Page 65 of Courier of Death
He again pressed his fingertips to his temple. “She did not say where she was going, nor did I inquire. Now, I am sending for my solicitor. I demand you all leave at once.”
He turned on his heel and left them. Jasper and Lewis exchanged a victorious glance.
“Let’s go back to her home,” Lewis said. “She’ll probably be there by now. We can bring her in for questioning.”
“She’ll never admit to anything,” Leo said. Not with so little tangible proof that she was involved. “Mr. Stewart has proven that he is easily persuaded and spineless. She isn’t, not if she’s orchestrated all of this.”
And for what? Emma’s plan had been to step into Geraldine’s shoes, to easily transfer Porter Stewart’s love from his wife to her. But he didn’t seem to be living up to her expectations.
The floorboards creaked behind them. Silent, the maid stood within the entryway.
“Betty?” Leo said.
The maid hadn’t appeared hesitant the few times she’d previously encountered her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Is there something you’d like to say?” Leo pressed.
She came into the room, still cagey. “When it comes to that woman,” she said quietly, “Mr. Stewart has the wool pulled over his eyes.”
The maid had been listening to their conversation. Leo imagined she’d listened in on plenty of other conversations too. Jasper stepped closer, his interest clear.
“Is there something you know about Mrs. Bates?” he asked.
“She’s barmy, that one.” Betty tapped the side of her head with an index finger. “I keep an ear to the door whenever she’sabout, and she was furious earlier when he told her to leave. I didn’t see anything, mind you, but I heard a scuffle. Him, pushing her away, telling her it’d been nothing but a mistake. You should’ve heard her howling.”
“Did you know they were carrying on together?” Leo asked.
The maid gave a short nod. Servants usually knew everything that happened in the households in which they worked.
“What happened after that?” Jasper asked.
“Mr. Stewart had had enough. He hardly ever shouts, him. But his voice came clear through the door, saying that he would never love her, never choose her, even if his wife were lost to him. And then, that barmy lady says back to him: ‘She will be lost to you sooner than you think.’”
Leo’s stomach dropped. “’Sooner than you think.’ She said those very words?”
The maid nodded. “Then came a loud smack, and Mrs. Bates stormed out.”
An ominous thought drifted through Leo’s mind. Emma Bates had gone to great lengths to secure Porter Stewart for herself. For her family too. How desperate and furious might she be now, faced with the knowledge that he would never love her, never marry her, even if Geraldine were out of the picture permanently?
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Jasper said. “Lewis, return to Mrs. Bates’s home and see if she is there. If she is, take her into custody. If not, gather some constables and come to Holloway Prison. It’s where I’m going.”
Leo thanked the maid and followed the two men out onto the front walk. Lewis peeled off at a run in the direction of Mrs. Bates’s street, and Jasper hailed an oncoming hansom. As it approached, Leo waited to be told that she could not accompany him to the prison. But he only opened the cab’s door and extended a hand to help her up.
“Nicely done with the newspaper article,” he said as she slipped her hand into his. A burst of pleasure helped propel her into the cab.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jasper had instructed the driver to be aggressive and move along as quickly as possible, but though the cab rattled toward Holloway Prison with noticeable speed, it wasn’t nearly fast enough to put him at ease. A rock sat in his gut, growing larger as a premonition of what they would find at the prison took shape in his mind.
“The chief warder allowed us in before, but you’re a police inspector. I got the impression he wouldn’t have permitted me inside if you hadn’t been there. He won’t allow an unaccompanied woman to visit Mrs. Stewart,” Leo reasoned, sitting rigidly on the opposite bench. She rubbed the center of her right palm with her thumb, massaging the scars through her glove. She did it without noticing, a habit whenever she was tense.
“It sounds like Mrs. Bates can be quite persuasive,” Jasper said. “If she is desperate, there’s no telling what she might do.”
If she’d orchestrated this entire situation—everything from convincing Porter Stewart to turn political, to arranging for Geraldine’s implication in a bombing scheme, to protecting Porter from Niles Foster’s blackmailing attempt—then shemight very well feel it all unraveling. Months of work, of carefully laid plans being carried out, had come down to one remaining barricade: Mrs. Stewart herself.
“How can he profess to love his wife and then betray her as deeply as he has?” Leo asked. “And not just by taking up with her sister-in-law, though that is wretched enough. He sabotaged her work with the WEA and doesn’t seem the least bit remorseful.”
Jasper had met men like Porter Stewart before. Shallow men with shallow hearts. Easily persuaded, led by compliments, and lavished with doting attention, all to instill a confidence in themselves that they lacked.
