by C. S. Harris
Some five and a half feet high and perhaps four feet wide, the cupboard had a row of hooks that ran across the top. One of these hooks had been thrust through the back of the Reverend’s collar so that his body hung there, head squashed to one side. Sebastian found the effect disconcertingly similar to a side of beef hung up for display in a butcher shop.
“I thought it best to leave him like that till you got here,” said the Squire, wiping one hand across his lower face. “So’s you could see it yourself.”
“Yes . . . well . . . we’ve seen it.” Lovejoy took another step back, holding his candlestick more carefully. “Pray, take him down now.”
Pyle nodded to his constable, a big, burly man in a leather waistcoat, who hefted the Reverend’s body off its hook. Rigid with rigor mortis, the corpse thumped awkwardly against a nearby bench before crashing to the floor.
“Sorry,” mumbled the constable.
Lovejoy dabbed at his lips with a wadded-up handkerchief and swallowed.
Sebastian said, “Any indication as to how he was killed?”
Pyle jerked his chin toward the Reverend’s bloodstained waistcoat. “There’s a neat slice in his waistcoat and shirt, just above his heart. I’d say he was stabbed. But then, I’m no doctor.”
Lovejoy tucked away his handkerchief. “We’ll have the corpse conveyed to Paul Gibson, at Tower Hill, for a full postmortem.”
Pyle nodded to his constable. “Aye. I’ll get the lads on it right away.”
Sebastian glanced around the vestry. “A wound like that would have bled significantly. Any traces of blood elsewhere in the church?”
“The cleaning lady found a bit near the altar. Looks as if somebody took the trouble to try to clean it up, which is why we didn’t notice it sooner. You can see something of a trail from there to the vestry, although it was pretty much wiped up, too.”
“Show us,” said Lovejoy.
Lovejoy studied the smeared stains near the altar, his head bent, his hands clasped behind his back as he followed the smudges back to the vestry. Then he walked outside to stand beneath the aged porch and draw the cool air of the night deep into his lungs.
“Why hang up the Reverend’s corpse in his own vestry cupboard?” he asked when Sebastian walked up behind him.
Sebastian stared out over the shadowy churchyard, with its pale, tumbled tombstones glowing faintly beneath the darkened canopy of oaks that shifted in the growing wind. “To delay discovery, one presumes.”
“Yes, I suppose.” Lovejoy was silent a moment, huddled deep in his coat, lost in his own thoughts. The wind gusted up even stronger, banging a shutter someplace in the night. He shivered, and turned toward where Tom walked the chestnuts. “And people claim London is a dangerous place.”
By the time they dropped the magistrate at his house on Russell Square, the wind had grown increasingly violent, churning the heavy clouds overhead and bringing with it the smell of coming rain.
“Out with it,” Sebastian said to his tiger as the tired chestnuts turned toward Brook Street.
Tom made his eyes go round with innocence. “Gov’nor?”
“You’ve been looking smug ever since we left Tanfield Hill. What have you discovered?”
Tom grinned. “While you and Sir ’Enry was in the church, I got to talkin’ to one of the ostlers at the Dog ’n’ Duck.”
“The what?”
“The Dog ’n’ Duck. It’s the inn down by the millstream.”
“Ah. Go on.”
“This ostler—’is name is Jeb, by the way: Jeb Cooper. Anyway, it seems ’e was a groom in the stables at the Grange thirty years ago.”
Sebastian swung onto Bond Street. The footpaths and pavement were eerily dark and empty, the unpleasant wind having driven most of the city’s inhabitants indoors. “You mean when Sir Nigel was still alive?”
“Aye.” A gust snatched at Tom’s hat, and he smashed it down on his head with his free hand. “ ’ E remembers the night Sir Peter’s da disappeared weery well. Weery well, indeed. Says there were strange goings-on at the Grange that night. Weery strange.”
“How’s that?”
“ ’ E says Sir Nigel didn’t jist ride into town that night. Says ’e took off in a ’igh dudgeon. That’s why nobody thought much about it when ’e dinna come back. Not till the next day, when ’is ’orse was found wanderin’ on the ’eath.”
Sebastian blew out a long breath. “Why is it,” he said, drawing up in front of his house on Brook Street, “that every time I begin to think I’m getting a handle on the events surrounding this murder, I suddenly discover I really don’t know what’s going on at all?”
The street was unnaturally dark, the wind having blown out a good half of the tall oil lamps that marched in a line up the block. But thanks to Morey’s vigilance, the two lamps bracketing Sebastian’s front door still burned brightly, casting a pool of light over the short flight of steps and the pavement before it.
“Give ’em a good rubdown,” said Sebastian, handing the tiger the reins. “I’ll drive the grays tomorrow.”
Tom scrambled into the seat. “Ye’ll be goin’ back out to Tanfield ’Ill?”
“Sounds as if I need to have a conversation with this ost—” Sebastian broke off, his head turning as the booming discharge of a long gun crackled through the night.
Chapter 26
With a startled cry, Tom started up, half spinning around in the seat.
“Bloody hell.” Grabbing the boy, Sebastian dragged him off the exposed high perch and into the inadequate shadows cast by the delicate carriage.
The rifle crackled again. Heads tossing, the chestnuts whinnied in terror, their hooves clattering on the cobbles as they sidled nervously. Sebastian was hideously conscious of the boy’s head lolling against his shoulder, could feel the slick wetness of blood on his hands. “Tom,” he whispered. “Tom!”
The boy let out a low moan, just as the gun boomed once more. Sebastian caught his breath. A third shot?
He scanned the dark, empty street before them, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the shadow of a man crouched in the area steps of a house some three doors down.
“Morey!” Sebastian bellowed.
Sebastian’s front door crashed open, spilling a flood of golden light down the steps. The majordomo charged out, blunderbuss in hand. “Where are they?” demanded the former gunnery sergeant. “I’ll get ’em, Captain.”
Sebastian yanked the majordomo down into the shadows and snatched the blunderbuss. “Here. Take care of the boy.”
Already, Sebastian could hear the sound of running feet, disappearing fast. “Bloody hell.”
Pushing up, he sprinted down the darkened street, blunderbuss in hand. A good three-quarters of a block ahead of him, a cloaked figure with a hat pulled low darted toward the corner.
“Watch!” bellowed Sebastian. “Watch, I say!” As the figure reached the corner, Sebastian paused to raise Morey’s blunderbuss and fire.
But the short-barreled, stocky muzzle loader was designed to do maximum damage at minimum range. The heavy shot blew a chunk out of one of the corner stones of the end house. The running figure veered out of sight.
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, and ran on.
He heard the creak of saddle leather, the clatter of hooves on cobbles. Bursting around the corner onto Davies Street, he saw the flick of a horse’s tail disappearing into the night.
He expelled a long, frustrated breath. “Son of a bitch.”
Fist tightening around the stock of the empty blunderbuss, he swung back toward Brook Street. He was passing a house halfway down the block when he saw the gleam of a metal gun barrel lying near the service door at the base of the house’s area steps. Running lightly down to the darkened service area, he picked up the long, elegant rifle abandoned by his would-be assassin.
Sebastian stood in the doorway of his best guest bedchamber, his gaze on the small, dark-haired boy sleeping beneath the covers. “How bad is it?”
Pa
ul Gibson collected his instruments in his bag and straightened. “Barring any serious infection, he should be fine. I was able to extract the bullet from his shoulder without doing serious damage to either bone or sinew. I suspect he fainted from shock as much as anything. He was certainly hollering lust ily enough while I was trying to sew him up. I’ve dressed the wound with some basilicum powder, and given him a couple drops of laudanum to help him sleep.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the boy’s pale face. “That bullet was meant for me.”
Gibson clapped Sebastian on the shoulder. “Come. I could use a drink and so could you. The boy’ll be fine.”
“So who do you think it was?” said Gibson, lounging in one of the leather chairs in Sebastian’s library. “Obadiah?”
“Perhaps.” Sebastian splashed generous measures of brandy into two glasses and handed one to his friend. “Perhaps not. I keep thinking of Reverend Earnshaw, hanging in his own vestment locker like a side of beef.”
“What’s to say that wasn’t Obadiah’s work, as well?”
“It’s certainly possible.” Picking up the rifle, Sebastian held it out. “Ever see a butcher carry a weapon like this?”
“What the devil is it?” asked Gibson, studying the rifle’s strange screw mechanism.
“It’s a Ferguson breech-loading rifle.”
“A breech-loading rifle?”
Sebastian nodded. “The problem with rifles has always been that they’re so damn slow to load. That, plus they can’t be fitted with bayonets.” He turned the screw handle to open the breech. “This mechanism got around both those problems. I’ve heard it said that a man who knows what he’s doing can fire six rounds a minute and hit a target up to two hundred yards away with this gun.”
“Six rounds a minute? You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”
Sebastian pointed to the clogged screw mechanism. “The problem is, the breech threads have a nasty habit of clogging up around the third shot. It’s one of the reasons the Army never adopted the Ferguson. They’re quite rare.”
Gibson ran a hand over the weapon’s well-oiled stock. “I suppose Obadiah could have lifted it from some dead officer in the field and brought it back from the Peninsula with him.”
“He could have,” said Sebastian, going to stand beside the window overlooking the darkened street.
Gibson cleared his throat. “Is it wise, do you think, to expose yourself at the window in that way?”
Sebastian swung to face him. “What would you have me do? Hide in the house?”
“No. But . . . just draw the drapes, would you?”
Sebastian drained his glass with a laugh and stepped away from the window. “Did you get a chance to look at Earnshaw’s body?”
Gibson shook his head. “The constable from Tanfield Hill was still drinking a tankard of ale in my kitchen when your footman arrived with news that Tom had been shot. I’ll start on your Reverend first thing in the morning.”
Sebastian went to pour himself another drink. “I’ll be surprised if his body has much to tell us.”
“The Constable said something about a stab wound?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
Gibson finished his own brandy in one long pull. “Just like Sir Nigel Prescott.”
“Yes. Only this one wasn’t stabbed in the back.” Sebastian raised the carafe of brandy in a silent inquiry.
“No more for me, thanks,” said the surgeon, pushing to his feet. “You’ll be riding out to Tanfield Hill again in the morning?”
“Yes.”
Gibson nodded. He turned toward the door, then paused to look back and say, “Just be careful, Devlin.”
Chapter 27
SUNDAY, 12 JULY 1812
The next morning dawned heavily overcast and blustery, with an unseasonably chill north wind that whistled in the chimneys and sent trash scuttling down the city streets.
Before leaving the house, Sebastian checked on Tom and found the boy sitting up in bed, pink-cheeked and cranky.
“ ’Tain’t nothin’ but a scratch,” he said. “If’n Morey’ll let me ’ave me breeches—”
Sebastian touched the boy’s forehead and found him hot. “You’re not going anywhere, and that’s an order.”
“But the grays don’t like Giles—”
“I’m not taking the curricle. I’ll be riding out to Tanfield Hill on Leila. Alone.” Sebastian had no intention of getting another groom shot. “And you are staying in bed until Gibson says otherwise.”
“But—”
“No buts.” It was said in the officer’s voice that had once quelled the rebellious murmurings of a battle-hardened regiment.
Tom flushed scarlet and hung his head. “Aye, my lord.”
Beneath the sullen, wind-tossed sky, the village of Tanfield Hill lay unnaturally quiet and somber. As Sebastian trotted his Arab up the high street, a woman with a dark shawl drawn over her head threw him a quick, anxious glance, her hand tightening its grip on the child beside her. Sebastian supposed having two clerics murdered in your church in less than a week might tend to make the locals nervous.
He found the Dog and Duck nestled in a curve of the millstream, just beyond the churchyard. A plain-fronted, two-story brick building dating back to the early eighteenth century, it had a cobbled rear courtyard sheltered on two sides by the attached livery and carriage house.
“Aye,” said Jeb Cooper, happy to talk while he worked rubbing down the Arab just inside the livery’s wide doors. “Time was, I was groom to Sir Nigel Prescott himself.” A slim, wiry man somewhere in his late forties or fifties, just below average height, the ostler had a head of thick, short gray curls and a bony face shadowed by several days’ growth of beard.
“I ain’t surprised to hear he was lyin’ dead all these years,” said the ostler. “I figured somethin’ bad musta happened to him, when they found Lady Jane.”
Sebastian frowned, not understanding. “Lady Jane?”
“Sir Nigel’s mare. Dapple gray, with four white stockings. The sweetest-goin’ thing you ever did see. Trained her hisself, he did.”
Sebastian propped his shoulders against the whitewashed wall, his arms crossed at his chest. “The mare was found running loose on the heath the next day?”
“That’s right. The next mornin’.”
“Did you think at the time Sir Nigel might have been set upon by highwaymen?”
The ostler looked at Sebastian over the mare’s back. “Me? Nah. I never believed it for a minute.”
“Why not?”
“Couldn’t see Lady Jane boltin’ and leavin’ Sir Nigel. That horse was his baby. If he were hurt, she would’nta left him.”
Sebastian studied the groom’s rawboned, grizzled features and wondered if the man would have said the same thing a week ago, before the Baronet’s mummified corpse had been discovered in the crypt of St. Margaret’s. He said, “How long were you at Prescott Grange?”
“Near ten years.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Jeb rubbed the side of his nose with one finger and winked. “I run into a spot o’ trouble with one o’ the housemaids, if ye know what I mean? Lady Prescott herself asked me t’ leave. But then, she’d had it in for me, ever since that night.”
Sebastian frowned, not understanding. “You mean the night Sir Nigel disappeared?”
“That’s right.” The ostler sniffed. “Big row they had, up at the house. Jist afore dinner.”
“An argument? Between whom?”
“Why, Sir Nigel and Lady Prescott, of course.”
“Did they quarrel often?”
Jeb paused to consider it. “Well, Sir Nigel had the devil of a temper. He was always shoutin’ at somebody or t’other. But her ladyship didn’t often stand up to him.”
“Yet she did that night?”
“Aye. I could hear her pleadin’ with him when he slammed out o’ the house callin’ for his horse.” Jeb raised his voice into a falsetto and opened his eyes ridiculous
ly wide. “ ‘Please don’t do this!’ ”
Sebastian frowned. “Please don’t do what?”
The ostler’s voice returned to its normal pitch. “Leave, I suppose.”
“But Sir Nigel left anyway? Despite her ladyship’s pleadings?”
“Aye. I saddled Lady Jane for him, and he rode off toward London.”
Sebastian stared out the open stable door, at the millstream flowing sluggishly past. The village of Tanfield Hill lay on the lane between the Grange and the main road to London. He said, “Did Sir Nigel actually tell you he was bound for London?”
Jeb Cooper screwed up his mouth with the effort of thought. “Can’t rightly say, now, after all these years.”
“You don’t have any idea what Sir Nigel’s quarrel with her ladyship was about?”
Jeb shook his head. “That I couldna say. But Bessie could maybe tell ye.”
“Bessie?”
“Bessie Dunlop. Her ladyship’s old nurse—and Sir Peter’s, when he come along. Most folks’ll tell ye she’s a witch.” He paused, a strange, faraway look coming into his eyes. “I’m not telling ye she ain’t a witch, mind ye. I’m jist sayin’, there ain’t much Bessie misses. Course, whether she’ll be willin’ t’tell ye everythin’ she knows, now, that’s somethin’ else agin.”
“Where might I find this Bessie Dunlop?”
“She lives on up the millstream. Maybe half a mile. A place called Briar Cottage.”
Sebastian straightened. “Thank you,” he said, pressing a guinea into the ostler’s hand. “You’ve been most helpful.”
He was in the yard, tightening the girth on the Arab’s saddle, when Jeb Cooper came up to him. “There’s one other thing was queer about that night I was thinkin’ ye might want to know about.”