“I want Stephen Decamp found so I can question him, but I’m more apt to believe he is the person who came upon Helen after her blood had pooled,” Jasper said. “Helen put that glass tube into her hair to hide it quickly. If Stephen drove her to London, she must have told him why she was in such a hurry to get here.”
“To find the tear catcher,” Leo said, understanding his thinking. “There would be no reason for her to hide it from Stephen.”
When he’d found Helen dead, he probably panicked. Knew he’d be accused of her murder if it came out that he’d driven her to London from Harrow in the middle of the night. So, why not drive the phaeton back to Cowper Hall as fast as possible before anyone could notice it missing? Leo posed this question to Jasper, who was considering it when she added, “Unless he didn’t think he could make it back in time. Stable hands rise early, often before dawn. A witness seeing him return, with a muddy phaeton and a fatigued horse, would be damning.”
The possibility that he’d fled England was now looking more likely.
“I interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Perry, Helen’s friends with whom she’d stay whenever she came to the city,” he said, his tired eyes drawn to the coal fire. “They didn’t see her, of course, and they claim not to have seen Stephen. But they knew about him.”
“Did they know about the baby?” Leo asked.
“No, though Mrs. Perry said Helen had recently been talking about taking an extended trip to France or Italy.”
To have the child, Leo imagined. Whether she would have given up her infant and returned to her husband afterward was a mystery. And maybe it didn’t matter.
“Mr. Dalton seemed genuine in his surprise earlier that his wife was having an affair and that she was pregnant,” Leo said. “I don’t think he killed her, though he would have had motive to.”
“I agree. He didn’t care about her enough,” Jasper said.
It was a sad thought. “I wonder if he ever did, or if it was only after his riding accident that he stopped loving her.”
Mr. Cowper had accused him of pitying himself and thinking nothing of Helen and what she had lost from the riding accident as well. The intimacy of having a husband, the possibility of having a child.
As Leo took another sip of whisky, Jasper leaned his head against the back of the sofa, his eyelids half shuttered. In the soft light of the paraffin lamps and the coal fire, he looked starkly handsome. Somehow, the golden bristle around his mouth accentuated his full lips. At first, she reined in her longing to touch him. But then, recalling their kiss at Cowper Hall, Leo knew it would not be unwelcome. So, she reached for his hand, which was resting on his thigh. He lifted his head and turned his tired eyes onto her, his palm flipping over to grasp her hand more fully.
“Have you slept at all?” she asked, though she suspected the answer. He’d been to Harrow and back during the night and then been bogged down in the investigation all day.
“No,” he confirmed. “I’ll get a few hours before I leave for Harrow again tomorrow morning.”
“Again?”
“I want to search Stephen Decamp’s home and interview his father. Depending on how close they are, the butler might know where his son has gone.”
Tomorrow would be his last day on leave from Liverpool. Leo didn’t know if he would leave straight from Harrow or come back to London first.
“I could come with you,” she offered, though she didn’t think Connor would appreciate her taking another day off. Already that afternoon, he’d let her leave early so she could visit Dita at Gleason’s.
Jasper lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed it, his beard tickling her skin. “I’m taking Constable Price.”
In case he needed to make an arrest. Of course. She felt a twinge of disappointment but was enjoying the feeling of her hand in his too much to withdraw it.
“I would be vexed if I wasn’t already preoccupied with an investigation of my own,” she said lightly.
His fingers tensed. “What investigation is this?”
She tried to read Jasper’s expression, but as usual, it was inscrutable.
“I’m helping Connor look into Lydia Hailson’s murder,” she confessed. “I started by speaking to Dita, as I told you I planned to do.”
He released her hand and sat forward, skewering her with a wide-awake stare. “I thought Quinn was going to hire a private agency.”
His terse voice revealed that he was, indeed, upset. She should have expected as much, though she hadn’t really stopped to consider how he’d react.
“He was going to, but we agreed that first, I’d see what I could discover from speaking to Dita,” she explained.
It didn’t alleviate an ounce of his irritation. He stood and paced away from the sofa, putting a distance between them that she regretted.
“Leo, if the woman was strangled while wearing her shop uniform, the last thing you should be doing is questioning Gleason’s staff.”
