by C. S. Harris
“According to his staff, he went out around nine. His house isn’t far from here—just off Hans Place. I’m told he was a widower with two grown children—a son in Jamaica and an unmarried daughter. Unfortunately, the daughter spent the evening with friends and has no knowledge of her father’s plans for the night.”
Sebastian let his gaze drift over the darkened, grassy banks of the nearby stream. “I wonder what the devil he was doing here. Somehow I find it doubtful he was looking for a warm hayloft.”
“I shouldn’t think so, no,” said Sir Henry, clearing his throat uncomfortably.
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “You’ll be sending the body to Gibson?” he asked. A one-legged Irish surgeon with a dangerous opium addiction, Paul Gibson could read the secrets of a dead body better than anyone else in England.
Sir Henry nodded. “I doubt he’ll be able to tell us anything beyond the obvious, but I suppose we ought to have him take a look.”
Sebastian brought his gaze, again, to the head on the bridge, the puddle of blood beneath it congealed in the cold. “Why cut off his head?” he said, half to himself. “Why display it on the bridge?” It had been the practice, once, to mount the heads of traitors on spikes set atop London Bridge. But that barbarity had been abandoned nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.
“As a warning, perhaps?” suggested Sir Henry.
“To whom?”
The magistrate shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“It takes a powerful hatred—or rage—to drive most people to mutilate the body of another human being.”
“Rage, or madness,” said Sir Henry.
“True.”
Sebastian went to study the ground near the bridge’s old brick footings. He carried no torch, but then, he didn’t need one, for there was an animal-like acuity to his eyesight and hearing that enabled him to see great distances and in the dark, and to distinguish sounds he’d come to realize were inaudible to most of his fellow men.
“What is it?” asked Sir Henry as Sebastian slid down to the water’s edge and bent to pick up an object perhaps a foot and a half in length and three or four inches wide, but very thin.
“It appears to be an old metal strap of some sort,” said Sebastian, turning it over in his hands. “Probably lead. It’s been freshly cut at both ends, and there’s an inscription. It says—” He broke off.
“What? What does it say?”
He looked up. “It says, ‘King Charles, 1648.’”
“Merciful heavens,” whispered Sir Henry.
Every English schoolboy knew the story of King Charles I, grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots. Put on trial by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan cohorts, he was beheaded on 30 January 1649. Only, because the old-style calendar reckoned the new year as beginning on 25 March rather than the first of January, chroniclers of the time recorded the execution date as 1648.
“Perhaps it’s unrelated to the murder,” said Sir Henry. “Who knows how long it’s been here?”
“The top surface is dry, so it must have been dropped since the rain let up.”
“But . . . what could a man like Stanley Preston possibly have to do with Charles I?”
“Aside from sharing the manner of his death, you mean?” said Sebastian.
The magistrate tightened his lips in a way that whitened the flesh beside his suddenly pinched nostrils. “There is that.”
A church bell began to toll somewhere in the distance, then another. The mist was beginning to creep up from the river, cold and clammy; Sebastian watched as Sir Henry stared off down the lane to where the oil lamps of Sloane Square now showed as only a murky glow.
“It’s frightening to think that the man who did this is out there right now,” said the magistrate. “Living amongst us.”
And he could do it again.
Neither Sir Henry nor Sebastian said it. But the words were there, carried on the cold, wild wind.
Chapter 5
T he smell of freshly spilled blood had spooked the horses so that Sebastian had his hands full as he turned the curricle toward home.
“Is that really an ’ead on the bridge?” Tom asked as they swung into Sloane Street. “A man’s ’ead?”
“It is.”
The tiger let out his breath in a rush of ghoulish excitement. “Gor.”
Small and sharp faced, the boy had been with Sebastian for more than two years now. Not even Tom knew his exact age or his last name. He’d been living alone on the streets when he’d tried to pick Sebastian’s pocket—and ended up saving Sebastian’s life.
More than once.
Sebastian said, “It belongs—or I suppose I should say belonged—to a Mr. Stanley Preston.”
Tom must have caught the inflection in Sebastian’s voice, because he said, “I take it ye didn’t much care for the cove?”
“I barely knew him, actually. Although I must admit I have difficulties with men whose wealth comes from sugar plantations in the West Indies.”
“Because they grow sugar?”
“Because their plantations are worked not by tenants, but by slaves—mostly Africans, although they also use transported Irish and Scottish rebels.”
They bowled along in silence until they’d passed the Hyde Park Turnpike and were weaving their way through the quiet, rain-drenched streets of Mayfair. Then Tom said suddenly, “If ye didn’t like ’im, then why ye care that somebody offed ’im?”
“Because even those who own West Indies plantations don’t deserve to be brutally murdered. Apart from which, I find the idea of sharing my city with someone who goes around cutting off the heads of his enemies somewhat disconcerting.”
“Discon-what?”
“Disconcerting. It makes me feel . . . uncomfortable.”
“I reckon it was a Frenchman,” said Tom, who had a profound suspicion of foreigners in general and the French in particular. “They’re always cuttin’ off folks’ ’eads.”
“An interesting theory that certainly merits consideration.” Sebastian drew up before the front steps of his Brook Street town house. The oil lamps mounted on either side of the door cast a soft pool of golden light across the wet paving, but the house itself was dark and quiet, its inhabitants still sleeping. “Take care of the horses, then go to bed and stay there. It’s nearly dawn.”
Tom scrambled forward to take the reins as Sebastian dropped lightly to the pavement. “Ye gonna ’ave a lie-in?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t reckon I will,” said Tom, his chin jutting forward mulishly.
Sebastian grunted. The lad’s grasp of the concept of obedience was still rather shaky.
He watched Tom drive off toward the mews, then turned to enter the house. Moving quietly, he stripped off his clothes in the dressing room and slipped into bed beside Hero. He didn’t want to wake her. But the need to feel her warm, vital body against his was too strong. He carefully slid one arm around her waist and pressed his chest against the long line of her back.
Her hand came up to rest on his, and in the darkness he saw her lips curve into a soft smile as she shifted so she could look at him over her shoulder. “You were a long time,” she said. “Was it as bad as Sir Henry’s message led you to expect?”
“Worse.” He buried his face in the dark, fragrant fall of her hair. “Go back to sleep.”
“Can you sleep?”
“In a while.”
“I can help,” she said huskily, her hand sliding low over his naked hip, his breath catching in his throat as she turned in his arms and covered his mouth with hers.
He came downstairs the next morning to find Hero in the entryway wearing a hunter green pelisse and velvet hat with three plums. She was pulling on a pair of soft kid gloves but paused when she looked up and saw him.
“Well, good morning,” she said, her eyes gently s
miling at him. “I didn’t expect to see you up this early.”
“It’s not early.”
She shifted to adjust her hat in the looking glass over the console. “It is when you’ve been up most of the night.”
She was an extraordinarily tall woman, nearly as tall as Sebastian, with hair of a rich medium brown and fine gray eyes that sparkled with an intelligence of almost frightening intensity. She had the kind of looks more often described as handsome than pretty, with a strong chin, a wide mouth, and an aquiline nose she had inherited from her father, Lord Jarvis, a distant cousin of the mad old King George and the real power behind the Prince of Wales’s fragile regency. Once, Jarvis had tried to have Sebastian killed—and undoubtedly still would, if he found it expedient.
“Another interview?” he asked, watching her tilt her hat just so. “What is it this time? Dustmen? Chimney sweeps? Flower girls?”
“Costermongers.”
“Ah.”
She was writing a series of articles on London’s working poor that she intended to eventually gather together into a book. It was a project that disgusted her father, both because he considered such activities unsuitable for a female, and because the entire undertaking smacked of the kind of radicalism he abhorred. But then, Hero had never allowed her father’s expectations or prejudices to constrain her.
She said, “Stanley Preston’s murder is in all the morning papers. Was he truly decapitated?”
“He was.”
She pivoted slowly to face him again, her eyes wide and still.
He said, “Do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like you to see.”
“Of course.” Slipping off her pelisse, she followed him into the library, where he’d left the ancient metal strap on his desk.
“I found this not far from Preston’s body.” He handed her the length of lead and gave her a brief description of the scene at the bridge.
“‘King Charles, 1648,’” she read, then looked up at him. “I don’t understand. What is it?”
“I could be wrong, but I’ve seen strips of metal like this before, wrapped around old coffins.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting this came from the coffin of Charles I?”
“I don’t know. But it’s telling the inscription reads, ‘King Charles’ rather than ‘Charles I,’ and 1648 rather than 1649. Where exactly is Charles I buried? I’ve realized I have no idea.”
“No one does. After the execution, there was talk of interring him in Westminster Abbey. But Cromwell refused to allow it, so the King’s men took the body away at night and buried it in secret. There are conflicting reports about what they did with him. I’ve heard speculation he may be somewhere in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. But no one knows for certain.” She frowned. “What were Preston’s politics?”
“I’d be surprised if he nourished any secret nostalgia for the Stuarts, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She ran her fingertips over the scrolled engraving, her features composed but thoughtful. “Do you mind if I show it to Jarvis?” she asked, reaching for her pelisse again.
“He’s not going to like my involving you in another murder investigation.”
“Don’t worry,” she said as Sebastian took the pelisse from her hands to help her with it. “I seriously doubt he could dislike you more than he already does.”
He laughed at that. Then he turned her in his arms, his hands lingering on her shoulders, his laughter stilling.
“What?” she asked, watching him.
“Just that . . . whoever killed Stanley Preston was either driven by a rage bordering on madness, or he is mad. And of the two, I’m not certain which makes him more dangerous.”
“Madness is always frightening, I suppose because it is so incomprehensible. Yet I think I’d fear more the man who is brutal but sane, and therefore capable of shrewd, cold calculation.”
“Because he’s clever?”
“That, and because he’s less likely to make mistakes.”
Chapter 6
S ebastian ordered his curricle brought round and came out of the house half an hour later to find Tom walking the grays up and down Brook Street. It had rained again sometime in the early morning hours, leaving the pavement wet, with dull, heavy clouds that pressed down on the city’s crowded rooftops and soaring chimneys. The horses’ breath showed white in the cold.
“If you fall asleep and tumble off your perch,” said Sebastian, taking the reins, “I won’t stop and pick you up.”
But Tom simply laughed and scrambled back to his place.
They headed south, curling around the edge of Hyde Park, where faint wisps of mist still drifted through the trees and the distant clumps of shrubs were no more than blurred shadows.
There’d been a time not so long ago when Knightsbridge and Hans Town were sleepy, pleasant villages lying several miles beyond the sprawl of London. Now, neat terrace houses of three and five stories—plus basements and attics—lined spacious squares and a broad thoroughfare called Sloane Street that stretched from Knightsbridge down toward Chelsea and the Thames. This was a district favored by prosperous barristers, physicians, and bankers, with a scattering of respectable lodging houses and workshops and a few more modest but comfortable homes for tradesmen.
Reluctant to disturb Preston’s grieving daughter so early in the day, Sebastian went instead to the Rose and Crown. A well-tended inn built of brick in the last years of the eighteenth century, it had a freshly whitewashed arch leading to a bustling yard and a public room that smelled of bacon and wood smoke and hearty ale. A buxom, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of perhaps sixteen was wiping the tables when Sebastian walked in.
“You’re Molly?” he asked.
She turned, a smile lighting up her pretty face as she let her gaze rove over him in frank assessment. “I am. Who’re you?”
“Devlin. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions about last night?”
The smile disappeared and she retreated behind the gleaming oak counter that stretched along one wall. “What you want t’ know fer? You don’t look like no beak t’ me.”
“I’m not.” He laid a coin on the counter between them, the metal clicking softly against the polished wood. “I’m told you recognized Mr. Preston last night. Did he come here often?”
Her hand flashed out, and the coin disappeared. “Sometimes. Though he mostly favored the Monster.”
“The Monster?”
She jerked her head toward the west. “It’s just off Sloane Street.” She wrinkled her little button of a nose. “The place is so old you have t’ walk down a couple of steps to get in the front door.”
Sebastian let his gaze wander around the taproom, with its neat round tables and straight-backed chairs and gleaming wainscoting. “Did Mr. Preston come in here last night?”
“Nah. Ain’t seen him for a fortnight or more.”
“When he would come in, what did he drink?”
“Ale, mostly. But he weren’t no lush, if that’s what you’re askin’. Usually, he’d just pop in for a quick pint of an evenin’, then leave.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to her pretty, expressive face. “I understand you’re the one who told the magistrate what you’d found at the bridge. But someone else was with you, wasn’t he? Someone from the stables?”
“Cian O’Neal.” Her voice dripped scorn. “Took one look at that head sittin’ up there and started screamin’ like he weren’t never gonna stop. When I said, ‘We gotta go tell Sir Thomas,’ he took t’ shakin’ all over, and his eyes got so big I thought they was gonna pop right out of his head. I grabbed hold of his arm, but he jerked away and run off. Never even looked back.”
“Did you see anyone else near the bridge?”
She stared at him. “What’re you thinkin’? That there was two heads there?”
; “I was wondering if you might have seen someone running away as you walked up the lane.”
“No. I remember laughin’ at Cian because it was so dark and quiet, he was scared even before we seen the head.”
“Can you think of any reason for Mr. Preston to have been at the bridge at that time of night?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Never thought about that, but . . . Well, no. Truth is, most folks around here tend t’ avoid Bloody Bridge after dark.”
“Bloody Bridge?”
“That’s what it’s called, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
She sniffed, nearly as contemptuous of his ignorance as she was of poor Cian O’Neal’s terror. “Folks say it’s haunted by those who’ve died there over the years.”
“Yet you weren’t afraid to go there,” said Sebastian.
She shrugged. “It’s the quickest way t’ get t’ Five Fields, ain’t it?”
“And why would you want to go to Five Fields at night?”
She gave him an impish smile and raised her eyebrows in a knowing look. “I won’t be goin’ there with Cian again, that’s fer sure.”
“Tell me, what did you think of Mr. Preston?”
She shrugged. “He never give me no trouble, the way some of ’em do, if that’s what yer askin’.”
“Have you heard anyone speculating about what they think might have happened to him?”
“Most folks’re sayin’ footpads must’ve done it, which just goes t’ show what they know.”
“What makes you so certain it wasn’t footpads?”
She lifted her chin. “Why, I could see his pocket watch, couldn’t I? Danglin’ from its chain like he was just checkin’ the time. Ain’t no footpad gonna go t’ all the trouble of cuttin’ off a feller’s head and then leave his watch like that.”
“Mr. Preston’s greatcoat was unbuttoned when you saw him?”