Page 24 of Method of Revenge
“The flaming punch? Isn’t it divine?” Constance replied, taking a furtive glance at Jasper. She still hadn’t forgiven him for that night in January and their argument afterward.
The two women settled into discussing the different entertainment venues they’d attended recently, and Jasper realized he hadn’t accompanied Constance to any of them. He wondered, fleetingly, if any other gentleman had.
“Did I hear correctly that Miss Spencer was there at the time of Mrs. Carter’s death?” Oliver asked while Miss Derring was speaking about a stuffy assembly room to which she refused to return.
Constance severed her attention from Miss Derring to ask, “What was she doing there?”
“She was with a friend,” Jasper replied.
“Who is this Miss Spencer?” Miss Derring asked. “Do I know her?”
“Gracious, no,” Constance replied, nearly choking on her sip of wine. “She isn’t part of our set.”
Jasper sat up straighter and addressed Oliver across the table. “Where did you hear she was at the club?”
“I had a drink with Commissioner Danvers last night,” he answered with a blasé shrug. “He mentioned that she drew some attention to herself.”
As Leo had helped depose the former police commissioner, Jasper imagined the new one was well aware of who she was. Sir Frederick Danvers had quietly praised Jasper for his work bringing his predecessor’s crimes to light, but publicly, he’d been silent. He wanted the Met to move on and forget the entire debacle.
“You must tell me who she is,” Miss Derring said, intrigued.
“While we are eating?” Oliver replied with a devilish grin. “You might regret asking.”
“You can read all about her, Helen,” Constance said with a rigid arch of her brow. “In this week’sIllustrated Police News.”
“What?” Oliver asked with a laugh of disbelief.
Miss Derring’s mouth popped open. “What is she doing in that horrid rag?”
Jasper groaned. He’d expected talk about it would circulate. If Leo had not already learned of it, he’d be stunned.
“It’s a profile of sorts,” Constance answered. “Though I cannot understand what she was thinking by agreeing to such a thing.”
“She didn’t agree to anything,” Jasper said. “Whoever wrote it did so without her knowledge.” He was certain of it.
“What does the article say?” Miss Derring asked.
Before Constance could reply, Jasper interjected, “Miss Spencer assists the city coroner at the Spring Street Morgue.” It did little to allay the woman’s expected reaction.
“How gruesome!”
“The article mentioned that she assists in investigations at Scotland Yard as a sort of female detective,” Constance said, looking pointedly at him. “I thought it was only that one time at the beginning of this year.”
She assists in investigations at Scotland Yard—that particular sentence was a thorn in Jasper’s side, and it would not have been well received at the Yard—ifanyone there took the melodramatic news rag with any seriousness.
“She was involved in one of my cases, but otherwise, she types postmortem reports for the city coroner, that is all,” Jasper said.
Her name had been kept to a minimum in the newspapers after the scandal with Sir Nathaniel, though everyone within the Metropolitan Police knew of the role she’d played in unmasking the commissioner’s crimes. Why would anyone be writing about it and Leo now? He considered whether there was anyone new in her life. Mr. Higgins, the medical student, had been at the morgue for about two weeks, according to Leo. Plenty of time to gather information on her. But why would he wish to? And why write for a tabloid when he was studying medicine? Then, there was Flora Feldman’s newest nurse. Mrs. Boardman, was it?
“How can she stand to work in such a wretched place?” Miss Derring asked. “She must be very strange.”
“She isn’t strange,” Jasper said, becoming more and more irritated. “She has a different temperament than most ladies do.”
Constance smirked and took another sip of her wine. Lowering her glass, she said, “I wonder if that temperament has anything to do with what happened to her family.”
Miss Derring gasped. “What about her fam?—?”
“We are finished speaking about Miss Spencer,” Jasper cut in. The table went quiet. Oliver smothered a bemused grin as he drank his whisky.
