoped she would not come here to the Yard. He’d been a fool to give her that assignment. Not because she wasn’t capable; he trusted her more than most of the detectives in the CID to gather information and to ask the questions that needed asking.
However, each time he remembered uttering the nameEsther Goodwinto her, he cringed. He hadn’t sent her there because he’d wanted her help; it had been a result of his jealousy. A spur-of-the-moment, unthinking, and amateur reaction, meant to stop her from returning to the morgue and working alongside Connor Quinn. Now, Leo would expect to be given more to do. And when Jasper refused, she would be angry and disappointed.
He’d set himself up for the fall.
A set of knuckles rapped on the frame of the open door to his office. He recognized the knock as Roy Lewis’s.
“How did things go at Sir Eamon’s home?” Jasper asked as he turned.
Rain had plastered the detective sergeant’s clothing to him, and Jasper had to hold back a grin at how much he resembled a cat crawling out of a river.
“Aye, it went about the way it looks.” Lewis shook off each leg, splattering water on the floor. “Spoke to the footman, Marcus Gibson, like you requested. Pressed him hard, but he swears up and down he didn’t know a thing about the armed men who barreled into the house when he opened the door. Got knocked on the head and doesn’t remember much after that.”
