by C. S. Harris
“The Twenty-fifth.”
Ryker nodded and took a sip of his ale.
Sebastian said, “How long have you been back?”
“A few months. But I reckon you knew that.”
“I take it Pippa told you about me?”
“Aye. Said you looked enough like Knox t’ be his own brother. I didn’t believe it when she said it, but it’s sure enough true. She says she never knew how that came about.”
“No one does.”
“I reckon somebody knows.” Ryker took another sip of his beer. “I hear you’re lookin’ into what happened to them two magistrates in Wapping.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I still got friends over there.”
“Your father had a public house in the area?”
“Aye. The Green Man, on Rope Walk Lane.”
“Why did he lose his license?”
Ryker leaned back in his chair. “Because he was tired of havin’ to pay the Black Eagle’s inflated prices, plus bribes to Cockerwell and his mates.”
“I’m told he died last summer, before the Middlesex Brewster Sessions.”
“Aye.”
“He lost the license before it came up for renewal?”
“Aye.”
“So why were you at the sessions?”
A smile curled the rifleman’s hard mouth. “Seemed a good opportunity to tell that lot what I thought of ’em.”
“I hear you threatened Nathan Cockerwell.”
The fanlike creases beside the man’s blue eyes deepened. “Nah. I just told him one of these days someone was gonna cut out his guts and feed ’em to the crows. Didn’t say I was gonna do it.”
“So where were you last night?”
The amusement slid into something brittle and dangerous. “Here. Why ye askin’?”
“Because someone didn’t exactly cut out his guts, but they did do a pretty good job of nearly taking off his head.”
“Good. But it weren’t me. If it’d been me, I’d have made him suffer first. Some men don’t deserve to die quick.”
Sebastian took a measured swallow of his ale. “Any idea who did do it?”
Ryker shook his head. “Those bastards must’ve ruined dozens—no, make that hundreds of men and women over the years. Good luck to whichever one finally paid a couple of ’em back.”
“You think that’s why Pym and Cockerwell were killed? Because they were corrupt?”
“Why else?”
“You don’t think it could have something to do with the Ratcliffe Highway murders?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about them. I was in Spain when that happened.”
“Did you know any of the people killed?”
“Not really.”
“You didn’t know the publican of the King’s Arms?” Wapping might be crowded with public houses, but surely the son of a man with a tavern in Rope Walk Lane would have known the longtime owners of the King’s Arms.
Ryker gave a dismissive twitch of one shoulder. “I knew who he was. That’s all.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“Somebody wanted him dead, I reckon.”
A young child’s laughter rang out in the taproom, followed by a low-voiced warning from Pippa. Sebastian said, “Whose beer did the King’s Arms sell?”
The rifleman’s lips pulled back in a smile that showed his teeth. “I’m not one as could tell ye that. Ye might try askin’ out at the Black Eagle. I reckon Sampson Buxton-Collins might know.”
A rush of small, quick feet sounded; then a ball rolled through the doorway to the office, chased by a sturdy lad of about three. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and yellow eyes. And even though Sebastian had seen the boy before, the sight of him still hit Sebastian’s gut and took his breath. The child looked enough like Simon that the little boys could be brothers.
Or first cousins.
“What the bloody hell ye doin’ in here?” growled Ryker, his face darkening. “Ye know ye ain’t allowed in here.”
The boy, his own face now tight and solemn, grabbed the ball and retreated backward out of the room in a way that told Sebastian all he needed to know about this man and the way he treated his predecessor’s young son. As soon as the child reached the doorway, he turned and fled.
“Bloody little bastard,” growled Ryker.
And Sebastian found himself wondering, To whom did Knox bequeath his tavern? To Pippa? Or to his infant son?
Sebastian suspected it was the latter. And that was worrisome.
Chapter 19
Ain’t seen nor heard nothin’, Captain,” said Adam Campbell, one of the veterans keeping a watch on the daughter of Sir Edwin Pym.
Sebastian had swung by Stepney to check on the men, to reassure himself that the evil stalking the streets of the East End had not touched this frightened woman and her three children. He’d found the tall Scotsman standing across the street from Katie Ingram’s modest town house, his battered old shako pulled low over his eyes, the collar of his coat turned against the cold and damp. The mist was coming up again, drifting in dirty white patches that slid across the haloed sickle moon hanging overhead.
“Max’s watchin’ the back o’ the house,” said Campbell. “He says he ain’t seen nothin’, neither. Maybe us bein’ here is enough to scare away whoever’s been troublin’ her.”
“Perhaps,” said Sebastian.
He was aware of the curtain shifting at a window of the house across the way and glanced up to see the silhouette of a woman standing there looking out at the darkness, doubtless drawn by the sound of hushed male voices and perhaps frightened by the sight of shadowy figures half-hidden by mist. He told himself today’s killings were different from those that took place around Ratcliffe Highway three years ago. Today’s killer was targeting men, not entire families, and he was killing his victims in the street rather than attacking them in their homes at night.
And yet Sebastian wasn’t convinced that was as significant as one might assume. An open draper’s shop and an empty pub on the verge of closing for the night were far easier to invade than a crowded lodging house down by the docks or the homes of wealthy men such as Pym and Cockerwell, with their locked doors and multiple servants. What did that mean for someone like Katie Ingram, a woman alone in a small house with just three young children and a couple of maidservants?
He heard the front door open and saw her step outside. She now wore the mourning clothes society demanded of a woman in her position, her newly dyed black muslin gown dull and dark in the night, the shawl around her thin shoulders also black.
“It’s Devlin, Mrs. Ingram,” he said, raising his voice and touching his hand to his hat as he walked across the street toward her. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. I was only checking on the men.”
She shook her head. “I knew it was you.” She hesitated, then drew a deep breath and said, “I heard about Nathan Cockerwell. I never liked the man, but to die in such a way . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m frightened.”
He knew he should say something like Don’t be. It was the standard response, after all. But he saw no reason to either ridicule her fears or diminish the very real danger she faced. “These are good men,” he said instead. “And Bow Street is sparing no effort to catch whoever is doing this.”
“I know,” she said, giving a jerky little nod, her fingers showing white where they clutched her shawl. “Thank you. Thank you for everything you’re doing.”
And yet the fear in her eyes remained, stark and haunting.
* * *
That night, Sebastian dreamt of a tall, shadowy man with yellow eyes that seemed to burn out of the darkness, and of a beloved golden-haired woman whose laughter brought an ache to his chest and made him cry out.
“It’s just a dream,” Hero whispered, her breath soft against his cheek.
He opened his eyes with a gasp. For a moment his world spun around in a whirl of confusion, then settled into a familiar view of blue silk bed hangings lit by the red glow from the fire banked on the hearth. He drew another shuddering breath, then gathered her to him, her body settling warm and solid against his.
“Why does it matter to me so much?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Why can’t I let it go?”
After he said it, he realized there was no reason for her to understand what he was talking about. But she did.
“I suspect it’s because you feel it goes to the core of who you are. I was thinking the other day, we aren’t our parents and grandparents, and yet their abilities and failings, virtues and faults, do seem to intertwine within us. And knowing them helps us to better understand ourselves.”
“Does it?” He speared his hand through her heavy dark hair, drawing it back from her face. “I sometimes wonder how well I ever knew my mother. I was eleven years old when she ran off to Italy with her latest lover and Hendon told me she’d died. I knew the face of the gentle, laughing woman she showed me, but there was so much else there I either didn’t see or didn’t understand—that I still don’t understand.”
Hero slid her hand in a soft caress across his chest. “Perhaps we can never entirely understand those we love—or ourselves, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean your need to hear her explanation for what she did—or to learn the identity of the man who is your father—is either a mistake or futile.”
He held her to him, listened to the wind throwing a light rain against the windowpanes and the howl of a lonely dog somewhere in the night. “I saw Jamie Knox’s son this evening,” he said after a moment. “He looks enough like Simon to be his brother.”
“And now he’s growing up with a man who could be a brutal killer,” said Hero. “How did Pippa ever meet him?”
“Ryker? I suspect he presented himself as an old friend of Jamie Knox. They were in the same rifle regiment.”
“Do you think he’s behind the new killings in the East End?”
“I think he could be. I suspect he’s more than capable of the kind of slaughter I saw in those two alleys.”
“I’m worried about that little boy.”
“So am I,” Sebastian admitted. “But I don’t see what we can do about it. He’s with his mother.”
It was inescapably true. And yet that cold reality brought him neither comfort nor absolution.
Chapter 20
Tuesday, 11 October
The next morning dawned clear and brisk, with small puffy white clouds that floated high in a deep blue sky.
Sebastian walked the gravel paths of what was left of Henry VIII’s ancient Privy Garden. With him was the man known to the world as his father—the man Sebastian himself had believed to be his father until a series of shattering revelations that came close to destroying him. The resultant estrangement between the two men had been bitter and painful. But they were slowly working their way toward forging a new relationship based on mutual respect, an old affection, and some uncomfortable truths.
Now nearing seventy, Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, was a stout man with a barrel chest, thinning white hair, and a blunt, heavy-featured face. As Chancellor of the Exchequer under a succession of prime ministers, he was both powerful and knowledgeable. He was also one of the few men in the Kingdom with the courage to occasionally stand against Jarvis.
“Yes, I’ve heard tales of the shocking corruption amongst the Middlesex magistrates and some of the East End vestries,” said Hendon when Sebastian asked him about it. “There was an MP from Devon who made a push recently to set up a select committee to investigate it all, but Sidmouth managed to get it shut down.”
“Sidmouth? Why?”
“Largely, I suspect, because the only thing more important to the Home Secretary than hanging Luddites is suppressing dissent and calls for reform.”
“He can’t do both? Try to drag us back to feudal times and do something about the rampant corruption in the East End at the same time?”
Hendon stared off across the parterres of tidy plantings toward the row of linden trees lining Whitehall, his jaw working back and forth in that way he had when thoughtful—or troubled.
“What?” said Sebastian.
“I don’t know for certain, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’ve long suspected that Jarvis and Sidmouth use East End publicans to spy on the area’s workers. Back in the early days of the French Revolution, they yanked the license of any publican who allowed radicals or reformers to meet in their taverns. But then they stopped—at least for the most part. It still happens occasionally, but I’ve come to the conclusion that’s only when a publican refuses to spy for the government.”
“How diabolically clever,” said Sebastian. Taverns were basically the only place common folk had to meet, discuss politics, and organize, and they’d played an important role in the foundation of the corresponding societies that had sprung up across England in the 1790s. Anyone anxious to keep an eye on discontent would be hard put to find better-placed spies than the publicans of working-class taverns.
Hendon drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes. Although I suppose it’s necessary if we’re not to see a guillotine set up in King’s Cross.”
“Because calls for true representative government and tax reform are a sure road to an English Reign of Terror? You don’t think the suppression of people’s rights might well prove far more dangerous in the long run? Particularly when they’re starving?”
Hendon twisted his head around to stare at him. “Good God, Devlin. You sound like Thomas Paine!”
Sebastian smiled. “Hardly. I’m not at all fond of violent revolution.”
“I should hope not.” Hendon drew his chin back against his chest. “Some years ago, Parliament voted thousands of pounds for the relief of the poor in the East End. It was supposed to be administered by the various parishes’ vestries, but it’s my understanding much of it simply disappeared into the pockets of certain churchwardens—Cockerwell and Pym being foremost amongst them.”
“Bloody hell. What kind of men line their own pockets by allowing poor women and children to starve to death?”
“Particularly heartless, venal ones,” said Hendon. His eyes narrowed. “You’ve involved yourself in these recent ghastly murders, haven’t you? In Wapping of all places, Devlin?”
“You think I should only investigate murders that occur in Mayfair?”
“No, I think you should leave such activities to the magistrates and constables. That’s what we pay them to do!”
It was an argument they’d had so many times over the past three and a half years that Sebastian simply smiled and shook his head. “You’re acquainted with Sampson Buxton-Collins, are you not? The man now running the Black Eagle Brewery?”
“I am. Why do you ask?”
“Tell me about him.”
Hendon’s frown deepened. “The family’s origins are decidedly common—I believe the grandfather made his fortune in tobacco before moving into banking. They’ve deep pockets—very deep pockets indeed. He’s closely related to the Barclay, Lloyd, and Gurney banking dynasties.”
“He’s a Quaker?” The Quakers had long dominated England’s banking segment, largely because they were once seen as particularly honest—a reputation they were rapidly losing.
“He is, yes.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Frankly, I find him both arrogant and unscrupulous.”
“Unscrupulous? In what way?”
“Well, for one thing, he has the clerk of the Shadwell Public Office on his payroll.”
“That’s allowed?”
“Evidently so—at least in the Ea
st End. If you had any sense, you’d stay far, far away from that lot.”
“You have reason to believe they’re dangerous?”
Hendon grunted. “Powerful men who believe their wealth is threatened generally are dangerous.”
“Careful, or you’re liable to start sounding like Paine yourself.”
Hendon’s eyes bulged as he sucked in a quick gasp of air.
But Sebastian only laughed.
* * *
The Black Eagle Brewery lay on Brick Lane, at the point where Spitalfields shaded into Bethnal Green.
Once an area known for the graceful country retreats of merchants and noblemen, for spreading market gardens and the cottages of prosperous Huguenot silk weavers, Bethnal Green was now the wretched home of starving, out-of-work journeymen with idle looms, Jewish and Irish refugees, and more than one notorious insane asylum.
Sampson Buxton-Collins—said to be one of the wealthiest men in England—divided his time between his recently purchased estate in Hertfordshire and the Georgian-style redbrick mansion that one of his predecessors had erected next to the sprawling brewery complex. He received Sebastian in an elegantly wainscoted room with a mammoth crystal chandelier and a towering, gilt-framed van Dyck over the marble fireplace.
“You find me shockingly busy, of course,” said Buxton-Collins with the hearty, patently insincere, jovial manner often affected by large, overbearing men. “But never too busy for the son and heir of the Earl of Hendon, eh?”
In his mid-forties, Buxton-Collins was a mountain of a man with a head of curly fair hair, a strong nose and chin, and the cold, alert eyes of a raptor. Despite his size, he had a reputation as an avid sportsman and something of a dandy. He was dressed in yellow pantaloons, glossy black boots, a double-breasted navy blue coat, and an elaborately tied cravat with a jeweled quizzing glass hanging from a silk riband around his neck.
“I appreciate your taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me,” said Sebastian.