by C. S. Harris
A bolt slid open and the door swung inward. The man who stood just inside the narrow, low-ceilinged hall was young still, no more than thirty, a dark-haired Irishman with a ready smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and brought a roguish dimple to one lean cheek. “Ah. It is you,” said Paul Gibson, opening the door wider and stepping back. “I was hoping you might come to me.”
Sebastian stood where he was. “You’ve heard what they’re saying?”
“Sure then, but you don’t expect me to be believing everything I hear, now do you?”
Sebastian laughed and stepped inside.
Paul Gibson bolted the door, then led the way back down the passage, the smoothness of his gait marred at each step by a peculiar little half hitch. He’d been an army surgeon, once—even after a cannon ball took off the lower part of his left leg. “Come into the kitchen. It’s warmer there, and closer to the food.”
Sebastian had bought a paper-wrapped sausage midway through the morning. But he hadn’t stopped for lunch and it was now past dinner-time. The fragrant warmth of the kitchen folded itself around him and he smiled. “Food does sound uncommonly good at the moment.”
“There are some gentlemen of my acquaintance,” said Paul Gibson later, when they were seated at a table before the kitchen fire with a joint of cold ham, a crusty loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine. “They’re in the brandy trade, if you know what I mean, and I’ve no doubt but what they’d be agreeable to—”
“No,” said Sebastian, reaching for another slice of ham.
Paul Gibson paused with his wineglass halfway to his mouth. “No?”
“No. Why does everyone keep trying to introduce me to their friendly neighborhood smuggler?” Sebastian met his friend’s arrested gaze. “I’m not running, Paul.”
Paul Gibson took a deep breath and let it out through pursed lips. “All right. So how can I help?”
“You can tell me what you know about Rachel York’s death. Are you the one who did the postmortem?”
In the two years since he’d left the army, Paul Gibson had set up a small practice here, in the City. But he focused a considerable portion of his time and energy on research and writing, and the teaching of medical students, as well as providing the authorities with his expert opinion in criminal cases.
“There was no postmortem.”
“What?”
He shrugged and emptied the last of the wine into Sebastian’s glass. “They’re not automatically done, you know. And in this instance, there wasn’t much of a reason for one, really. It was fairly obvious how she’d died.”
“You saw the body?”
“No. A colleague of mine was called in.” Lurching to his feet, the Irishman limped across the kitchen to fetch another bottle of wine. “It was a brutal attack, from the sounds of it. She’d been beaten as well as raped, her throat slashed not once, but many times.”
It fit with what Pierrepont had told him, but Sebastian had been hoping for more. “Would it be possible for you to arrange to see her?”
Gibson shook his head. “Too late. The body’s already been turned over for burial. The theater is arranging it.”
Sebastian swirled his wine thoughtfully in his glass.
“What do you think you’re going to do? Hmm?” Gibson swung his wooden leg over the opposite bench to sit down again with an awkward lurch. “Find the man who killed her yourself?”
“If I don’t, who will?”
“It’s not an easy thing, solving a murder.”
Sebastian looked up to meet his friend’s narrowed, worried eyes. “You know what I did in the army.”
“Yes. But there’s a difference, I should think, between being a spy and finding a killer.”
“Not as much as one might imagine.”
A hint of a dimple appeared in the Irishman’s cheek. “So. Have any suspects yet?”
Sebastian smiled. “Two, as a matter of fact. There’s an actor by the name of Hugh Gordon—”
“Ah. I saw him just last month. A very effective Hector.”
“That’s him. Seems Rachel York was his mistress when she first started at the theater. He took it badly when she left him.”
Paul Gibson frowned. “How long ago was this?”
“Some two years ago.”
The Irishman shook his head. “Too long. If she’d just left him, I could see it. But passions cool with time.”
“One might think so. Except that he still sounds surprisingly bitter to me. I get the impression Mr. Gordon nourishes republican sentiments that he believes Rachel York once shared. I’d say he’s as bothered by the blue blood of her recent lovers as anything else.”
The Irishman drained his glass. “So, who is her current lover?”
Sebastian reached for the bottle and poured his friend some more wine. “She seems to have been involved with an extraordinary number of gentlemen, at least on a superficial level. But the only one of any significance I’ve discovered so far is a Frenchman who was paying the rent on her rooms. An émigré by the name of Leo Pierrepont.”
“A Frenchman? That’s interesting. What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot. He’s a man in his late forties, I’d say. Came here back in ’ninety-two. He’s known as a good swordsman, but I’ve never heard anything to his discredit.”
“I put my money on the Frenchman.”
Sebastian laughed. “That’s because it’s the French who shot away the bottom half of your leg. Besides, he has an alibi: on the night Rachel was killed, he was giving a dinner party—or so he says. He could be making it up, of course, but it should be easy enough to check.”
“Unfortunate.” Gibson shifted in his seat, a grimace of pain flashing momentarily across his face as he moved his leg. “Neither sounds like a very promising suspect to me. Is that the best you can come up with?”
“So far. I was hoping Rachel’s body might give me some idea of what direction to look in next.”
Outside, the wind gusted up, buffeting the back of the house and eddying the flames on the hearth. Paul Gibson turned toward the fire, the flickering light playing over the thoughtful planes of his face. After a moment, he opened his mouth to say something, closed it, then finally said in a rush, “You know, there might be a way. . . . ”
Sebastian studied his friend’s averted profile. “A way to do what?”
“A way that I could get a look at Rachel York’s body. Do a thorough autopsy.”
“How’s that?”
“We could hire someone to steal the corpse tomorrow night, after it’s been buried.”
“No,” said Sebastian.
Gibson swung to face him. “I know some men who’d be willing to do it without—”
“No,” said Sebastian again.
His friend’s lips thinned with exasperation. “It’s done all the time.”
“Ah, yes. Twenty pounds for a long, fifteen for a half-long, and eight for a short—a long being a man, a half-long a woman, and a short a child. But just because it happens all the time doesn’t mean that I have to do it.”
The Irishman fixed him with a steady stare. “If she were given a choice, which do you think Rachel York would prefer? That her body be left to rot in its grave, or that the man who put her there be brought to justice?”
“Well, we can hardly ask her, now can we?”
Paul Gibson sat forward, his hands coming up, palms pressed together. “Sebastian, think about this: whoever this man was, he could kill again—in fact, he almost surely will kill again. You know that, don’t you? But as long as the authorities are looking for you, they’re not going to be doing anything to find him.”
Sebastian didn’t say a word.
Gibson flattened his hands on the scarred wooden tabletop and leaned into them. “She’s dead, Sebastian. The woman who was Rachel York is long gone. What’s left is just a shell, a husk, that once held her. In a month’s time, it’ll be rotting pulp.”
“That’s simple justification and you know it.”
“Is it? What we would do to her is no worse than what time will do to her. And there’s nothing you can do to stop that.”
Sebastian took a deep, bitter swallow of his wine. He told himself Paul was right, that catching Rachel’s killer was more important than preserving the inviability of her grave. He told himself her killer could, if free, kill again. But it was still wrong. He raised his gaze to his friend’s. “How soon can you set it up?”
Paul Gibson let his breath out in a quick huff. “The sooner the better. I’ll send a message to Jumpin’ Jack first thing in the morning.”
“Jumpin’ Jack?”
The Irishman’s dimple flashed, then was gone. “Jumpin’ Jack Cochran. A gentleman in the resurrection trade I have reason to know.”
“I won’t ask how you know him.”
Gibson laughed. “He got his name when one of the stiffs he was sliding out of its coffin suddenly sat up and started talking to him. Old Jack jumped out of that grave real fast.”
“You’re making that up,” said Sebastian.
“Not a bit of it. The lads he had with him were all for swinging a shovel at the man’s head and finishing him off right then and there, but Jack would have none of it. Hauled the fellow off to an apothecary, and even paid the bill when the unlucky devil died anyway.”
“I am filled with admiration for the man’s character,” Sebastian said with a grin, and rose to leave.
The Irishman’s face fell. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ve put you in enough danger as it is, coming here. I’ve a room at the Rose and Crown, near Tothill Fields. They know me there as Mr. Simon Taylor. From Worcestershire.”
Gibson walked with him to the front door. “I’ll let you know when everything’s arranged.” He paused, his face thoughtful as he watched Sebastian button his scruffy topcoat up under his chin. “You do realize, of course, that we could go through all of this, and still not learn anything useful?”
“I know it.”
“You’re only assuming that the man who killed that poor girl was someone she knew. It might not be, you know. She could simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. You might never find who did it.”
Reaching out, Sebastian paused with his hand on the edge of the door and looked back at his friend. “No. But at least I’ll have tried.”
Gibson met his gaze, his face unsmiling and drawn with worry. “You could still leave.”
“And spend the rest of my life running?” Sebastian shook his head. “No. I’m going to clear my name, Paul. Even if I have to die trying.”
“You could die trying, and still not succeed.”
Sebastian settled his hat lower on his forehead and turned into the icy blast of the night. “It’s a chance I’m just going to have to take.”
Chapter 21
Sebastian stood alone in the shadows and watched as Kat Boleyn separated herself from the knot of laughing, pretty women and hot-blooded, predatory males clustered around the stage door.
Golden lamplight pooled on gleaming wet pavement. The wind gusted up, sharp and bitter, and brought with it a rush of smells, of fresh paint and sweat-dampened wool and the thick grease of cosmetics: theater scents evocative of a time long past, when he’d believed—really believed—in so many things, like truth and justice. And love.
He’d been twenty-one that summer, not long down from Oxford and still drunk on the wonders of Plato and Aquinas and Descartes. She’d been barely seventeen, yet in her own way so much older and wiser than he. He’d fallen hopelessly, wildly in love with her. And he had believed, truly believed, that she loved him.
Ah, how he had believed. She’d told him she’d love him until the end of time, and he had believed. Believed her and asked her to marry him. And she had said yes.
It was still raining, but softly now. He watched her walk quickly toward him, the hood of her cloak raised against the drizzle, her gaze turned toward the hackney stand at the end of the street.
“You should be more careful,” said Sebastian, falling into step beside her. “Now is not a good time to be out alone at night.”
She gave no start of surprise, only glancing up at him from beneath the shadow of her hood. “I refuse to live my life in fear,” she said. “I should think you’d remember that about me. Besides”—a soft smile touched her lips—“do you think I didn’t know you were there?”
He thought she probably had. He remembered that about her, too—that while most people were hopelessly, cripplingly blind in the dark, Kat’s night vision was unusually sharp. Not as good as Sebastian’s own, but sharp.
She made a move toward the nearest hackney. He caught her arm, drawing her on up the street. “Let’s walk.”
They turned their steps toward the West End, part of a crowd of playgoers straggling home through the lamp-lit darkness. Snatches of light and laughter tumbled from the quickly closed doors of taverns and coffeehouses, music halls and brothels. From a darkened, urine-drenched doorway, a streetwalker hissed at him, her eyes bold, desperate. Haunting. Sebastian looked away.
“What can you tell me about Leo Pierrepont?” he asked.
“Pierrepont?” The rain had stopped now. Kat pushed back her hood. “What has he to do with anything?”
“He was paying the rent on Rachel’s rooms.”
She was silent for a moment, and he remembered this about her, too, the way she carefully thought things through before speaking. “Who told you that?”
“Hugh Gordon. Pierrepont didn’t deny it.”
“You’ve spoken with him?”
“We shared a hackney ride,” said Sebastian, and smiled softly at the familiar way her brows drew together in thought. “It’s a curious arrangement, don’t you think, for one man to be paying the rent on a woman’s rooms while knowing she continues to receive other male visitors? Unless, of course, he’s acting as her pimp.”
Again that pause, as she thought through what he had said and considered her response. “Some men like to watch.”
Sebastian knew a surge of unexpected and unpleasant emotions. He wanted to ask how she knew this about Pierrepont—if she, too, had entertained the Frenchman by allowing him to watch her make love to other men. Instead, he said, “Well, that’s certainly one alternative that hadn’t occurred to me. Your experience in such matters is more valuable than one might realize.”
She halted abruptly, her chin jerking up, her eyes flashing. She would have swung away, back toward the theater, if he hadn’t caught her arm.
“I’m sorry. That was an unforgivable thing to say.”
She met his gaze. He couldn’t begin to interpret the dark shift of emotions he could see in her eyes. “Yes. It was.” She removed her arm from his unresisting grip and walked on again. A silence fell between them, filled only with the soft swish of the soles of her half-boots gliding over wet pavement and the whisper of old, old memories.
He let his gaze travel over the achingly familiar line of her profile, the arch of her neck. Her nose was small and turned up at the end like a child’s, her mouth wide, too wide, her lips full and sensuous. A seductive combination of innocence and sin.
There had been other women in his life since Kat Boleyn; beautiful, intelligent women, including one in Portugal he might even have fallen in love with if Kat Boleyn hadn’t always been there, like a shadow across his heart. And he wondered suddenly if he’d approached her this morning because she’d known Rachel York and could give him the information he needed, or if he had turned to her now for some other reason entirely, a reason his mind sheered away from.
She said, “You haven’t asked if I had a chance to speak with Rachel’s maid.”
A carriage dashed past, the coronet on its panels glistening with wet, the air filling with the scent of hot pitch from the linkboys’ torches. Sebastian watched it disappear into the distance, flames wavering against a black sky. “Did you?”
“No. She’s gone. Vanished—along
with virtually everything in Rachel’s rooms that was movable.”
He brought his gaze back to her face. “I thought you said the constables were watching the house?”
“Only through the night, according to the elderly Scotswoman who lives upstairs. She also told me a young man came to Rachel’s rooms the morning after she was killed.”
“A young man?”
“A young man with a key. Looking for something, or so it seems. He went through Rachel’s rooms, then popped upstairs to ask our inquisitive neighbor if she knew where Mary Grant had gone.”
“Searching for what, I wonder?
“This, perhaps.” Pausing beneath the flickering light of a streetlamp, she drew something from her reticule and held it out to him.
It was a small book, bound in red calfskin and tied up with a leather thong. “I thought her rooms had been emptied,” he said, taking the book and loosening the knot in the leather.
“She kept it in a secret compartment in the mantelpiece.”
She didn’t say how she’d known about that compartment. He glanced up at her, then down at the book. It was fairly new, less than a fifth of its pages having been used.
And most of those first pages were now missing.
“The front pages have been cut out,” he said, running one finger along the ragged edges.
The clouds overhead shifted fitfully with the wind. The rain had cleared away the city’s nearly perpetual blanket of yellow fog, allowing rare glimpses of a distant full moon. In the shimmer of moonlight, her face appeared pale and faintly troubled. “It’s almost as if she knew something might happen to her.”
“Assuming it was Rachel who did it.” Sebastian thumbed through the dozen or so pages that were left. They covered little more than the previous week. “You think she was protecting someone?”
“I don’t know. It seems a reasonable explanation, doesn’t it?”
There was another explanation, of course: that Kat Boleyn had cut the pages out herself. Only, if there’d been something here she hadn’t wanted Sebastian to know about, why bother to give him the book at all? Why not simply destroy the thing and claim it had never been found? Why even offer to go to Rachel York’s rooms in the first place? To keep him from discovering whatever secret had been written on those missing pages? But why? Why?