“I won’t be dictated to,” she asserted. “And I won’t curtail myself when I feel strongly about something. Iamgoing to investigate Lydia’s death,” she said. “I would like your support, Jasper.”
Displeasure filled his eyes. “I cannot agree that you should be investigating a murder on your own.”
Though it pained her, Leo slipped from his hold and stepped away. “Then it seems we are at an impasse.”
He nodded, his jaw clenched. “It seems we are.” After an awkward moment of silence, he nodded again. “I will collect Mrs. Zhao, and we’ll be on our way.” Jasper walked to the sitting room door, pausing a moment at the threshold. “Be careful, Leo.”
She wilted as he shut the door behind him.
Chapter Thirteen
The low, green hills surrounding Harrow had turned the autumnal shades of golden umber, rusted orange, and vibrant red. The late morning sunshine rippled over swathes of land, and crisp air filled Jasper’s lungs as he rode alongside Constable Wiggins. The Metropolitan Police’s Paddington Division had sent the gray-whiskered officer to meet Jasper at the Great Western Railway train station, and now they were on their way in an open cart toward Cowper Fields.
“We knocked at Decamp’s door and searched his farm yesterday,” Wiggins said as he directed the horses along a narrow lane, edged by flat fields. “There weren’t no one about.”
The constable wasn’t happy that Jasper had wired ahead of his morning train, announcing that he would be undertaking a thorough search of Stephen Decamp’s home and then interviewing the viscount’s butler, the elder Decamp. Wiggins and his sergeant had been unsuccessful in finding their quarry the day before and surely believed the Scotland Yard inspector did not trust they had done their jobs properly.
Had Jasper not been in a black mood that morning, he might have been kind enough to assure Constable Wiggins that hetrusted they’d looked thoroughly for Stephen Decamp and that now, he hoped to get some idea of where the man had run off to. However, Jasperwasin a black mood, and as such, he kept his conversation limited as they rattled along toward Decamp’s farm.
He'd slept little the night before, giving up entirely around two in the morning and going to his study for a liberal pour of whisky and a look through his late father’s unsolved case files. It was the only thing he could think of to distract himself from thoughts of Leo…though he hadn’t been successful.
Jasper had not arrived at her home the evening before with any intention of informing Claude of his wish to court her. But as the two of them had exchanged pleasantries in the front room while awaiting Leo’s return, he’d decided it was as good a time as any. They were alone, with Mrs. Zhao occupying Flora in the kitchen, when Jasper asked if he might speak plainly about something.
Claude, his white eyebrows lifting above the rims of his spectacles, had said, “I’ll pour us a drink.” And while doing that, he’d added, “This is about my niece, I presume?”
The man was old, but he wasn’t a fool, and so Claude hadn’t been surprised when Jasper confessed that his feelings for Leo were not platonic in the least.
“I wish to court her when I return from Liverpool,” he’d said, gripping his crystal glass of brandy with strangely damp hands. He had no reason to be nervous. He knew Leo’s feelings matched his and that Claude, mild mannered and amenable, would not argue against it. Still, this was a stride toward making their relationship official.
“You don’t need my permission,” he’d said. “Just that of my niece. Which you have, I expect?”
Jasper had grinned and replied, “I think so, yes,” while recalling their numerous letters over the last few months, thefew instances they had kissed, and Leo’s palpable relief when he’d told her that the Liverpool case was solved, and that he would be coming home.
Somehow, though, he’d botched everything.
He’d left the Duke Street residence without a firm answer from Leo and was instead filled with unexpected doubt. There was no question that Leonora Spencer was intelligent, thoughtful, and naturally talented when it came to investigating crime. But when she suggested she might go the same route as her friend and join a private detective agency, he’d been blindsided. And he’d lost his temper.
Nothing he had said was untrue. He’d worked with enough private agencies to know that women like Dita Brooks were mostly employed to do little more than bait criminals and philandering men, or to infiltrate places where only women were permitted. Leo could do far better than subject herself to those sorts of tawdry assignments. Maybe he ought to have said as much last evening; instead, he’d gone and pointed out something else that was true, though unflattering: that she didn’t have the necessary experience to single-handedly solve a murder inquiry.
When she’d accused Jasper of caring how it would reflect upon him at the Yard if she were to work for a private agency, his tongue had become leaden. Because she had not been wrong—it would look bad. It might have been selfish of him, but it was true. As much as he despised it, senior detective inspectors had to think about appearances and public opinion. If they had wives, those wives were expected to be conventional. They were expected to remain in the background and take care of the inspector’s family and not inspire scandal. They certainly weren’t supposed to be stubborn-to-the-marrow morgue assistants or danger-seeking female detectives.
Jasper shifted on the wooden seat of the cart, irritated. With himself, with Leo, with the fact that he could not bloody well get the memory of kissing her in her room at Cowper Hall out of his head. It was always there, waiting for him, reminding him of how much he wanted her. Maybe that was making everything worse. His physical desire for her was tying him up in knots and only adding to his frustration.
“There it is,” Constable Wiggins said, severing Jasper’s increasingly depraved thoughts. “Up ahead, on the right. Decamp’s place.”
Grateful for the distraction, Jasper breathed in another lungful of brisk air and got his head on straight. He focused on the stone cottage Wiggins had indicated. It was a rambling sort of home, constructed of fieldstone and covered with a mossy slate roof. Green vines, changing in color to autumnal fire red, clung to the exterior, and set close to the main house was a large stone barn and two smaller cowsheds.
Several muddied pigs gathered frantically near the fence of a paddock near the cowshed, as if seeking attention, and a black sheepdog with a white muzzle barked incessantly from where it had been tied to a hitching post next to the barn. The barn doors were open, and just inside, Jasper saw an unhitched gig.
“Was that gig here when you came by yesterday?” he asked Wiggins, gesturing toward the two-seater conveyance.
The constable was eyeing the dog warily. “No, Inspector. Though I heard the dog. It were inside the house, barking.”
“What time were you here?”
“Not long after the wire from Scotland Yard came in. I’d say two in the afternoon. Maybe half two.”
So, Decamp had returned two days after Helen’s murder. Had he shuttered the dog inside the house the night of the storm with the notion that he would be returning before morning? And now, the dog was tied up outside and agitated.
