At Wiley’s nod, he turned and started for the corridor. On the face of it, Leo and Frederick’s departure together might have meant nothing. But if Frederick had been looking for a piece of evidence, and he’d found Leo going through the box… Jasper’s worry might have been unfounded, but by the time he reached Constable Woodhouse, he knew he couldn’t set it aside.
“Woodhouse,” he said, approaching the reception desk. The constable was donning his boiled wool coat as he prepared to leave for the evening. “Did you see Miss Spencer go out?”
“Not long before you arrived, Inspector,” he answered with a nod.
“And was a man with her?”
Another nod. “A gent. He offered to escort her to where she was going. She declined, saying it was but a short walk.”
Again, on its surface, the overheard exchange didn’t sound overtly alarming. But Frederick Cowper was the only other person who had known about Francine’s letter. Ursula had confessed to him in the billiards room, stoking his anger…or had it been panic?
“Did she say where she was going?” Jasper asked. At the shake of the constable’s head, indecision stole through him. Her home on Duke Street was a short walk from the Yard. But so was the morgue.
As he, Warnock, and Price exited through the back door into the courtyard behind headquarters, he tried to determine where Leo might have gone.
“Sir?” Warnock said. “Shall I get a cab for us?”
Jasper knew he should go to Paddington Station, on the chance that Frederick’s train had not yet left. But he could not shake the suspicion that Leo was in trouble.
“Yes,” Jasper said, making his decision. “Take Price and go to Paddington Station. If you find Mr. Cowper, take him into custody and bring him back here.”
Warnock accepted the task with alacrity, and he and Price set off toward the line of carriages for hire.
Jasper pulled the brim of his hat down against the rain and set off in the direction he hoped Leo had gone.
Chapter Twenty
It was pure good fortune that Leo did not topple to the office floor when she was shoved from behind. Had she fallen, she had little doubt that her attacker would have pounced. Instead, she caught herself by grasping the corner of a low bookshelf next to the door and whirled to the side, out of reach.
The back door slammed shut, severing the minuscule amount of light that had been coming in from outside. Connor had not yet returned from his pint with Dita, and so, not a single bracket gasolier or lamp was lit, leaving the office drenched in darkness.
But even blind, Leo knew who had shoved her from behind.
“You recognized the fabric, didn’t you, Mr. Cowper?” she said, chilled air filling her lungs as she dragged in breath.
She backed up toward her desk, where she knew she would find a paper knife in the drawer. Besides the scalpels stored safely away in the postmortem room, it was the sharpest object she could think of.
Ahead of her, she saw the barest slip of movement through the dark.
“You did not notice the tear along your jacket’s cuff when you arrived to breakfast the morning after the storm,” she said. Even Leo had not noticed it at the time, but she’d been able to peruse the details her memory had stored of their momentary meeting.
In that one image, she had noticed things she’d not paid attention to previously: a footman, lifting a silver cloche cover to reveal a plate of sausages for the viscount; the scowl upon the viscount’s lips when he saw Jasper and Leo leaving the dining room; and the way Frederick had been straightening the cuffs of his jacket when he’d nearly collided with them in the doorway.
“My guess is that you didn’t realize you’d torn your cuff at all until I picked up that scrap of fabric in the evidence box,” she added. Belatedly, she realized the look that had filled Frederick’s eyes when he’d seen it had not been one of confusion, but fear.
Her hip brushed the edge of the desk, and her hand fumbled toward the knob of the center drawer.
“This gives me no pleasure, Miss Spencer,” the viscount’s heir replied, and with a rush of alarm skittering through her limbs, Leo realized he’d nearly reached the desk, too. “I wish you did not possess the sort of memory you do.”
She certainly wished that Nadia had kept her mouth shut about it.
Leo opened the desk drawer and, knowing precisely where the paper knife was, gripped its ebony handle. She held it before her, wishing her vision would hurry up and adjust to the dark.
“Youput your fist through the pane of glass at the Craven Hill house,” she said, backing up again, the blade she used to open letters poised before her. “You found Helen in the upstairs bedroom, and you killed her.”
But why? And what could he have possibly wanted with Helen’s tear catcher?
“Except for you, no one can place me there,” he said, his voice oddly calm.
