by C. S. Harris
Jarvis was very good at tidying up loose ends.
Jarvis might have owed his introduction to Court to his distant kinship to George III. But it was his incomparable intellect combined with the formidable strength of his will and his cunning that had made him indispensable first to the King, then to the Regent. The position of prime minister could have been his in an instant, had he wanted it. He did not want it, being content to leave the nominal governance of the country to men such as Spencer Perceval and the Earl of Hendon. None understood better than Jarvis the limitations of power politics. He found it far more satisfying—and lucrative—to exercise power from the shadows. There was no one more powerful in all of England than Jarvis. But then, there was no one in England more fiercely devoted to his King and his country. For the sake of England and the dynasty that ruled her, Jarvis would do anything.
A scratching at the door brought his head around. A pale-faced clerk bowed and said, “Colonel Bryce Epson-Smith to see you, my lord.”
“Send him in.”
Hat in hand, the Colonel advanced halfway into the room and sketched a low bow. “You wished to see me, sir?”
The Colonel was a tall man. Not quite as tall as Jarvis, but superbly muscled, with dark hair and gray eyes. A former cavalry officer, Epson-Smith had now served Jarvis for more than three years. Of all Jarvis’s agents, he was the most intelligent and the most ruthless.
Jarvis drew an enameled snuffbox from his pocket and opened it with one flick of his finger. “Last night, someone killed a half dozen whores at a house of refuge run by the Society of Friends near Covent Garden. I want you to find out who did it and kill them.”
A flicker of surprise passed across the Colonel’s normally impassive features. “The Regent has an interest in the incident?”
Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “It’s a personal matter.”
Colonel Epson-Smith inclined his head. “I’ll get on it right away, sir.”
“Discreetly, of course.”
“Of course.” Epson-Smith bowed again and withdrew.
Chapter 5
Long before he reached what was left of the Magdalene House in Covent Garden, Sebastian could smell the fetid odor of old smoke hanging heavy in the cool air.
The house had collapsed in on itself, leaving only a smoldering, burned-out husk of blackened bricks and charred timbers. Three men with dampened hides wrapped around their boots and cloths covering the lower part of their faces were carefully raking their way through the ruins. A small crowd of ragged women and children had gathered at a nearby corner to watch, their faces drawn and solemn. Even the baker’s boy was silent, his tray of cooling buns hanging forgotten from its band around his neck.
Sebastian spotted Paul Gibson crouched awkwardly beside a small body in a ripped, stained gown of yellow cotton. Six more bodies lay in a neat row along the footpath. Four of the bodies looked badly burned, their skin blistered and black, their faces charred beyond identification. But a couple of the women had obviously been sheltered by falling debris, their bodies battered and scorched but still recognizable.
Hunkering down beside his friend, Sebastian found himself staring at a young girl, her slim form relatively untouched by the fire. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, her face still full-cheeked and childlike, her cornsilk-fine fair hair fluttering gently in the smoke-tinged breeze. But what drew Sebastian’s attention, and held it, was the ripped and bloodied bodice of her simple muslin gown. “Could that have been done by a falling timber?” he asked.
Paul Gibson shook his head. “No. She was stabbed with a knife. There, in the side”—he pointed—“and several times here, in the chest.”
“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian softly. “She was right.”
“Who was right?” Gibson glanced up at him. “Did someone survive this?”
“So it would seem.” Sebastian nodded toward that long, silent row. “What about the others?”
His lips compressing into a thin line, Paul Gibson turned his head to follow Sebastian’s gaze. The Irishman had spent years as an army surgeon, dealing with all the unspeakable horrors of a battlefield’s carnage. He now taught at St. Thomas’s, in addition to keeping a small surgery near the Tower. But despite it all, Sebastian knew that any premature or violent death still troubled Gibson. It was why, late at night in the small, secluded building at the base of his unkempt garden, he could frequently be found exploring the mysteries of life and death with the help of a series of cadavers culled from the city’s untended church-yards. No one in London could read a dead body better than Paul Gibson.
“The others are much the same,” said Gibson. He lurched to his feet, stumbling slightly as his one remaining good leg took his weight; he’d lost the lower part of his other leg to a French cannonball. “Several are so badly burned it would be impossible to say how they died without a proper postmortem. But I’ve found at least one more that was stabbed, and another who had her throat slit.”
“Could any of them have been shot?”
“Actually, yes. The woman at the far end was definitely shot. How did you know?”
Sebastian stared at that distant blackened form. “Is she identifiable?”
“Maybe by her mother. Although I wouldn’t want her mother to have to remember her looking like this.” Gibson glanced around as a hoarse shout went up from one of the men working through the smoldering ruins. “Looks like they’ve found another one,” said Gibson. “That makes eight.”
Sebastian blew out a long, slow breath. “Jesus.” He watched as two men stumbled out of the ruins, a makeshift stretcher carried between them.
“This un ’ere’s in bad shape,” said one of the men as they eased their burden down on the footpath. “Please God it’s the last.”
Gibson hunkered down beside the charred, blackened form, but said, “This one’s so burned that even with a proper autopsy—”
“Get away from that body!”
Sebastian looked up to find a tall, bearlike gentleman in an exaggerated top hat and red-and-white-striped silk waistcoat descending upon them from a lumbering dray. Sir William Hadley, one of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, came puffing up to them, his jaw jutting forward like a man ready for a fight. “What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t you hear what I said? Get away from that body.”
Gibson pushed slowly to his feet. “I’m a surgeon.”
“A surgeon! Who gave you permission to examine these bodies? I’ve ordered no postmortem. And don’t try to tell me one of the families requested it, because I won’t believe it. Whores don’t have families . . . leastways, none that’ll acknowledge them.”
The Irishman’s dark brows drew together in a frown. “Nevertheless, a postmortem is called for, Sir William. These women were murdered.”
“Murdered?” The Bow Street magistrate let out a harsh laugh. “What are you talking about? This wasn’t murder. These women died in a fire. Someone left a candle too close to a curtain or let a hot ember fall from the hearth.”
“And how do you explain the stab wounds?”
“Stab wounds? What stab wounds?”
“At least two of these women were stabbed, while one had her throat—”
Sir William swiped his massive arm through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Enough of this. I will not have my office’s resources diverted to investigate the death of a bunch of strumpets. You think the good citizens of this city care if there are a half dozen or so fewer trollops walking the streets?”
Sebastian nodded toward the body of the fair-headed girl lying at the end of the row. “I think her mother might care.”
“If she had a mother who cared, she wouldn’t have become cash on the hoof.” Sir William paused a moment, his eyes narrowing as he studied Sebastian. “I know you. You’re Lord Hendon’s son.”
“That’s right.”
Hot color flooded the magistrate’s big, fleshy face. “This is none of your af
fair—you hear me? I don’t care if your father is Chancellor of the Exchequer. I won’t have you meddling in this investigation.”
Sebastian said, “I didn’t realize there was an investigation for me to meddle in.”
Sir William’s face was so dark now it looked purple. He thrust a meaty finger inches from Sebastian’s nose. “I’m warning you, my lord. Keep out of this or I’ll have you arrested—peer’s son or not.”
The magistrate stomped away to go bark orders at the men searching the ruins. Gibson stared after him. But Sebastian was more interested in the elegant town carriage drawing up at the corner, its liveried footman hastening to open the carriage door.
“Who’s that?” said Gibson, following his friend’s gaze.
A tall gentlewoman in a smart pelisse had appeared in the open doorway, the ostrich plume in her hat waving in the cool breeze as she waited for the footman to let down the steps.
“That,” said Sebastian, “is Miss Hero Jarvis.”
“Lord Jarvis’s daughter? Why is she here?”
“She’s the woman who survived the fire.”
“Miss Jarvis? What in God’s name was she doing at the Magdalene House?”
“Research,” said Sebastian, and went to hand the lady down from her carriage.
Chapter 6
“I expected I might find you here,” said Miss Jarvis. She accepted Sebastian’s assistance down, then released his hand immediately and took a step back. Within the shadowy interior of her carriage, he could see a maid waiting primly with hands clasped before her.
“That is Paul Gibson, is it not?” said Miss Jarvis, gazing beyond him to where Gibson stood beside the curricle talking to a glowering Tom. “The surgeon?”
“You know him?”
“I attended several of his lectures at St. Thomas’s—on the circulatory system, and on human musculature.”
It was the last thing Sebastian would have expected her to have done, but he kept the thought to himself.
“Frankly,” she said, “I’m surprised to see him here. I didn’t think Sir William planned to order autopsies.”
“He hasn’t. Gibson’s here because he’s a friend of mine.”
She glanced up at him. “And has he discovered anything?”
“He says the women were murdered. Most were stabbed, although he thinks at least one was shot.”
She opened her parasol and raised it against the feeble sun. “You doubted me, did you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, as if she had expected as much. In the street before the house, Sir William was now busy supervising the loading of that sad row of charred bodies into the back of the dray. She watched him for a moment, then said, “Has Dr. Gibson’s opinion prompted Sir William to order the women autopsied?”
“No. I suspect we can thank your father for that.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it would have happened, even without my father’s interference. Sir William’s attitude toward prostitutes is well-known. Last month, a costermonger came before the magistrates for beating a woman to death in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Sir William let the man go with only a warning.”
Sebastian studied her clear-skinned face. “Why are you here, Miss Jarvis?”
The breeze fluttered her hair across her face, but she pushed it back without a hint of artifice. “I’ve been talking to the Society of Friends. It seems a gentleman by the name of Joshua Walden was at the Magdalene House the night Rose first sought refuge with them. He lives in Hans Town. I thought he might be able to tell us more about her.”
“ ‘Us’?” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I was under the impression this was your investigation, Miss Jarvis. That my role was that of an adviser only and was rapidly coming to a conclusion.”
She tilted her head back, one hand coming up to hold her hat as she stared up at the crumbling, smoke-darkened walls of the Magdalene House. Something quivered across her face, a breath of painful emotion that was there and then gone. “That was mere subterfuge and you know it. I want to find out who killed these women, Lord Devlin, and why, and I am not too vain to acknowledge that you are far more experienced in such matters than I. I was hoping that if you looked into the incident, even briefly, it would catch your interest.”
When he made no response, she said, “Do you believe in justice?”
“As an abstract concept, yes. Although I fear there is little true justice in this world.”
She nodded toward the blackened ruins of the Magdalene House. “In life, our society failed Rose—failed all these women. I don’t want to fail them, in death.”
“You are not responsible for society.”
“Yes, I am. We all are, each in our own small way.” She turned to fix him with a direct gaze. “Will you come with me to Hans Town?”
He started to say no. But as he looked into her fierce gray eyes, he realized that a part of her actually wanted him to say no, because it would give her an excuse to walk away from all of this, away from the fear and the horror that was that night.
Turning, he watched the workmen swing the body of the young fair-headed girl into the back of the dray. And in that moment, he wasn’t thinking about Lord Jarvis, or Hero Jarvis. He was thinking about the life that child would never live, and the men who had taken it from her.
And so he surprised both himself and Hero Jarvis by saying, “Yes.”
Chapter 7
Joshua Walden’s home in Hans Town proved to be a modest house of red brick, with neatly painted white shutters, a shiny black door, and window boxes filled with well-tended masses of dianthus and saxifrage.
A tall, almost cadaverously thin man in his late forties or early fifties with a thick head of graying brown hair, he received them in a plainly furnished parlor. “I am honored by this visit, Hero Jarvis,” he said, inviting them to sit. “Honored. I read thine article on the high rate of mortality amongst children sold by the parish as climbing boys to chimney sweeps. Fascinating work.”
“Why, thank you,” said Miss Jarvis, giving the Quaker a smile so wide it made Sebastian blink. “Although I must confess the methodology used was not my own.”
From his seat beside the empty hearth, Sebastian listened, bemused, while Miss Jarvis worked, deliberately and adroitly, to insinuate herself in their host’s good graces. The two crusaders rattled on at length about everything from laying-in hospitals to poor laws. Only gradually did she bring the conversation around, artfully, to the reason for their visit.
“I understand you were at the Magdalene House the night Rose Jones sought refuge there,” she said.
“Yes. It was the third night.”
“The third night?” said Sebastian.
Walden smiled. “What thou would call Wednesday. I remember it because the weather was dreadful—the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was quite cold. We haven’t been having much of a spring, have we? The poor women were soaked through and dangerously chilled.”
Sebastian sat forward. “Women?”
“Yes. There were two of them. I don’t recall the other one’s name. Helen, or Hannah . . . something like that. She didn’t stay long, I’m afraid. Our rules are not harsh but they are firm. We’ve discovered that some of the women who come to us don’t really wish to leave the life. I’m afraid Helen, or Hannah, or whoever she was, fell into that category. She was frightened the night she came, but that soon wore off. She left after only a day or two.”
Miss Jarvis nodded, neither embarrassed nor shocked by the nature of the conversation. “You say she was frightened?”
“Oh, yes. They both were. It’s not unusual. Many of the women who come to us are fleeing dreadful situations—virtual slavery, you know. The brutes who keep them have either forced them to sign papers the poor simpletons believe are binding, or have contrived to reduce them to a state of hopeless indebtedness, even renting them the very clothes on their backs so that by fleeing they open themselves up to charges of theft.”
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br /> “Did she give you any idea what kind of situation she’d fled?” Sebastian asked.
“We generally don’t inquire too closely into such details. But from one or two things Hannah—yes, that was the other girl’s name. Hannah, not Helen. At any rate, from one or two things she let slip, Margaret Crowley received the impression the women had been at a residential brothel.” He paused, his thin chest rising on a sigh. “Margaret Crowley was the matron at the Magdalene House, you know.”