“Then why did I find you just now, prepared to bludgeon Miss Spencer?” Sergeant Lewis asked.
The woman scoffed and stammered the beginnings of an excuse. But another uniformed constable, this one unfamiliar to Leo, joined Connor in the yard. In one hand, he held the same jade urn that the salesclerk had tried to sell them earlier, and in his other was a small, brown-paper-wrapped parcel.
“Sir, it’s as you said,” the constable announced. “Found this under a false bottom inside the urn.”
He handed the parcel to Sergeant Lewis, who tore at the brown paper to reveal a tin with a hinged lid. Opening it revealed at least a dozen small, white-coated pills. He closed the lid again.
“Mrs. Gleason, you’ll come with me to Scotland Yard. I have questions for you,” the sergeant said, then gestured to Constable Drake to cuff her wrists. He ordered the second constable to go through the store and find all the other items tagged with a fleur-de-lis.
By then, a handful of employees, both storeroom laborers and uniformed sales assistants, had gathered in the yard. Mr. Gleason joined them, his shock apparent as he saw his wife in handcuffs.
“What is the meaning of this, officers? Clara, what are they accusing you of?”
Mrs. Gleason did not answer her husband or even look at him as Constable Drake led her down the alley toward Oxford Street. It would be a spectacle to be led out onto such a popular street in handcuffs and then placed into a police wagon.
“Officer! I demand to know what is happening,” Mr. Gleason shouted at Sergeant Lewis. But Lewis let him stew a moment.
“Miss Spencer,” he said as he passed her on his way to meet the store owner. “Good work. I’ll take things from here but do come to the Yard to give a full account as soon as you can.”
She caught the twitch of a smile as he went to meet the red-faced Mr. Gleason. Leo rubbed her shoulder lightly. Pleased as she was by the sergeant’s praise, it was difficult for her to be too upset by the small injury.
“Are you badly hurt?” Connor asked as he reached her, but he wasn’t so much concerned as he was indignant. “You should not have chased after Mrs. Gleason the way you did. It was reckless. What if I hadn’t come across the sergeant and his constable as soon as I reached the front doors of the store?”
“I don’t really think she would have bludgeoned me,” she replied, trying to soothe him. “She’s complicit, but she isn’t a murderer.”
“Leo!” Dita elbowed her way through the gathering employees in the yard, her jaw loose with shock as she stared down the alley. “Tell me you haven’t had Mrs. Gleasonarrested?”
“I’m sorry, Dita,” she said. “I know she is your client, but she’s involved in drug smuggling and with Lydia Hailson’s murder.”
Dita groaned as she joined Leo and Connor. “I suppose those things are somewhat more important than adultery,” she conceded, then sighed heavily. “Mr. Castelan is going to be livid.”
Connor blinked in surprise as he stared at Dita. Leo realized the two had not yet met and introduced them. “Connor, this is my good friend, Nivedita Brooks. She’s working for Castelan Private Inquiries. Dita, this is Mr. Connor Quinn, the assistant coroner at the morgue.”
Dita’s disappointment in the sudden end to her undercover work transformed to regret, her dark brown eyes filling with sympathy. “You had been Miss Hailson’s beau. Leo told me. I hope you don’t mind.”
Connor, with his bowler in hand, raked his fingers through his already mussed strands of dark hair. “Not at all, Miss Brooks. Still, I can’t help but feel it’s all so meaningless and pitiful. Lydia was truly killed over a drug smuggling operation?”
Leo understood his grappling sense of futility. Lydia ought to have had decades more to live. Resting a hand gently on his shoulder, Leo replied, “It appears that way. I’m sorry, Connor.”
He nodded. “At least now, we know.”
After another moment, in which none of them knew what more to say, Dita untied the knot at the back of her pinafore. She slipped it off and tossed it on a nearby crate. “I don’t know about you two, but I think I need a pint before I return to Mr. Castelanand update him. And it looks like I’m out of a job at Gleason’s anyhow.”
The relief Leo felt that Dita would no longer be attempting to lure Mr. Gleason into some sordid rendezvous nearly had her agreeing. But she did want to get to the Yard to give her account of the events, and she wished to see if Jasper had returned from Harrow. They had left off on a sour note the night before, and the more time that passed before they addressed it, the more difficult she worried it would be.
Leo apologized for having to turn down Dita’s invitation, but to her surprise, Connor felt differently. He held out his elbow to Dita.
“I think I could do with a drink too,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind my company?”
She gave him the once-over again, as if inspecting him for some fault, but Leo had seen that same glint in her eyes many times before.
“I suppose that remains to be seen,” she teased before taking his arm.
The pair of them waved goodbye to Leo as they set off down the alley, already absorbed in the beginnings of a conversation. She was suddenly relieved that she’d begged off, rather than sit with the pair of them as they became better acquainted.
“Oh, and Leonora,” Connor called as he seemed to remember something and turned around. “I won’t forget your fee.”
“We didn’t discuss a fee,” she said.
