by C. S. Harris
“Like what?”
He went to stand at the long row of windows, his gaze on the scene outside. A few puffy white clouds had appeared on the horizon, but the sun still drenched the beds of roses with a dazzling golden light. The workmen were now bent over their shovels; Lady Winthrop was nowhere to be seen. “She was an unusual woman,” he said, watching the distant clouds. “Strong. Opinionated. Unafraid to challenge the conventions and assumptions of her world. And not given to suffering fools lightly.”
“In other words,” said Sebastian, “the kind of woman who could make enemies.”
Winthrop nodded, his gaze still on the scene beyond the glass.
“Anyone you know of in particular?”
The banker drew a deep breath that expanded his chest. “It seems somehow wrong to be mentioning these things now, when the recollection of a few careless words uttered in anger could easily result in a man standing accused of murder.”
“Are you saying Miss Tennyson quarreled with someone recently?”
“I don’t know if I’d say they ‘quarreled,’ exactly.”
“So what did happen?”
“Well, when I saw her on Saturday…”
“Yes?” prompted Sebastian when the man hesitated.
“I knew something was troubling her as soon as she arrived at the site. She seemed…strained. Jumpy. At first she tried to pass it off as nothing more than a melancholy mood, but I wasn’t fooled.”
“Was she given to melancholy moods?”
“She was a Tennyson. They’re all melancholy, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Go on.”
“She said she didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps I pressed her more than I should have, but in the end she admitted she was troubled by an encounter she’d had the previous day, on Friday. She tried to laugh it off—said it was nothing. But it was obviously considerably more than ‘nothing.’ I don’t believe I’d ever seen her so upset.”
The sound of a distant door opening echoed through the house.
“An encounter with whom?” asked Sebastian.
“I couldn’t tell you his name. Some antiquary known for his work on the post-Roman period of English history.”
“And this fellow disagreed with Miss Tennyson’s belief that your Camlet Moat was the site of King Arthur’s Camelot?”
Winthrop’s jaw tightened in a way that caused the powerful muscles in his cheeks to bunch and flex. For the first time, Sebastian caught a glimpse of the steely ruthlessness that had enabled the banker to amass a fortune in the course of twenty years of war. “I gather he is of the opinion that King Arthur is a figment of the collective British imagination—a product of both our romantic wish for a glorious, heroic past and a yearning for a magical savior who will return to lead us once more to victory and glory.”
“And was this disagreement the reason for Friday’s ‘encounter’?”
“She led me to believe so.”
“But you suspect she was being less than open with you?”
“In a word? Yes.”
Chapter 7
Luick footsteps sounded in the hall, and Winthrop turned as his wife entered the room. She drew up abruptly at the sight of Sebastian, her expression more one of haughty indignation than welcome. It was obvious she knew exactly why he was there.
“Ah, there you are, my dear,” said the banker. “You’ve met Lord Devlin?”
“I have.” She made no move to offer him her hand.
“We met at a dinner at Lord Liverpool’s, I believe,” said Sebastian, bowing. “Last spring.”
“So we did.” It was obvious Lady Winthrop had not found the encounter a pleasure. But then, Sebastian did have something of a reputation for dangerous and scandalous living. She said, “You’re here because of the death of the Tennyson woman, are you? I told Sir Stanley no good would come of this Camelot nonsense.”
Sebastian cast a glance at her husband, but Winthrop’s face remained a pleasant mask. If he was embarrassed by his wife’s boorish behavior, he gave no sign of it.
“I take it you don’t share Sir Stanley’s enthusiasm for the investigation of Camlet Moat?” said Sebastian, draining his wine.
“I do not.”
Winthrop moved to close the lid on the glass case. “My wife is a God-fearing woman who worries that any interest in the island shown by their betters will merely increase the unfortunate predilection of the locals to fall victim to ancient and dangerous superstitions.”
Lady Winthrop threw her husband a quick, veiled look.
“Have you visited the excavations yourself, Lady Winthrop?” Sebastian asked.
“I see no utility in poking about the rubbish of some long-vanished buildings. What’s gone is gone. It’s the fate of mankind that should concern us, not his past. Everything we need to know is written in the Good Lord’s book or in the learned works of theology and morality penned by his inspired servants. It is his intentions that should be the object of our study, not some forgotten piles of stones and broken pots.”
Winthrop said, his voice bland, “May I offer you some more wine, Lord Devlin?”
“Thank you, but no.” Sebastian set aside his glass. “I must be going.”
Neither his host nor his hostess urged him to stay. “I’ll send a servant for your carriage,” said Lady Winthrop.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more assistance,” said Winthrop a few moments later as he walked with Sebastian to the door and out into the blazing sunshine.
Sebastian paused at the top of the broad steps. “Tell me, Sir Stanley: Do you think it possible that Miss Tennyson’s death could have something to do with your work at Camlet Moat?”
“I don’t see how it could,” said Winthrop, his face turned away, his gaze on the gravel sweep where Tom was just drawing up.
“Yet you are familiar with the legend that Arthur is only sleeping on the isle of Avalon, and that in England’s gravest hour of need he will arise again to lead us to victory.”
The two men walked down the steps. “I find legends endlessly fascinating; tales of noble heroes and beautiful maidens have entranced mankind through the ages. But as an inspiration to murder? I don’t see it.”
Sebastian leapt up to the curricle’s high seat and gathered the reins. “Anything powerful can also be dangerous.”
“Only to those who feel threatened by it.” Winthrop took a step back. “Good day, my lord.”
Sebastian waited until they were bowling away up the drive toward the park’s gateway before glancing over at his tiger and saying, “Well? Anything?”
“It’s a queer estate, this Trent Place,” said Tom, who possessed a knack for inspiring other servants to gossip. “Seems like it changes owners nearly every other year.”
“Not quite, but almost,” said Sebastian. It was typical of new estates. Ancient manors could stay in the same family for centuries, but the new wealth of merchants and bankers frequently went as easily and quickly as it came. “And what is the servants’ general opinion of the current owners?”
“There was some mutterin’ and queer looks, but nobody was willin’ to come out and say much o’ anything. If ye ask me, they’re afraid.”
“Of Sir Stanley? Or his wife?”
“Maybe both.”
“Interesting,” said Sebastian. “And what do they think of the excavations at Camlet Moat?”
“That’s a bit queer too. Some think it’s excitin’, but there’s others see it as a sacra—sacra—” Tom struggled with the word.
“A sacrilege?”
“Aye, that’s it.”
“Interesting.”
Sebastian guided the chestnuts through the park’s massive new gateway, then dropped his hands; the horses leapt forward to eat up the miles back to London. He could see the heat haze roiling up from the hard-packed road, feel the sun blazing down hot on his shoulders. He was intensely aware of the fierce green of the chestnut trees shading a nearby brook, of the clear-noted poignancy of a la
rk’s song floating on the warm breeze. And he found himself unable to stop thinking of the vibrant, intelligent young woman whose pallid corpse awaited him on Paul Gibson’s cold granite slab, and to whom all the beauties of that morning—or any other morning—were forever lost.
By the time Sebastian drew up before Paul Gibson’s surgery on Tower Hill, the chestnuts’ coats were wet and dark with sweat.
“Take ’em home and baby ’em,” he said, handing Tom the reins.
“Aye, gov’nor.” Tom scrambled into the seat as Sebastian hopped down to the narrow footpath. “You want I should come back with the grays?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll send for you if I need you.”
He stood for a moment, watching the lad expertly wind his way westward through the press of carts and coal wagons. Near the base of the hill, a ragged boy with a drum tapped a steady beat to attract customers to the street seller who stood beside him hawking fried fish. Nearby, a woman with a cart peddled eel jelly, while a thin man in a buff-colored coat watered a nondescript roan at an old fountain built against the wall of the corner house. Then, realizing he was only delaying the inevitable, Sebastian turned to cut through the noisome, high-walled passage that led to the unkempt yard behind Gibson’s surgery.
At the base of the yard lay a small stone outbuilding used by the surgeon both for his official postmortems and for a series of surreptitious dissections performed on cadavers snatched from the city’s graveyards under the cover of darkness by stealthy, dangerous men. As Sebastian neared the open door of the building, he could see the remains of a woman lying on the cold, hard granite slab in the center of the single, high-windowed room.
Even in death, Miss Gabrielle Tennyson was a handsome woman, her features gracefully molded, her mouth generous, her upper lip short and gently cleft, her chestnut hair thick and luxuriously wavy. He paused in the doorway, his gaze on her face.
“Ah, there you are,” said Gibson, looking up. He set aside his scalpel with a clatter and reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “I thought I might be seeing you.”
A slim man of medium height in his early thirties, Paul Gibson had dark hair and green eyes bright with an irrepressible glint of mischief that almost but not quite hid the dull ache of chronic pain lurking in their nuanced depths. Irish by birth, he had honed his craft on the battlefields of Europe, learning the secrets of life and death from an endless parade of bodies slashed open and torn asunder. Then a French cannonball had shattered his own lower left leg, leaving him with a painful stump and a weakness for the sweet relief to be found in an elixir of poppies. He now divided his time between teaching anatomy to the medical students at St. Thomas’s Hospital and consulting with patients at his own private surgery here in the shadows of the Tower of London.
“Can you tell me anything yet?” asked Sebastian, looking pointedly away from what Gibson had been doing to the cadaver. Like Gibson, Sebastian had worn the King’s colors, fighting for God and country from Italy to the West Indies to the Peninsula. But he had never become inured to the sight or smell of death.
“Not much, I’m afraid, although I’m only just getting started. I might have more for you in a wee bit.” Gibson limped from behind the table, his peg leg tap-tapping on the uneven flagged flooring. He pointed to a jagged purple slit that marred the milky flesh of the body’s left breast. “You can see where she was stabbed. The blade was perhaps eight or ten inches long and an inch wide. Either her killer knew what he was doing or he got lucky. He hit her heart with just one thrust.”
“She died right away?”
“Almost instantly.”
Sebastian dropped his gaze to the long, tapered fingers that lay curled beside the body’s hips. The nails were carefully manicured and unbroken.
“No sign of a struggle?”
“None that I’ve found.”
“So she may have known her attacker?”
“Perhaps.” Gibson tossed the rag aside. “Lovejoy’s constable said she was found drifting in a dinghy outside London?”
Sebastian nodded. “On an old moat near Enfield. Any idea how long she’s been dead?”
“Roughly twenty-four hours, I’d say, perhaps a few hours more or a little less. But beyond that it’s difficult to determine.”
Sebastian studied the reddish purple discoloration along the visible portions of the body’s flanks and back. He knew from his own experience on the battlefield that blood tended to pool in the lower portions of a cadaver. “Any chance she could have been killed someplace else and then put in that boat?”
“I haven’t found anything to suggest it, no. The livor mortis is consistent with the position in which I’m told she was found.”
Sebastian’s gaze shifted to the half boots of peach-colored suede, the delicate stockings, the froth of white muslin neatly folded on a nearby shelf. “These are hers?”
“Yes.”
He reached out to finger the dark reddish brown stain that stiffened the delicate lace edging of the bodice. Suddenly the dank, death-tinged air of the place seemed to reach out and wrap itself around him, smothering him. He dropped his hand to his side and went to stand outside in the yard, the buzz of insects loud in the rank grass of the neglected garden as he drew in a deep breath of fresh air.
He was aware of his friend coming to stand beside him. Gibson said, “Lovejoy tells me Miss Jar—I mean, Lady Devlin was acquainted with the victim.”
“They were quite close, yes.”
Sebastian stared up at the hot, brittle blue sky overhead. When the messenger from Bow Street arrived in Brook Street that morning, Sebastian thought he had never seen Hero more devastated. Yet she hadn’t wept, and she had turned down his suggestion that she drive up to Camlet Moat with him. He did not understand why. But then, how much did he really know about the woman he had married?
Hero and this dead woman had shared so much in common—an enthusiasm for scholarship and research, a willingness to challenge societal expectations and prejudices, and a rejection of marriage and motherhood as the only acceptable choice for a woman. He could understand Hero’s grief and anger at the loss of her friend. But he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable sense that something else was going on with her, something he couldn’t even begin to guess at.
Gibson said, “This must be difficult for her. Any leads yet on the two lads?”
Sebastian glanced over at him, not understanding. “What lads?”
“The two boys Miss Tennyson had spending the summer with her.” Gibson must have read the confusion in Sebastian’s face, because he added, “You mean to say you haven’t heard?”
Sebastian could feel his heart beating in his ears like a thrumming of dread. “Heard what?”
“The news has been all over town this past hour or more. The children have vanished. No one’s seen them since yesterday morning.”
Chapter 8
The Adelphi Terrace—or Royal Terrace, as it was sometimes called—stretched along the bank of the Thames overlooking the vast Adelphi Wharves. A long block of elegant neoclassical town houses built by the Adams brothers late in the previous century, the address was popular with the city’s rising gentry class, particularly with Harley Street physicians and successful barristers such as Gabrielle Tennyson’s brother. As Sebastian rounded the corner from Adams Street, he found Sir Henry Lovejoy exiting the Tennysons’ front door.
“You’ve heard about the missing children?” asked Sir Henry, his homely face troubled as he waited for Sebastian to come up to him.
“Just now, from Gibson.”
Sir Henry blew out a long, painful breath. “I needn’t scruple to tell you this adds a very troubling dimension to the case. A very troubling dimension indeed.”
“You’ve found no trace of them?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Right now, we’re hoping the children witnessed the murder and ran away to hide in the woods in fright. The alternative is…Well, it’s not something I’m looking forward to dealing with.”
They turned to walk along the terrace fronting onto the wharves below. The fierce midday sun glinted off the broad surface of the river beside them and the air filled with the rough shouts of bargemen working the river and the rattle of carts on the coal wharf.
“We’ve had constables knocking on doors up and down the street,” said Sir Henry, “in the hopes someone might be able to tell us what time Miss Tennyson and the children left the house, or perhaps even with whom. Unfortunately, the heat has driven most of the residents into the country, and of those who remain, no one recalls having seen anything.”
“Any chance the children could have been snatched for ransom?”
“It’s a possibility, I suppose, although I must confess I find it unlikely. I’m told the children’s father is a simple, impoverished clergyman up in the wilds of Lincolnshire. And while the victim’s brother, Mr. Hildeyard Tennyson, is a moderately successful barrister, he is not excessively wealthy.” Sir Henry rubbed the bridge of his nose between one thumb and finger. “The elder boy, George, is just nine years old, while the younger, Alfred, is turning three. They were here with Miss Tennyson when the servants left yesterday morning, but as far as we’ve been able to tell, that’s the last time any of them were seen.” He hesitated, then added reluctantly, “Alive.”
“And the servants never thought to raise the alarm when neither Miss Tennyson nor the children returned home last night?”
“They thought it not their place to presume to know their mistress’s intentions.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Sebastian. “And now they’re so frightened of being blamed for the delay in launching a search that it’s difficult to get much of anything out of them?”
“Exactly.” Lovejoy sighed. “Although they may prove more willing to open up to you than to Bow Street.” The warm breeze blowing off the water brought them the smell of brine and spawning fish and the freshness of the wide-open seas. His features pinched, Lovejoy paused to stare out across the barges and wherries filling the river. “I’m heading back up to Enfield now, to organize some men to drag the moat.”