by C. S. Harris
He thought she might be offended by the blunt question. Instead she sucked in a quick breath, then gave a startled laugh. “Name me a publican around here who doesn’t.”
“Seems to me that might aggravate someone enough to want to kill.”
She looked him evenly in the eyes. “Only someone who got into this business without knowing what’s what. It’s been like this since before my father built this inn almost thirty years ago. I grew up thinking that’s just what publicans do—bribe magistrates.”
It occurred to Sebastian that Ian Ryker had grown up in his father’s tavern and yet still carried a hefty load of animosity toward the local magistrates. But then, they’d yanked the senior Ryker’s license—and very likely murdered him, as well.
He said, “Did you know a publican named Ryker? Used to keep the Green Man on Rope Walk Lane.”
“Ian Ryker? Yes. Why? He’s dead now.”
“Do you know his son, also named Ian?”
Her eyes went away from him again. “I know him. He’s not around anymore.”
“That’s because he’s taken up with a woman who owns a tavern in Bishopsgate.”
“Has he? Well, then, good.” The vehemence in her voice surprised him. “He can stay up there. We don’t need his kind around here.”
“Why’s that?”
“He had a wife once. Only, she died. He claimed she fell down the stairs.” Hannah Bishop paused, her chest shuddering as she drew a deep breath. “She didn’t fall down the stairs.”
Sebastian watched her features flatten beneath an onslaught of suppressed emotions. And he found himself thinking about Jamie Knox’s little boy, his ball gripped tightly in his hands as he backed stony-faced away from the man who’d taken his father’s place.
Chapter 34
That afternoon, Hero spent more time than she’d have believed possible trying to convince any of the heartbreakingly young girls on the streets of Wapping to talk to her. It took over an hour, but she finally found one, named Letitia Simmons, who at first refused to talk to her, then changed her mind and said she’d do it—but for five shillings instead of two—and three up front.
“This’ll pay me rent for a week, it will,” said Letitia, tucking the coins into the cleavage of her ample bosom. She was a pretty, strapping young girl of perhaps seventeen, black haired and black eyed, with rosy cheeks and a rosebud mouth and a way of throwing back her head when she laughed—which was often. She was a revelation to Hero. Hero had interviewed a number of such women several years before, when she was researching the economic origins of the city’s exploding prostitute population. But she had never met a light-skirt like Letitia.
“Been on me own since I was fourteen,” said the girl without the least bit of shame or self-consciousness.
They were sitting on a low wall down near the basin, Hero with her notebook balanced on her knee, the seagulls wheeling overhead and the breeze off the river smelling of fish and tar. “Is that when you lost your parents?”
Letitia shook her head. “Nah. Me mum died when I was seven, and they hanged me da when I was eleven.”
Hero almost dropped her notebook and had to scramble to catch it. “Your father was hanged?”
“Aye. For counterfeiting. That’s when they stuck me in the workhouse.”
“And you ran away?”
“Nah. It weren’t so bad. I mean, they was all a bunch of pudding-faced bleaters, and the endless Bible readings was a real snore. There was this chaplain who was always takin’ me aside and prayin’ over me, warnin’ me about the temptations of sin and the dangers of hellfire, and all the while he’s doin’ it, he’s squeezin’ me arm or me knee and smilin’ like he just won the lottery or somethin’.” She gave a derisive snort. “Dirty old wanker. But at least he never did nothin’ else, which is more’n can be said for the turnkeys in Newgate—the nasty, rotten buggers.”
“You were in Newgate?”
Letitia sniffed. “Quodded fer three months, I was.”
Hero had to work to keep her reaction off her face. “So why did you leave the workhouse?”
“They apprenticed me to a bakery over in Brompton. You know, by the barracks?”
“Yes,” said Hero, who thought she knew where this was going.
“At first it was real nice. All I had t’ do was mind the shop and serve the people what come in. There was heaps of soldiers around all the time, and they liked me a lot. We was always laughin’ and talkin’, and there was this one sergeant—Miles—he was real sweet. Used to buy me hair ribbons and bits of lace and stuff. So when his regiment was sent to Dover, I went with him.”
“You ran away from your apprenticeship?”
Letitia wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “The baker’s wife, Mrs. Bieber, was real mean t’ me. She was always smackin’ me and tellin’ me I was gonna go t’ hell. Like that was gonna make me wanna stay with her rather than go with Miles.”
“So then what happened?”
“I had a gay ole time in Dover. Made lots of friends down there. Only, Miles got a bit jealous and started smacking me around. So I left and come back up to London.”
Hero blinked. “Why Wapping?”
Again that twitch of the shoulders. “It’s where we lived before me mum died. Been here about six months now, but I ain’t sure how much longer I’m gonna stay. They say Portsmouth is a grand place to work.”
Hero asked her next question as casually as she could. “I hear that some of the magistrates around here like to pick up girls off the streets—especially very young girls.”
“Oh, aye, real beard splitters, some of ’em are.”
“Beard splitters?” said Hero, not understanding.
Letitia laughed so hard she rocked back on the wall. “That’s what we call a cove what likes t’ go with strumpets.”
“Oh,” said Hero, annoyed to feel herself coloring.
“That wanker what got killed last week was the worst.”
“You mean Sir Edwin Pym?”
“Aye. Real rough, he was, always squeezin’ yer diddeys and rubbin’ his tallwag and barbels against you like he was a mangy dog with an itch to scratch.”
This time Hero stopped herself from asking for translations, although she did write the unfamiliar terms down in her notebook.
“I learned real quick to run when I seen him comin’,” Letitia was saying. “He was always treatin’ girls like they was three-penny stand-ups and then payin’ em nothin’. Did it t’ one of the girls I room with the very night he was killed.”
“Oh?” said Hero, barely daring to breathe. “Would she be willing to talk to me, do you think?”
Letitia opened her mouth to say something, then closed it as a look of instinctive wariness settled over her features. “Why?”
“It’s just that I’m having such a hard time finding girls who are willing to talk to me. I’ll pay her, of course—and you, too, if you can convince her to meet with me. Maybe bring her here tomorrow afternoon?”
“I dunno,” said Letitia, slowly. “She’s real skittish. She ain’t like me.”
“I’ll pay you five more shillings if you can convince her to come.”
Letitia licked her lips. “I’ll sure enough try.”
“Good. We can meet here tomorrow afternoon at, say, two o’clock?”
Letitia gave her a sly sideways look. “Maybe give me a shilling now so’s I can show Molly you’re good fer it?”
Hero gave her the shilling, then wrote in her notebook, Molly.
Chapter 35
Sebastian arrived back at Brook Street that afternoon to find Hero in a chair by the nursery fire with Simon perched on her knee while she read him a book.
“Papa!” called Simon, looking up. “We readin’ book!”
Sebastian paused in the doorway and smiled. “I see that.”
“All do
ne now,” said the boy, scooting off Hero’s lap to go plop down beside his box of tin soldiers.
“Sorry,” said Sebastian.
Hero laughed. “It’s not your fault. He was already getting restless.”
“How long did he last?”
“At least ten minutes. I think that’s a record. He can’t sit still very long.”
“Unless he’s doing something he shouldn’t.”
“Oh, but that’s different.”
He came to warm himself in front of the fire. “How was your latest venture to Wapping?”
“Potentially fruitful,” she said, and told him of her conversation with Letitia.
“Do you think this Molly will show?” he asked when she had finished.
“I don’t know. But I suspect Letitia will do everything within her power to get the girl there and earn her shillings.” She set the book she was still holding aside. “I wonder how many young doxies named Molly there are in Wapping.”
“Probably quite a few.”
Hero sighed. “I suspect you’re right.”
They watched Simon aim his toy cannon at a line of soldiers, then go, “Boom!” and knock them all down. Where the devil did he learn that? thought Sebastian. Then he looked up to see that the expression on Hero’s face had shifted, and said, “What is it?”
She sighed. “I received a note a short while ago from Jarvis asking that I come to Berkeley Square tomorrow at five for a visit.” A faint gleam of amusement showed in her eyes. “You are not invited.”
“Oh?”
She pushed up from the chair and went to stand beside the window overlooking the street. The nursery was at the very top of the house, tucked up under the roof. “It’s been a year now since my mother died, and—” She hesitated, then swung to face him. “I have the most lowering suspicion that he plans to tell me he’s decided to marry Cousin Victoria.”
Sebastian considered a range of possible responses to that statement and finally settled on a craven “You do?”
She put a hand up to her forehead. “The thing is, she’s never been anything except warm and friendly to me, and yet . . .”
“You don’t like her.”
Hero gave him a quavering smile. “She’s beyond brilliant; she’s lived the most amazing life, traveled everywhere, been widowed twice. Sometimes I think I’m being unfair, that I simply don’t want her to take my mother’s place—and I don’t. But the truth is . . . she’s a female version of Jarvis, except worse. There is nothing she says or does that’s not carefully calculated. How can someone be like that? All the time?”
“You don’t think Jarvis knows that about her?”
Hero looked at him with wide, hurting eyes. “I suppose he does. No one’s more astute than he. And yet . . . he is a man, and she is so very beautiful.”
“He’s still Jarvis.”
“I suppose. Hopefully if that’s what this visit is about, I’ll somehow manage to convincingly wish them both happy.” She glanced out the window, her attention caught by something in the street below. “There’s the most reprehensible-looking fellow loitering by our area steps. Big and tall, with a long black beard and a nose to rival that of Wellington himself.”
Sebastian went to stand beside her, his jaw tightening as he stared down at the man now mounting the front steps. “That’s Long Billy Ablass.”
* * *
Sebastian’s majordomo, Morey, had refused to allow the burly seaman to come any farther into the house than two steps past the front door.
“Wot’s this trumped-up jackanapes here think, hmmm?” demanded Ablass when Sebastian walked down the stairs to the entry hall. “Think I’m here to murder every last one of ye in yer beds? If’n I was, I wouldn’t be comin’ in the front door in the bloody daytime, the bleedin’ fool.”
Morey executed a dignified bow and withdrew.
“Why are you here?” Sebastian asked the tall, beefy seaman. His hair was sticking out at wild angles, his eyes bloodshot, his beard matted.
“I ’ear ye been askin’ about me agin. It ain’t good fer me reputation, ye know? Got folks whisperin’ about me behind me back, it does.”
“Oh? And what are they saying?”
“That I must be the new Wappin’ killer, that’s wot they’re sayin’—and maybe the old one, too.”
“Interesting.”
“Interestin’! Ye think it’s interestin’? Why I oughta—”
“Don’t,” said Sebastian icily when the man raised his fists and took a hasty step forward.
Ablass drew up, his throat working as he lowered his hands to his sides.
Sebastian said, “You were seen arguing with Sir Edwin Pym just a few days before he was killed. What was that about?”
“Arguin’? I don’t know wot yer talkin’ about.”
“Yes, you do.”
Ablass’s lips parted in a sly grin. “Wot would me and some high-and-mighty magistrate be doin’, havin’ words?”
“I can think of several explanations.”
The smile faded.
Sebastian said, “Where were you living at the time of the Ratcliffe Highway murders?”
“Wot? Ye think I can remember?”
“I think you can.”
The man pointed one long, bony finger at Sebastian. “Ain’t nobody gonna pin these new killings on me. Ye hear? I got nothin’ to do with them dead magistrates.”
“Just like you had nothing to do with Hugo Reeves or the original Ratcliffe Highway murders?”
“That’s right!”
“Tell me this: Did you ever drink at the Pear Tree?”
Ablass pinched his lower lip between a grimy thumb and forefinger and pulled it down. “Sometimes. Why?”
“So you would have had access to Johann Peterson’s chest of tools?”
Ablass took a step back. “Oh no. Ye ain’t gonna try t’ hang that around me neck again. The man what done those killings is dead.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the other man’s face. “You knew John Williams, didn’t you?”
Ablass started to deny it, then must have remembered he’d already admitted they’d been shipmates. “Aye, we was on the Roxburgh Castle together. Why?”
“Where was he originally from?”
“I dunno. If he ever said, I don’t remember it. Why would I?”
“He never talked about home?”
Ablass shrugged. “Just t’ say he’d run away t’ sea as soon as he could.”
“Did he say why?”
“Nothin’ I remember.”
“Did you know Timothy Marr?”
Ablass stared back at him, eyes half-hidden by lowered lashes. “No. Why would I?”
“He was a sailor before he opened his linen draper’s, wasn’t he?”
Ablass’s lips curled into a sneer. “He weren’t a sailor—didn’t sail before the mast like the rest o’ us. The captain’s own personal servant, he was. You think he’s gonna consort with the likes o’ us?”
“So you did know him.”
Ablass sniffed. “Knowed who he was.”
“And the King’s Arms? Did you ever drink there?”
“Reckon I may’ve, once or twice, but what of it? Two weeks they kept me locked up in Clerkenwell after Johnny hanged hisself—”
Johnny, noted Sebastian as the man raged on.
“Two weeks,” Ablass was saying, “with leg-irons festerin’ on me like I was a bloody thief or something. But they never found nothin’ would stick, and you ain’t gonna, neither. And ye keep tryin’, yer gonna have cause t’ regret it, if’n ye get me drift.”
“Are you threatening me?” said Sebastian.
“Take it how ye will,” growled Ablass, and turned to wrench open the door and stomp down the front steps.
“Charming fellow,” said H
ero, coming down the stairs.
“Isn’t he?”
“I can see someone like that beating a man’s head to a pulp and then slitting his throat.”
Sebastian took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So can I.”
Chapter 36
That night Sebastian dreamt he heard a baby screaming in terror at the top of an endless flight of dark, twisting stairs. He raced up and up, feet pounding on worn bare wooden steps, breath rasping in his throat, his heart squeezing, squeezing.
“Simon,” he cried. “Simon!”
He recognized the gaily sprigged wallpaper at the top of the stairs, the comfortable armchair drawn up before the crackling fire, the familiar array of blocks and tin soldiers. But when he reached the nursery, he found only an empty room.
And a small, gently rocking cradle drenched in blood.
* * *
He awoke with a start, heart pounding in his ears, throat dry and sore. Thrusting up, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there, his body tingling. He was aware of Hero sleeping peacefully beside him and knew the urge to climb up to the nursery, to check on Simon and reassure himself the child was still there, safe. He told himself he would alarm Simon’s nurse, Claire, unnecessarily, perhaps even wake the boy. And yet he wondered how he could ever get back to sleep without knowing.
He realized he was shivering, both in reaction to the dream and from the icy bite of the night air on his bare skin. Pushing to his feet, he went to throw more coal on the fire. It was when he was standing beside the hearth, his gaze on the flames licking at the new fuel, that he heard a faint, distant snap, snap.
He raised his head. His hearing, like his vision, had always been unusually acute. The sound had come from downstairs, he was certain. A moment later he heard a dull scraping noise, then the creak of a floorboard beneath stealthy footsteps.
He normally kept his small double-barreled pistol locked in his desk in the library. But for the past several nights, haunting thoughts of the old Ratcliffe Highway murders had driven him to bring the weapon, loaded and primed, to bed with him. Moving swiftly, he drew the pistol from its drawer, then placed his fingers over Hero’s mouth and said quietly, “Don’t be afraid.”