Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  Miss Jarvis said, “Just tell me where to meet you, and when.”

  “I’ll contact you.”

  “You don’t know who I am.”

  The Cyprian laughed. “I know who you are,” she said, and slipped away through the crowd gathered around an oak-sided Dutch eel boat.

  Sebastian stared down at the pierced, coffin-shaped barges floating at the eel boat’s stern. He’d never liked eels, ever since he’d watched as a boy when the half-eaten body of a drowned wherryman was pulled from the river, a dozen long black eels sliding sinuously away from it.

  Miss Jarvis said, “You’ve heard of this Sir William before. Who is he?”

  Sebastian swung his head to look at her. “Sir William Hadley.”

  “From Bow Street?”

  “The very one.”

  To his surprise, she let out a sharp laugh. “And my father pressured him not to investigate the fire. Now that’s rich.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sebastian squinted up at the sky. “We should have brought your carriage. It’s going to rain.”

  They turned their steps back toward the bridge. She said, “I gather Ian Kane is the man who owns the Orchard Street Academy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Lord Devlin.” She swung to face him, oblivious to the red-cheeked fishmonger at her side shouting, “Who’ll buy brill, oh? Brill, oh!” She said, “What else do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  He met her indignant stare with a bland smile. “Miss Jarvis, I am not some Bow Street Runner you hired to give you daily reports.”

  She was an inch or two shorter than he, but she still managed to look down her nose at him. “I would think that common courtesy—”

  “Courtesy?” He jerked her out of the way just as the fishmonger in the nearest stall slopped a bucket of water across his marble slab. “Believe me, Miss Jarvis, it is courtesy that prevents me from regaling you with the sordid details of this murder.”

  “If I were a man, or if I’d asked for your assistance in discovering the facts surrounding the murder of a cleric of impeccable character, you would tell me?”

  “Probably,” he said slowly, not sure where she was going with this.

  “Then I would like to point out to you that in this case, ignorance is not bliss. Last night, two men tried to kill me because of what I do not know.”

  They had reached that part of Billingsgate known colloquially as Oyster Street from all the oyster boats drawn up at the wharf. Sebastian stared at the bobbing red cap of a man in the hold of the nearest boat, his spade rattling over the gray mass of sand and shells at his feet. “Believe me, Miss Jarvis, you don’t want to hear about this.”

  “On the contrary, my lord Devlin. I do.”

  He studied her squarely held shoulders, the contemptuous twist of her lips. “Very well, Miss Jarvis. I will tell you. Ian Kane is an ex-miner from Lancashire who enjoys painting nude women and sunlit buildings. He also in all likelihood murdered his first wife. Whether or not he murdered Rachel Fairchild I do not know, but he certainly expressed a desire to do so, seeing as how when she ran away from his house last Wednesday, he was on the verge of selling her to a customer for two hundred pounds.”

  “Selling her?”

  “That’s right. We don’t quite put our women and children up on the auction block like the Americans, but we still sell four-year-olds to chimney sweeps and nubile young women to anyone with the coin to buy them.”

  He hesitated. She stared back at him, tight lipped, and said, “Go on.”

  “Very well. The customer in question—let’s just call him Luke, shall we? It seems that Luke is a thief. A very successful thief who, incidentally, had an ambitious project scheduled for Monday night, just hours after the murders in Covent Garden. Is that significant? I don’t know.”

  Her face was quite pale, but all she said was, “What else?”

  “Well, then there’s Rachel’s betrothed, the inappropriately named Tristan Ramsey. It seems Mr. Ramsey was very well aware of the fact that his future bride was not in Northamptonshire recuperating her health. In fact, he knew she was at the Orchard Street Academy.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “He went there as a customer.” He left it at that. Hero Jarvis might bring out the worst in Sebastian, but he wasn’t so ignoble as to tell her what Ramsey had done to Rachel there, on the stained sheets of that Covent Garden brothel. He said instead, “Ramsey told Rachel’s brother, Cedric Fairchild, where she was. According to Cedric Fairchild, he went to see her last week, but she refused to leave with him. Both men claim they don’t know why she ran away from home, or how she ended up in Covent Garden.”

  Miss Jarvis sucked in a deep breath that stirred the once-jaunty ribbons of her hat, now wet and limp. Two tiny lines appeared between her brows as she studied his face. He wondered what she saw there. “But you know, don’t you?” she said. “Or at least, you have some idea.”

  He stared out over the stairs of Billingsgate, to the wind-whipped, choppy brown river. He was thinking about the leper colony that had once stood in the marshes of what had since become St. James’s Park, and what Rachel had told her brother about the diseased and rotting outcasts who threatened society.

  “Tell me,” said Miss Jarvis.

  He swung his head to look at her, at her windblown brown hair and her once fine burgundy carriage dress now ruined by the slime and muck of the fish market. She was brilliant and well-educated and more aware of the harsh realities of the world than most women of her station. But the explanation that was beginning to take shape in his mind was too raw, too ugly to be spoken aloud.

  He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”

  She didn’t believe him, of course. She remained uncharacteristically silent, her lips pressed into a thin, straight line, her shoulders stiff as he guided her to where Tom was walking the chestnuts up and down the lane. He handed her up into the curricle. She remained withdrawn, lost in her own thoughts, until he swung the horses out into traffic and headed upriver, away from where she’d left her own carriage awaiting her outside Paul Gibson’s surgery.

  “This isn’t the way to the Tower,” she said suddenly, looking around.

  Sebastian set his horses at a brisk trot toward Upper Thames Street. “I thought you might enjoy coming with me to pay a call on Sir William.”

  She cast him a withering glance. “No, you didn’t. You want me there for some other reason. What is it?”

  He gave her a wry smile. “You’re quite right, Miss Jarvis. My motives are entirely disreputable. I’m simply looking forward to watching Sir William explain to Lord Jarvis’s daughter his own involvement in the murder Lord Jarvis ordered him not to investigate.”

  Chapter 35

  “Keep’em warm,” said Sebastian, pulling up in front of the Bow Street Public Office and handing Tom the reins.

  Tom blew out a long breath through the gap in his front teeth and tried to look nonchalant. “I reckon maybe I’ll walk ’em around the block,” he said, casting an uneasy glance at the bustling entrance to the public office.

  “One might almost imagine,” observed Miss Jarvis as Sebastian ushered her into the smoky, pungent din of the public office, “that your tiger finds the prospect of lingering too close to Bow Street a decidedly uncomfortable proposition.”

  “One might,” Sebastian agreed. The public office was crowded with the usual assortment of beggars and pickpockets, constables and barristers. He collared a harried, bucktoothed clerk who tried to brush past them. “Miss Hero Jarvis and Lord Devlin to see Sir William.”

  The clerk cast a dubious eye over their slime-smeared clothes, his thin nose twitching as the smell of oysters and hake and brill engulfed him. “I’m afraid Sir William has left strict instructions that he never be disturbed for an hour after—”

  “If you think,” said Sebastian with that icy self-composure only the son and heir of an earl could achieve, “that Sir William will thank you for
leaving Lord Jarvis’s daughter waiting in the common lobby of a public office, you obviously have not considered the matter.”

  The clerk was a pale-skinned man with protuberant eyes and a short upper lip that refused to cover his pronounced front teeth. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down above his modest cravat. “Lord Jarvis’s d—” He broke off, his eyes bulging even more. “Please follow me,” he said, tripping over his own feet in his haste to lead them up the stairs to the private apartments overhead.

  He escorted them to a small anteroom, then paused. “If you’ll just wait here,” he whispered, extending both hands out palm flat in a gesture reminiscent of someone quieting a congregation. The man should have been a cleric, Sebastian thought, instead of a clerk. “I’ll tell Sir William you’re here.”

  “Why do I get the impression Sir William makes it a habit of slipping away from his duties every afternoon for an hour’s nap?” said Miss Jarvis as she watched the clerk creep through the door to their left.

  “I suspect you’re—” He broke off as a wailing shriek arose from the far side of the door. “What the devil?”

  Miss Jarvis reached the door before him, pushing it open without ceremony. The room was small, a cross between an office and a storage room overflowing with untidy files. The clerk stood just inside the door, his mouth now opening and closing silently on his large front teeth.

  Sir William half sat, half lay in an awkward pose in a padded chair behind a battered oak desk, his eyes wide and staring, his jaw slack, his head lolling at an unnatural angle.

  Sebastian expected Miss Jarvis to scream. Instead she said calmly, “Good heavens, someone’s broken his neck.”

  “Fish.” Sebastian tossed his coat to one side and stripped off his waistcoat. “I need a bath.”

  “It’s coming, my lord,” said the valet, picking up the offending coat with one crooked finger and heading for the door.

  “Oh, and, Calhoun?”

  The valet turned. “My lord?”

  “Somewhere in this city are two whores who formerly graced the parlor of the Orchard Street Academy. One, named Hessy Abrahams, hasn’t been seen since Wednesday of last week. The other, Hannah Green, arrived at the Magdalene House with Rose Fletcher but fled before the fire. She may or may not have gone to ground in the Haymarket. I need to talk to both of them—if they’re still alive.”

  “If they’re alive, I’ll find them, my lord,” said Calhoun, and bowed himself out.

  “Any luck yet locating your missing friend?” asked Sebastian, pausing beside Somerville’s table, where he sat with his chin sunk against his chest and shoulders hunched as if against the cold.

  Somerville looked up and shook his head. “We haven’t found a trace of him.”

  Pulling out a chair, Sebastian signaled a passing waiter and ordered two more pints. “I understand you served in Africa,” he said casually.

  “Yes, Egypt,” said Somerville. “As well as the Sudan and Cape Town.”

  “I spent some time in Egypt myself, but I never went below the Sahara.”

  They spoke for a time of Africa and the Americas, slipping easily into that camaraderie known to soldiers everywhere. Sebastian took his time bringing the conversation around to the Fairchilds. “You grew up in Northamptonshire, I take it?” he asked casually.

  “Wansford.” Reaching into his pocket, Somerville tipped the contents of a rice-paper packet of white powder into one palm. He licked it clean, then gulped his beer as a chaser. “Quinine,” he said when he became aware of Sebastian watching him.

  “With a little added kick of arsenic?”

  The man gave a wry grin. “It’s a winning combination. Africa would be lost to us without it.”

  Sebastian said, “Was Cedric Fairchild with you in Africa?”

  “Cedric? No. We’ve known each other since we were in leading strings. My father’s land marches with Lord Fairchild’s estate.”

  “Then you know his sister Rachel.” Sebastian deliberately kept the sentence in the present tense.

  Somerville nodded. “She used to come over and play with m’sisters when she was little.”

  Sebastian smiled. “How many sisters do you have?”

  Somerville gave a mock groan. “Five. M’father claims buying a pair of colors is nothing compared to the cost of a London Season.”

  “How many still left to go off?”

  “Four. Fortunately Mary—the eldest—managed to do quite well for herself. Married Lord Berridge, you know. She’s promised to sponsor her younger sisters, when the time comes. M’father’s relieved, I can tell you. He always hoped Cedric would take a fancy to one of them, but I’m afraid Cedric always looked upon my sisters as if they were his sisters, too.”

  “I imagine they were often at Fairchild Hall.”

  “Well, no,” said Somerville. His eyes were bright, feverish with a deadly combination of sickness and arsenic. “As a matter of fact, m’father would never let any of ’em go over there.” The captain hesitated, then leaned forward to add softly, “He always said Lord Fairchild was a tad too fond of little girls, if you know what I mean?”

  Sebastian took a slow sip of his beer. A tad too fond of little girls. It was a polite, euphemistic expression for something so ugly and bestial most Englishmen found it difficult to admit it actually existed in their oh so proper and painfully civil society. If Somerville hadn’t imbibed so many beers, Sebastian doubted the man would even have mentioned it.

  Had there been rumors around the village of Wansford? Sebastian wondered. Tales of frightened little girls? Servants who caught glimpses of what was meant to be hidden? Sebastian couldn’t even say exactly what had first raised the suspicion in his head. There couldn’t be that many reasons a gently bred young woman would flee her home to end her days on the streets.

  Yet Rachel Fairchild had run away twice. Once from the Fairchild townhouse in Curzon Street, then again from the Academy in Covent Garden. Were the two flights linked? Or had the first flight merely exposed her to the danger that had led to the second—and, ultimately, to her death?

  Sebastian regarded the young man beside him. “Tell me about the first Lady Fairchild.”

  “Lady Fairchild?” Somerville looked surprised. “She was French, you know. An émigrée. I remember she always wore a red velvet band around her neck, in memory of some relative or other who’d been guillotined.” He brought up one hand to touch his throat. “It fascinated me when I was a lad. But I don’t recall much else about her. I was still at Eton when she died.”

  “Was she ill for long?”

  “Ill? Hardly. She was shot.”

  “Shot?”

  Somerville nodded. “Lord Fairchild himself found her in the Pavilion—you know, one of those follies built like a Greek temple. By the lake. The inquest decided it was some poacher’s shot gone wild, but, well”—Somerville shrugged—“people will talk.”

  “They thought it was murder?”

  “Murder? Oh, no.” Somerville drained his tankard. “They thought it was suicide. But then, what were they going to do? Bury her ladyship at the crossroads with a stake through her heart? They returned a verdict of death by misadventure, and Lady Fairchild now sleeps peacefully in the family tomb.”

  “Buy you another beer?” offered Sebastian.

  The captain looked at his tankard as if startled to discover it empty. “I thank you, but no.” He set the tankard aside and rose to his feet. “I promised m’sister Mary I’d take her for a drive around the park this afternoon. Since I’ve been posted back here to London, she’s decided to make good use of me—she’s lined me up for everything from Lady Melbourne’s famous picnic this Saturday to some grand ball or t’other I can’t remember when. It’s enough to make a man look upon forced marches and monthlong sieges with something approaching fondness.” Smiling faintly, Somerville gave a casual salute and turned toward the door.