by C. S. Harris
At the mention of his wife, Jarvis turned down the ends of his mouth in a grimace. He had no patience for Annabelle, a silly, half-mad imbecile who belonged in Bedlam. He grunted. “Women like Annabelle dispense soup to the poor and shed tears over the plight of orphans in the streets because it’s an easy sop to their consciences. Nauseating, perhaps, yet ultimately harmless. But you—you spend your days with your nose stuck in books, researching theories and advocating schemes that could almost be described as radical.”
Hero’s fine gray eyes narrowed with a hint of a smile. “Oh, believe me, some of my schemes are most definitely radical.”
Jarvis pushed to his feet and turned to face her. “The most powerful men in London quake in terror at the thought of annoying me. Yet my own daughter openly behaves in ways she knows full well displease me. Why is that?”
“Because I’m too much like you.”
He grunted. If she were a son, he would be proud of her intellect and her force of character—if not her political notions. But she was not a son; she was a woman, and lately she’d been looking strained. He studied her pale, unusually thin face. “You’ve not been looking your best these past few weeks, Hero.”
“Dear Papa.” She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. She was tall enough to do it without standing on tiptoe. “Surely you know better than to tell a woman she’s off her looks?”
He allowed himself to be coaxed into a smile, and pressed her shoulder in a rare gesture of affection. But all he said was, “I didn’t kill your meddlesome bishop.”
“Then who did?”
“That, I don’t know. And neither, to be frank, do I care.”
Leaving her father in the library, Hero hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, yanked her chamber pot from its cupboard, and was wretchedly sick.
She’d learned the sickness normally came upon her first thing in the morning, although it could strike unexpectedly at any time. She was not a woman accustomed to feeling either fear or vulnerability. But as she settled on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, her damp forehead pressed against the cupboard door, Hero found herself perilously close to succumbing to both.
For a young Englishwoman of her station to bear a child out of wedlock was the ultimate, unforgivable disgrace. It mattered not how powerful or wealthy her family, or how bizarre the circumstances that had led her to such a fate; the result could only be social ostracism, complete and everlasting. Hero had always considered herself an independent-minded woman. But even she could not contemplate such a fate with equanimity.
Her options were depressing, and limited. She could contract a quick, convenient marriage; she could give birth in secret and give the child away; or she could eliminate herself in a decorous act of self-destruction. Since Hero had no patience with suicides and refused under any circumstances to submit herself to the power of a husband, she was left with only one real option: a secret birth.
The results of such births were typically dumped, anonymously, on the parish or some desperate peasant family, either of which could generally be relied upon to kill the unwanted infant within a year. But Hero had no intention of abandoning the child growing within her to such a short, brutal life. And so she had approached her friend Bishop Prescott for his assistance in locating a good, loving family. Such arrangements were dangerous, since they could be difficult to keep hidden. But she had found Prescott both supportive and blessedly nonjudgmental.
Now Prescott was dead, and all her plans were in disarray.
At the thought, she felt a new surge of nausea, but suppressed it resolutely. Pushing to her feet, she smoothed her gown, washed her face, and walked down the hall to her mother’s chambers.
She found Lady Jarvis stretched out upon the daybed in her dressing room with the drapes closed. She still wore her wrapper, and the left side of her face drooped in that way it had when she was tired.
“Didn’t you sleep well, Mama?” asked Hero, bending to kiss her mother’s cheek. Her hand dropped to Lady Jarvis’s shoulder, and she felt so thin and frail that Hero experienced a new leap of fear.
Never well, Lady Jarvis had been especially listless lately. She was nearing fifty, a fading shadow of the beautiful, vivacious woman she had once been. Worn-out by an endless series of miscarriages and stillbirths, she had succeeded in presenting her lord with only one sickly son and a hale daughter before suffering a seizure that put an end to her childbearing days and left her weak of mind and body.
Now, she gripped her daughter’s hand and said, “Troublesome dreams. Always troublesome dreams.” Her soft blue eyes came into focus on Hero’s face. “You’ve been looking tired yourself, Hero; is something wrong? Are you ill?”
Hero felt an unexpected lump in her throat. She had no doubt of her mother’s love and devotion. But Lady Jarvis lacked the mental or emotional strength to deal with her own problems, let alone her daughter’s. Hero forced a smile. “You know I’m never ill. It’s such a lovely day; shall we go for a walk around the square?”
“I don’t know if I can, dear.”
“Of course you can. Let me ring for your woman to help you dress.” Disengaging her hand from her mother’s grasp, Hero went to open the curtains and give the bell a sharp tug. “It will do you good. I’ve a quick errand to run, but I should be back by the time you’re ready.”
Lady Jarvis frowned and struggled to sit up. “An errand? What type of errand?”
“Oh, nothing of importance,” said Hero, who was in fact bound on a very important errand, to the official chambers of the late Bishop Francis Prescott, in St. James’s Square.
Chapter 7
Pale and naked, the body of the Bishop of London lay stretched out upon the slab table in Paul Gibson’s secluded outbuilding. Thanks to the thickness of the stone walls, the atmosphere in the low-ceilinged, windowless space was cold and dark and thickly scented with death. Sebastian paused in the open doorway and took one last gulp of fresh air.
“Ah, there you are,” said the surgeon, laying aside a bloody scalpel. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist this one.”
Of medium height, with the dark hair and ready smile of an Irishman, Paul Gibson had known Sebastian for years. Once, they’d worn the King’s colors and fought together from the mountains of Italy and the Peninsula to the West Indies. They might come from different worlds and speak the King’s English with markedly different accents, but theirs was a friendship forged in blood and guts and fear.
“Nice to be predictable,” said Sebastian, eyes blinking at the room’s rank air. After only some fourteen to sixteen hours of death—and most of that during the cool hours of the night—the Bishop’s corpse was still relatively fresh. The sheet-covered form that rested on a stretcher in the room’s far corner was anything but fresh.
Limping over to where a chipped enamel basin and pitcher stood on the wooden shelf that ran across the room’s back wall, the surgeon splashed water into the basin and rinsed his hands. “There’s no denying it’s an interesting puzzle. Two men murdered decades apart in the same place? Not often we see that.”
“Judging from the smell, I’d say that’s fortunate. Have you found anything yet that might link the two?”
“Not yet. But then, I’ve only just started on the Bishop. It’s definitely the blow to his head that killed him . . . not that that’ll come as a surprise to anyone who’s had a good look at him.”
Sebastian studied the corpse before them. The Bishop of London had been a tall man, and thin, with long, sinewy arms and legs. In his late fifties or early sixties, he had a high forehead and a strong nose, his cheekbones prominent and knifelike beneath the flesh of his face. His hair was completely white, worn straight and unusually long. Even in death, something both scholarly and gentle lingered in his expression.
“Did you know him?” said Gibson.
“I met him once or twice.” Sebastian examined the gash that disfigured the left side of the Bishop’s head. “Sir Henry said they found an iron bar near the body. Do you th
ink it was the murder weapon?”
Gibson nodded to a stout bar, one end gently curved and notched, that lay on the nearby bench. “I’d say so, yes. It fits the size and shape of the wound very neatly. The blow shattered his skull, tearing the lining of the brain and leaving it exposed. He probably died almost immediately, although it is possible he lived as much as half an hour after he was hit. I doubt he ever regained consciousness, though.”
Sebastian glanced up in surprise. “So he might still have been alive when Reverend Earnshaw found him?”
“Possibly. Not that it matters. Even if the Reverend had gone for a doctor rather than the magistrate, there’s nothing anyone could have done for him.”
Sebastian studied the Bishop’s long fingers, the nails meticulously manicured and unbroken. “No sign of a struggle?”
“None.” Gibson tossed aside the rough towel he’d been holding. “The papers are saying the Bishop surprised a thief who’d taken advantage of the crypt being opened to rob the burials.”
“I suppose it’s a more reassuring tale than the alternative—that someone deliberately bludgeoned the Bishop of London to death.”
Gibson looked over at him. “Any idea who?”
“Not a clue. Not even a suspect.” Sebastian hunkered down to study the dead man’s bloodied head. “What can you tell me about his murderer?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. Judging from the position of the wound, I’d say the Bishop was hit from the front, by someone who was right-handed. The assailant was either extraordinarily tall, or the Bishop was positioned below him—as if sitting, or at least crouching.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you look closely, you’ll notice that the wound isn’t exactly on the side of his head. It’s up toward the crown. The only way anyone could strike at that angle is if he were standing above the Bishop, or if he were considerably taller than the Bishop—which is unlikely, given that Bishop Prescott was an unusually tall man himself.”
“You think the Bishop could have been crouched down beside him?” said Sebastian, nodding toward the shrouded form on the stretcher behind them.
“From the way I understand the two men were found, I’d say that’s highly probable. The Bishop was lying virtually on top of the earlier victim.”
Reluctantly, Sebastian went to draw back the covering from the eighteenth-century corpse, and let out his breath in a sharp hiss. “Good God.”
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” said Gibson, limping over to stand beside him.
“That’s one word for it.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had much of a chance to examine this one yet, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“Really?” Sebastian studied his friend’s rapt expression. “You’d love the crypt of St. Margaret’s, then.”
“I would indeed. What an opportunity!”
Sebastian ducked his head to hide a smile.
Beneath the froth of lace, the once fine blue velvet coat, and the satin waistcoat, the body’s sinew had shriveled and sunk. Yet it was obvious that the corpse had belonged to an unusually large man, robust of frame and full of flesh. Time and the action of the chemicals in the crypt had withered and distorted the features of his face and darkened the skin until he looked like an aged Moor from the mountains of Morocco. Without the chin strap that normally held a burial’s jaw closed, his mouth had fallen open in a gaping, hideous yowl, but where once had been eyes were now strange, paperlike wisps.
“Old fly pupae,” said Gibson, when Sebastian looked up in question.
Sebastian cleared his throat and overcame the urge to draw the covering back up over that horror. “I understand this one was stabbed in the back with a dagger?”
“That’s right.” Gibson limped over to retrieve an object from the bench and held it out. “This.”
The blacked blade was long and thin, cast in one piece with the handle, then hammer-forged to produce a diamond blade cross-sectioned without any sharpened edges. A stabbing weapon, it was designed not to cut, but to penetrate deeply.
“A fine weapon,” said Sebastian, running his thumb along the delicate floral scroll of acanthus leaves and flowers that decorated the handle. “Renaissance, perhaps?”
“I’d say so, yes. Italian.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the withered cadaver at their feet. “What I want to know is, what the hell was our gentleman in velvet and lace doing down in that crypt in the first place?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t alone.”
Chapter 8
After allowing his awed tiger a suitable amount of time to gape at the mummified corpse in Gibson’s dissection room, Sebastian drove to St. James’s Square, where a vast mansion known as London House served as both the London residence and the official chambers of the Bishop of London. A thick layer of straw had already been laid on the street outside of Number 32; the blinds were drawn at all the windows, and every opening had been hung with black crepe. When Sebastian rang the heavy iron bell, a sepulchral-looking servant ushered him into a darkened entry.
A hushed voice behind him said, “Lord Devlin, I take it?”
Sebastian turned to find a lean, flaxen-haired cleric regarding him from the doorway of the small chapel that lay just to the right of the entrance. “Yes.”
The cleric stepped forward in a waft of incense. “I am Dr. Simon Ashley, the Bishop’s chaplain. The Archbishop has asked me to render you whatever assistance is necessary to expedite your endeavors to make sense of this dreadful tragedy.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian.
The Chaplain laced his fingers together and bowed. Somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, he had a fine-boned, delicate face and the pale complexion of a man whose life was lived indoors. To the uninitiated, the position of chaplain might seem a lowly office. It was not. Bishop Prescott had once served as chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester, while the current Archbishop of Canterbury had been chaplain to the Bishop of Durham. Serving as a Bishop’s chaplain was an important step up the ecclesiastical ladder.
“I assume you’ll wish to begin with—” The Chaplain broke off, his thin nose twitching.
“It’s the crypt,” said Sebastian, letting his gaze drift around the entry with its gleaming marble floors, its soaring wall panels, its rows of heavy oils framed in gilt and hung with more black crepe. Yards and yards of black crepe. “I’m told the odor lingers.”
“Yes, well . . .” The Chaplain cleared his throat and ges tured with one hand toward the stairs. “The Bishop’s official chambers are this way. If you’ll come with me?”
Sebastian followed the black-robed man up the grand staircase, their footsteps echoing in the stillness of the vast house. “The Bishop was here yesterday?”
“Most of the day, yes,” said the Chaplain, pausing on the first floor to throw open the doors to a set of apartments to the left of the stairs. “He had a number of appointments. We weren’t scheduled to move to Lambeth Palace—the Bishop’s summer residence—for another fortnight.”
These rooms, like those below, were in shadow, the blinds drawn fast. But Sebastian’s eyes were unusually well adapted to the dark. Pausing just inside the entrance, he let his gaze wander over the wainscoted anteroom, its gilded, velvet-covered benches and unlit branches of wax candles in gleaming brass sconces. Beyond the anteroom lay a second, smaller chamber with a broad desk. Sebastian had taken two steps toward it when the Chaplain cleared his throat again.
“You’ll understand, of course, that ecclesiastical affairs are often of a, shall we say, delicate nature?”
Sebastian looked around. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, the Archbishop has delegated to me the task of going through the Bishop’s papers. I can assure you that if I find anything that appears relevant to his death, I will of course pass it on to you.”
“In other words, the Archbishop would rather I refrain from rifling through the Bishop’s drawers? Is that what y
ou’re saying?”
The Chaplain gave a nervous titter, but didn’t contradict him.
Sebastian wandered the rooms, his hands clasped behind his back. The Chaplain trailed at a distance of six or seven feet, a handkerchief pressed surreptitiously to his nose. But there was little enough for Sebastian to see. As an administrator, Prescott had obviously possessed a passion for neatness; the surface of his desk was clean and polished, every drawer carefully closed. If the Bishop had any skeletons in his life, he’d kept them tucked away, out of sight.
“What about the Bishop’s private apartments?” said Sebastian.
“They’re upstairs. This way.”
The Bishop’s private chambers on the second floor were more relaxed and informal, for it was here that Prescott had passed his leisure hours. A riding quirt and a pair of gloves rested beside a snuffbox on the gleaming surface of the inlaid round table at the center of the room, as if their owner had just stepped out and would return in a moment. Near the hearth, a book lay open across the arm of an overstuffed chair. Sebastian glanced at the title. The Libation Bearers, by Aeschylus.
He turned in a slow circle. Most of the walls not taken up with windows were covered by vast floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Running his gaze over the titles, he was surprised to see the works of Cicero and Aristotle, Plato and Seneca, nestled beside the more predictable volumes on Aquinas and Augustine.
“An interesting collection,” said Sebastian.
“The Bishop began his career as a classics scholar at Christ’s College, in Cambridge.”
“He had no family?”
“A nephew only. His wife passed away some eight or nine years ago. There were never any children.”
“Was he close to his nephew?”
“Very. Sir Peter was like a son to him.”
Sebastian swung around to look back at the Chaplain. “The Bishop’s nephew is Sir Peter Prescott?”