He was still grappling with how to respond without upsetting her when the dinner gong sounded.Finally. The noise in the room grew exponentially as people started for the door. Jasperindicated they should go in too, and they fell into step at the back of the crowd.
“I thought you would apply at Hogarth and Tipson once Claude was gone from the morgue,” he said, referring to the funeral service on Cambridge Circus.
“I will if I must, but I’d much rather stay on at Spring Street. It turns out that Connor and I work well together.”
Jasper clenched his teeth and made no reply, though as they followed the crowd through the parlor’s connecting door to a large dining room, he could not ignore the invisible spear lancing the center of his chest.Damn it all.Though it was rare for him, he knew jealousy when he felt it.
A long table glittered with china, silver, crystal, and flickering tapered candles. Overhead, a gasolier threw off gilded light on the place settings, each assigned a name placard. Uniformed servers were helping the guests find their seats, and Jasper and Leo were separated as they were each shown to their seats. He was placed between a woman and an older gentleman—Mrs. Buckley and Sir Walter Conrad, according to their name placards—and Leo was settled across the table, diagonal to him. Connor Quinn was to her left, and to her right was the sour-faced older woman who had been conversing with Sir Eamon earlier.
Leo met Jasper’s eyes before Quinn said something to her, drawing her attention away again. Next to him, Mrs. Buckley murmured a polite hello and asked which police force he worked for.
“Scotland Yard, madam,” he replied, to which Sir Walter snorted. Derisively, no doubt. Jasper ignored the man as the hum of conversation began to quiet. Sir Eamon stood at the head of the table, his wife, at the opposite end, and he waited until all eyes were on him before addressing them.
“Welcome, friends, welcome. On behalf of myself and the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage Fund, I thank you foryour unwavering support of our truly important work. As you all know, our public servants are the lifeblood of this city, upholding law and order, and?—”
The doors at both ends of the dining room flew open with startling violence, cutting off the chief coroner mid-sentence. Several men, their faces draped with black cloth, stormed inside. Each held a revolver. Jasper stood, his pulse streaming out in alarm. Several more officers around the table pushed back their chairs too, and cries of distress from both men and women resounded.
“Stay in your seats!” a tall man in the group shouted to be heard above the clamor. He leveled his weapon at Sir Eamon. “Sit down. Everyone! Back into your seats.”
The chief coroner sank into his chair as the other masked men—five in all—fanned out around the table. Stymied, Jasper, and the others who’d stood with him, returned to their seats as ordered. Though many of the men were in uniform, they did not have weapons. As a detective, Jasper had been issued a revolver, but he hadn’t had any reason to carry it with him that evening.
Across the table, Leo twisted in her chair to see the intruders, and in that moment, Jasper wished like hell that he’d been seated next to her. Had he been, he would have put his hand over hers to stop her from slipping the knife next to her plate into her lap, as he watched her do right then.
“Quiet!” the masked group leader shouted. His deep voice silenced the murmurings of confusion and panic almost immediately. “Hands on the table. All of you. Do it now.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Sir Eamon asked from his chair, placing his hands flat onto the table as directed. “How dare you come in here?—”
“Enough,” the same masked man said. “Do as I tell you, and we will be gone within moments. Disobey, and there will be consequences. Am I understood?”
Nervous murmurings ran up and down the length of the table. A few muted wails of fear came from the chief coroner’s wife and the woman next to her as one of the intruders placed himself behind them. Another stood behind Jasper’s shoulder, and a third had positioned himself near Sir Eamon at the head of the table. The tall intruder who’d spoken remained at the backs of those seated on the opposite side of the table, a handful of places down from Leo. Her hands were now on the table, though the silver knife was missing. She had to have pocketed it.
The fifth masked man had gone to the door leading to the kitchen. He’d locked it and made the two servers in the dining room lower themselves to a prone position on the floor.
The black cloth draping the intruders’ heads had slits cut out for their eyes. Long beards extended from the bottom of each head covering, and each man wore a brown, pin-striped suit, though a few were ill-fitting. Their matching appearances distracted Jasper for a moment before the leader spoke again, calmly and clearly.
“Good. Now, ladies, remove your jewels and place them on the table in front of you.”
A robbery.That’s what this was?The women in attendance were certainly wearing their best jewels. Leo as well. Jasper had noted the string of pearls adorning her neck and the matching pearl earrings. His father had left them to her in his will, and now, her eyebrows pulled taut as she realized that she was to lose them to these thieves.
He would have wrung all five of their necks if he could, but with weapons aimed at the dinner guests, Jasper could only sit, bristling with fury.
Ladies began to adhere to the command, including Leo, who blinked rapidly as she lifted her gloved hands to remove the earrings.
“This is preposterous,” Sir Walter, to Jasper’s left, said loudly. “Who do you think you are, coming in here and staging this robbery? You have no right!”
The man punctuated his complaint with the slamming of his fists on the table, and then he stood up, kicking his chair back behind him.
Instead of ordering the man to sit down and be quiet, the masked leader paused. Then, he strode swiftly down the table toward Leo. Jasper’s heart thudded to a painful stop as the man, without a shred of hesitation, put the barrel of his revolver to the back of the head of the older woman seated to Leo’s right—and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Two
She’d known the benefit dinner would be awful. Earlier, while dressing for the evening, Leo nearly sent word to Connor that she was bowing out. The anticipation of mingling with dozens of people whom she did not know, and who would eye her with disapproval and curiosity should they learn that she worked in a morgue, had given her indigestion for days in advance. But Connor had insisted his grandfather’s generosity always abounded at the Orphanage Fund’s benefit dinner and that they should put it to good use. There would be no better time, he’d claimed, to convince the chief coroner that Leo was a credit to the smooth operation of the Spring Street Morgue.
But now, as the report of the gun blasted through Leo’s ears, she lamented letting Connor have his way.
She screamed, clapping her hand over her ear as something warm and wet misted the right side of her face. Shock blinded her for a moment, and when her vision cleared, she stared with abject horror at the woman who’d been seated next to her. Mrs. Seabright, according to her name placard, was face down on the table. She’d been thrown forward, her body now limp, her skull a ruined mess. And the blood…it pooled swiftly onto the whitelinen tablecloth. Loud, frantic screams—no longer Leo’s own—chorused along the table, causing the sharp ringing in her right ear to throb even more painfully.
“Silence! Do as I say and stay in your seats, or another one of you will die!” the tall man shouted to be heard above the chaos.
