Page 34 of Method of Revenge
“Yes, why?”
“I just wonder…what if Miss Morris left her position so swiftly because she’d started to notice herself increasing and feared she couldn’t hide it for much longer? She might have gone to stay with family until after the baby was born.” The suggestion made sense. Her family might not have taken the news well.
“Did she have any relatives that you know of?” Leo asked Miss Geary. “Anyone she could have turned to?”
The woman hadn’t yet sipped her tea; she just continued to hold it, letting it warm her hands. They no longer shook, at least. “She never mentioned anyone.”
“Did she ever mention a beau of any sort?” Leo asked. Miss Geary had only said she didn’t know Regina had been courting a Carter, not that she hadn’t been courting at all.
When the secretary hesitated, Leo and Dita exchanged a glance. Dita, whom Leo could admit was much warmer and reassuring than she herself, put a gentle hand on Miss Geary’s shoulder.
“Anything you tell us will be in confidence,” she said. “We only want to help Inspector Reid solve Regina’s murder.”
“Are you quite positive itwasmurder?” Miss Geary lowered her voice with a surreptitious look over her shoulder. “People can fall, crack their skulls…”
“She was bludgeoned with a heavy object,” Leo said. “A mallet, most likely.”
The secretary’s coloring leeched entirely from her face, and Leo realized too late that she had been too blunt. Though Miss Geary already had dark circles under her eyes and lines bracketing her mouth, she appeared more aged as she took in this revelation. She nodded jerkily.
“I…I could have been imagining it, but I noticed Mr. Henderson—David—had become more…solicitous toward Regina since the autumn.”
Leo sat up, alert. “Before or after Gabriela announced her engagement to Mr. Carter?”
Miss Geary twisted her lips, as though trying to recall the exact timing. “Before. Shortly before.”
“Solicitous in what way?” Dita asked.
Miss Geary waited to reply until a pair of women in canvas pinafores streaked with colorful paint had passed behind them. “A vase on her desk was filled with a new bouquet twice a week, sometimes more often. It was David. I saw him one morning refreshing the vase with new flowers. He’d blushed, as though I’d caught him out. And then there were the looks they shared.Smiles.” She shrugged. “I didn’t ask Regina because I didn’t want to know the truth. He’s a married man, you see.”
Leo did see. If David Henderson had come to suspect Regina was carrying his child, he might have wanted to eliminate the inconvenient problem. She supposed his wife might have felt the same way, if she’d found out about the affair. Right then, Jasper was questioning the man. Leo trusted he would come to the same suspicion.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, the detective inspector appeared in the canteen entrance. Aggravation tensed the corners of his mouth. Leo thanked Miss Geary for her time, and when they rejoined Jasper, he wasted no time leaving the factory.
“The interview with the younger Mr. Henderson didn’t go well, I assume?” Leo asked as they walked along the street toward a cab stand.
Jasper whisked off his bowler and ran a hand through his golden hair. “He seemed genuinely upset, and when I informed him about the baby, his legs went out from underneath him. The man all but toppled into his chair.”
“They were having an affair,” Leo said.
“Miss Geary suspected it,” Dita added. She’d brought the complaints folder upon their exit and now handed it to Jasper.
He nodded. “I figured as much and pressed him, but he wouldn’t admit to anything.”
“Well, now we know Regina Morris couldn’t have been the woman in the hooded cloak I followed at Striker’s,” Leo said. No other theories of who it could have been came to mind either.
What a tangle this case had become. Had the Inspector still been alive, Leo would have brought all the pieces to him to sort through with her. Frustration had been an emotion that always eluded Gregory Reid, even in the most perplexing of cases, or ones that never gave answers or resolutions. He would removeall emotion completely, it seemed, instead treating the elements like an arithmetic equation that had been disarranged and in need of reordering. She could hear his voice now, musing to himself,“Are these two separate cases, or are they one?”
“Did you show David Henderson that awful photograph?” Dita asked Jasper. He nodded.
“Like everyone else, he couldn’t imagine why his sister had it with her or why anyone would have given it to her.”
They arrived at the cab stand, where two hansoms waited for hire. Jasper opened the door to one and handed up Dita. He paused before extending his hand to Leo.
“I won’t be traveling back with you. Since both victims were connected to the wallpaper factory and to Andrew Carter, I need to speak to him again.” His brow crinkled in distaste. “I’ll take another cab to his address.”
He rolled his shoulders and neck as though trying to stretch out a knotted muscle. Unlike the Inspector, Jasper often experienced the emotion of frustration. However, it usually seemed to spur him on rather than defeat him.
She gestured toward the folder in his hand. “May I read the complaints file? I don’t know if it will help, but I can memorize them and then summarize the findings.”
