What the Devil Knows

by C. S. Harris

  Her eyes went wide, and he immediately withdrew his hand. “Someone’s downstairs,” he whispered, pressing the flintlock into her hand. “I want you to take this, go upstairs, and stay with Simon and Claire. I’m going to try to stop them down here, but if they get past me, I need you to protect Simon.”

  “Who—?” she started to say, but he was already moving.

  Taking the heavy iron poker from beside the hearth, he crept down the corridor toward the back of the house. The footsteps were now coming from inside the servants’ stair. Two men, he decided, perhaps three. Climbing fast.

  The lingering terror of his dream rode him. He was breathing so heavily he was shaking, his naked body covered in a cold sweat. As he neared the door to the back stairs, it occurred to him that the men could simply keep going on up to the nursery. In his mind he was screaming, Simon! Hero! Then the green-baize-covered door from the servants’ stair flew open, and a brawny, dark-haired man carrying a cudgel and wearing a rough seaman’s coat stepped into the corridor.

  Sebastian had planned to swing the heavy iron bar at the man’s head like a club, but the angle was wrong. All he could do was shift his grip on the poker and ram the thick pointed tip like a sword into the man’s chest.

  It made an obscene popping sound, the man’s blood spraying across Sebastian’s face and body in a hot wet arc. He saw the man’s eyes roll back in his head and tried to yank out the poker before the man fell. But the hook protruding some inches from the poker’s tip must have caught on the man’s ribs. He collapsed heavily, yanking the poker from Sebastian’s grip just as a second man in pale canvas seamen’s trousers and a black coat leapt over the body of the first and came at Sebastian with what looked like a fat butcher’s knife gripped in his fist.

  Sebastian kicked him in the face. But he was barefoot, and though the man staggered back, he recovered quickly. With an angry roar, he charged again, his big head lowered like a rampaging bull.

  The force of his rush bowled Sebastian over. He went down hard, the man on top of him, Sebastian scrambling to wrap his fists around the man’s knife hand and twist it back. He heard bone snap, heard the knife clatter to the floor as the man reared back with a howl. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian grabbed the knife and slashed it across the intruder’s neck just as a third man came barreling through the narrow service door.

  “Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, shoving the dying knifeman to one side. The new assailant yanked the bloody poker from the first dead man’s chest and came at Sebastian with a snarl, a club in one hand and the poker in the other.

  Sebastian still had the second man’s knife, but it was too awkward and sticky with blood to throw. He lunged sideways to where the first man’s fallen cudgel had rolled, just as the corridor exploded in flame and smoke.

  The force of the pistol shot slammed the third man back against the wall. He wavered there for a moment, eyes going wide, blood pouring from his mouth as his jaw sagged. Then he slid down the wall to the floor, leaving a dark smear of red on the wainscoting behind him.

  A sudden ringing silence descended on the night. His breath coming in great gasps, Sebastian turned to see Hero standing at the base of the stairs coming down from the nursery, his pistol still extended in her steady grip.

  He was shaking more than she was.

  “I hid Claire and Simon in a cupboard,” she said, thumbing back the second hammer. “But I thought you might need some help.”

  Sebastian pushed to his feet. “Thank you.” The urge to go to her, to take her in his arms and hold her close, was strong. But he went first to check all three men and make certain they were dead. He expected one of the intruders to be Long Billy Ablass, but all three were unknown to him.

  “Are they dead?” asked Hero.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She lowered the pistol and came forward in a rush to wrap her arms around his waist and press her now trembling body against his.

  * * *

  Hero argued against it, but in the end Devlin convinced her to let the constables think he had killed all three attackers. She knew their world as well as he, knew that her controversial articles and other activities already skated close to the edge of what was considered acceptable for a woman of her station. She had killed before, and many of those who knew it already looked askance at her for it. As much as it angered and frustrated her, she had no desire to face social ostracism.

  After the bodies had been removed, the constables seen off the premises, and Simon and Claire and the servants comforted and sent back to bed, she and Devlin sat together beside their bedroom fire, both too wound up to sleep.

  “Who do you think sent them?” she asked after a time.

  Devlin stared into the fire for a moment, the golden light glazing his prominent high cheekbones. “If I had to guess, I’d say Sampson Buxton-Collins. Who else mixed up in all this has the financial resources to hire three men? But I could be wrong. Hell, it could be Seamus Faddy for all I know. He did say he has a crew.”

  She rolled her head against the back of the overstuffed chair to look over at him. “Why would Seamus Faddy be trying to kill you?”

  “I’ve no idea. I don’t think it likely, but I have to acknowledge it as a possibility.”

  She was silent for a moment, listening to the crackle of the fire and watching the flames leap. “Why would Buxton-Collins kill Pym and Cockerwell? They were his allies.”

  Devlin took a slow sip of the brandy he’d poured himself. “I don’t know that he did. But it’s possible he’s afraid I’m on the verge of uncovering something else—something he’d kill to keep hidden.”

  “Such as? You already know about his cozy arrangement with the Middlesex licensing committee. And Jarvis and a succession of Home Secretaries have obviously been winking at it for years.”

  He gave a faint shake of his head. “I thought at first that we were looking for someone who enjoys killing for the sake of killing. But I think now that I was wrong. I think there’s a pattern here and a reason. I’m convinced it’s tied in to what happened three years ago. But I’m only seeing the hazy outlines of it, and I can’t begin to grasp it.”

  He drained his glass and set it aside, then came to settle on the carpet at her feet and take her hands in his. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to bring danger to our house. I’m thinking perhaps it’s wrong, what I do. That I shouldn’t—”

  She loosed a hand from his grip to touch his lips, then slide her fingertips down his neck in a light caress. “No. Dante assigned the hottest circle of hell to those who do nothing in the face of evil. Life shouldn’t be about pursuing pleasure or being safe, being comfortable. It’s about helping others, and reaching for what’s right, and trying to make this a better world. That’s what you do. It’s a part of why I love you, and I won’t have you give it all up out of some mistaken belief in what you owe me.”

  “If anything ever happened to you or Simon, I could never forgive myself.”

  “And I could never forgive myself if I let you change because of us.”

  He caught her hand again, his gaze holding hers, his yellow eyes shimmering in the firelight as he pressed a kiss to her palm. “God, how I love you.”

  Chapter 37

  Friday, 14 October

  Jarvis was drinking a morning pot of ale in solitary splendor at his breakfast table when he heard someone ringing a peal at the distant front door. There was a quick step in the entry hall and the voice of his butler, Grisham, raised in protest. Then the dining room door crashed open and Devlin stood on the threshold, his caped greatcoat hanging open, his driving whip gripped in one hand, and his face tight with rage.

  “Unorthodox,” said Jarvis, taking a slow sip of his ale. “I take it you haven’t come to join me for breakfast?”

  “You bloody son of a bitch,” swore the Viscount. “Three men broke into my house last night with cudgels and knives.
”

  Jarvis’s hand spasmed around his tankard, but he kept all betraying traces of emotion from his face. “Hero . . . ?”

  “She and Simon are fine. The men are dead.”

  Jarvis felt his breath ease out in a ragged sigh.

  “Who sent them?” demanded Devlin, his hand tightening around his whip. “You know.”

  “You can’t seriously believe that.”

  “I think you have a damned good idea.”

  Jarvis set aside his tankard with a thump. “This is your fault. You are the one meddling in affairs that do not concern you, drawing dangerous men into my daughter’s life and—”

  “My fault? You bloody bastard. If anything happens to my family—”

  Jarvis pushed back his chair with a loud scrape and surged to his feet. “In case you have forgotten, your ‘family’ consists of my daughter and grandson.”

  “So why the hell won’t you tell me who sent those men?”

  “I don’t know, damn you!”

  The Viscount’s lips curled into a hard, tight smile. “And yet you flatter yourself on knowing everything.”

  “Get out. Get out of my house.”

  Devlin nodded. “I’ve said what I came to say. We both know where we stand.”

  Then he turned on his heel and left.

  Chapter 38

  Sampson Buxton-Collins was coming out of a coffeehouse across from the Bank of England when Sebastian intercepted him on the pavement.

  “Lord Devlin,” said the brewer, drawing up short. Today the big man was wearing fawn-colored pantaloons and a blue-and-white-striped silk waistcoat beneath a blue coat with large silver buttons. An extravagantly tall beaver hat topped his carefully arranged locks, and a silver-headed ebony walking stick dangled from one hand. “I heard about the attack on your house. Shocking business; beyond shocking. I do hope dear Lady Devlin suffered no ill effects from such an alarming incident.”

  Sebastian kept his voice low and even. “If I find you had anything—anything at all—to do with what happened last night, I swear to God I will destroy you.”

  The rich brewer’s normally ruddy face went white with rage. He held himself stiffly, his nostrils flaring, the hand holding his walking stick coming up to point a finger at Sebastian. “You dare? You dare to threaten me? Me?”

  Sebastian met the big man’s glittering, blazing gaze and smiled. “Only you know if you have something to fear.”

  * * *

  “The housebreakers’ use of cudgels and knives suggests they could be the same men who were behind the recent East End murders,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy later that morning as he and Sebastian walked down Bow Street toward the river. The day was cloudy but warmer, the rattle of a passing bricklayer’s dray sending up a pair of pigeons to flap their wings in alarm.

  “Perhaps,” said Sebastian. “Or perhaps whoever sent them simply wants us to think that.”

  Lovejoy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Yes, I can see that. Unfortunately, we’ve only been able to identify one of them so far—a ne’er-do-well from Bethnal Green named Jud Piper.”

  “Bethnal Green? Does he have any known connections to Sampson Buxton-Collins?”

  Lovejoy stared at him. “Buxton-Collins? You can’t be serious.”

  “I wish I weren’t.”

  “Oh, dear. I’ll tell the lads to make some inquiries.” The magistrate hesitated, then cleared his throat and said, “I do hope Lady Devlin was not too terribly distressed by last night’s dreadful incident.”

  “No,” said Sebastian baldly.

  “Good, good.” Lovejoy cleared his throat again. He’d never been able to disguise the fact that Hero made him uncomfortable. But then, Hero disconcerted most men. “You’ve heard that Ian Ryker was remanded into custody by the Shadwell Public Office this morning?”

  “Ryker? Why?”

  “Seems he was lying when he claimed he never left the Black Devil on the night of Sir Edwin Pym’s murder. Two people have now sworn to seeing him in Wapping that night.”

  “Where are they holding him?”

  “In Coldbath Fields Prison.”

  * * *

  They called it “the English Bastille”—except that the original Bastille Saint-Antoine of Paris was considerably more comfortable than Coldbath Fields Prison.

  Standing in a broad green field of lazily grazing white sheep on the outskirts of Clerkenwell, the prison dated back to the first days of the seventeenth century. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century, it was a severe, grim place used primarily for political prisoners, vagrants, debtors, prisoners awaiting trial or interrogation, and those with short sentences. Men, women, and children were herded in together in open yards or crammed into small, dark, unheated cells that flooded when it rained. Provided with only foul water and stale bread, they were beaten with sticks or knotted ropes if they complained. An inquiry into the prison’s wretched conditions and high death rate some dozen years before had ended with the prison governor successfully bankrupting one of the disappointed reformers by suing him for libel.

  Sebastian could feel the place’s miasma of fear, despair, and rot pressing in on him as he followed a turnkey down a long gallery of endless putrid cells to a small waiting room with a high barred window. The room was damp and icy cold and furnished with only a crude table and stools. The turnkey left him there some five minutes before returning with the publican Ian Ryker.

  The man’s clothes were torn, disheveled, and dirty, his eyes glittering with silent rage, his face mottled with bruises that suggested he had not surrendered peacefully to the constables. He was ironed on his right leg, and the chain clinked as he drew to a halt and brought up a hand to scrape across his beard-stubbled face. “If I’d known your lordship was comin’ for a visit, I’d have shaved and asked me valet to lay out a change of clean clothes.”

  “Good God,” said Sebastian.

  Ryker tilted back his head, his eyes hooded as he continued to hold Sebastian’s gaze. “You think I look bad, you ought to see the sorry bastards who’ve been in here a while.”

  “Why did you lie about where you were that night?”

  Ryker shrugged and went to stand with his shoulders propped against the far wall, his arms crossed at his chest. “Didn’t expect nobody t’ know better.”

  “Now they think you did it,” said Sebastian. And perhaps with good reason.

  “Yeah, well, I’m workin’ on that.”

  Sebastian studied the man’s narrowed bloodshot eyes. “Three men broke into my house last night armed with knives and cudgels. You know anything about that?”

  The publican’s face remained admirably blank. “No. Why would I?”

  “You haven’t heard any talk?”

  “Not sure who you think I consort with, but I don’t normally number housebreakers and murderers amongst me mates.”

  “Ever hear of a man from Bethnal Green named Jud Piper?”

  “Who?”

  “Jud Piper.”

  “No. He one o’ ’em?”

  “Yes.”

  Ryker shook his head. “Sounds like you riled somebody up real good.”

  “Apparently.”

  He brought up a hand to rub the back of his neck, his eyes taking on a speculative gleam. “I was talkin’ to a cuffin out in the yard a bit ago. He’d heard what I was thrown in here for and made it a point to come over and see me for himself. Seems he was here the night John Williams is supposed to ’ve hanged himself. Had the cell right next t’ him.”

  “And?”

  The rifleman gave Sebastian a slow, malevolent smile. “Let’s just say you might want to talk to him. Flood is his name. Wendell Flood.”

  * * *

  Wendell Flood was a small, spry old man with wispy white hair and the kind of wrinkled, desiccated face that one could not imagine had ever been young.

>   When the turnkey brought him to the room at Sebastian’s request, the old man hopped up on the edge of the table and sat there like a scruffy bird perched on a fence rail. His clothes were a tattered collection of rags and patches topped by an incongruously fine green coat.

  “I’m told you were in the cell next to John Williams back in December of 1811,” said Sebastian.

  Flood curled his hands around the edge of the table and leaned back, his speculative gaze on Sebastian’s face. “Aye, that I was. Call ’em the ‘reexamination cells,’ they do. They’re isolation cells, ye see. Use ’em for those they’ve hauled in for questionin’ and want to question again.”

  “And why were you in there?”

  The corners of the old man’s eyes crinkled with a secret smile. “Don’t rightly remember. I been in there off and on a fair number of times o’er the years. It’s hard to keep ’em separate in me head. Gettin’ old, ye know.”

  Sebastian suspected Flood remembered very well, but he didn’t press the point. “Did you ever see Williams?”

  “Oh, aye. We’re mostly locked up in the cells only at night, ye know.”

  “How did he seem? Was he worried about his coming hearing, do you think? Cast down about it?”

  “Nah. If anything, I’d say he was chipper. A real likable lad, he was. Said he reckoned he had nothin’ t’ worry about, because he hadn’t done nothin’. Said he figured the saddle’d be put on the right horse soon enough.”

  “That’s what he said? He used those exact words?”

  “Yup. Last time I talked to him.”