Page 49 of Cloaked in Deception
“Her name is Charlotte Radcliff?” Lewis said, writing in his notebook as the matron confirmed it with a nod.
“Excuse me,” she said, unable to look in their direction any longer. “I will wait for you in the hall.”
Matron Westover’s skirts whirled as she fled. As the victim was her aunt, Jasper understood such a reaction. He turned back to Tinsdale.
“What else can you tell me, Sergeant?” he asked.
“No staff or child has left the premises since this morning, after the body was found. PC Landry, he’s a good copper. Make a fine detective one day, I’ll wager. He knew to keep everyone penned in while he had me sent for.”
Tinsdale went over the number of staff (eighteen) and children (fifty-seven) at Wellesley House and confirmed that he’d had a look inside Miss Jones’s room. She didn’t have bloodied clothing or shoes, or anything of a suspicious nature, though Jasper conceded she could have disposed of them well before the sergeant arrived.
“When are the doors locked for the evening?” Lewis asked.
“They’re locked at all hours,” Tinsdale answered, sounding as if that should have been obvious. “Can’t have the little ones running off. And they would, mind you. A few manage it every now and again. Though, they’re never very good about getting far.”
It reminded Jasper of Gavin Seabright and his reported escape attempts when he’d been a boy here. With his mother still alive and living at home, he must have wished to return to her. It wasn’t so surprising that other children would attempt to do the same. When Jasper had fled his Uncle Robert and Aunt Myra’s home, he’d been prepared to live rough on the streets. It would have been preferable to him going back to the unyielding clutches of the Carter family. Perhaps the children Tinsdale hadneeded to track down and return to the orphanage all felt the same way as Jasper had.
“Were there any visitors yesterday?” Jasper asked, thinking of ways someone might have slipped inside the walls of the orphanage.
“As far as I know, there weren’t any visitors. The groundskeeper said he found a damaged cellar window this morning, as if a housebreaker took a crowbar to it.”
An intruder during the night, then.
“Was anything taken?”
The sergeant shook his head. The medicine cabinets looked undisturbed, and Jasper couldn’t imagine the orphanage would keep a large quantity of money or valuables anywhere on the premises.
Jasper took another look at the body and wished Leo had traveled with them. She would have been able to determine a more exact time of death. As it was, sometime between midnight and ten o’clock in the morning was their window. However, taking into consideration the groundskeeper’s discovery of the broken cellar window that morning, the coagulation of the blood pool around Nurse Radcliff, and the lividity of the victim, Jasper was confident that the killer had struck the previous night, while it was dark and everyone else was asleep.
The question was why target Nurse Radcliff at all? Martha Seabright had been asking questions about her the night of the benefit dinner, and the nurse had been the one to declare Edward Seabright dead. Now, Leo’s theory that Edward hadnotdied echoed in the back of his head.
Jasper instructed Lewis and Tinsdale to arrange for the body to be removed and then joined Matron Westover in the hall outside the infirmary.
“I have some questions for you,” he said.
The matron nodded, as if in resignation, and led him back through the darkened corridors. Her office, she claimed, would be the best place to speak.
“The children were sent to bed earlier than usual this evening, though I don’t trust they are asleep just yet,” she said, her voice subdued so as not to carry. “They are aware something has happened, but I didn’t want them crossing paths with detectives from London. As you know, they have family ties to the police, and many of them are newly grieving.”
He understood. To see police roaming the corridors, causing a stir, would likely upset the children.
Using her chatelaine again, she opened the door to her office. A lamp was still lit, and the dim light gave the small room a snug atmosphere. It was different from what he’d seen of the orphanage so far. Matron Westover went not to her desk, but to a pair of striped cushioned chairs near a small hearth, inset with a coal stove. A half-full cordial glass of spirits—sherry, if he were to guess by the golden chestnut color—had been left on an occasional table next to one chair. The matron retook her seat and held out a hand to indicate he take the one across from her.
Jasper preferred to stand when asking questions related to an inquiry. However, realizing it might be too intimidating for him to loom over her, he perched on the edge of the chair’s cushion after relenting.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he offered.
She accepted his condolences with a pert nod and then picked up her small glass of sherry.
“Sergeant Tinsdale mentioned a damaged cellar window that appeared to have been pried open,” Jasper said. “Did your groundskeeper find anything of note in the cellar? Or elsewhere on the grounds?”
She shook her head after sipping her drink. “He must have gotten in through that window. There is no other way he couldhave entered the building. I keep all the doors locked at all times.”
“He?”
“I’m assuming the intruder was a man,” she replied.
The physical strength needed to pry open a window and to violently attack a woman led Jasper to suspect a man as well. The violence was itself a clue, too.
