Page 56 of Method of Revenge
David was attempting to pull himself up from the floor while gripping his bloody head. “Good God, what was that?”
“Dynamite,” Leo replied as she moved to help him stand. “Mrs. Nelson wasleavingthe building late last night, not entering it, when she was attacked. She’d already planted the bomb. She confessed everything in her letter, even her husband’s deeds.”
And then, she’d intended to end her own life. Leo suspected, however, that her husband had beat her to it.
David leaned heavily against her, one of his eyes swollen to a grotesque state, and blood washing over his cheek. “This factory is filled with flammable polymers and chemicals,” he said, stumbling over his words. “There could be another explosion.”
Jasper grunted again in pain as he positioned one of Lewis’s arms over his uninjured shoulder. “Go, Leo,” he commanded, his voice strained.
With David’s considerable weight leaning against her, she staggered out of the debris-strewn office. In the corridor, a wallhad collapsed, and parts of the ceiling had come down. The sharp scent of smoke filled the air. Something was on fire within the building—just as Mrs. Nelson had intended.
The destruction of the wallpaper factory had been Evelyn’s sole desire, while her husband had chosen another method of revenge. From her confession letter, Leo learned they’d drifted apart for months while she had worked to acquire dynamite and assemble a timed bomb, and he had planned to hurt Jack Henderson as Terrence had been hurt—with his children’s deaths. But Mrs. Nelson hadn’t intended to kill anyone. She’d joined Henderson & Son to more easily place the bomb when it was ready.
“She timed the bomb to go off after the employees left for the day,” Leo said as they reached the stairwell.
“It doesn’t matter. David is right. With the amount of chemicals in this building, the fire could trigger another explosion at any moment,” Jasper said.
Lewis was coming to, murmuring that he could walk on his own. David stumbled awkwardly, nearly causing her to fall down the stairs. Sweat rolled down the back of her neck and her ribs were on fire by the time they made it to the bottom step. The foreman came through a wall of dark smoke toward them, and he lifted David’s other arm, to Leo’s relief.
“This way!” he shouted, then led them to the loading dock and out into the factory yard.
Fresh air flooded Leo’s lungs so quickly her head and vision swam. Jasper lowered Lewis onto a crate, and David collapsed onto the cobbles. Drawn by the explosion, people swarmed the factory yard. The blast likely had been felt from several streets away. A bucket brigade had begun to form, and pea whistles trilled in the distance, summoning a proper fire wagon.
Jasper stared at the building, its glass windows blown out and a ragged hole in the wall where bricks had cascaded tothe ground. He continued to cradle his arm. “Mrs. Nelson got what she wanted. There must be thousands of pounds worth of wallpaper burning in there right now.”
“That was whatshewanted, yes,” Leo said. “It was Terrence who wanted to hurt Jack Henderson more personally.”
The confession in Leo’s coat pocket made it clear that Mrs. Nelson had still felt responsible for Gabriela’s death and for Regina’s murder as well. Her husband had become obsessed with his revenge, and she hadn’t been able to dissuade him from his plans.
Regina had seen Terrence one night at the factory, arguing with Evelyn. Then, a few days later, when the note from Regina appeared on David’s desk, Evelyn had been concerned. She wrote in her confession that the handwriting hadn’t looked like Regina’s but rationalized that she might have been in a hurry to leave it and be gone from the factory before anyone saw her. It wasn’t until Jasper identified the Jane Doe as Regina Morris that Mrs. Nelson understood her husband had killed the secretary to silence her. She’d known then that he needed to be stopped.
“Why then is David still alive?” Jasper asked, glancing toward the man. He’d been moved from the cobbles to the back of a cart. There, a pair of older women were tending to his bloodied, swollen face. He’d already been injured when Leo arrived in his office, and she suspected Andrew Carter’s two hired men had something to do with his condition.
“Maybe Terrence had been counting on his wife to help give him access to David, but she wouldn’t agree,” Leo suggested.
She removed the letter from her pocket and held it out for Jasper to take. He lifted it from her fingers using his uninjured arm.
“I can help you with that,” she said, pointing to his left shoulder.
Many bodies arrived at the morgue with dislocated shoulders, especially those who’d suffered deadly falls or carriage accidents. Claude had shown her how to maneuver the ball of the shoulder back into its socket. However, if Jasper allowed her, it would be her first time performing the motion on a living person. She chose not to tell him as much when he nodded, a tight grimace already on his face in preparation for the shock of pain the maneuver would cause. At least then he’d be able to use his left arm again.
She gripped his forearm, and at the count of three, pulled and pushed the shoulder back into place. A cracking sound accompanied it, and Jasper groaned, hanging his head and cursing under his breath. That was when she saw the tear in his coat along the top of his back and shoulders, and the blood seeping through the fabric.
“You’re bleeding quite heavily,” she said, wincing. “We need to get you, Sergeant Lewis, and Mr. Henderson to a hospital.”
He nodded, his face glistening with sweat and streaked with soot and blood. “The London is closest.”
They left Mr. Bridges in charge of the bucket brigade; pails of water were being drawn up from the nearby Basin and rushed to the factory to douse the fire. She and Jasper trundled Lewis and David into one of the factory’s wagons. Then Jasper took the reins.
“You’ve one good arm, and you’re bleeding,” Leo said, stealing the reins from his hands as she sat on the driver’s bench beside him. “I will drive.”
“But you’re terrible at it,” he grumbled.
She balked. “The Inspector taught me, and he said I was marvelous.”
Jasper chuffed a laugh. “Of course, he did. When did he ever discourage you from anything? Even the things you were bad at?”
Leo tried to think of an example and failed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m still driving.”
