Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  He left his bed just before dawn, when the air was tangy and crisp, the dark streets below empty and quiet. He was standing at the window and watching the first hint of light spread across the sky when Hero came to wrap her arms around his waist and press her warm, soft body against his naked back.

  She said, “Troublesome dreams?”

  He rested his hands on hers. “Yes.”

  She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “I owe you an apology. I thought you were wrong, you know—that you were allowing your own past with Oliphant to influence your thinking about Stanley Preston’s killer. But revenge and fear are powerful motives, and Oliphant obviously possessed both.”

  Sebastian kept his gaze on the lightening sky above the rooftops. “I could still be wrong. Sometimes I think I keep trying to prove that Oliphant is the murderer just so that I can kill him.” He paused as a chorus of morning birdsong filled the air, sweet and bright and achingly clear. “But I’m still missing something—something vitally important. And I’m afraid more people are going to die because of it.”

  “Perhaps you’ll find some hint of what it is at Windsor this morning,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said, and turned to take her in his arms.

  Chapter 33

  Saturday, 27 March

  S ebastian reached Windsor shortly before ten that morning.

  The sky was a limpid blue filled with clusters of white clouds that turned the castle’s soaring sandstone walls and towers by turns moody and golden in the fitful spring sunshine. The black-cassocked man who hurried out into the lower court to meet his curricle was tall and rail thin, with greasy, limp hair and an extraordinarily large, toothy mouth. “Lord Devlin!” he exclaimed, bowing nearly double. “This is an honor—truly an honor. Allow me to introduce myself: Rowan Toop, my lord, virger of St. George’s. Unfortunately, the Dean had a previous engagement this morning that will preclude him from meeting with you. But he sends his regrets and has instructed me to cooperate with you in every way possible.” He laced his long, bony fingers together and rested them against the front of his cassock, his face frozen in an eager grin that was wide enough to look almost painful.

  “I understand the burial of the dead is under your charge,” said Sebastian, dropping lightly to the ground. He exchanged a meaningful look with Tom, who nodded almost imperceptibly before driving off toward the stables.

  Toop’s grin faltered. “It is, yes, to be sure, to be sure.” He bowed again. “The Dean tells me you’d like to view the newly discovered royal burial chamber.”

  “That would be helpful, yes.”

  The virger extended a hand toward St. George’s ancient, soot-stained facade. “If you will come this way, my lord?”

  They climbed the steps to the grand royal chapel and pushed open one of the heavy, weathered west doors. The soaring, stone-vaulted nave lay hushed and empty in a rich, colorful light that poured in through the high rows of stained-glass windows above.

  “I fear this theft has been a shock to Dean Legge. A terrible shock,” said Toop as he paused in the narthex to light a simple horn lantern he then carried with them to the padlocked gate in the quire. Setting down the lantern, he fished a large iron key from the depths of his cassock and held it up as if for Sebastian’s inspection. “Had this gate specially installed, he did—not that it did much good, unfortunately.”

  Sebastian studied the stout iron bars and padlocked heavy chain. “When exactly was it installed?”

  “Ordered it put in just after Lord Jarvis’s first inspection of the tomb, he did.”

  “Immediately after?”

  Toop frowned as he carefully fitted the key into the lock. “Well, we had to have the gate made, of course. So it was a day or two before it was actually in place. That must’ve been when the thieves struck.”

  “Thieves? What makes you think there were more than one?”

  “Just assumed it, I suppose.”

  “Did anyone check Charles’s coffin at the time of the gate’s installation?”

  “Well, no. Why would we? I mean, Lord Jarvis left strict instructions that nothing was to be disturbed again until the Prince Regent’s formal examination of the remains. And since we’d replaced the black velvet pall, it would have been impossible to see that the coffin had been tampered with even if we had chanced to look into the vault again—which I don’t believe anyone actually did. His lordship is not one you care to cross.”

  The padlock clicked open, the clanking of the chain sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the deserted quire as Toop unwound it from around the bars and swung the gate wide. “If you’ll allow me to go first, my lord,” he said, reaching for the lantern, “I’ll be able to light the way for you. It’s rather dark down there.”

  “Who do you think stole the King’s head?” Sebastian asked as he followed the virger down a narrow, sloping passageway, the light from the horn lantern bouncing and swaying over the rough walls.

  “Me?” Toop twisted around to stare back at Sebastian with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Good heavens; I can’t imagine. We must always be careful with new burials on account of the resurrection men. But no surgeon is going to want a head that’s more than a hundred and fifty years old, now, is he? I mean, what could he do with it? I can’t imagine who’d want such a thing.”

  “A collector?” suggested Sebastian.

  Toop’s large mouth twisted into an exaggerated grimace. “He’d need to be powerfully queer, if you ask me.”

  “There are those for whom royalty exudes an extraordinary fascination. And there’s something about the Stuarts that many find particularly compelling.”

  The virger sniffed. “I’ve dealt with the dead for more than twenty years now, from the freshest corpses to musty, thousand-year-old bones. But I certainly wouldn’t want some rotting head sitting around my house, king or no king. It’s not healthy. It’s not right. It’s not . . . normal.”

  They drew up before a rough, man-sized opening in the passage’s wall. “Ah, here it is,” he said, stepping back as he held the lantern high. “After you, my lord.”

  Stooping low, Sebastian entered a barrel-roofed vault lined with unfaced bricks and scarcely wide enough to hold the three caskets that rested on its damp, bare floor. A dusty black velvet pall shrouded the coffin to his left, although the other two were uncovered. The smallest coffin, against the far wall, looked intact. But the largest of the three—well over six feet in length and obviously made broad enough to accommodate a man of enormous proportions—was so shattered that fragments of bone and shreds of discolored, decaying shroud showed clearly through the broken sides and top.

  “Any indication that the other two coffins were also disturbed?” asked Sebastian.

  Rowan Toop ducked in behind him, the soft glow from his lantern sending their shadows ranging long and distorted across the ceiling and far wall. “Oh, no, my lord. Jane Seymour is still sealed up as tight as you could wish, while old Henry here looked like this when we found him. It was the gasses from his bloated, putrefying body started it, you know—burst the coffin open even before he was laid to rest. His corpse lay for the night in the chapel of Syon Abbey while on its way here for burial, and when they went to collect him in the morning, they discovered the coffin had exploded. Dogs were feasting on the royal remains.”

  “Divine retribution for the dissolution of the abbeys?”

  Rowan Toop gave another of his odd, almost comical grimaces. “Well, that’s what they said at the time. Course, I suspect it was only made worse when they stuck Charles in here.” Toop lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Dropped the one king on the other, if you ask me.”

  “What about the other royal vaults? Have they also been targeted by thieves?”

  “Oh, no, my lord. We’ve checked, and all are secure.”

  Sebastian let his gaze wander around the crude, low-ceili
nged crypt. “Seems an uncharacteristically humble place for a king like Henry VIII to have chosen to rest for eternity.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t choose it, you see. He’d planned a magnificent tomb with white marble pillars and gilded angels and a life-sized equestrian statue of himself beneath a triumphal arch. Except that he didn’t like to think about his own death, so only parts of it were finished by the time he went. Both he and Jane were supposed to be in here only temporarily, while the grand tomb was built. But none of his three children ever got around to completing it, and in the end, even those bits that were finished were scattered. They say the bronze effigies of Henry and Jane were melted down during the Civil War. His grand black sarcophagus is now in the crypt of St. Paul’s cathedral, with Horatio Nelson inside it.”

  “At least it was finally put to use.”

  “True, true.”

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the timeworn black pall that draped the simple coffin of the murdered King.

  Toop cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Would you like to actually see him, my lord? Whoever stole the King’s head cut a hole in the top of the coffin. Although I must warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  Sebastian had no desire to view any more decapitated bodies. But he acknowledged the need to verify what he had been told. “Yes,” he said reluctantly.

  The virger swallowed hard and moved to draw back the old cloth. “He’s extraordinarily well preserved. They often are, in crypts.”

  A heavy stench of decay wafted through the stale air. Sebastian took one look at the moldering King’s truncated neck and the discolored depression left by his purloined head, and nodded. “That’s good. Thank you.”

  He ducked back through the opening into the dark passage while the virger replaced the pall and carefully smoothed its aged folds. “How many people knew of the burial chamber’s discovery?”

  Toop followed him with the lantern. “Truthfully? I’d say just about everyone in Windsor who isn’t deaf or dead. There’s no way to keep workmen from talking, I’m afraid. They go home and tell their wives, or their mothers and sisters. And then they go down to the pub and brag about it to their friends, and before you know what’s what, the whole town is talking about it.”

  “Yet it’s one thing to know about the vault, and something else again to gain access to it.”

  “Well . . .” Toop lowered his voice as they retraced their steps toward the surface. “I wouldn’t say this in front of the Dean, but the truth is, just about anybody could’ve got in here before the gate was up, if they’d a mind to do it. The castle might be a royal residence, but St. George’s Chapel has always been open to the public.”

  “Have you had trouble with things being taken before?”

  “Now and then, yes,” said Toop as they emerged from the dank passage into the incense-scented air of the quire. “Needless to say, the Dean is beside himself over this. He’s always nourished ambitions of becoming a bishop, you see. But once the Regent learns of this—as he surely will unless the head is somehow recovered . . .” He gave another of his rubbery-mouthed grimaces.

  “How long have you been virger here?” asked Sebastian.

  “Me? More than fifteen years now, my lord.”

  “Since before Dean Legge, then.”

  “Oh, yes, my lord; long before.” His mouth stretched into a wide, toothy grin. “And I’ll still be here long after he’s moved on to other things—God willing.”

  Sebastian thanked him and left the virger there, still grinning aimlessly as he rewound the chain around the gated crypt entrance.

  He sent a message to the stables for Tom, then walked out the gate to the sunlit terrace overlooking the village and the old royal deer park with its distant, elm-lined Long Walk stretching for miles across the undulating countryside. His visit to Windsor Castle had proved to be frustratingly unenlightening. If Toop were to be believed, virtually anyone could have made away with King Charles I’s head and coffin strap. How—or even if—that theft had played a part in Preston’s death was still murky.

  Sebastian braced his outthrust hands against the stone parapet edging the terrace, his gaze on the wind-tossed shadows of clouds chasing one another across the landscape below. The sense that he was missing something—something vitally important—continued to haunt him.

  A flock of pigeons rose in a sudden burst into the sky, wings whirling in alarm and drawing Sebastian’s attention to a disheveled, slope-shouldered man standing with his back to the stone wall edging the steep approach to the gate. He caught Sebastian’s gaze and nodded, his eyes alight with amusement.

  “Why the devil are you still following me?” Sebastian demanded, walking up to him.

  Diggory Flynn’s full, crooked lips quirked up in a grin. “What makes you think I’m here ’cause of you?”

  “You just happened to take it into your head to visit Windsor this morning, did you? Is that what you would have me believe?”

  “Sure then, but ’tis more pleasant than a day spent in the likes of Smithfield Market or Covent—”

  Sebastian’s hand flashed out to close around the other man’s neck and shove him back against the low stone wall.

  Flynn let out a yelp, fingers digging into Sebastian’s forearms as he bent the man backward over the parapet. “Here, what you wanna go and do that for?”

  “Let me warn you right now,” said Sebastian, keeping his voice low and even. “Follow me if you like; I can deal with that. But if I hear you’ve been anywhere near my family again, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

  The man’s face contorted into a parody of pain. “Ouch. It’s hurting me, you are.”

  “Good.” Sebastian tightened his hold on the man’s throat. “Who sent you?”

  “I told you; I don’t work for nobody.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Diggory Flynn’s eyes rolled sideways as he considered the drop-off behind him, his tongue flicking out to moisten his dry lips. “You can’t kill me. People’re watching. There’s laws agin’ murder in this country. Just ’cause you’re a viscount don’t mean you can go around killin’ folk.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Sebastian, releasing his grip on the man and taking a step back. “If I kill you, there won’t be any witnesses.”

  “That supposed to reassure me?” Flynn carefully straightened his grimy neckcloth and tugged at the hem of his worn, rucked-up waistcoat. “You’re just trying to scare me, you are.”

  “You should be scared. I mean what I say.”

  Flynn’s mismatched eyes widened ever so slightly. Then he pushed away from the old stone wall and scuttled off, his head down, the tails of his tattered coat fluttering in the breeze.

  “Who was that?” asked Tom, drawing the curricle up beside Sebastian.

  “I’m not quite certain.”

  “’E’s a real Cap’n Queernabs, he is,” said Tom.

  “A what?”

  “Don’t ye know? A Cap’n Queernabs is a cove what’s dressed real shabby-like.”

  “He is that.” Sebastian leapt up into the curricle. “Hear anything of interest in the stables?”

  “They’re all talkin’ about how somebody prigged one of the old kings’ heads.”

  “So much for swearing all interested parties to secrecy,” said Sebastian, taking the reins. “Anyone have any idea who might be behind the theft?”

  “Oh, they got all sorts of ideas. But ain’t no two alike.” The boy scrambled back to his perch. “What’d you say was the name of that cove?”

  Sebastian gave his horses the office to start. “Flynn. Diggory Flynn. Why?”

  “Calhoun was talkin’ ’bout somebody hangin’ around Brook Street the other day—somebody who sounded more’n a bit like yon Cap’n Queernabs.”

  Sebastian reined in hard and turned to stare at his tiger. “When was this
?”

  “Dunno. Few days ago. Why?”

  But Sebastian only shook his head, the wind cold on his face as he whipped the horses for home.

  Chapter 34

  “The thing ye gots t’ understand,” said the costermonger, leaning against the side of a donkey cart piled high with whole, fresh fish still glistening and wet from the market, “is that not ev’rybody sellin’ on the streets is a coster.”

  “Oh?” said Hero, intrigued by the costermongers’ determination to hold themselves apart from all other street sellers.

  “Course not,” said the coster. He was a big man named Mica McDougal, with beefy arms and a wind-reddened face and dark hair covered by a small cap. “Why, the Dutch buy-a-broom girls, the Jew old-clothes men, the pea soup and bread ’n’ butter sellers, the wooden-spoon makers—ain’t none of ’em proper costermongers.”

  “So what makes one a ‘proper’ costermonger?”

  “Proper costermongers sell stock we buys at the fruit and vegetable and fish markets. Some of us ’as stalls or stands in the streets, and some of us makes rounds with a barrow or donkey cart. But you’ll never find a costermonger sellin’ tatted ’air nets or wooden clothes pins.” He wrinkled his nose in disdain.

  “How far do you travel on your daily rounds?”

  “Oh, usually nine or ten miles.”

  “That’s quite a distance to walk every day.”

  “Nah. Sometimes in the summer, Liz ’n’ me’ll go on country rounds for as much as twenty-five miles.”

  “Liz?”

  The coster grinned and shifted to lay an affectionate arm across his donkey’s withers. “Liz.”

  The donkey peeled its lips away from its long teeth and let out a loud hee-haw.

  “Do you live around here?” Hero asked.

  “Ah, no; we lives off Fish Street Hill, m’lady. You’ll find most costermongers what deals in fish lives thereabouts, so’s we’re close t’ Billingsgate Market.”

  “You have children?”

  “I got three: two boys and a girl. ’Twere five, but two o’ the little ones died o’ fever afore Christmas.”