Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  He’d been expecting something similar to Basil Thistlewood’s eclectic collection of rare treasures mixed indiscriminately with the curious or merely odd. But this was more like a thieves’ den from a child’s fable, with exquisitely painted porcelain vases, snuffboxes with intricate filigreed lids, willowy Chinese maidens carved from ivory, gilded saints’ images, even a life-sized winged horse of glistening white marble.

  He turned in a slow circle, trying to take it all in. When he came back around, he found himself being studied by a pair of beady black eyes.

  “Who might you be, then?” demanded Priss Mulligan.

  She couldn’t have stood more than four foot ten and was nearly as broad as she was tall, with thick dark hair and creamy white skin and puffy round arms that ended in incredibly small, childlike hands.

  “A potential customer?” Sebastian suggested.

  She gave a disbelieving grunt. “’Tis possible, I’m supposing. But is it likely?” She pursed her lips and shot a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby can. “Nah.”

  In age, she could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, her massive hips churning beneath her high-waisted, brown bombazine gown as she came forward, her gaze never leaving his face. “You ain’t a beak; that I can tell, just looking at you.”

  “No,” agreed Sebastian.

  She sniffed and wiped her lips with the back of one hand.

  Sebastian said, “I understand you recently sold a Spanish reliquary to a friend of mine.”

  “Oh? And who might your friend be?”

  “Stanley Preston.”

  “Him as just got his head cut off?”

  “So you did know him?”

  “Sure, then, but any fool on the street would recognize that name. Ain’t often a body gets his head lopped off in London—leastways, not these days.”

  “You didn’t sell him a reliquary?” Sebastian nodded to a gilded bronze receptacle molded in the shape of an arm—presumably because that’s what it contained. “Rather like that, except a foot.”

  “Came out of a church in Italy, that one did.”

  “How did it end up here?”

  “Émigré sold it to me, just last week. Always coming in here, they are, looking to unload all manner of things. Need the money, you see.”

  Sebastian caught the faint sound of a man’s hushed breathing coming from behind the curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. Someone was there, watching and listening.

  He kept his gaze fixed on the woman before him. “Seems a curious item to pack when you’re fleeing for your life,” he said.

  Priss Mulligan’s lips pulled back in a smile that showed small, sharp teeth stained brown by tobacco. “Some people have no sense.”

  “When was the last time you saw Mr. Preston?”

  “Didn’t say I had seen him, me.”

  Sebastian studied the woman’s plump, creamy face and small, still faintly smiling mouth. Like most people who made their livings by buying and selling, she was shrewd and crafty and doubtless far from honest. But there was something else about her, something that went beyond mere venality. She was a woman whom even cocksure young boys would cross the street to avoid; whose presence made horses snort nervously and dogs slink, bellies to the ground. The degree of malevolence in her was palpable.

  She was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “Have I seen you before?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  She smiled wider and pointed one fat, stubby finger at him. “I know what it is. You look more’n a bit like that rifleman keeps a tavern just off Bishopsgate. Got those same nasty yellow eyes, he does.”

  “Interesting,” said Sebastian, careful to keep his voice bland, almost bored, although in truth he was fully aware of the existence of a Bishopsgate tavern keeper who looked enough like him to be his brother—or at least a half brother. “You essentially have two choices: You can either answer my questions, or I can suggest to Bow Street that an inspection of your premises might yield some interesting results.”

  Her breath was coming fast now, in angry little pants. “Folks around here’ll tell you, it ain’t a good idea t’ mess with Priss Mulligan.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Sebastian let his gaze drift around the crowded shop. “I don’t see any human heads.”

  “Only heads I ever sell are saints’ heads, covered with silver or gilt bronze. Like that arm there.”

  “When was the last time you saw Stanley Preston?”

  “Never said I did; never said I didn’t.”

  “So when was it?”

  Her smile shifted subtly, became something reflecting true humor, although the source of her amusement escaped him. “A month or more ago it was, to be sure.”

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  “Someone who wanted him dead, I expect.”

  “Know anyone who falls into that category?”

  “Not so’s I can think of, offhand.”

  “You had no disagreements with him?”

  Her eyes widened with a practiced intensity and semblance of earnest honesty that almost—but not quite—struck him as comical. “I did not,” she said.

  “How often would he buy from you?”

  “Now and then.”

  “Did he ever put in a request for anything special?”

  “On occasion.”

  “Such as?”

  “Och, this ’n’ that.”

  The breathing from the far side of the curtain grew harsher. Faster.

  Sebastian said, “Must be something of a disappointment, to lose one of your best customers.”

  Priss Mulligan worked the wad of tobacco in her jaw. “I got others.”

  He touched his hand to his hat. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Anytime, yer lordship. Anytime.”

  He didn’t bother to ask how she knew he was a lord. The truth was, asking any question of the Irishwoman was unlikely to elicit either a direct or an honest response. People like Priss Mulligan lived their lives behind a miasma of subterfuge and deliberately generated fear. It said something about Stanley Preston that he had done business with the woman. Repeatedly.

  Sebastian walked out of the shop into the ragged crush of Houndsditch’s overcrowded, desperately poor residents. The light was beginning to fade from the sky; whatever warmth there might once have been was gone from the day.

  As he turned toward Bishopsgate, where he’d left Tom with the curricle, he was aware of a nondescript, slope-shouldered man slipping from the noisome alley alongside the shop to fall into step behind him.

  Chapter 21

  W ith the approach of evening, a fierce bank of clouds had scuttled in from the east, their roiling dark underbellies tinged with a strange, coppery green glow. Billowing gusts of wind sent handbills fluttering over the uneven paving stones and flapped the worn black shawl of a stooped old woman hawking nuts from a rusty tray. The knots of dirty, pinch-faced children huddled closer to the braziers of the coffee stalls and hot-potato sellers, their hollow eyes following Sebastian without curiosity or comprehension as he passed.

  He paused as if to study the colorful caricatures displayed in a print shop’s dusty window, being careful not to glance toward the slope-shouldered man in polished black boots who drew up abruptly and started fumbling in his pockets as if in search of a handkerchief. When Sebastian walked on, the click-click of the man’s bootheels was just audible above the din of rattling cartwheels and the shouts of the children and the singsong cries of the street sellers.

  Sebastian quickened his pace and heard that distinctive click-click speed up. When he slowed, so did his shadow. Then, as they neared the end of the lane, Sebastian turned abruptly and strode back toward Priss Mulligan’s shop.

  The slope-shouldered man paused, his eyes widening ever so subtly. Of medium height and lanky
despite his small potbelly, he had stringy black hair worn long enough to hang over his collar and a noticeably asymmetrical face with a bulbous nose and crooked mouth. But he was obviously convinced that Sebastian remained oblivious to him, because he simply turned as if to watch a brewer’s wagon full of empty casks that was rattling up the street, its tired horses hanging their shaggy heads, the malty aroma of ale mingling with the smell of roasted nuts and hot coffee and dung.

  “Who are you?” demanded Sebastian, walking right up to him. “And why the devil are you following me?”

  He expected the man to run, or at least to deny following him. Instead, the man laughed, his face instantly transforming from bland abstraction into a mask of glee. “I’d heard you were good,” he said. “But I didn’t credit it, meself.”

  “Your mistake.”

  “Ain’t it just?”

  Sebastian studied the man’s beard-shadowed face, the grimy collar and filthy hair. His clothes were those of a workman down on his luck—or someone who had other reasons for doing his shopping at the rag fairs of Rosemary Lane.

  “Who are you?” said Sebastian again.

  The man tipped his hat and bobbed his head, as if making an introduction. “Name’s Flynn. Diggory Flynn.”

  “Why were you following me?”

  Diggory Flynn’s eyes slid away, his tongue flicking out to wet his full, oddly misshapen lips. “Didn’t mean you no harm.”

  “And why should I believe you?”

  “Never did you nothing, now, did I?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Someone took a shot at me, just last night. Could have been you.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

  “Who set you after me?”

  “What makes you think anybody did?”

  “Who told you I’m ‘good’?”

  A strange quiver passed over the man’s lopsided face, then was gone. “You’ve got a reputation, you do.”

  Sebastian resisted the urge to grab the man by the front of his coat and shove him up against the dirty brick wall of the wretched shop beside them. “Why were you following me?”

  “You got some folks worried, you do.”

  “Who?”

  The man had the strangest eyes, one a pale blue that burned with a fierce intensity, as if lit from within by a fire bordering on madness; the other was light brown. “You think on it, you’ll know.”

  “Where’d you get the boots?”

  “The boots?” He cast an admiring glance down at them. “Won ’em off a hussar captain, I did. Ain’t they grand?”

  “I knew exploring officers in the Army who had no trouble rubbing grease in their hair or dressing themselves in filthy rags, but for some reason they really, really hated wearing anything but their own boots. It got them killed sometimes.”

  Diggory Flynn’s face shone with merriment. But all he said was, “I wouldn’t know nothin’ about that. Weren’t ever in the Army, meself.”

  Sebastian took a step back, then another, his gaze never leaving Flynn’s face. “Turn around and walk back the way you came.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Flynn touched a hand to his battered slouch hat. “Yes, sir,” he said, his grin never slipping. Then he thrust his hands in the sagging pockets of his worn-out coat and sauntered back up the lane, whistling “Bonny Light Horseman” softly beneath his breath.

  “I assume this Diggory Flynn is the man you heard behind the curtain in Priss Mulligan’s shop?” said Hero.

  She was seated in the armchair beside the bedroom fireplace, one hand trailing lightly over the back of the big, long-haired black cat stretched out beside her. The cat had adopted them some months before, although they’d yet to come up with a name that seemed right for him. It was nearly midnight; the fire on the hearth filled the room with a warm golden glow, while outside, a howling wind buffeted the house and sent the rain clattering against the windowpanes.

  “It’s possible,” said Sebastian, holding his dozing son against his shoulder, his palm splayed against the child’s tiny body as he walked back and forth.

  “Yet you don’t sound convinced. Why?”

  He found himself reluctant to put his suspicions into words. “She certainly has a nasty reputation. And I suspect it’s well earned.”

  “It’s odd, but he sounds rather like the man I saw at Covent Garden Market this morning.”

  Sebastian turned to look at her. “What man in Covent Garden?”

  “I thought I told you about him. It was my coster guide, Lucky Gordon, who noticed him first. He was simply standing there, staring at me. But when I tried to approach and ask what he wanted, he disappeared.”

  Sebastian went to lay the sleeping babe in his cradle, then stood for a moment, watching the firelight dance over the child’s soft cheeks and the gentle curve of his dusky lashes. And he knew it again, that chilling whisper of fear, that shuddering awareness of how fragile and vulnerable were the lives of those he loved.

  “What?” asked Hero, watching him.

  “As of dawn this morning, I had never heard of Priss Mulligan. So why would she have set someone to follow my wife?”

  “Why would anyone?”

  When he remained silent, she said, “You think Diggory Flynn works for Oliphant, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  She tilted her head to one side, and he knew what she was thinking—that his history with Oliphant was tempting him to see connections where they didn’t necessarily exist. He acknowledged that she might even be right.

  But he didn’t think so.

  She said, “Why would Oliphant set someone to watch me? Not you, but me?”

  Sebastian went to where a decanter stood warming on a table before the fire and poured himself a glass of brandy. “It’s a game he plays; a game of intimidation. He wants people to know they’re being watched—and that the people they love are vulnerable. He enjoys making them afraid.”

  “I would think he’d know you better than that—know that you don’t frighten easily.”

  He watched her head bend as she stroked the cat, watched the firelight catch the subtle auburn glints in the heavy fall of her hair and glaze the angle of her cheekbone. He wanted to tell her that there were things Oliphant knew that she did not, and that sometimes the innocent are made to pay for the sins of the guilty. But all he said was, “The thought of anything happening to you or Simon scares the hell out of me.”

  She lifted her head to meet his gaze, her features calm and still. “Nothing is going to happen to us.”

  He took a long pull of his brandy and felt it burn deep in his chest. “Your father thinks I’m putting you at risk simply by looking into Preston’s murder.”

  “Well, that’s something you two have in common, then—needlessly worrying about Simon and me, I mean.” She shifted her hand to scratch the cat beneath his chin, the feline’s eyes slitting with pleasure as he lifted his head. “Jarvis tells me Charles I’s head is missing, as well as the coffin strap.”

  Sebastian went to stand before the fire. “Saw him, did you?”

  “This afternoon, when Simon and I were visiting my mother. He’s not exactly pleased with you, is he?”

  “Is he ever?”

  A gleam of amusement showed in the gray eyes that were so much like her father’s. “No.” The amusement faded. “Do you have any idea yet how the theft from the royal vault figures into Preston’s murder?”

  “Oh, I’ve plenty of ideas. And not a bloody clue which—if any—of them are right. I don’t even know who brought the coffin strap to the bridge that night. It could have been the original thief, or a dealer, or the killer—assuming that the thief or dealer isn’t the killer. Or even Preston himself.”

  “Why would Preston be carrying it?”

  Sebastian shrugged. �
��Perhaps he was taking it to show someone. Or perhaps he’d just purchased it.” He tilted his head back and moved it slowly from side to side in a futile attempt to loosen some of the tension he carried in his neck. “If the strap had been left beside the body, I might think the killer intended it as some sort of statement or warning. But it wasn’t; it was lying in weeds down near the creek, as if someone had simply dropped it.”

  “Perhaps the killer did leave it with the body. Only, someone else came along and picked it up. Someone who then dropped it in fright. Or perhaps the killer was stealing it and he dropped it.”

  “I can see Thistlewood or Priss Mulligan taking the coffin strap. But not Oliphant or Wyeth.”

  She smiled. “You complained last night that you had almost no suspects. Now you have almost too many: the unknown relic thief; a vindictive ex-governor; a scorned Army captain; a rival curiosity collector; and a nasty secondhand dealer.”

  “Don’t forget the banker who quarreled with Preston right before he was killed. I haven’t even been able to speak with him yet.”

  “What’s his name? Do you know?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Henry Austen. I spoke to his sister.”

  “You mean, Jane Austen?”

  “Yes. You know her?”

  “I met her a few times at a friend’s salon last year. She’s a deceptively clever woman with a devastating wit.”

  “She is indeed. She tells me Preston was angry with her brother over something Austen’s wife said.”

  “Sounds like a rather silly argument over which to kill someone.”

  “True. Yet men have killed for less. And he is the last person known to have seen Preston alive.” Sebastian drained his glass and set it aside. Then his gaze fell on the set of three slim blue volumes that rested on the table beside her chair, and he said, “Don’t tell me you’re reading this new anonymous novel as well?”

  “My mother gave it to me. It’s quite entertaining.” She scooped the cat up into her arms and laughed out loud when he stiffened and widened his eyes in indignation. “And I’ve found the perfect name for you,” she told the cat. “It precisely captures your charming blend of arrogance and aloofness—and your impressive handsomeness, of course.”