Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  “A regular paragon.” Sebastian folded his napkin and set it aside. Catching Morey’s eye, he said, “Tell Calhoun I’ll be needing him right away.”

  The majordomo bowed and withdrew.

  Tom frowned. “A para-what?”

  “A paragon. A model of excellence and perfection.”

  “That sounds like ’im all right.”

  Sebastian pushed up from the table. “Which begs the question, doesn’t it? What’s this paragon doing frequenting someplace like the Orchard Street Academy?”

  Sebastian looked around from rubbing powder into his hair. Between the powder and some judiciously applied theatrical makeup, he had already added twenty years to his appearance. A bolster around his torso would add twenty pounds. “Only a month?”

  Calhoun laughed. “Two, in a pinch.”

  A few simple questions asked along the riverfront soon brought Sebastian to the outward-bound West Indian docks at the Isle of Dogs, where he found Luke O’Brian overseeing the loading of a shipment of canvas and hemp bound for Barbados. For a moment Sebastian simply watched him from a distance. The purchasing agent was a well-made man of perhaps thirty or thirty-five, expensively if quietly dressed, his manner easy toward ship’s captain and sailor alike.

  Most of the Bow Street Runners Sebastian had met were gruff, bullying men. That was the demeanor Sebastian assumed now, sinking further into the persona as he walked the length of the wind-buffeted dock so that even his posture and manner of movement altered. It was a trick Kat had taught him when they were both young and in love and fatally unaware of the common blood that coursed through their veins.

  “You’re O’Brian, aren’t you?” said Sebastian brusquely. “Luke O’Brian?”

  The purchasing agent turned. He had light brown hair and hazel eyes that flashed with a lively intelligence. “That’s right. May I help you?”

  “My name is Taylor.” Sebastian clasped the lapels of his corduroy coat and threw out his chest. “Simon Taylor. We’re looking into the death of Rose Fletcher.” He’d learned he never actually had to say he was from Bow Street; as long as he looked and acted the part, the assumption simply followed.

  Sebastian watched as the guarded smile slid away from O’Brian’s face and his lips parted on a quick, silent intake of breath. “Dead? Rose is dead? You’re certain?”

  “We believe she was one of the residents of the Magdalene House when it burned Monday night.”

  O’Brian turned toward the canal, one hand coming up to cover his mouth, his eyes squeezing shut. He was either devastated or a very, very good actor. It was a moment before he managed to say, “You’re certain there’s no mistake?”

  The smell of hot tar and dead fish pinched Sebastian’s nostrils. “We don’t think so. When was the last time you saw her?”

  O’Brian shook his head, his face still half averted, his voice a torn whisper. “I don’t know. . . . Ten days ago, maybe. She didn’t tell me she was leaving Orchard Street. I just went there one day and they said she was gone.” He looked around suddenly. “You’re quite certain she was at the Magdalene House?”

  “It’s difficult to know anything with these women, isn’t it? Did she ever tell you her real name?”

  “No. She didn’t like to talk about her life . . . before.”

  “She never told you anything?”

  O’Brian fiddled thoughtfully with the fob at the end of his watch chain. It was of gold, Sebastian noticed, discreet but well-fashioned. The cuffs and collar of his shirt were carefully laundered, his cravat snowy-white. No black neckcloths for this agent. “Only that her mother was dead,” said O’Brian, staring out over the masts of the ships rocking at anchor off the docks. “From one or two things she let slip, I gathered the family lived in Northamptonshire. She may have had a couple of sisters—and a brother. I believe he was in the Army. But she didn’t like to talk about them.”

  “Northamptonshire? Do you know why she left home?”

  O’Brian shook his head. “No.”

  “And you’ve no idea why she fled Orchard Street?”

  “No. She knew how I felt about her. If she had trouble, why didn’t she come to me?”

  Sebastian said, “You think her trouble was with Kane?”

  O’Brian’s jaw hardened. “Maybe. More likely that bloody magistrate.”

  “What magistrate?”

  O’Brian’s nostrils flared on a quickly indrawn breath. “Sir William. The bastard knocked her around pretty bad a couple of times.”

  “Ian Kane says he keeps rough customers away from his girls.”

  “Usually.” O’Brian stared against the sun peeking out from behind a cloud to set the wind-ruffled surface of the water to sparkling and flashing. “But you can’t exactly keep a Bow Street magistrate away, now can you?”

  “Bow Street? You mean Sir William Hadley?

  O’Brian cast him a sideways glance, an unexpectedly hard smile curling his lips. “That’s right. Sir William Hadley himself. So what are you going to do about that? Hmmm, Mr. Bow Street Runner?”

  Chapter 19

  Since Bow Street Runners did not in general drive around London in their own carriages, Sebastian had arrived at the Isle of Dogs in a broken-down hackney driven by a gnarled old jarvey who refused to nudge his mule out of a slow trot. But Sebastian had better luck on the return journey, the hackney swaying along at a satisfying clip as they bounced over the bridge spanning the Limehouse Cut and swung into the long, straight stretch of the new Commercial Road.

  It was only by chance that Sebastian glanced back in time to glimpse the dark-coated man astride a raw-boned gray trotting along behind them. Sebastian had noticed the man before, lounging in the door of a coffeehouse near the wharf.

  It could be a coincidence, of course. Anyone wishing to return to London from the West India Company docks would inevitably travel this same route. Leaning forward, Sebastian spoke to the driver. “Turn left here. Just wind your way down toward the river.”

  “Aye, gov’nor,” said the jarvey in surprise.

  They swung into a narrow lane bordered on one side by an open field, on the other by a long row of new houses. This was a part of the city that was expanding rapidly, transformed by the massive new construction of docks and warehouses that had accompanied the war. They ran past the long rope walks of Sun Tavern Fields and, beyond that, the spicy fragrance of a cooperage and the blasting heat of a foundry.

  The dark-coated man on the raw-boned gray kept pace behind them.

  “Where now, gov’nor?” called the jarvey.

  “Pull up at that tavern halfway down the lane.”

  The tavern was a new two-story brick structure with twin bay windows. As Sebastian paid off the jarvey, the dark-coated man trotted past, then reined in at the base of the hill overlooking the quay and the warehouses that bordered it.

  Sebastian entered the tavern and ordered a glass of daffy. The tavern was crowded with dockers and day laborers who filled the small public room with their voices and the smoke of their pipes and the pungent scent of their hardworking, unwashed bodies. Gin in hand, Sebastian took a seat at an empty table near one of the windows overlooking the street.

  At the mouth of an alley directly opposite the tavern stood Dark Coat. As Sebastian watched, he lit a white clay pipe, the blue smoke wafting about his face as he drew hard on the stem. He looked to be in his early thirties, a medium-sized man with a crooked nose and a powerful jaw shaded blue by a day’s growth of beard. He sucked on his pipe, one shoulder propped against the brick wall of the shop beside him, his eyes narrowed against the smoke and the inevitable reek of the alley.

  Sebastian set his drink on the table untasted and walked out of the tavern. He had to check for a moment and wait while a dray piled high with coal rumbled past. Then he stepped off the footpath into the churned mud of the unpaved lane. Dark Coat turned his head away, his attention seemingly all for the forest of masts that filled this part of the Thames.

  Sebastian plante
d himself directly in the man’s line of vision. “Who set you to follow me?”

  The man’s eyes widened, but he otherwise managed to keep his face admirably blank as he pushed away from the wall. “I don’t know what the bloody hell yer talkin’ about.”

  Experience had taught Sebastian to watch a man’s hands. He saw the flash of the knife the instant before it slashed up toward his face. Flinging up his left fist, Sebastian knocked the man’s forearm with his own in a sweeping block as he took a quick step backward.

  Too late, Sebastian felt his boot come down on a trampled sludge of rotten cabbage leaves and mud. The leather of his sole skidding dangerously, he slid sideways, one leg shooting out at an awkward angle.

  Dark Coat pivoted and ran.

  “Shit.” Catching his balance, Sebastian raced after him, past smashed hogsheads and broken crates and dust bins of refuse that reeked of fish guts and offal. They erupted out of the end of the alley through an open gate and into a coal yard. Sebastian heard a hoarse shout from one of the workmen as they pelted past, dodging between towering mountains of gleaming, blue-black coal, their feet kicking up foul clouds of fine coal dust.

  The man ahead of Sebastian swerved sideways. Scrambling over the yard wall, he darted out into the traffic of the quay. Dodging lumbering drays and the cracking whip of a bellowing teamster, Sebastian pelted after him.

  The dark mouth of a warehouse yawned before them, a vast vaulted chamber whose dank air breathed the heady, forbidden fumes of the Bordeaux and the Côte d’Azure. Dark Coat plunged down the stone steps, the string of lamps above flickering with his passing. Sebastian raced after him. Racks of wine casks towered over them, threw long shadows across a cobbled floor gleaming damp in the wavering lamplight. Somewhere, moisture dripped—wine, or a residue of last night’s rain—a slow drip-drip that formed a counterpoint to the slap of boot leather and the rasp of gasping breath.

  “What the hell do you want from me?” shouted the man, his voice echoing back as he took the stairs at the far end of the wine cave two at a time.

  “Who hired you?”

  “Go to hell!”

  At the top of the steps, the man veered right. Wary of an ambush, Sebastian slowed. By the time he emerged into the blinding light of the afternoon, the man had disappeared.

  Breathing hard, Sebastian let his gaze travel over the darkened warehouses around him. A couple of drunken flaxen-haired sailors stumbled past warbling a German sea song. From the distance came the sound of coopers hammering at casks on the quay, the rattle of chains flying up on a crane . . . and, from the warehouse to his right, a thump, like the sound of a body careening into an unseen obstacle.

  This storeroom was dark, without the string of lanterns that had turned the wine warehouse into a long cavern of dancing shadows. Sebastian entered cautiously, giving his eyes time to adjust. With each step, his feet stuck to the floor as if it were newly tarred. It took him a moment to realize what it was: years and years of sugar that had leaked through casks to cover the floor, then half melted in the damp air. From up ahead came that same furtive sucking sound. Then it stopped.

  Away from the open doorway, the darkness of the warehouse was nearly complete. But Sebastian’s senses of sight and sound had always been acute. Wolflike, Kat used to say. Trying to still his own breathing, he listened, his gaze raking the towering rows of casks.

  It was the barest hint of sound—cloth brushing against wood. Sebastian whirled just as Dark Coat leapt toward him from atop the nearest stack of kegs.

  The sudden movement dislodged the casks, toppling them in an avalanche of crushed staves and cascading sugar that swept Sebastian off his feet. He went down hard, his hand scooping up a fistful of sugar he threw in Dark Coat’s face as the man lunged toward him, knife in hand. The man swore and staggered back, buying Sebastian enough time to roll to one side and come up onto his knees, a broken stave clutched in both hands.

  “Ye son of a bitch,” swore the man, charging again.

  Swinging the stave like a curving club, Sebastian slammed the jagged edge into the man’s wrist, sending the knife skittering away into the darkness. “Who hired you?” shouted Sebastian.

  Whirling, the man took off toward the distant rectangle of light, his boots sliding and sucking in the sugar.

  Shoving to his feet, Sebastian tore after him. They erupted into the sunlight covered in a fine dusting of sparkling white crystals.

  “Englishes,” said one of the German sailors, laughing as Sebastian ran past.

  He could hear the bleating of a goat from a ship out on the river, the raucous cries of the seagulls circling over the docks. Heads turned as, one after the other, the sugar-encrusted men raced up the hill and into the lane. Dark Coat had a good hundred-foot lead, and Sebastian couldn’t close it.

  Snatching up his gray’s reins on the fly, Dark Coat threw himself into the saddle, the horse shying violently as the man’s weight came down hard, and he set his spurs into the animal’s sides.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Sebastian. Breathing hard, he leaned forward, his hands on his sugar-dusted knees as he watched the gray’s tail disappear with a shivering swish up the lane.

  Sebastian was in his dressing room brushing the sugar out of his hair when Jules Calhoun came in. “A bath is on the way, my lord.” He held out a sealed missive on a silver tray. “This arrived while you were out. Delivered by a liveried footman.”

  Sebastian reached for the letter and studied the masculine-looking handwriting of the address. He flipped it over, frowning at the sight of the familiar coat of arms on the seal. The handwriting might be masculine, but it obviously belonged to Miss Hero Jarvis. He broke the seal and unfolded the heavy white page.

  My lord,

  I have new information concerning Rose’s identity. I will be visiting the Orangery in Kensington Gardens at two o’clock this afternoon. Please be prompt.

  Miss Jarvis

  Calhoun moved about the room gathering up the Viscount’s sugar-dusted disguise. “You think the man who followed you was working for Ian Kane?”

  “It’s possible. Kane is the one who sent me after O’Brian in the first place.” Sebastian glanced over at his valet. “But there may well be more to Mr. O’Brian than meets the eye.”

  “Would you like me to look into the gentleman, my lord?”

  “It might prove interesting.”

  Calhoun bowed and turned toward the door.

  “Oh, and, Calhoun—tell Tom to bring my curricle around in half an hour. I think it’s time I paid a little visit to Bow Street.”

  Chapter 20

  Dressed once more in his own exquisitely tailored dark blue coat and buckskin breeches, Sebastian drove his curricle to the Brown Bear, the aging inn in Bow Street that was essentially treated as an extension of the Bow Street magistrate’s office.

  “Walk ’em,” he told Tom, handing the boy the reins. “We’ll be leaving for Kensington as soon as I’m finished here.”

  Pushing through the inn’s smoky public room, Sebastian found Sir William Hadley seated at a booth near the rear, a plate of cold roast beef and a tankard of ale on the worn, stained boards before him. “You might be interested to know I’ve discovered the identity of one of the women who was killed Monday night at the Magdalene House,” said Sebastian, sliding into the bench opposite the Bow Street magistrate.

  Sir William raised his tankard to his lips and drank deeply. “Now why the bloody hell would I be interested in that?” he said, drawing the back of one meaty hand across his wet mouth.