Leo stared at him, flummoxed. “Why would you have done that?”
“Because she was a bloody good reporter, and I wanted to find out who had stolen from me.”
She frowned as the underlined word in Lydia’s journal came forward:Opium.
Jasper had told her that Eddie Bloom was small beer compared to other criminal rackets like the East Rips and Spitalfields Angels, but that he was still dangerous. Not very long ago, opium was readily available to anyone who wanted it, especially in its most common form of laudanum. But now, the sale of opium was restricted to chemists and apothecary shops, which were required to record every sale, the amount, and the identity of the buyer. It was still sold on the black market, however, and Leo imagined men like Mr. Bloom and other criminal syndicates were primarily responsible for that.
“When was your opium stolen?” Leo asked.
He frowned and clenched his jaw, as if he did not like her knowing the item stolen was opium. But he didn’t ask how she’d determined that. “Two months ago, I received a shipment. The crates were unloaded at night and placed under guard at one of my warehouses. The following morning, the guards were dead, and my crates were empty.”
Gracious. Leo wondered how much opium had been stolen.
“Then, I started hearing whispers about pills being sold to toffs up in Mayfair and Bloomsbury,” he went on with an arch of his brow.
“You believe it was your stolen product,” Leo said as the carriage traveled along Regent Street. He seemed to be taking her back toward Westminster. “But I don’t understand. Whywould you need Lydia Hailson to find out who stole from you? You are Eddie Bloom. Could you not hunt down the thieves yourself?”
She hadn’t meant to sound so contemptuous, but she wouldn’t apologize for it. The man was dealing in illegal opium, and it was starting to look as though his involving Lydia in his inquiry had resulted in her murder.
“Believe it or not, Miss Spencer, I’m a pragmatic man,” he replied, unfazed by her question or tone. “Shows of brute force aren’t my style. They also tend to attract unwanted attention from the bobbies. I have no intention of letting the people who stole from me go unpunished. I just have a shrewder, less obvious notion of how to take them down.”
“By hiring a reporter to investigate and expose the illegal opium operation the thieves were running with your pilfered product?” she presumed.
He grinned and gave a nod.
Eddie Bloom’s name would not be attached to the opium, though the names of the thieves would be. They would be arrested and prosecuted, and although Eddie would not recover the opium that he’d lost, he would have the satisfaction of knowing the thieves were being punished and eliminated from the market.
“How did you narrow in on Gleason’s?” Leo asked.
“Miss Hailson found that a few shops up in that posh area were dealing pills in a clandestine manner, but as Gleason’s was the only one hiring women, that’s where she went.”
“And how did you know Miss Hailson would work with you, without exposing your part in the plan?”
Another one of his sly grins formed. “Her articles inThe Illustrated Police Newswere top notch. I must say, even better than those articles that described you so well.”
The articles he was referring to were short profile pieces that ran last winter, much to Leo’s chagrin. Constable Elias Murray of thePolice Gazettehad written them anonymously, hoping to get his foot in the door at the popular weekly newspaper. They had detailed her tragic past and her current occupation at the morgue, soliciting shock among readers.
“She was a regular at Striker’s Wharf,” he continued when Leo did not react to his goading remark. “I was doing her a favor. This article would’ve been a spectacle, big enough to make her name known. And besides, Miss Hailson was too smart to cross me.”
The carriage was now trundling toward Trafalgar Square.
“I am certain she was quite smart,” Leo said. “But unfortunately, she wasn’t careful enough to go unnoticed. She was wearing her uniform when she was found dead. She must have been caught snooping.”
Again, Mr. Bloom’s square jaw shifted, exhibiting frustration. Or perhaps it was remorse. Then again, maybe she was being too generous.
“She was due at the club,” Mr. Bloom said. “When she didn’t show, and no word came, I suspected something had gone amiss.”
As the carriage diverged from traffic and came along Spring Street, his attention dropped to the folio still clutched tightly under her arm. “You found that in her room? Is it what she was writing?”
“I am not giving it to you just yet, Mr. Bloom,” she stated. “I’ve yet to read her papers and notes thoroughly. So, considering we have a mutual interest in finding Miss Hailson’s killer, I propose you allow me until the morning to go through them. After that, they are yours.”
He laughed, and the sound of it was just prickly enough for Leo to wonder if she had pushed too far. But he sighed and said,“You have until ten o’clock tonight. I’ll send someone to your home to collect the papers then. No tricks, Miss Spencer. This is a fair deal.”
The carriage came to a stop in front of the morgue’s front door. She would have plenty of time to commit Lydia’s papers and notes to memory.
“All right,” she said, and though she didn’t like the idea of Eddie Bloom’s man coming to her door at that late hour, she gave the nightclub owner her address. He grinned, and something about it said that he’d already known where to find her.
The carriage door opened, and the tall man who had blocked her path near the omnibus stand earlier was there to extend his hand. Reluctantly, Leo took it.
