Page 8 of Courier of Death
John had said something like this to Leo once. However, it was apparent his brother hadn’t supported his decision to join the police force.
“Mr. Lloyd, you said you knew your brother would get into trouble.” Leo’s heart began to sink. “Do you mean to say that you suspected this would happen?”
He slammed to a halt across the room and stared at her, aghast. “You mean with a bomb? No, never. Johnny couldn’t have had anything to do with that.”
She kept quiet. John had been carrying the bomb, so he must have hadsomethingto do with it.
“What kind of trouble did you mean then?”
It wasn’t customary to ask the family members any questions about the deceased other than what arrangements they would like to make for the body. But she conceded that this wasn’t a customary situation.
“I meant about the gambling,” the constable’s brother replied readily enough.
“Charlie, don’t speak ill of your brother when he can’t defend himself,” Mrs. Lloyd pleaded, pressing a hankie to her wet cheeks.
Leo recalled the brass token, now in her apron pocket. It might be a gambling marker of some kind.
“You know it’s true, Mum,” Charlie replied. “Either that, or he was on the take.”
“Stop!” Mrs. Lloyd burst into more tears.
“How else do you explain the posh boots, the better threads he kept buying, and the hats. Christ a’mighty, he had a closet full of them,” Charlie went on.
The times Leo, Dita, and John had gone to Striker’s Wharf together, she hadn’t noted the extravagance of his clothing. Perhaps that was simply because she was accustomed to seeing him in police blues.
“How long had your brother been bettering himself?” she asked.
Charlie snorted. “Bettering himself. Ha! He was hanging about with the wrong sort, telling me to stop my worrying and mind my own business. I told him, I said he would trip up, be sorry…” He closed his fist and pounded it against his forehead twice, as if to stop his mind from going back over what had been said between them. “And now look what’s happened.”
Leo tried but failed to make the correlation between a vice of gambling and the decision to carry a bomb in a valise. However, the token in his pocket could very well indicate that John had been at some gambling casino shortly before his arrival at the Yard. Had that been where he’d received the bruising on his face?
“Have you spoken with anyone from Scotland Yard yet?” Leo asked. It seemed strange that Inspector Tomlin would not have rounded up the constable’s family for questioning as immediately as he had Dita.
Mrs. Lloyd shook her head. “I was at home when Charlie came to tell me what had happened. We went straight to Scotland Yard, but a constable outside told us the body had already been brought here.”
“And how did you learn of the explosion, Mr. Lloyd?” Leo asked.
He’d quit pacing, his restlessness transforming to melancholy in the blink of an eye. “A friend came to my shop. Drives a hansom, keeps it near Whitehall. Said he saw the whole thing, Johnny walking toward the Yard, the bomb exploding, and…”
Charlie’s explanation fell off as rapidly as his temper had. If he was angry with his brother, Leo suspected it had more to do with misplaced feelings of loss than with anything else. Anger so often preceded despair, and John’s brother seemed to be closing in on the latter.
The bell chimed on the front door as a pair of uniformed police constables entered the morgue lobby. Leo stood to greet Constables Warnock and Drake, who doffed their helmets. “We heard you were sent here,” Drake said, speaking to Mrs. Lloyd and her son. “We’re to bring you to the Yard. The lead inspector has some questions to put to you.”
Charlie’s ire flared to life again. “I got nothing to say except my brother is innocent. He wouldn’t have done this. He loved his job, respected his mates!”
Mrs. Lloyd, perhaps sensing that the two constables weren’t going to leave without escorting them to Scotland Yard, got to her feet. “Miss,” she said, addressing Leo. “I’ll have my boy collected as soon as I can manage it.”
Her chin wobbled, and then she put her head down and left. Drake went with her, while Warnock waited for Charlie to come along. He did, although with reluctance.
Leo exhaled, tension dissolving from her back and shoulders as she returned to the postmortem room. Claude handed her the clipboard with her notes. “As soon as you’re finished typing, my dear, you’re to go home.”
At twenty-five, Leo didn’t enjoy being told what to do, even if her uncle was only trying to show his care and worry. But she agreed and started for the office and her typewriter. After speaking with John’s family, however, home would not be her first destination.
Chapter Four
It wasn’t the right night to attend the theatre. Jasper had known it before collecting Miss Constance Hayes from her boardinghouse, and when she appeared on her doorstep, dressed in a glittering dark maroon gown, he wished he’d sent her a note earlier, bowing out.
He wasn’t in the mood for lively entertainment. The Rising Sun, the pub across the street from the Yard, would be full of fellow officers tonight. He should be there, commiserating and drinking with them until he blacked out. The bombing and Constable Lloyd’s death had cast a pall over the central offices for the rest of the day, as they would for many days to come. Not only had one of their own been killed, but by all appearances, he’d intended to do harm to other officers as well.
