Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  “How’d you know they was military coves?”

  He regarded her fixedly. “You knew they were military?” She’d never mentioned it.

  She twitched one shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “What else do you know that you haven’t told me?”

  It came out more sharply than he’d intended. Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think it was important.”

  The horses slowed. She shifted her gaze to the glazed front of the coffee shop that stood near Charing Cross. “You reckon the birthday cove is in there now?”

  The coachman drew the carriage in close to the opposite curb. “If not, he’ll be here eventually. Can you see the door of the coffeehouse from where you are?”

  She shifted her weight restlessly, her lower lip creeping out in the beginnings of a pout. “Aye.”

  Suppressing a smile, Sebastian drew from his pocket the note he had prepared and signaled one of the footmen. “Find an urchin and give him a couple of shillings to deliver this to Captain Patrick Somerville in the Scarlet Man.”

  “That’s right clever,” said Hannah, watching the footman turn away with the note. “What’s it say?”

  “Only that the Captain is needed at his regiment.”

  Her brows drew together under the strain of thought. “You reckon this Somerville is the birthday cove?”

  “Does the name sound familiar?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t pay no attention to names.” Her frown deepened as she watched the footman hail a half-grown lad. “What if this Somerville ain’t there?”

  “Then we wait.”

  The lower lip came into play again. “We shoulda brought the kittens.”

  But in the end, they had no need to wait. A moment later, a tall, lean gentleman in the gold frogged, dark blue tunic of a hussar appeared at the door of the coffeehouse and turned to walk briskly toward Whitehall.

  “That’s him,” said Hannah, shrinking back into the shadows of the carriage’s interior. “That’s the birthday cove.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “ ’Course I’m certain. I told you, I don’t pay no attention to names. But I never forget a face.”

  Sebastian regarded her thoughtfully. She was not, despite all appearances to the contrary, quite as lacking in sense as a fencepost. He said, “You wouldn’t happen to know how Rose Fletcher killed the man in her room that night, would you?”

  “She stabbed him,” Hannah whispered, leaning forward as if someone could overhear. “Stabbed him with a pair of sewing scissors. Leastways, that’s what she said.” She sat back again, the anxiety on her face fading as her thoughts turned to a more pleasant topic. “Do you think Mrs. Calhoun would let me keep one of the kittens?”

  Chapter 54

  A slow drizzle fell that evening, glazing the paving stones and footpaths of Mayfair with a wet sheen that reflected the light of the wind-flickered streetlamps and passing carriage lanterns. Dressed in knee breeches and a white silk waistcoat with buckled shoes at his feet and a chapeau-bras tucked under one arm, Sebastian set forth for the ball being given that evening by Lady Burnham in her Park Lane home.

  The rain had thinned the crowds gathered on the footpath outside to watch, but it still took Sebastian’s carriage an inordinate amount of time to press its way forward, for some five hundred people had been invited to the ball. He had no doubt that Patrick Somerville’s well-married sister, Lady Berridge, would be in attendance, with her reluctant brother in tow.

  As he entered the ballroom, the first person he saw was his aunt Henrietta, who immediately gasped and groped for the quizzing glass she always wore around her neck, even when decked out in mauve silk and lace and a towering turban. “Good heavens. Devlin, whatever are you doing here? First Almack’s and Lady Melbourne’s breakfast, now Lady Burnham’s ball?” She drew in a deep breath that swelled her massive bosom and gave him an arch smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally taken it into your head to look for a wife?”

  “No,” he said baldly, his gaze raking the crowded ballroom beyond her. In actual fact he was looking for a murderer, but he wasn’t about to tell his aunt that. His eyes narrowed as he spied Patrick Somerville talking to a pale-haired young matron near the bank of French doors that overlooked the rear terrace. “If I change my mind, believe me, Aunt, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Excusing himself, he pushed on through the laughing, chattering crowd. But as ill luck would have it, he had only worked his way around half of the room when he came upon Miss Jarvis.

  “Good heavens,” she said in a tone that exactly matched his aunt’s, except that Miss Jarvis was not smiling. “What are you doing here?”

  “I received an invitation.”

  “Yes, but you never attend these things.” She was wearing an emerald green silk gown that became her surprisingly well, and had crimped her hair so that it softened the angular planes of her face. But there was nothing soft about her expression. She frowned. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you? Who is it?”

  He deliberately turned his back on the row of French doors. “Perhaps I’ve suddenly taken it into my head to enjoy a bit of dancing.”

  “Nonsense.” She cast a quick glance around. “We can’t talk here. Escort me to the refreshment room.”

  He was too much of a gentleman to refuse her, and she knew it. Lending her his arm, he led her through the crush to a chamber that had been set aside for refreshments. He was hoping to find it crowded. It was nearly deserted.

  “I want you to tell me what happened last night in Orchard Street,” she said, accepting a glass of lemonade. “You do know, don’t you?”

  She would have read about the fire in that morning’s papers, of course. He picked up a plate and surveyed the delicate tidbits offered by their hostess to sustain her guests until supper. “I think the abbess was the intended target,” he said as calmly as if they were discussing the orchestra or the silver streamers decorating the ballroom. “Do you like shrimp or crab?”

  “Shrimp, please.” He didn’t expect her to know what an abbess was, but in that, he reckoned without the research that had embroiled her in this murderous tangle to begin with. She said, “They killed her?”

  “Yes.” He selected three fat shrimp, then added a slice of ham and some melon. “Along with a fair number of others.”

  “Because they thought she could identify them? Is that it? If she could, it’s a wonder they let her live so long.”

  “I suspect she didn’t know their names. She only became a threat as we began to circle around toward them.” He let his gaze wander over the table. “Would you like an ice?”

  “No, thank you.” She took the plate he’d prepared for her. “Do you think they’ll go after Hannah Green again?”

  “They would if they knew where to find her. Fortunately, they don’t.”

  She applied herself to the refreshments with a healthy appetite. “How is she, by the way?”

  “Hannah? Last time I saw her, she was in rapture over the stable cat’s litter of black-and-white kittens.”

  Miss Jarvis glanced up, half frowning and half laughing, as if uncertain whether to believe him or not. “Kittens?”

  “Kittens.” He studied her clear gray eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek. He considered telling her about the harp player and about Patrick Somerville, then changed his mind. The less he involved her in all this, the better.

  She said, “What will become of her, when this is over?”

  “Hannah?” He shook his head. “I’m not certain. In many ways she’s still a child.”

  “But not in all ways.” He knew she regretted her words the instant she said them. For one frozen moment, their gazes met and held. She set her plate aside. “Thank you for the refreshments,” she said, and turned on her heel and left him there, looking after her.

  By the time Sebastian made his way back to the ballroom, Patrick Somerville had disappeared. Sebastian prowled the conservatory and the rooms set aside for card playing, befo
re finally wandering out onto the terrace to find the hussar captain leaning against the stone balustrade and smoking a cheroot.

  “Nasty habit I picked up in the Americas,” said Somerville, blowing a cloud of blue smoke out of his lungs. “My sister Mary keeps telling me it’ll be the death of me, but I tell her the malaria’ll kill me long before then.”

  Sebastian came to stand beside him and look out over the glistening wet garden. The rain had eased up, but the air was still chill and damp and smelled strongly of wet earth and wet stone. “I hear they’ve found your friend’s body.”

  Somerville drew on his cheroot, his eyes narrowing. “Yes, poor old sod.”

  “I understand he had a pair of sewing scissors broken off in his heart.”

  The hussar turned his head to stare directly at Sebastian. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From the surgeon who performed the postmortem.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the garden. “A man killed at the Orchard Street Academy last week was stabbed by a pair of sewing scissors.”

  Somerville drew on his cheroot, and said nothing.

  Sebastian said, “How many bodies do you think have turned up in London in the past year with pairs of sewing scissors broken off in their hearts?”

  The captain tossed the stub of his cheroot into the wet garden below, then pursed his lips, expelling a long stream of fragrant smoke. “You know I was there, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Somerville flattened his hands on the wet balustrade, his back hunched as he stared out over the shadowy gardens. “I still don’t understand what happened that night. First the girl I was with disappeared. And then, when I went looking for Ludlow, they said he’d already gone.”

  “You believed them?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? We were supposed to meet up later, at a tavern near Soho. I went there expecting to find him waiting for me. But he never showed up. At first I thought he’d simply changed his mind and gone home. It wasn’t until he was still missing the next day that I realized something had gone wrong. I thought he’d been jumped by footpads or something. I never imagined he hadn’t even left the Academy.”

  “Who else was with you that night?”

  “No one.” He pushed away from the balustrade. “What’s your interest in this, anyway?”

  From the ballroom behind them came the lilting chorus of an English country dance. Sebastian said, “I’m just doing a favor for an acquaintance.” He studied the man’s pale face, clammy with sweat despite the chill from the rain. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: When’s your birthday?”

  “My birthday?” Somerville gave a shaky laugh. “Why do you ask?”

  “It was last week, was it?”

  A muscle jumped along the man’s tightened jaw as he considered his answer. “Yes,” he said slowly, realizing the futility of denying it. “Why?”

  “Happy birthday,” Sebastian said, and walked off into the night.

  “Unfortunately, you’ve no real proof,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. They were seated beside the cold hearth in the magistrate’s simple parlor on Russell Square. A fire would have helped take the chill off the damp night, but Lovejoy never allowed a fire to be kindled in his house outside the kitchen after the first of April. Sebastian knew that for Lovejoy, it wasn’t a matter of frugality so much as a question of moral fiber.

  Sebastian poured himself another cup of hot tea and said, “Hannah Green identified Patrick Somerville.”

  “As a customer. There’s no law against paying a woman for a moment’s physical gratification, however morally repugnant it might be. She didn’t see him kill anyone. And even if she had, who’d take the word of a soiled dove against that of a hussar captain wounded in the defense of his country?”

  “He wasn’t wounded. He has malaria.”

  “I think I’d rather be wounded.”

  “Frankly, so would I.” Sebastian took a sip of his tea and wished it were something stronger. “There’s still the harp player. She heard the men who attacked the Academy last night. If Somerville was one of them—and I strongly suspect he was—she would recognize his voice. If we can set up a situation in which she can hear him—”

  “No jury would convict a hussar captain on the strength of testimony given by a blind woman who played the harp in a brothel.”

  Sebastian knew a welling of frustration. Lovejoy was right, of course. But there had to be a way. . . . “The girl who worked in the cheesemonger’s shop across from the Magdalene House might recognize him. She noticed several gentlemen loitering in the street right before the fire.”

  “Did she actually see them go into the house?”

  “No.”

  Lovejoy thrust out his short legs and crossed them at the ankles. “It’s just all too convoluted and confused. Even I still don’t understand it properly.”

  Sebastian leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “A week ago last Tuesday, two men—Max Ludlow and another gentleman I’ve yet to identify—hired Rose Fletcher, Hannah Green, and Hessy Abrahams off the floor of the Academy as part of a birthday surprise for one of their friends—Captain Patrick Somerville. The women were taken by hackney to rooms someplace, where Somerville later joined them. It must have been decidedly awkward when he realized one of the women his friends had hired for the night was Rachel Fairchild, the sister of his childhood playmate.”

  Lovejoy cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Decidedly awkward, I should think.”

  “So awkward that I get the impression neither one of them let on about it. But Somerville must have said something to his friends the next day. And when it came out that Rachel’s mother was French—that Rachel herself spoke French—they realized they’d been indiscreet. That she had overheard—and understood—a dangerous conversation the men had conducted in French, assuming none of the women could understand them.”

  “So they went back to the Academy the next night, planning to kill the women? Before they could tell anyone what they’d heard?”

  “Yes. Except, of course, it all went awry. The mysterious third gentleman made his kill quickly, breaking Hessy Abrahams’s neck. But Rachel Fairchild managed to stab Max Ludlow with a pair of sewing scissors, and then warn Hannah Green. I gather the three men were supposed to meet up at a tavern later. When Ludlow didn’t show up, the others had no way of knowing what had gone wrong. It must have taken them several days to figure it out, and to trace the two surviving women to the Magdalene House.”

  “By which time Hannah Green had already fled.” Lovejoy stared thoughtfully at the cold, blackened recesses of the hearth. “They killed an extraordinary number of people, simply to silence one woman.”

  “They’re soldiers. They’re trained to kill. And they’re on a mission.”

  “To kill the Prime Minister?” Lovejoy stirred his tea, his features pinched and troubled. “You’ve told Perceval of your theory?”

  “That someone is planning to assassinate him? Yes.”

  “And?”

  Sebastian smiled. “He didn’t believe me any more than you do.”

  Lovejoy laid aside his spoon with a soft clatter. “It just seems so absurd. No British prime minister has ever been assassinated. And by three of His Majesty’s own officers? What possible motive could they have for doing such a thing?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t know. What can you tell me about the man found this morning? Max Ludlow.”