He had dismissed the new, relentless changes at home. After all, his parents were probably packing up for another summer trip to the shore. Instead, they’d left for a different destination.
They’d left him and Oscar behind. They’d left them penniless.
And they’d left them with that smell.
God, this smell.
“Are you . . . absolutely sure?” Allene whispered, glancing at the servants only a few feet away. Behind her, Mr. Cutter was escorting the last police officers out the door.
“I think so,” Jasper whispered back.
“Well, that’s exciting!” Allene blurted, then covered her mouth.
Jasper took a step closer. “For God’s sake. Someone died, Allene!”
“Someone whom none of us is that sad about!” she reminded him.
“Shhh!” said Birdie, scandalized. “It isn’t Christian to speak of the dead.”
“What you smelled?” he told them. “It’s poison. Cyanide. I would bet my life on it.”
They looked at him and knew he was right. Everyone knew about Jasper’s parents. Four years ago, he lost them, lost his money, and gained a scandal. He went to live with his alcoholic uncle in the Bowery. Mr. Cutter had instructed his servants not to answer the door when Mr. Jones called at the house. He’d forbidden Allene from finding him. Birdie, unaware she was about to be cast out, lived in Allene’s shadow. And her shadow had shunned him too.
Allene took a huge breath. “Well, if you’re sure, Jasper Jones, then you’re about to turn my life inside out.” She somehow didn’t look upset by this possibility.
He took a step back, trying to clear his head of the cobweb of memories that threatened to ensnare him again. His mother’s face on the pillow, her lifeless hazel eyes wide open. Jasper had inherited those eyes. God. “Look. I could be wrong. I’ll be at the Bellevue morgue tomorrow for work. I’m assigned to that wing of the building. Maybe I can . . . take another look at Florence. To be sure.”
Allene’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “You could do that?”
Jasper nodded. He tried damn hard not to grin. After working every shift he could squeeze in and sleeping a scant five hours a day, he had finished his two years of college at age seventeen. There wasn’t enough money for medical school, not yet. But he’d read all about Dr. Norris. The medical examiner’s office at Bellevue had opened only a few months before and already was eschewing bribes from the Tammany Hall politicians. The forensics department was rapidly but quietly gaining fame for scientifically and systematically finding murderers, no matter how inconvenient. The murder-suicide that turned out to be a double murder by a jealous police sergeant. The twin babies that died “naturally” in their sleep from a purposeful overdose of teething medicine given by the wife of a Tammany Hall regular who “didn’t want to be bothered by their screeching anymore.”
If he could get his foot in the door of the medical examiner’s office, it would be his ticket out of obscurity. He wouldn’t follow his brother’s listless path, finding direction only once he’d been drafted, then dying soon after. In the last few years, he’d snubbed offers of friendship, girlfriends, and he even dispensed smiles with tightfisted, calculated effort. He was too busy to be friendly to strangers, and most people burnt time he didn’t have. At eighteen, he felt it running thin through his hands.
No, Jasper would be in charge of the fate of the most notorious and the most powerful people in New York, the ones who thought they had the right to decide who lived or died in this world. He looked well bred, had himself a good brain and loads of ambition—and now he had a corpse.
Alive, Florence was a snooty socialite who’d thrown snide remarks at him countless times, including last evening.
Dead, she was his salvation.
“Jasper.” Allene was watching him as carefully as Birdie was. “Thank you. I’ll speak to Father about all this. Right now, you need to go home. But promise to see me again. Soon.”
Something in her expression made him pause. It wasn’t just excitement; it was the brightness and energy you see in a bird behind gilded cage wires. So pretty, so alive, but trapped all the same. He saw how Allene had reacted to Andrew’s kiss before. She could care less about that lucky bum.
Jasper donned a brilliant smile. “Oh, I’ll see you soon. Even if you’re going to be married, doesn’t mean I can’t get my share of your time before then. Thank Florence for that.” He leaned forward and gave her a slow kiss on the cheek. When he pulled away, he squeezed her waist. Allene was blushing. Excellent.
“You’re a cad,” she said.
He winked. “Of course I am.”
Allene was a piece of a puzzle in a plan he was still working out. No doubt he was resentful of her for snubbing him these past years, but she would make it up to him. He would make sure of that. When he’d received the invitation, he had thought of torching it in the sink, but then considered. Allene had everything he no longer did—connections and money. There were smart ways to get both without begging. Some of the most eminent physicians were friends of the Cutters—perhaps they would cross his path now. If he wanted to find Florence’s murderer and rise beyond being a janitor forever, he would need Allene.
She led him reluctantly to the large double doors. Andrew was waiting for him, looking clean worn out. “Aren’t they something?” he murmured, watching Allene’s and Birdie’s mesmerizing feminine silhouettes recede to the drawing room.
“Mmm.” Jasper wasn’t sure how to respond. Andrew seemed like a friendly chap, never once looking down his nose at him, unlike everyone else at the party. If things had been different, Jasper would have been the one in the tuxedo, marrying into the Cutter family. He wouldn’t have to wake up tomorrow morning on Eldridge Street and scrub urine stains off Bellevue’s tiled floors.
Actually, Jasper despised Andrew, now that he thought of it.
“You’re very lucky,” Andrew said, filling the silence.
Jasper twitched out of his resentful torpor. “Excuse me?”
“Birdie. What a patootie. She’s your girl, isn’t she?”
“I thought I was the one who was supposed to be doing the congratulating tonight,” Jasper replied.
This time, it was Andrew’s turn to say, “Mmm.” He abruptly faced Jasper, just as the motorcar rumbled up to the curb. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Say. When Florence fell down the stairs . . . where were you, really? You weren’t actually in Allene’s room, were you?”
Where was he? Where he shouldn’t have been, of course.
“Just kiss her!” Allene had teased.
Jasper had been lounging on her bed, surrounded by an overabundance of lace pillows.
It was a dare and a test. He knew it. Birdie had scorched her cheap dress by standing too close to the fireplace. She’d always done that, trying to escape notice by backing against a wall. He’d followed them to Allene’s room, past the party guests, and Allene had permitted him to enter. Just like when they were children.