Page 57 of Method of Revenge
He gave in to her demand, cradling his still sore arm as she directed the pair of horses toward the hospital. The drive wasn’t far, just off Whitechapel Road, and along the way, Lewis began to speak and think more clearly.
“We should have Henderson guarded. At least until Nelson is found and arrested,” he said, pressing a hand to the back of his head. His palm came away wet with blood.
“I don’t need a guard,” David said, his words slurred, as though he’d partaken in too many pints of ale at a pub.
“Your sister’s killer still wants you dead,” Leo reminded him. “I should think you’d want a phalanx of guards.”
He didn’t argue, though that might have been because he’d dropped into unconsciousness again.
While she drove, Jasper read the confession Leo had found in Mrs. Nelson’s bodice. Once he finished it, he folded the paper, almost reverently, and put it away in his pocket. His forehead continued to bead with sweat, even though it was cold, and they were in an open wagon. His coloring paled, then flushed, and she worried he was losing too much blood. He wouldn’t want her to fuss though, so she kept her lips sealed until they arrived at the hospital and entered the front doors.
“You need to see a doctor,” she told him as David and Lewis were being collected for treatment.
“I’m fine,” he replied, rolling his shoulder. “See? You set my arm.”
“No, you’re not fine. Your coat is gashed open, and you’re bleeding through your shirt.” She pulled aside his coat collar, revealing the blood-soaked linen.
“Leo—” He took her wrist and held it down. But an eagle-eyed nurse had seen the blood, and she hastened forward with a wheelchair.
“All right, I give up. I’ll go. But I am not sitting in that.” He left the lobby on foot with the nurse.
Leo trailed them at a distance. Her only injury was a few bruised ribs; at worst, they may have been broken, but there was nothing to be done except to bind them tightly, and she could attend to that herself once she was home. The nurse showed Jasper down a wide corridor, with curtains hanging to enclose the individual beds.
As Leo waited, she considered Mrs. Nelson’s confession letter and the frustrated sadness she’d felt while reading it. The bereft mother had intended to bring public attention to the dangers of the toxins used in wallpaper, and yet instead, her husband had taken the settlement to pay off debts, drink, and gamble heavily. By signing the contract of silence, Mr. Nelson had muffled his wife. After that, she’d felt her only option had been to enact a bolder protest.
Leo didn’t know what it was to have a child or to lose one. It would not be the same as losing a brother or sister, or a mother or father. This, she knew instinctively. Her grief over the Inspector’s death was also a different breed than the anguish Mrs. Nelson must have endured with the loss of her children.
Leo’s family had been taken from her, but unlike Evelyn Nelson, she had never learned who’d killed them. A part of her didn’t want to know. What would she do with that information? How could she possibly avenge them? Would she be as single-minded as Evelyn had been in her plans for vengeance? Perhaps. For that reason alone, Leo could not entirely condemn the poor woman. And though he would likely never say as much, she suspected by the careful refolding of Evelyn’s letter that Jasper felt much the same way.
She’d settled into a chair in the corridor, her eyes tracing the checked pattern of black and white floor tiles. She didn’t know what made her glance up. Some intuition, maybe. When shedid, a doctor was passing by. He wore a white, smocked coat as he walked briskly past her and down the corridor. His profile was only visible for a split second, but recognition fired through her brain. Leo sat straight up, watching the man as he carried on toward the other end of the long corridor. His doctor’s coat didn’t quite fit his broad shoulders; the material pulled between his expansive shoulder blades.
Her heart hammering, she shot to her feet and reached for the curtain enclosing the space into which Jasper had been shown. Her breathing was ragged as she yanked the curtain aside.
Seated on the bed, his shirt discarded next to him, Jasper leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The nurse was sponging dried blood from a long gash that was drawn across his shoulder and upper back. He sat straight up, twisting to glance at Leo.
“Miss, please wait outside,” the matronly woman said sternly.
Jasper reached for his shirt and stood from the bed simultaneously. “What’s wrong?” he asked, ignoring the nurse’s protests.
Stripped to his waist, Leo received a generous view of his bare chest and abdomen. She blinked, momentarily startled. He gingerly slid his arms into his shirt sleeves and brought the panels together.
“Leo?” he pressed, buttoning as he waited for her tongue to unknot.
“Mr. Nelson,” she blurted. “He’s here.”
He went still, buttons forgotten. “Where?”
Leo stepped back out into the corridor and pointed. “That way. He’s wearing a white doctor’s coat.”
Jasper tore past her and stared in the direction she’d indicated. Mr. Nelson was no longer in sight. “He’s after David Henderson,” he said and, with his shirt still unbuttoned anduntucked, began to run along the hall, ripping open curtains as he went. Leo fell into step alongside him, taking the right-hand side of the corridor, while he took the left, both of them flinging open any of the drawn privacy curtains and receiving gasps and startled admonishments as they went.
But then, as Leo swung the next curtain aside, she jolted to a stop.
David Henderson, his head and eyes bandaged with linen, was seated on a hospital cot. A thick-set doctor was helping him to grasp a drinking glass and raise it to his lips.
“Don’t drink that!” Leo shouted.
Terrence Nelson swung toward her, his eyes ablaze with determination.
