by C. S. Harris
Then he swept through the door without another glance at the pallid man who lay dead in the center of the room.
“Insufferable bastard,” grumbled Archie later, after the coroner had disappeared into the Blue Boar’s parlor. He roughened his voice and rolled his “r’s” in a credible imitation of Magnus Fowler’s Shropshire accent. “‘For a village of this size to experrrrience not one but two inexplicable homicides in as many days is as outrrrrageous as it is intolerrrrrable.’ What the blazes does he think I should be doing that I’m not?”
“He hasn’t the slightest idea,” said Sebastian, although the reassurance did nothing to ease the young man’s scowl.
They were standing in the lane outside the inn. The sky above was a clear blue, the noonday sun drenching the village in a white heat. A fair number of the villagers and even some jurors were still milling about, talking and laughing loudly, so that it was a moment before they became aware of the sounds of an altercation coming from the direction of the churchyard, the Reverend’s soothing tones alternating with a younger man’s voice, obviously cultured but ragged now with emotion.
“For God’s sake, Reverend. You must let me see her! Please tell me it isn’t her. Oh, God; Emma, Emma . . .”
“Who is that?” asked Sebastian.
“Good heavens,” said Archie, his features going slack as he turned to stare up the hill. “It’s Crispin Seaton.”
Chapter 27
The Reverend Benedict Underwood had stopped Lord Seaton at the church porch by planting himself in the archway, his arms outstretched and his jaw set with determination.
“You can’t go in there, my lord,” the Reverend was saying as Sebastian and Archie came up. “Mrs. Underwood is supervising Margaret in the preparation of the body for burial. Wouldn’t be proper for you to see the lady in such a state.”
Lord Seaton raised both hands to clutch the sides of his head, elbows splayed. “But don’t you understand? I must know if it’s her!” A handsome young man in his early twenties, he had a tumble of golden curls and large, deep blue eyes in an open, earnest face. A splendid chestnut grazed nearby, reins trailing across the grass, as if the young lord had ridden into the churchyard and dismounted only at the church steps.
“My lord,” said Underwood. “Please.”
“Who do you think she might be?” asked Sebastian.
At the sound of a stranger’s voice, Crispin whirled around, his cheeks flaming with color, his eyes wild. “Who’re you?”
“Devlin.” Sebastian studied the younger man’s haggard face. “You knew Emma Chance?”
Crispin shook his head. “I don’t think her name is actually Chance.”
“Who do you think she is?”
The young lord swallowed hard, the belligerence and angry fire seeming to drain out of him. “Miss Emma Chandler.”
“How old is this Miss Chandler?” Archie asked his childhood friend.
“Twenty-one.”
“Can she draw?” asked Sebastian.
Crispin sucked in a shuddering breath. “Like a Renaissance master.”
Sebastian turned to the Reverend, who had dropped his arms to his sides and was now standing in the porch, looking from one man to the next. “Ask your good wife to have Margaret cover Emma Chance’s body with a sheet. I think Lord Seaton needs to see her.”
She lay in a small room at the base of the ancient west tower. A branch of candles flickered near her head, for the tower’s walls were thick, its lancet windows small and high.
Crispin Seaton drew up just inside the low arched door to the room. Sebastian heard him draw a quick, rasping breath, saw his head shake from side to side in instinctive, hopeless denial. “No!” he screamed, his voice raw with anguish. “Oh, God, no.”
Sebastian caught him as he crumpled.
“Her name was Emma Chandler,” said the young Lord Seaton in a hushed, strangled voice. “Not Chance. Chandler.”
They were in the parlor at the vicarage; Crispin perched at the edge of a chair beside the empty hearth, a glass with a hefty measure of the Reverend’s Scotch in one hand.
“Who was she?” asked Archie, leaning against the sill of a window overlooking the churchyard.
“She was—until a few months ago—a parlor boarder at Miss Rowena LaMont’s Academy for Young Ladies in Tenbury.”
Archie and Sebastian exchanged glances. Parlor boarders were a special classification of boarding school students. Living at a school the year around, they typically enjoyed their own bed and were granted the privilege of sharing the headmistress’s parlor in the evening. Such students were frequently wealthy orphans or motherless children of men posted overseas.
But sometimes they were the illegitimate, hidden offspring of a wealthy family.
“What happened a few months ago?” asked Sebastian.
“She turned twenty-one and came into her inheritance.”
“How did you happen to meet her?”
Crispin looked up from the brooding contemplation of his Scotch. “My two sisters attend Miss LaMont’s academy. Last winter, I inherited a small manor house nearby from a great-aunt. It was in a shocking state of disrepair, and I spent some time there setting it to rights. Emma—Miss Chandler—was my sister Georgina’s particular friend, and often came with her to see me.”
“Were you in love with her?”
Crispin pressed his lips together into a tight line and nodded as if he didn’t trust his voice.
“Who were her family?” asked Archie. “They should be notified.”
Crispin stared at him. “But I don’t know who they are. She didn’t know who they were.”
“Why was she here?” asked Sebastian.
“I don’t know.”
“But you did know she was here.”
“No!” The vehemence of the denial took Sebastian by surprise. “I was on my way back from leaving my sisters and the Bonaparte girls with my aunt in Windermere when I heard that a young woman named Emma Chance had been killed in Ayleswick. She sounded so much like my Emma that I . . . I . . .” He paused to take a long gulp of his drink. “She used that name sometimes, you see—Emma Chance. Like it was a joke, although I never thought it very funny.”
Chance child. It was a polite euphemism for a bastard.
Sebastian studied the young man’s bowed head and rigid frame. His grief was real. But Sebastian couldn’t shake the suspicion that the young lord was being less than honest about something.
“Who do you think killed her?” Sebastian asked.
Crispin glanced up, his face blank. “I’ve no notion. Why would anyone want to kill her?”
“Who knew of your interest in Miss Chandler?”
“No one.” Crispin thought about it a moment, then added, “Well, my sister Georgina, I suppose. And Louisa. But they would never tell anyone.”
“Your mother didn’t know?”
Crispin surged to his feet, his face white, his fists clenched. “What the bloody hell do you mean by that?”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“Not yet, no, damn you! And if you’re suggesting that my mother would—that she would hire someone—”
Sebastian hadn’t actually suggested it. But he found it more than interesting that Seaton’s mind had instantly leapt to that possibility.
“Take a damper, Crispin,” said Archie Rawlins.
Crispin turned his head to glare at his childhood friend.
Archie said, “Someone killed her, Crispin. She told everyone in the village that she was a twenty-eight-year-old widow on a sketching expedition. Now we find out she’s someone else entirely. That changes everything; don’t you see?”
“You can’t be suggesting she was killed because of me!”
“No,” said Sebastian. “Although I suspect she was here because of you.”
Crispin stared at him, hi
s jaw slack. “But why would she come here and pretend to be someone else? It makes no sense.”
“Where has she been living since she left the school?”
“In Little Stretton. It’s a village to the north of here, near the Long Mynd. There’s a teacher who used to be at the school—Miss Owens is her name; Jane Owens. She has a cottage there. Emma was very fond of her.” He paused, his lips quivering. “She had this scheme of the two of them opening a school together.” It was obvious from the way he said it that Seaton had not been in favor of the idea.
“Can you tell us anything—anything at all—that might shed some light on what happened to Miss Chandler?”
“No. You think if I knew anything, I wouldn’t tell you?” Seaton drained his Scotch and set the glass aside with a hand that was far from steady.
Sebastian exchanged glances with Archie.
An already puzzling investigation had just become considerably more complicated.
“So the Reverend decided to bury only Hannibal Pierce?” said Hero.
Sebastian was standing in their private parlor, their small son in his arms. A portmanteau packed by his valet, Calhoun, stood near the door, and a message had been sent to Tom to bring round the curricle. He planned to leave for Little Stretton on the hour. “Seems wise,” he said. “Why bury her amongst strangers if someone can tell us who she is?”
“Crispin Seaton says Emma Chance—or rather, Chandler—didn’t know anything about her family.”
“No. But her school must.”
“So why not go to Miss Rowena LaMont’s Academy in Tenbury?”
“I intend to. But first I want to know what Emma was doing here, in Ayleswick, and I’m hoping this Miss Jane Owens can tell me.” He smiled as Simon reached out one splayed hand to explore his father’s nose. “Hopefully I won’t be gone more than a couple of days.”
Hero said, “I’m thinking I might spend some time looking into those two earlier suicides the vicar’s wife was telling me about.”
“What about your interviews for the article on the effects of the enclosure movement?” He worried sometimes that marriage to him was distracting Hero from the life she’d once intended to have.
She met his gaze, her face solemn. “Finding this killer is important to me too, Devlin—particularly if Emma Chandler isn’t the first young woman he’s murdered.” She paused, her nostrils flaring on a deeply indrawn breath. “Were they buried at the crossroads, do you think? Those other young women who were thought to have committed suicide, I mean.”
It was the practice in England to bury those convicted of the crime of felo-de-se at the crossroads, with a stake driven through their hearts—the idea being that both the stake and the constant traffic above would keep their restless souls from wandering. He shook his head. “I don’t know, but probably. Superstitions die hard in areas like this.”
He saw her jaw harden, saw the glitter of outrage in her eyes. To steal a young woman’s life was bad enough. But to convince others that a murder victim was responsible for her own death, thus condemning her to an ignoble burial, added another vile outrage to an already despicable act.
His gaze fell to the pile of women’s clothing delivered that morning by Constable Nash. All were now neatly folded. He said, “You looked at her clothes?” Hero had declined to attend that morning’s inquests.
“I did.”
“Anything interesting?”
She went to where the clothes rested on a straight-backed chair. “It’s a lovely walking dress, probably made by a modiste in Ludlow and quite new. I did notice this—” She picked up the dress and turned its back toward him. “It looks as if dirt has been ground into the shoulders.”
He carried Simon over to study the delicate cloth. “Makes sense, given how she was killed.” He shifted the baby’s weight so he could finger the slightly abraded cloth. “It probably also explains the faint scrapes on her back. Her killer was pinning her down, and she was struggling.”
“How perfectly ghastly.”
“It is, yes.”
Hero set the dress aside. “I don’t think she was wearing her spencer when she was killed. It’s not dirty at all.”
“The day was quite warm. The spencer was found folded beside her.”
“The back of her hat is smashed, though; I’d say she was wearing it when she was killed.” Hero reached for a soft kid glove. “And there’s this,” she said, holding it out to him.
“What about it?”
“There’s only one.”
Sebastian remembered noticing a glove lying with Emma’s hat and spencer in the meadow. Had its mate been there too? He couldn’t recall. He said, “Knowing Constable Nash, he probably dropped the other one somewhere. But you might ask Archie to look into it if you should happen to see him while I’m gone.”
From the lane in front of the inn came the jingle of harness and the sharp cockney accents of Tom cajoling the chestnuts.
Sebastian brushed his lips against his son’s cheek and breathed in the sweet baby scent. “For days now—ever since Hannibal Pierce was shot—I’ve been thinking this is all somehow connected to the presence in the neighborhood of Napoléon Bonaparte’s brother. God help me, I was even willing to entertain the idea that Emma might be an agent sent from Paris. Now I’m wondering if I made a mistake assuming the two murders are connected. They may not be at all. Or Pierce could have been killed simply because he saw something that endangered whoever murdered Emma.”
Hero reached to take the child from his arms. “But why kill an innocent young artist?”
He expelled a long breath. “Hopefully this Miss Jane Owens can help answer that question.” He cradled her cheek in one hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. “Promise me you’ll be careful?”
“That’s my line,” she said, and he laughed.
Chapter 28
Sebastian reached the village of Little Stretton late in the afternoon of a long, golden August day.
Lying some fourteen miles to the north of Ludlow on the main coach road that led to Shrewsbury, the village nestled at the base of a stretch of highlands known as the Long Mynd. Its cottages were a charming mix of half-timbered, red brick, and weathered gray stone, its gardens of hollyhocks and tumbling roses well tended, the breezes sweeping down from the hills above sweetly scented by the slopes’ tangle of gorse, bracken, and heather.
Miss Jane Owens lived in a somewhat dilapidated whitewashed cottage situated on the banks of the River Ashes Hollow. She answered the door herself, a small, slim woman in her forties with a no-nonsense starched white cap covering short, curly brown hair barely touched by gray. Her forehead was high, her mouth small, her gray eyes wide with surprise at finding a fashionably dressed lord standing on her porch and an elegant curricle with a well-bred pair of spirited chestnuts at her gate.
“Miss Owens?” he asked with a bow.
“Yes?” she answered pleasantly. But she was obviously good at reading people, because whatever she saw in his face caused her smile to falter. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? What is it? Dear God, what has happened?”
“I think you’d best sit down before I tell you,” said Sebastian. He had come equipped with a letter of introduction penned by Lord Seaton. But it didn’t look as if he would need it.
She gripped the edge of the door, her lips pressed tight. “No, tell me now.”
“It’s Emma Chandler,” he said.
The horror and dread that leapt into her eyes told him just how much the younger woman meant to her. “Please say she’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and saw her brace herself for what was to follow. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”
“I’ve been an educator for more than twenty-five years,” said Jane Owens later, as they walked along the banks of the swiftly rushing river. “Every child is unique and distinctive, each in his or her o
wn way. But I never had a student quite like Emma.”
“She was an extraordinarily talented artist,” said Sebastian.
“She was beyond extraordinary. I firmly believe she had the talent to be as famous as Lawrence or Reynolds, if that was what she wanted.”
“But it wasn’t?”
A faint smile touched the older woman’s lips. “No. She wanted to open a school—a school for girls like her.”
“You mean, chance children?”
Jane Owen cast him a thoughtful glance. “Have you known many such children?”
Sebastian stared across the narrow, rocky river, toward the barren slopes of the Long Mynd rising gently above them. Amongst those of his class, such children were most often handed over to foster families and forgotten—if they weren’t simply abandoned on the parish. Some were hidden away in schools, as Emma had been. But only a rare few were raised within the family, usually disguised as a “distant cousin,” their true identity carefully hidden even from the children themselves.
“Not really,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ve taught several over the years. They . . . they have problems it’s difficult for the rest of us to understand. Those of us who grow up within a family—” She gave a quick, dry laugh. “Even if it’s not one we particularly like—that family still helps us define who and what we are. It’s so much a part of us that we tend to take that aspect of our identity for granted.”
Sebastian remained silent, his gaze on the swirling waters beside them. He’d grown up thinking he knew his family, only to realize that it had been a lie, that half of his heritage was a question mark, a dark, mysterious unknown that alternately intrigued, tormented, and repelled him. It was as if a yawning hole had opened up inside him that he was both desperate and terrified to fill.
“But these children,” Jane Owens was saying, “the ones who are given away or secluded and kept a secret—they have no sense of who they are, of who and what they come from. They can only imagine . . . dream . . . wonder. It tends to make for troubled youngsters, full of sadness and anger. They can be quite difficult to deal with.”