Jasper thanked him with a nod. He appreciated Lewis letting him know he was being spied on. It turned his thoughts to the orange-hatted man who’d been following him the last few weeks and whether he might have anything to do with Coughlan’s initiative.
After finishing their pints, he and Lewis parted ways outside the Rising Sun. Jasper popped open his umbrella. It had grown dark with the rainstorm, and the lamplighters were out early to light the gas mantles on the posts. The walk to Charles Street wasn’t far, but in the rain and gusting winds, which caught the silk of his umbrella time and again, it felt like twice the distance.
As he reached the bustling convergence of Northumberland Avenue and Charing Cross Road at Trafalgar Square, he considered stopping at the morgue to see if Leo was there. The skittering sensation of beetles crawling over his back stopped him. He was being tailed. Checking over his shoulder, he didn’t see the man from that morning, but the poor lighting and busy pavements could have easily obscured him.
If he was correct and someone was following him, Jasper wouldn’t lead him to the morgue or to Leo. He kept on, toward Charles Street, and checked behind him again before climbing the steps to his home. Lampposts showed a few people on the pavements, but Jasper’s eyes didn’t pick out a man in an orange bowler. Clenching his jaw, he opened the front door with his key and let himself in.
At the warming scents of beef and herbs, and the promise of Mrs. Zhao’s cooking, his stomach grumbled.
“Mister Jasper,” the housekeeper said as she bustled into the front hall. She looked at him aghast as he folded the umbrella and dumped it into the urn next to the door. The muggy air in the Rising Sun hadn’t helped to dry him out.
“I know, I know, Mrs. Zhao. I’ll change before dinner,” he said, starting for the stairs.
“See that you do, but first, Miss Leo is here.”
Jasper stopped with his hand on the knob of the newel post. Mrs. Zhao hadn’t commented on Leo’s absence the last month, but she was an intuitive woman and must have noted something was amiss. She now lifted one of her graying eyebrows, watching for his reaction. He tried to keep his expression impassive as a stirring in the center of his chest—and then lower, in his groin—set him back on his heels.
“In the study?” he asked, hopeful Mrs. Zhao hadn’t sensed his jumbled reaction.
She looked to the sitting room entrance. Only then did he notice the room was lit. He frowned.
“Why have you put her in there?”
Mrs. Zhao peered at him as if he’d gone daft. “It was where she wished to wait for you,” she answered, then motioned impatiently for him to join his guest.
Jasper went to the half-closed door and pushed it ajar. Several rooms in the house were little used, and the sitting room was one of them. The dated furnishings and decor were kept polished and free of dust, but the room still had a sad, disused air to it. The last time Jasper had been in there, he’d just been beaten to a pulp by four Spitalfields Angels, who’d warned him to stop investigating the Scotland Yard bombings in May. He’d been moved from the kitchen to the sitting room sofa, where Leo had tended to his injuries.
Now, finding her in there again, standing by the glass-fronted bookcase, threw him afield. A few paraffin lamps hadbeen lit for her to see by, and she had opened one of the bookcase’s glass doors. She pulled out a volume.
“You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you?” she asked by way of greeting. Her attention slipped over his drenched appearance, but she didn’t comment on it. “Charles Darwin is something of a hero to Mr. Quinn, and I haven’t yet readOn the Origin of Species. He does go on about it, and it would be good to know how to discuss it with him.”
At the mention of the new city coroner, the hot, stirring sensation Jasper had felt just seconds ago turned into a hard coil.
“Take it,” he said, more sharply than intended. She went to her handbag and put the book inside.
“I said I’d report back, but I figured you would only shout at me if I dared come to the Yard.”
“I wouldn’t have shouted,” he said, inexplicably irritated as he walked toward the center of the room, searching for a decanter of whisky. There wasn’t one in sight.
She eyed him with apprehension. “Maybe not, but you would have certainly growled at me like you’re doing now.”
“What did you learn from Esther Goodwin?” he asked, wanting to get on with it.
Leo’s expression went flat as she turned from him and commenced her report. “No one liked Martha Seabright,” she began. “Not her sister, nor her children. Esther was appalled when Martha gave her children to the orphanage. She’d offered to help care for the children, but Martha was insistent on sending them away. Esther suspected Martha did it to be rid of them. Possibly because they reminded her of her husband, whom she’d hated and who had been abusive—Connor and I found old scars consistent with cigar tip burns all over her body.”
Jasper grimaced. Those sorts of injuries were common among abused women and children, and they never failed to sicken him.
“Esther took in Paula once she left the orphanage at sixteen, but Gavin went back to his mother, only to leave shortly afterward because he’d discovered Martha was prostituting herself.”
Jasper forced himself to focus on the information rather than the way Leo had walked around one of the two armchairs, her fingers trailing along the top seam of the faded rose-pink fabric.
“She hadn’t spoken to Martha in about seven years. Esther isn’t in contact with Gavin, but she’s close with Paula, whose husband pays for her placement at Gunnerson’s Rest Home,” Leo continued, her hand falling away from the chair as she walked toward the window.
The curtains in the room weren’t drawn, leaving an open view of the street. Thinking of the orange-hatted man, Jasper overtook Leo, reaching the window first.
“That fits with the Blicksons’ residence on Park Crescent in Marylebone. It’s a nice place,” he said, while tugging the rope on one of the maroon drapes. Freeing the next rope, he let the curtains fall forward to shutter the window.
“You spoke to Paula?” Leo asked, peering sideways at him as he moved to the other window.
