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Chapter Eighteen

Leo woke Monday morning to the sound of screams. Startled into a sitting position, her mind fogged by slumber, she’d recognized that the anguished cries of pain were coming from Flora.

Now, several hours later, Leo and Claude sat inside a small hospital room at St. Thomas’s where Flora lay sleeping. Her aunt had risen from bed earlier than usual and, with Claude still sound asleep, had left their room and gone to the staircase. A normal occurrence for any able-bodied person, to be sure. However, Flora fumbled her footing somewhere on the steps. She fell, landing in a heap at the foot of the stairs. Claude and Leo had rushed to her in a panic, and they had instantly known from the odd angle of her leg that it was broken.

Once at St. Thomas’s, the doctor administered a draught of laudanum to calm her. Leo half-wondered if it would have been beneficial to treat her uncle with a few drops of the tincture too.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Leo told him yet again. And again, he refused to give himself grace.

“I should have been awake to assist her down the steps,” he said, his shoulders slumped and his white hair disheveled. There had been little time for either Claude or Leo to dress properly before rushing Flora to the hospital; he had forgotten his suspenders, and Leo still wore her hair loose around her shoulders.

The doctor had set Flora’s leg—the break in her femur had been relatively clean, he reported, and fortunately, her hip was not involved. That, he said, would have been a far graver injury for a woman of her advanced age. Afterward, he’d taken Claude and Leo aside and said the very thing they had been trying to outpace.

“I believe Mrs. Feldman will require round-the-clock nursing care, and not just until her leg heals. Incidents like these are quite common in patients with her condition. Cognitive decline affects the whole body, I am afraid, not just the mind.”

The doctor had left them to contemplate, and for some time now, they had been sitting quietly in uncomfortable chairs set against the hospital room wall.

“Jasper will hear back soon if Chesterton Hall passes muster,” Leo offered. “He wired the local constabulary yesterday. I’m sure the home has a fine reputation, Uncle.”

Even to her own ears, her attempt to keep a light and positive tone sounded forced.

“It is time,” Claude said with dismal sigh. “I will make the arrangements.”

“After the holiday,” she urged. “We can let her leg heal a little and enjoy Christmas together.”

The truth was, Christmas with her aunt and uncle had never been a warm, cozy affair. Flora’s chill toward her niece did not thaw any time of year, not even then. It had always been the Christmas Eve dinner held at the Inspector’s home that Leo had looked forward to. He would have a wrapped gift or two under the small Christmas tree for Leo to open on that evening.

This would be her first Christmas Eve without him, she realized. And come January, she would be alone at the house on Duke Street.

“I know you will be going with her,” Leo confessed, with an unexpected hitch in her voice.

Her uncle shifted in his chair, and in her peripheral vision, she saw him peering at her. Leo met his eyes. The clear blue irises gleamed with emotion.

“I know she has never been motherly toward you,” Claude began. Leo shook her head, as if to stop him from making any excuse. But he persisted. “Life, long ago, injured her. I believe, irreparably. There was…a child.”

Leo stared at him, stunned.

“A little boy,” he went on. “We named him David, after my father. He was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.” Here, her uncle’s voice cracked. He continued after a moment. “There was a fever. Flora grew ill, but she recovered. David did not. He was six months old.”

Leo closed her eyes to an overwhelming surge of sympathy for her aunt and uncle.

“Why did you never say?” she asked.

“Any mention of our son would send Flora into a despair so consuming that I feared I would lose her. So, I learned not to speak of him.”

And then, when her sister, niece and nephew were killed, Flora had suffered another excruciating blow.

“She closed off her heart to you. Too fearful to love another child and possibly go through what she had with David,” Claude said. “There was a flaw in that thinking, however. By closing off her heart to you, she never allowed herself the chance to know what it feels like to be loved by a child.”

Claude reached for her hand. It was warm and coarse and comforting. “It is, I have long believed, the best feeling a person can experience. I have you to thank for that, my dear.”

Leo could not keep the tears from slipping down her cheeks. Even if the lump in her throat had not been constricting her ability to speak, she did not know what she could say to such a heartfelt revelation. Claude, bashful as usual, smiled and patted her hand.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use a spot of tea,” he said, then started to rise. Leo got to her feet first.

“I’ll go. You stay with Aunt Flora.” She kissed his forehead before leaving the room.

Leo sniffled and wiped the corners of her eyes as she turned down the corridor, heading toward the refreshment room located on the ground floor. She had taken only a few strides when she saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure that she knew at once.