“You found out, I presume,” she called. “And that was why Lydia had to die.”
As she came around the bend, she nearly collided with a man carrying a mannequin’s torso. His eyes were wide with alarm, and he was looking after the scurrying Mrs. Gleason, who was several paces ahead. She’d arrived in a large storage room, packed with crates and racks of clothing, striped boxes stamped with the department store’s logo, and display mannequins, not to mention a handful of men who looked to be laborers. Mrs. Gleason wove through the storage room, paying no mind to the men, but throwing increasingly agitated looks over her shoulder at Leo.
“But it wasn’t you who strangled Lydia, was it?” she said, knowing somehow to keep needling the woman and not let up. “No, the bruising on her neck wouldn’t match your smaller hands. It was from a man’s grip. Your husband’s?”
Mrs. Gleason had reached another door, this one leading into a delivery yard behind the store. She swung around for a mere second to throw Leo a foul glare. “That fool?” she hissed, spitting the words out.
But then, as though reconsidering her need to keep moving, Mrs. Gleason turned and continued down a set of stone steps into the yard. Leo recalled Dita’s undercover mission: to lure Mr. Gleason into a compromising situation, so that his wife could successfully challenge him in court for a divorce. If she despisedher husband, Leo questioned if she would have even bothered involving him in this opium scheme.
Leo kept up the pursuit, even though her heart was racing and she had no plan for what to do if she did manage to overtake the woman.
“It was you who was foolish. You left Lydia’s body to be found still dressed in Gleason’s uniform,” Leo said loudly as she skipped down the stone steps and continued following the fleeing woman through the yard. “I imagine the person who strangled Lydia was the criminal you are procuring the opium from. He wouldn’t have wanted her discovery to make it into the newspapers.”
Mrs. Gleason threw another panicked glance over her shoulder as she turned into an alleyway and disappeared from view.
Leo raised her voice. “Where do you think you can go, Mrs. Gleason?”
The alley only led out to Oxford Street. Though tired of the chase, Leo kept onward without pause, entering the alley. Her feet were beginning to ache in the fashionable shoes she’d put on earlier, and when she nearly stumbled over a pile of loose bricks, she wished she was wearing her more sensible boots.
“There is no point in—” Leo swallowed the rest of her sentence as a hand gripped her wrist and tugged hard.
Mrs. Gleason, having ducked behind some scaffolding in the alley, now shoved Leo hard against the brick wall. The back of her head struck the surface, and pain fogged her vision for a crucial moment. When it cleared, Leo forced her senses to sharpen; Mrs. Gleason held a brick, poised high to come down onto her head.
The woman held it steady, her teeth bared in frustration as she pinned Leo in place using her free arm. “You are just as meddlesome as that girl was.”
“You didn’t kill Lydia, and you won’t kill me,” Leo declared, though she wasn’t at all confident in that last bit.
“I’m warning you to leave off, just as I did her.” Mrs. Gleason’s hand trembled as it held the brick high. “But she was relentless. She wouldn’t listen, and once they knew what she was doing, it was out of my control.”
“Who?” Leo asked. “Who found out what she was doing?”
A bead of sweat shone on Mrs. Gleason’s brow. “No one goes up against the Angels. Not me, and especially not young, interfering nobodies like you and Miss Hailson!”
“Stop! Drop the brick and step away!” From the head of the alley at Oxford Street, a pair of men approached: Constable Drake and Detective Sergeant Lewis.
When Mrs. Gleason craned her neck to look down the alley, Leo lifted her foot and kicked the woman’s shin as hard as she could. Mrs. Gleason staggered back, and her arm swept down at the same time. The brick glanced off Leo’s shoulder before she could move out of the way, but in the next moment, Mrs. Gleason had dropped the improvised weapon and started running back toward the cobbled yard behind the store. Connor, however, appeared at the other end of the alleyway and blocked her retreat.
“Mrs. Gleason, stop!” Sergeant Lewis had hastened down the alley, and now his command was met with compliance. The woman closed her eyes with a pained expression of defeat.
“Are you all right, Miss Spencer?” the sergeant asked.
Leo rubbed her smarting shoulder, grateful the brick had hit her there and not on the head.
“I’ll be fine,” she answered. “I’m relieved you got my note.”
“From the looks of how we found you, so am I,” he said with a chastising raise of his eyebrow.
“I don’t know what this woman has told you, but I am innocent,” Mrs. Gleason stated, eyeing Constable Drake with wariness as he stood ready to apprehend her.
“She is selling opium to her customers in marked vases, urns, and other housewares,” Connor explained. “Her former employee, Lydia Hailson, discovered the operation, and when she did, she was killed.”
“Mrs. Gleason knows who killed her—a Spitalfields Angel,” Leo added.
There were many members of that particular criminal gang in London, and Leo’s experience with them so far had been harrowing. Months ago, Jasper had been severely beaten by a group of Angels as a warning to him to stop investigating the bombing outside Scotland Yard that had killed Police Constable John Lloyd. But Mr. Bloom had wanted to know who had stolen his product and killed his men, and now, he would have his answer.
However, as Lydia had, Leo kept Eddie Bloom’s name to herself.
“That is a ridiculous accusation.” Mrs. Gleason tried to force a laugh, but it was strained and shrill.
