What the Devil Knows

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian paused at the bar, his glance taking in the barrels piled up along the back wall. “You know who I am?”

  “Reckon there ain’t likely to be two different nobs wanderin’ into the Pear Tree two days in a row, now, is there?” Vermilloe carried the tankards to a couple of seamen sitting at a table beside the grimy front window, then came back to pick up a ragged towel and wipe at what he’d spilled. “Hear you’re wantin’ to know about that Ratcliffe Highway killer.”

  “You think John Williams was the murderer?”

  “Course he was. The Crown gave out over five hundred pounds to people for helpin’ catch him. Wouldn’t have done that if he weren’t the real killer, now, would they?”

  “A reasonable deduction, I suppose. I assume your share was handsome?”

  Vermilloe gave a sly smile and wet his dry, chapped lips. “The biggest, it was. If I hadn’t identified the maul and crowbar, they’d have never known Williams was the one.”

  “You recognized the crowbar, as well?” said Sebastian.

  “Aye. The slimy bastard used old Peterson’s maul to kill the Marrs, and his crowbar at the King’s Arms.”

  “So the crowbar came from Johann Peterson’s tool chest, as well?”

  “Sure did.”

  “It was marked with his initials?” Sebastian didn’t recall seeing them.

  The smile tightened. “No.”

  “So how did you recognize it?”

  “Just did, that’s all.”

  “I’m told your wife didn’t recognize the tools.”

  “She’s a woman; what’s she know of such things?” The innkeeper’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Plus, she fair doted on that foppish cub. A real Squire of Alsatia, he was, spendin’ all his blunt on clothes and prancin’ around like he was somethin’ he wasn’t. Insinuating, he was. Liked to pretend he was a gentleman.” Vermilloe snorted. “As if a gentleman’d be stayin’ at a place like the Pear Tree and bustin’ his arse as a common seaman.”

  “I understand you were in prison for debt at the time of the killings.”

  Vermilloe’s tongue darted out to wet his lips again. “So?”

  “Who was the debt to?”

  Vermilloe sniffed. “Don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  Sebastian let his gaze drift around the small, squalid taproom. “I suppose I could ask Bow Street to send a couple of their Runners around, if you’d prefer to speak to them.”

  No innkeeper wanted a Bow Street Runner poking around his tavern and looking into the origins of the rum in his cellars. Vermilloe’s eyes narrowed down to mean, angry slits. “Ran a bit behind on my payments to Buxton-Collins, I did. That’s all.”

  “Your porter comes from the Black Eagle?”

  “What if it does?”

  Rather than answer, Sebastian said, “Did you see John Williams the night of the King’s Arms murders?”

  “No. Come in late that night, he did. Real late. It’s one of the reasons they knew he was the killer.”

  “How late?”

  “Must’ve been close on one o’clock.”

  “That’s late, indeed,” said Sebastian. According to the young journeyman lodger who’d survived the murders, the killer had fled the King’s Arms no later than ten or fifteen minutes after eleven. It was at most a five-minute walk from the King’s Arms to the Pear Tree. So if Williams was the killer, where had he spent the intervening hour and forty-five minutes?

  “Did he say where he’d been?”

  “Claimed he’d been out drinkin’, then gone to see some herbwoman about a wound on his leg wasn’t healing right.”

  “A wound from what?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was growing testy. Aggrieved. “How would I know?”

  “Did the herbwoman not vouch for him?”

  “Don’t know as anyone asked her.”

  “They didn’t?”

  Vermilloe tossed his towel aside and settled his hands on his hips. “It’s because of these new killings you’re here, ain’t it? You’re thinking Williams must not’ve been the Ratcliffe Highway killer after all.”

  “You don’t?”

  Vermilloe snorted. “Don’t know who’s behind these new killings, but whoever’s doing it, you can be sure it’s just some joker tryin’ to make folks think he’s the Ratcliffe Highway killer. That’s all.”

  “And why would someone want to do that?”

  Vermilloe twitched one narrow shoulder. “Reckon he’s got his reasons, whoever he is.”

  Sebastian studied the man’s thin, angry face. “I take it you’ve been paying Pym and Cockerwell a bribe to renew your license every year?”

  He watched Vermilloe’s face cloud with the wary expression of a man who realizes too late he’s lost control of a conversation that’s suddenly veered into dangerous territory. “What? No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Right. Just like you never agreed to report your customers’ disgruntled political talk back to the Home Office.”

  A venomous flare of anger showed in the publican’s fishlike gray eyes before being quickly hidden by lowered lids. “Don’t know who’s been telling you this nonsense. I’m just a simple Wapping innkeeper, doin’ my best to get by.”

  “Who do you think would want to kill Pym and Cockerwell?”

  “Told you, I don’t know.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “Don’t know nothin’ about it.”

  “What about Hugo Reeves, the seaman who was killed a few weeks ago? Did you know him?”

  “Reckon I seen him around a bit. He come in here a few times.”

  “Any idea why someone would want to kill him?”

  “Nah. Just got in a fight with the wrong sailor, from the sound of things.” A raucous outburst of laughter drew his attention to the seamen by the window. “You don’t know nothin’ about what it’s like around here. Nothin’.”

  “Then tell me,” said Sebastian.

  But Vermilloe simply shook his head, his lips pressed together tight, his nostrils flaring with his shallow, rapid breaths.

  * * *

  The mist was rolling in again by the time Sebastian left the Pear Tree. He’d told Tom to wait with the curricle near a watering fountain on the corner of Cinnamon and King Edward streets, but he hadn’t expected the fog to roll in this early.

  Sebastian’s hearing and eyesight were both abnormally acute. But the fog wrapped him in a gray, impenetrable shroud, dampening sounds and cloaking the presence of danger. He was aware of the rasp of his own breathing, of every nerve tingling as he walked down the cobbled street toward the corner. Then the dark outlines of his curricle came into view, the chestnuts throwing their heads and stamping their feet in agitation.

  But the curricle’s high seat was empty.

  Chapter 30

  Sebastian drew up abruptly, one hand slipping into his pocket, his fingers curling around the handle of the small double-barreled flintlock pistol he’d taken to carrying since that first night in Wapping. He watched as two men with cudgels stepped forward to range themselves one on either side of the horses. Then a gust of wind eddied the mist, showing him a third man standing against the grimy brick wall of a nearby sailmaker’s shop. He had a knife in one hand, his other hand wrapped around Tom’s upper arm. The boy stood rigid, his eyes open and blinking rapidly, his hands tied behind his back and a gag pulled tight across his mouth.

  “Been waitin’ fer ye, we have,” said one of the men near the horses’ heads. He wore seamen’s trousers and a dark coat with a kerchief pulled over his lower face. But Sebastian recognized his light gray eyes, rusty hair, and voice. It was the Glaswegian from outside the Three Moons.

  The other two men were larger, meatier, and totally unfamiliar.

  “Have another message to deliver, do you?” sa
id Sebastian.

  The Glaswegian shook his head and brought up his cudgel to smack it against his left palm. “Reckon we’re through talkin’.”

  It’s a truism in combat that you always deal with the most immediate threat first, and in Sebastian’s way of thinking, that meant the man with the knife holding Tom. He was no more than ten feet away, and Sebastian had a clear shot. He drew the flintlock from his greatcoat pocket, thumbed back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

  The night exploded in flame and smoke. The man went down, leaving a bloody smear on the wall where his head had been.

  “Oye!” yelped one of the men by the horses.

  Pulling back the second hammer, Sebastian pivoted and shot the larger of the two remaining men.

  The Glaswegian charged. “You bloody bastard,” he snarled, swinging his cudgel like a cricket bat at Sebastian’s head.

  Rather than try to duck, Sebastian stepped inside the man’s swing and plowed into him. They went down together hard, Sebastian on top, the breath leaving the other man’s chest in a whoosh as his back smacked against the cobbles.

  “Who sent you?” Sebastian demanded, dropping the empty pistol to grab the man by the coat, pick his shoulders up off the ground, and slam him down again. “Who sent you, damn your eyes?”

  The man gasped for breath, his mouth puckering, his eyes bulging.

  Sebastian picked him up and slammed him down again. “Who sent you?”

  “The Eagle!” said the man with a pained gasp. “Somebody from the Black Eagle.”

  Sebastian picked him up again. “Buxton-Collins?”

  The man’s face went gray as he fought for air. “Don’t . . . know.”

  “Was it Buxton-Collins?” Sebastian slammed him down again and saw the man’s eyes roll back in his head as he went limp.

  One of the chestnuts whinnied in alarm, its white-socked legs dancing as the second man Sebastian had shot staggered up again, cudgel in hand.

  Sebastian rolled, scraping the side of his face on the edge of the granite kerb as he snatched up the Glaswegian’s cudgel and sprang to his feet.

  The two men faced each other across a distance of five or six feet, the mist wafting between them. Both were breathing heavily, the big man bleeding freely from a wound to his upper left arm.

  “You’ve already been shot, and at least one of your friends is dead,” said Sebastian. “Give it up. Your odds of getting out of this alive aren’t good anymore.”

  The big man’s gaze slid sideways to the Glaswegian’s limp, silent form. For a moment he hesitated. Then he threw down his cudgel and ran, his feet slipping and sliding over the damp cobbles as he disappeared into the fog.

  Yanking his knife from his boot, Sebastian bent to check the man in the gutter. The Glaswegian was unconscious, but he wasn’t dead.

  The man by the wall didn’t have much of his head left.

  “You all right, Tom?” said Sebastian, going to slice the cords binding the boy’s hands behind his back and yank the gag from his mouth.

  “Aye,” said the tiger, bringing up a shaky hand to swipe at his dry lips. “I’m that sorry, gov’nor. They was on me afore I even knew what was happening.”

  Sebastian put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and held him tight. “Not your fault, lad. Not your fault.”

  * * *

  Alive to the possibility that the surviving attacker could return at any moment with reinforcement, Sebastian left the Glaswegian and his dead friend lying in Cinnamon Street and drove straight to the public office in Shadwell. By the time he returned with a couple of constables, both the Glaswegian and the dead man were gone.

  “Well, hell,” said Sebastian, wiping a crooked elbow against something warm and wet running down the side of his face. Except for the blood splatter on the brick wall of the nearby sailmaker’s shop and the slouch hat left lying upside down in the gutter, there was no sign that the attack had ever occurred.

  Chapter 31

  The windows of Sampson Buxton-Collins’s Bethnal Green mansion were ablaze with a warm golden light that spilled out into the night, along with a roar of men’s and women’s voices mingled with genteel laughter and the delicate strains of Haydn played by a string quartet.

  “Looks like ’e’s ’avin’ ’isself a party,” said Tom as Sebastian drew up well back from the line of elegant carriages disgorging silk-top-hatted gentlemen and richly gowned ladies dripping with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies that glittered in the lamplight. The mist was thinner here away from the river, the cold air pungent with the scent of fermenting beer from the dark, looming mass of the brewery complex nearby.

  Sebastian handed his reins to the tiger. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “Yer still goin’ in there?” said Tom, scrambling forward to the high seat.

  Sebastian hopped down. “Why? You think I’m not dressed for the occasion?”

  Tom cast a critical eye over his employer. “The shoulder seam o’ yer coat is split, ye’ve manure smeared all over yer breeches, and the side o’ yer face is bleedin’.”

  Sebastian swiped at the blood trickling down his cheek. “So it is.”

  * * *

  Sebastian might have been wearing doeskin breeches and Hessians rather than the elegant evening dress of the brewer’s other guests, but Buxton-Collins’s butler recognized the Viscount from his previous visit. And no mere servant was going to turn away the son of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, even if he was bleeding.

  As Sebastian pushed his way through the house’s hot, overcrowded reception rooms, he recognized the Lord Mayor of London, several wealthy rival brewers, including Whitbread and Meux, and enough Quaker bankers to finance another twenty years of war with Europe. A half-dozen directors of the East India Company, numerous prominent members of Parliament, and an impressive showing of cabinet ministers were also in attendance. This was a very different gathering from what one might have found at a typical ball in Mayfair. There was definitely some overlap, but the emphasis here was not on landed estates or ancient lineage and grand titles, but on money and power.

  The house’s large, magnificently paneled eighteenth-century dining room, frequently used for meetings of the brewing company’s board, had been emptied of its furniture and was now a ballroom filled with music and laughter. The air fairly crackled with an unmistakably mercenary atmosphere as the mothers of young unmarried women scouted the gathering for prospective rich sons-in-law.

  Buxton-Collins was on the far side of the room, deep in conversation with Lord Sidmouth. The brewer’s gaze met Sebastian’s over the heads of the glittering crowd; then he murmured something to his companion and crossed to where Sebastian stood near the door, waiting for him.

  “Lord Devlin,” said the brewer with an assumption of hearty good cheer belied by the brittle animosity in his eyes. “How kind of you to surprise us by dropping in on our little gathering.” His hand came up to slide along the black satin riband around his neck and lift his quizzing glass to his right eye. “Merciful heavens. Have you suffered some accident? If you’d like, I could call my—”

  “That’s quite all right,” said Sebastian, dabbing at the blood trickling down his face again. “I’m not staying. I simply wanted to let you know that I received your message.”

  Buxton-Collins raised one eyebrow in a pantomime of confusion. “My message?”

  “The one delivered by the three men who jumped me near Pear Tree Alley this evening.”

  “Have you been set upon? Goodness gracious. I do hope—”

  “I’m fine, thank you, although Calhoun will no doubt despair of the effects of the incident on my coat and breeches. And two of the men you sent are damaged badly enough that I suspect it will be a while before they’re able to report back on the success of their mission. The third is dead.”

  Buxton-Collins held himself very still, his normally booming voice
lowered to a lethal hiss. “If you’ve been set upon by ruffians who told you they were in my employ, I am sorry, but I had nothing to do with this misadventure. And I resent both the suggestion that I would resort to such vulgar tactics and the implication that I might have reason to do so.”

  “You and I both know your reasons,” said Sebastian, his body thrumming with anger and the lingering remnants of the bloodlust that had come close to swallowing him in the lane in Old Wapping. “You have a reputation as a smart man, Buxton-Collins, but what you did tonight showed a distinct lack of understanding of whom you’re dealing with.”

  The faux-jovial facade was gone, leaving the big man’s face white with anger, his nostrils pinched. “I say, if you think—”

  “I came here for one reason and one reason only,” said Sebastian, stopping him. “And that’s to tell you this: Send someone at me again and you’ll regret it.”

  “You can’t just throw something like that in a man’s face and leave,” sputtered Buxton-Collins as Sebastian turned to go.

  But Sebastian kept going, the elegantly dressed, overfed crowd parting before him like a school of fish clearing the way for a dark predator.

  Thursday, 13 October

  The fire on the hearth burned with a steady red glow and a cheerful crackle that sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of the predawn hours. Dressed in clean buckskin breeches and a linen shirt open at the neck, Sebastian stood with one hand braced against his library’s mantel, a glass of brandy cradled in the other as he stared down at the dancing flames.

  The problem with murder victims as corrupt and loathsome as Sir Edwin Pym and Nathan Cockerwell, he decided, was that they left behind too many enemies with a good reason to kill them. Ian Ryker. Charlie Horton. Seamus Faddy, the Reverend York . . . the list was nearly endless. Add in the strange similarities between these new deaths and the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders of three years ago, and the result was a giant muddle that seemed to keep getting worse instead of better.