Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  “Why do you think she cried?”

  “Why do you think she cried?” said Maggie scornfully. “Why does any woman cry?”

  Sebastian studied Maggie McQueen’s bright dark eyes, age-worn face, and work-gnarled hands. “Do they cry much?” he asked quietly. “The women of the Orchard Street Academy?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Not most o’m. Most o’m have more’n they ever dreamed of—plenty of food, a roof o’er their heads, nice clothes.”

  “But Rose?”

  “That one . . .” Maggie hesitated, the smoke from her pipe drifting up to waft around her head. “She grew up dreaming of other things.”

  Yet still she stayed, Sebastian thought, caught in a purgatory of her own making, trapped by self-loathing and misplaced guilt and suffering for the sins of others. Aloud, he said, “Why did you leave the Academy?”

  Maggie knocked the ashes out of her pipe against the hearth and prepared to stand up. “You come around asking questions. They got nervous.”

  “They?”

  She shrugged. “Mr. Kane. Miss Lil. Thackery. Aa seen ’em loooking at uz. Wondering if Aa’d squawk. Old woman like uz, who’d notice if Aa disappeared one day? So Aa disappeared meself. Afore they could make uz disappear.” She hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and shot it at a nearby spittoon with flawless accuracy.

  “Did you see Hessy Abrahams’s body?” asked Sebastian.

  “ ’Course Aa did. Aa wrapped it in canvas, too.”

  “Was she stabbed, as well?”

  Maggie pushed to her feet. “Nawh. Twern’t no blooood on her. Somebody’d gone and snapped her neck. Just like a chicken ready for the pot.”

  Chapter 44

  SATURDAY, 9 MAY 1812

  Sebastian watched the tavern for a time from across the street, where a scattering of ashes and a black scorch mark on the broken paving stones marked the spot once occupied by the hot potato seller. A few men turned to stare at him as they passed, their jaws unshaven, their eyes sunken. But the streets were largely empty. This was a district that really only came to life in the afternoon and evening.

  A noisome alley ran along the south side of the tavern. Crossing the street, Sebastian took a deep breath and ducked down the passageway, his bootheels crunching the debris of broken bottles and oyster shells and rain-sodden playbills that fluttered halfheartedly in the breeze. Like most alleys in London, this one served the area’s residents as an outdoor chamber pot. It made a change from the smell of fish, but he doubted Calhoun would consider it an improvement.

  After his last visit to the Black Dragon, Sebastian suspected his chances of simply strolling in the front door unmolested were limited. He needed a less direct entrance.

  He found the door that opened onto the alley from the tavern’s kitchens and, just beyond it, a flight of rickety wooden steps that led up to the first floor. Beyond that the alley ended abruptly in a high brick wall. Sebastian was standing at the base of the stairs and considering his options when the kitchen door opened behind him.

  He swung around to see a burly man wearing a brown corduroy coat back into the alley as he wrestled with an overflowing dustbin. He was followed by a second man with a broken nose and cauliflower ear who dumped an armload of broken-up crates to the side of the door, then straightened. Sebastian recognized Thackery, the ex-pugilist from the Orchard Street Academy.

  “Well, well,” said Thackery, his small black eyes lighting up at the sight of Sebastian. “Look what we got here.” His smile widened to show his broken brown teeth. “I see ye forgot yer bloody walking stick.”

  With a brick wall behind him and two thugs in front of him, Sebastian’s options had suddenly become limited. He took a step forward and slammed his bootheel into the pugilist’s right knee. “That is the one I hit before, isn’t it?” he said as the ex-fighter went down with a howl.

  “Wot the ’ell?” The burly man in brown corduroy set down his dustbin with a thump and reached inside it to pull out a broken bottle. “Ye know this cove, Thackery?” Moving into the center of the passageway, he crouched down into a street fighters’ stance, the broken bottle held like a knife. “Looks like ye wandered down the wrong alley,” he said to Sebastian.

  One hand clamped to his knee, Thackery staggered up to lean against the soot-stained brick wall behind him, his breath coming hard and fast. Sebastian kicked again, this time aiming at the dustbin. It toppled over with a cascading crash of broken glass and animal bones that knocked the other man off his feet in a swill of stinking refuse. Leaping over the strewn garbage, Sebastian managed to take two steps toward the mouth of the alley before Thackery came off the wall at him.

  Big and enraged, the man caught Sebastian in a rush that carried him across the alley to slam him up against the far wall. The impact sent the breath whooshing out of Sebastian. He was dimly aware of light spilling down the steps as the door to the first floor opened above them. Then Thackery picked Sebastian up bodily and pinned him to the bricks.

  Gripping his hands together, Sebastian pyramided his forearms and drove them up, intending to break the pugilist’s grip on his jacket. It didn’t work. Nonplussed, he hammered his doubled fist down into the man’s face. Thackery grunted but stood firm.

  His hands still locked together, Sebastian swung his doubled fists back, then slammed them into the side of Thackery’s head. He still didn’t budge.

  “That’s enough,” said Ian Kane from the top of the steps. “Let him go.”

  Thackery hesitated.

  “You heard me. Let him go.”

  Breathing heavily, his face red, Thackery took a step back and let Sebastian slide down the wall.

  Sebastian straightened his lapels and adjusted the folds of his cravat.

  “Since you’re here, you might as well come up,” said Ian Kane, resplendent in buckskin breeches and a silk paisley dressing gown in swirls of red and blue.

  “Thank you,” said Sebastian, aware of Thackery’s angry gaze following him as he picked up his hat and mounted the steps.

  “Some ale?” asked Kane, leading the way into a comfortable old parlor with gleaming wainscoting and an elaborately carved stone hearth.

  “Please,” said Sebastian, his gaze on the carved caryatids holding up the mantel. “Lovely piece.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

  Sebastian surveyed the damage to his hat. “I’ve been hearing some interesting tales about the Academy.”

  “You know what they say,” said Kane, going to pour two glasses of ale. “You don’t want t’be believing everything you hear.”

  “No denying that,” agreed Sebastian. “For instance, I heard there were only two women missing from your house—Rose Fletcher and Hannah Green. Now I discover there’s actually a third. Hessy Abrahams.”

  Kane’s head came up just a shade too fast. But otherwise, he gave nothing away. He held out one of the glasses of ale. “It seems you know more about my establishment than I do.”

  “Do I?” said Sebastian, taking the ale. “It’s my understanding Hessy Abrahams didn’t run away like the others. She was murdered.”

  Kane raised his own glass to his lips. “You must have been talking to one of my competitors. They’re always spreading dastardly tales about me.”

  “Actually, I’ve been talking to Maggie McQueen.”

  “Ah. Dear Maggie. I wondered where she’d taken herself off to.”

  Sebastian held his ale without tasting it. “Something rather spectacular happened in your house on Wednesday of last week, Kane. What was it?”

  Kane shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe. But nothing happens in one of your houses that you don’t know about.”

  A smile lit up the other man’s eyes. “I heard that Bow Street magistrate—Sir William—died of an apoplectic fit in his own public office.”

  “Well, you can’t believe everything you hear.”

  Kane gave a short bark of laughter and went to stretch out in an upholstered seat near the fir
e. “Very well. You like stories, Lord Devlin? I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were three gentlemen out on the town. Like most young men, they had a perennial itch in their pants. As ill luck would have it, they chose to scratch their itch at the Orchard Street Academy. They selected three Cyprians and disappeared up the stairs with them. After that, I’m afraid, the tale becomes rather murky. The next thing we know, one of the gentlemen is raising a dust because his particular Bird of Paradise has flown—without, it seems, performing the services for which he had already handed over a substantial sum. Prime articles in my establishment do not come cheap, you understand.”

  “And his lady of choice was?”

  “Hannah Green. Miss Lil was still looking for dear Hannah when she discovered Hessy.”

  “With her neck broken.”

  “You’ve heard this tale before.”

  “Not in its entirety,” said Sebastian. “And the gentleman who had selected Hessy?”

  “Disappeared.”

  “Like Hannah Green,” said Sebastian.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Rose Fletcher?”

  “Rose, too, had simply vanished.”

  “Leaving a dead customer in her bed?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Kane leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure you understand my position. Dead bodies are not good for business. They attract all sorts of unwelcome attention from the local constabulary and scare away customers.”

  “So you—what? Dumped the bodies in the river? Buried them in Bethnal Green?”

  Kane gave a slow smile. “Something like that.”

  “It’s an interesting story. There’s just one small problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Kane pressed his splayed hands to his chest in mock astonishment. “Stories need to make sense?” His hands fell. “I’ll be frank with you, my lord. I don’t understand what happened that night. All I know is that a few more nights like that and the Academy will be out of business.”

  “Had you ever seen any of the three men before?”

  Kane’s lips curved up into a slow smile. “You forget, my lord, I wasn’t there.”

  “The dead man, then. You saw him. Did you recognize him?”

  “Believe me, Lord Devlin, I don’t have the slightest idea who he was.”

  “Believe you, Mr. Kane? Now why should I believe you?”

  Ian Kane was no longer smiling. “I could have let Thackery and Johnson kill you in the alley.”

  Sebastian set aside his ale untouched. If the confrontation hadn’t occurred in uncomfortable proximity to the Black Dragon, Sebastian doubted the brothel owner would have felt compelled to interfere. As the man said, dead bodies weren’t good for business. “That wasn’t a matter of altruism. That was just . . . geography.”

  Kane stayed where he was, his head falling back as he watched Sebastian turn toward the door. “Then I suggest that in the future you choose your locales wisely.”

  Chapter 45

  Sebastian sat on the scorched, crumbling remnant of a wall and breathed in the pungent smell of wet burned wood and old ash. He’d come here to what was left of the Magdalene House after leaving the Black Dragon in St. Giles. A journeyman glazier passing in the street threw him a sharp look, but kept walking. Sebastian stared out over the charred jumble of debris and wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.

  What manner of men would kill seven unknown women just to get at one? The answer was only too obvious. Men who were accustomed to killing. And no one was more accustomed to killing than military men.

  He thought about the girl from the cheesemonger’s shop, Pippa. She’d given him a clue that first day, when she’d told him the gentlemen she’d seen watching the Magdalene House had reminded her of some old Nabob. One could always tell a Nabob by his sun-darkened skin, just as one could tell the military men who had spent years under the fierce suns of India and the Sudan, Egypt and the West Indies.

  The sound of boot leather scraping over fallen timbers brought Sebastian’s head around. “What are you doing here?” asked Cedric Fairchild, picking his way toward him.

  “Trying to make sense of all this.” He studied the younger man’s haggard face. “What brings you here?”

  “I don’t know.” Cedric stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat, his shoulders hunched against the dampness as he stared out over the house’s shattered walls and twisted, burned contents. “I can’t believe she died here. I keep thinking that if I’d only managed to talk her into leaving—”

  “Don’t,” said Sebastian. “It’s not your fault.”

  Cedric swung his head to look at him. “Yes, it is.” He sucked in a breath that seemed to shudder his entire frame. “I was talking to Georgina—Lady Sewell. My sister. She’d heard about Rachel’s death and came to see me. She told me something I didn’t know. It seems that last summer—before I came home—Rachel did quarrel with Ramsey. So maybe my father was right. That is why she ran away.”

  Sebastian’s brows drew together. “Would Lord Fairchild have forced her to marry Ramsey even if she had changed her mind?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought about it. I suppose he might. He’s a stickler for the proprieties, you know. And if she’d broken off her betrothal, there would doubtless have been a scandal.”

  Sebastian watched as Pippa from the cheesemonger’s across the street came and stood in her shop’s doorway, a frown on her face as she narrowed her eyes, watching them.

  Cedric said, “I don’t understand why you’re poking into the past, asking these questions about Rachel. About my family. What’s any of it got to do with this?” He swept his arm in a wide arc that took in the fallen, blackened beams, the crumbling chimney of what was once a fireplace.

  “I’m not certain it has anything to do with it,” Sebastian admitted.

  Cedric’s arm dropped to his side. “My father’s not well, you know. The news about Rachel hit him hard.”

  “You told him it was true?”

  “My sister told him.”

  “And he believed it? He accepted that she is dead?”

  Cedric’s gaze shifted away. “I don’t know. He said he didn’t. I mean, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it, with her body burned like that? But he’s—he’s not himself. I’m worried about him.”

  Sebastian felt his lips curl into a wry smile. “You want me to stop asking questions about Rachel. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “She’s dead! Dead and buried. Knowing what happened to her isn’t going to bring her back, but it could very well kill our father.” Cedric jerked his head toward the back of the burned-out house. “You want to find out what happened to the women in this house, fine. But leave my family out of it!”

  In the sudden silence that followed his outburst, Sebastian could hear the rattle of a shutter being thrust up. He glanced down at his clasped hands, then up at the other man’s tight-lipped face. Cedric Fairchild might have been to war, but he suddenly looked very, very young. Sebastian said, “This man who’s missing . . . Max Ludlow. Did you know him well?”