Connor puckered his brow and smoothed his neatly trimmed mustache as he gave her request thought. Three corpses had been delivered to the morgue overnight, not to mention the backlog from the previous day.
“Well, as you are not strictly employed here,” he began, “I suppose you don’t need my permission.Yet.”
Connor sighed and continued, “I plan to speak to my grandfather tonight and make the official request to bring you on as my assistant. If that is still what you want?”
Leo released the stranglehold on her clasped hands. “Yes. Very much.”
It would mean the world to her to finally be employed officially because of her ability and talent, and not just at the behest of the late Gregory Reid. She’d forever be grateful for the Inspector’s support and for his belief in her, but knowing that she was valued and wanted by someone who had no stake in her happiness felt inordinately more consequential.
Connor nodded and, with his hands resting on his hips, looked at the fishmonger’s corpse. “I suppose I can manage here alone for a little while.”
She thanked him and, promising to return as soon as possible, removed her apron as she hurried to the back office. The morning had dawned with clear skies, and the bright sunshine didn’t hint toward another temperamental rainstorm, so she left the umbrella in the urn by the door and set out with just a wide-brimmed hat to block the sun. With her handbag tucked into the crook of her elbow, Leo walked to Charing Cross Station, where she boarded the District Railway train. Hailing a cab would have been simpler, but at a dearer cost, and so she settled on a hard bench and endured the slow, crowded rail ride to Moorgate Street.
The letter from the orphanage that Leo had found in Mrs. Seabright’s handbag had been stored within its original envelope, a posting address printed on the front. A key had also been inside the handbag. Before sending the woman’s possessions to the Yard that morning, Leo had taken the key.
Jasper had said her home was searched by constables, with nothing of importance found, but Esther’s comment about Martha as a young girl, hiding the things she’d stolen from Esther, had given Leo an inkling. It had prickled at the back of her mind all night and into morning, however dully in comparison to her more stirring thoughts of Jasper.
The detective inspector would not have responded well to her suggestion that he have constables search the house again. As it was, it had been on the tip of his tongue last night to tell her to stay out of the inquiry.
So, she’d made up her mind to have a look for herself.
Leo stepped off at Moorgate Station, the barest reservation tingling through her. From Fore Street to Cripplegate, she kept a steady pace, slowing only when she found Well Street. A row of red-brick, terraced housing lined each side of the street, numbered brass plates on the front doors of each. She came upon No. 19, which belonged to Martha Seabright, but didn’t stop. Glancing up and down the street, she failed to see any constable in a blue uniform and hat, but she was still wary. So, she continued to the end of the street, turned the corner, and then, after several strides more, turned again to enter the narrow alleyway behind the terraced row.
She was grateful for the sunshine as she walked along the alley. Laundry lines were strung overhead, creating a warren of long underwear, petticoats, dresses, shirtwaists, and cloth diapers. She passed a few women bent over washbasins and shouting at little tots playing. A few peered suspiciously at her but said nothing as she passed.
Leo counted off the back door of each home, her eyes skipping ahead to the one that would belong to Martha Seabright. The key she’d pilfered was in her handbag, but before she could reach for it, the back door to No. 19 opened. Leo skidded to a stop along the grass-and-pebble lane as a woman draped in a dark, sapphire-blue cape emerged. She had pulled the hood of the cape up to obscure her face. The velvet material was much too heavy for summer, but the voluminous hood was effective at concealing her features. Leo presumed that had been the intent as the woman lowered her head, then gripped the side of the hood with one white-gloved hand to keep it in place. Sheclosed the back door and started briskly down the alley, heading in Leo’s direction.
Leo whirled in between two sheets hanging from laundry lines. Could this be the woman the landlady, Mrs. Beardsley, had seen with Gavin? Holding her breath, as much to silence herself as to not inhale the musty odor of the poorly washed linens, Leo’s pulse skipped madly at the base of her throat. She waited for the woman to pass by, her cape rippling and her head still down as she went. Waiting another few moments, Leo slowly peeled back one sheet and watched the woman’s retreat. Whoever she was, she was not being furtive or unassuming in the least. Everything about her, from her fine cape to her liquid, graceful movements, shouted that she was in a place where she didn’t belong even less so than Leo.
Casting a look over her shoulder toward Martha’s home, Leo made the decision to abandon her plan to search the house. If this woman was the one associated with Gavin, it would be more crucial to find out who she was and where she lived.
Leo stepped out from the hanging laundry and hurried to keep the woman in sight. If the lady was cautious, she would have looked over her shoulder to see if she was being followed. But she disappeared around the alley entrance, back toward Fore Street, without a backward glance.
When several seconds later Leo turned out of the alley, the mysterious woman was still moving along the pavements at a businesslike clip. Her hood was still up as well. Leo stayed far enough behind so that if the woman did turn, she would not startle at seeing someone so close on her heels.
The train station wasn’t her destination. Instead of turning in the direction of Moorgate Street, the woman strode toward a line of cabs. Leo gnashed her teeth. If the woman got into a cab, the only way to follow her would be to hire one as well.
Sure enough, the woman approached a cabbie. She angled her head just enough for Leo to see the very tip of her nose. But then it disappeared again into the hood, and the woman climbed into the hansom.
Leo broke into a run now and reached another cabbie at the stand, panting.
“Can you follow that cab?” she asked, pointing to the one that had just drawn into traffic.
“Where’s it goin’?” the cabbie asked.
“I don’t know, but I need to follow it.”
He grimaced. “How’s it I know you got enough to cover the fare?”
Suppressing a groan of exasperation, Leo opened her handbag and pulled out all the money she had: a single shilling. “Take me as far as this will cover, but please, we must go now.”
His brushy brows leaped up. “Six pence gets a mile.”
She put the coin into his palm. “Just drive.”
He pocketed the coin, while she climbed up into the forward-facing seat. During the colder months, most of these open hansom cabs had a leather curtain to block the cold, rain, and snow, but in this fine weather, Leo’s view was unobstructed. She kept her eye trained on the cab the woman had climbed into as her own pulled into traffic. As Leo instructed, the driver didn’t follow too closely. A coach and an open wagon separated them for a short while, but as they traveled west along Holborn Street, the woman’s cab was straight ahead.
“Your shilling’s up,” the cabbie called from his high bench behind her. He pulled the traces and slowed his two horses.
