Jasper holstered his Webley and removed the pair of handcuffs he always carried in his coat pocket. “Have you seen the old woman?”
“No one’s up here. She must have done a runner. Where’s Miss Spencer?”
That was the question still kinking Jasper’s gut.
“Give me a hand,” he said as he grasped the edge of the toppled mantel. Together, they hefted the heavy wooden prop off Felix. The man groaned and tried to shove up onto all fours, but Jasper jammed his knee into the middle of his back. He went down flat again.
He locked Felix’s wrists into the cuffs. Before he could stand and yank the man to his feet, the telling click of a revolver’s hammer being cocked sounded from behind him. Lewis reached for his holstered weapon, albeit too late.
“Don’t, detective,” came a calm female voice. “Raise your hands high.”
Lewis did, though reluctantly and with a grimace of disgust—perhaps for himself, since he hadn’t seen her sooner.
“And you, Inspector, remove those irons from my son’s wrists.”
Esther Goodwin.Bloody hell.
“I’m not going to do that, Mrs. Goodwin,” he replied, his spine rigid and nerves skittering at knowing a gun was trained on him. “Your son is a murderer, and I am arresting him.”
“Mother, shoot him,” Felix grunted from where the side of his face was pressed to the floor. Jasper’s knee still pinned him in place.
“She won’t.” Jasper twisted his knee, eliciting a squeal of pain from the man he’d pinned. “You’re the killer here, not her.”
Behind him, Esther rasped, “I will do what it takes to protect my son.”
“Is that so? Why, then, didn’tyoulead the group of masked robbers into the benefit dinner and shoot your sister in the head?” Jasper queried. “And why didn’t you travel to Twickenham to stab Nurse Radcliff in the back? By the way, Goodwin, you killed the wrong nurse.”
Under Jasper’s knee, the man went notably still.
“You could have spared your son the noose by doing it all yourself, Mrs. Goodwin, but you sent him instead,” Jasper said.
“Loving mum that you are,” Lewis tacked on, his hands still raised in the air.
“But what happened in Gavin Seabright’s room, I wonder,” Jasper mused. “That Harry fellow was pushed. Hit his head. That doesn’t seem like your usual method, Goodwin. But in the end, what’s another murder charge after two?”
“That wasn’t him,” Esther said, her voice no longer calm. It shook.
“Be quiet, Mother,” Felix said, sawing out the words through the pain and humiliation of being pinned to the floor.
So, Esther had the altercation with Harry. Jasper wanted to know more about the details, but this wasn’t the time to press for them. She had come to the point where she either needed to follow through with her threat or give up. As she had yet to shoot him, Jasper was more apt to believe that if she were to pull the trigger, it would be due to a quiver of her finger. He needed her to lower the gun.
“Kill me or my sergeant, Mrs. Goodwin, and you will get the noose yourself,” Jasper informed her. “Lay down your weapon. Sergeant Lewis will escort you from the theatre.”
“Do as Inspector Reid says, Mrs. Goodwin.”
Jasper’s heart lurched. He twisted around at the new voice and saw Leo directly behind the older woman. She was holding something against Esther’s back. A sword?
Christ. It was a sodding theatre prop.
“You didn’t have a blade before,” the woman said incredulously. And then, as if figuring it out, Esther grated out a bark of anger and whirled around. Leo’s prop sword sliced downward against the woman’s hand, and the report of a gun rang out.
Jasper pushed off Felix and rushed forward, like a battering ram, straight into Esther Goodwin. They slammed against the floor, the woman wriggling and wailing. He closed his hand around her left wrist, and a blink later, Leo’s foot came down on top of her hand.
Esther’s screams became sobs as Leo bent forward to pluck the weapon from the woman’s weakened fingers.
Jasper pushed Esther onto her stomach, and Lewis was there in an instant, clapping his own pair of handcuffs around her wrists, one of which appeared to be bleeding.
Leo dropped the prop sword to the floor with a clatter. “Gracious, I didn’t think it was real,” she said, breathing heavily.
