Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

Sebastian said, “I can ask Jules Calhoun to take her to his mother. Calhoun is my valet,” he added by way of explanation when Miss Jarvis threw him a questioning glance.

  “You would send her to your valet’s mother?” said Miss Jarvis, while Hannah Green let out a wail.

  “I ain’t goin’ to nobody’s bleedin’ mother,” said Hannah. “She’ll make me feel like some bleedin’ cockroach or somethin’. It’ll be worse than the Quakers.”

  “You’d rather have your neck snapped?” said Sebastian.

  Hannah opened, then closed, her mouth.

  “Besides,” said Sebastian, “I think Grace Calhoun will surprise you.”

  This time, Hannah’s mouth fell open and stayed open. “Grace Calhoun? Your valet’s mother is Grace Calhoun?”

  “You know her?”

  “Get on wit’ you. Ev’rybody knows Grace Calhoun.”

  “Who is Grace Calhoun?” whispered Miss Jarvis to Paul Gibson.

  But Paul Gibson only said, “Not someone you want to know.”

  “Aw,” said Hannah Green, casting a long, wistful look at the curricle and pair of blood chestnuts waiting with Tom across the street. “I was ’opin’ maybe I’d get t’ride in yer curricle. I ain’t never ridden in a rig like that afore.”

  While Miss Jarvis turned a laugh into a cough, Sebastian said to his friend, “Tell Calhoun I should be there shortly. And don’t let her out of your sight until you turn her over to him.”

  “I ain’t gonna pike off,” said Hannah from the depths of the hackney, both hands once again wrapped around her throat.

  “Not if you want to live, you won’t,” said Sebastian, stepping back. Gibson scrambled in behind her and the hackney started with a jerk. “And I must say, I am surprised at you, Miss Jarvis,” he added, turning to her. “Laughing at the enthusiasms of those who are less fortunate than we.”

  “I wasn’t laughing at Hannah,” said Miss Jarvis, opening her parasol against the noonday sun. “I fear I was overcome by the mental image of you driving that vision in pink-and-white stripes and burgundy plumes through the streets of London. It’s why you sent her with Gibson, isn’t it?”

  “I sent her with Gibson because it is my intention to seek out Spencer Perceval and warn him of a possible plot to assassinate him. Just as soon as I drive you home.”

  Her smile faded. “Thank you, but I came by hackney, and I intend to return by hackney.”

  “I’m not sure that would be wise.”

  “Are you concerned about my safety, or my reputation?”

  “Both. You don’t even have your maid with you.”

  Miss Jarvis looked down her aquiline nose at him. “As for my reputation, I seriously doubt it would be enhanced by my driving through the streets of the City in your curricle—”

  “You’ve done it before.”

  “While as for my safety—” She nodded down the street toward a loitering brown-coated man, who quickly glanced away when her gaze turned toward him. “I have my father’s watchdog to protect me.”

  Sebastian studied the smooth line of her cheek, the proud angle of her head. “Nevertheless, you will take care.”

  Her hand tightened around the handle of her parasol. “Lord Devlin. There is no need for you to concern yourself over my safety. I have always considered myself an eminently practical and capable person.”

  “You’ve never before been involved in murder.”

  “Yet, in the past week, I have survived three separate attempts on my life.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

  Chapter 49

  He found Spencer Perceval at the Admiralty, walking rapidly toward Whitehall. “Lord Devlin,” said the Prime Minister when he spotted Sebastian, “have you reconsidered your decision against taking up a position in the Commons?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Sebastian, glancing at the huddle of clerks who’d followed the Prime Minister down the stairs. “Walk with me a ways. There’s something we must discuss.”

  Perceval’s smile faded. “If it’s this business about that poor unfortunate Bellingham—”

  “Bellingham?” With difficulty, Sebastian resurrected the memory of the half-mad merchant who had accosted Perceval on the footpath outside Almack’s. “No. But there is something I believe you must be made aware of.” The two men turned their steps toward the Parade. “Last Monday, someone attacked the Friends’ Magdalene House in Covent Garden and killed all the women there.”

  Perceval nodded. “I’d heard you’d involved yourself in their deaths.”

  Sebastian studied the Prime Minister’s open, congenial face. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From your father.”

  “My father? What does he know of it?”

  “He does concern himself with your welfare, you know. Your association with these types of affairs worries him.”

  “Because he considers my involvement in murder investigations beneath my station?”

  “Because he fears for your safety.”

  Sebastian stared out over the company of infantrymen drilling before them, their backs rigid, their feet rising and falling in unison. “I spent six years in the Army. He didn’t fear for my safety then.”

  “Only every minute of every day.”

  Sebastian looked at the man beside him. “I am sorry if my involvement in these matters causes Hendon distress. But this is something I must do.”

  “Because you enjoy it?”

  “Enjoy it? I suppose I do enjoy the mental challenge of solving a puzzle,” he admitted, considering. “But the swirl of emotions that inevitably surround a violent death? The hatred and envy, the grief and despair? No one could enjoy that.”

  Perceval’s eyes narrowed into a frown. “You’re certain the women in the Magdalene House were murdered?”

  “Yes. But I’m afraid there’s far more involved than that. The evidence suggests their deaths may be linked to a scheme to assassinate you.”

  “Me?”

  “Last week, a party of gentlemen hired three young prostitutes to entertain them for the night. During the course of the evening’s revelries, the men became incautious enough to discuss their plans in French. I suppose they thought it unlikely that any of the women could understand their conversation. But one did.”

  Perceval gave a sharp bark of laughter. “What are you suggesting? That Napoleon wants to see me dead? What would he think to gain by such an action? If the Whigs were to come to power, they might seek to end this war. But the Whigs will never come to power. Not with Prinny as Regent.”

  “I don’t claim to understand the motivation at work here. But two of the three women hired that night are dead, along with an uncomfortable number of the people they’ve come into contact with since. The one woman who survives says they were overheard discussing plans to murder someone named Perceval. Now I could be mistaken. They could be planning to kill someone else entirely. But the lengths to which they’ve been willing to go to silence everyone who has any knowledge of their plot suggests that something more serious is afoot here.”

  Perceval was quiet a moment, his gaze like Sebastian’s following the troop of men as they wheeled to their right. “A man in my position makes enemies,” he said at last. “It’s inevitable. You saw that poor old sod Bellingham.”

  “Bellingham is an annoying gnat compared to these men. They’re ruthless and brutal.”

  Perceval scrubbed one hand across the lower part of his face. “If they killed those eight women—”

  “And that was only the beginning.”

  The Prime Minister turned to face him. “What would you have me do? Cower in Downing Street in fear? I can’t do that and still properly run this country.”

  Sebastian felt the cold wind buffet his face, bringing him the smell of dust and damp grass. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting you do. Only—be aware that someone wants you dead, and take whatever precautions you can.”

  The bells of the abbey began to strike the
hour. “I must go,” said Perceval, turning toward Carlton House. “I’m to meet with the Prince Regent at half past.” He gripped Sebastian’s shoulder for a moment, then let him go. “Thank you for the warning.”

  Sebastian stood for a moment, watching the slim, middle-aged man hurry away. Then he turned toward his own waiting curricle. And it occurred to him as he crossed Whitehall that in the past hour he’d said essentially the same thing to three very different people—Hannah Green, Miss Jarvis, and Spencer Perceval. He had the disquieting feeling that time was running out for all three.

  “To the Blue Anchor?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “Grace spends most of her time these days at the Red Lion.”

  “Good Lord,” said Sebastian. If anything, the Red Lion had an even more shocking reputation than the Blue Anchor, but he couldn’t see how he had any choice. “I’ll order the town carriage for you.”

  Hannah Green caught her breath in shivering delight when she saw the carriage pull up before the door. “Gor,” she whispered. “It’s like somethin’ out of a fairy tale, it is.”

  “As good as a ride in the curricle?” Sebastian asked, giving her a hand up the steps.

  “Better!”

  He cast a glance at Jules Calhoun. “Think your mother can handle her?”

  The valet laughed and hopped up behind her. “My mum? Are you serious?”

  “You ain’t comin’ with us?” said Hannah.

  Sebastian shook his head and took a step back. He’d realized it was past time he paid another visit to the Orchard Street Academy.

  Chapter 50

  Leaving Tom and the curricle at Portman Square, Sebastian walked the length of Orchard Street, the weight of a double-barreled pistol heavy against his side. It was early yet, the footpath crowded with last-minute shoppers. As he approached the once grand old house, he pulled his hat low over his eyes and turned up the collar of his driving coat.

  If anyone could identify the men who’d hired Rose, Hessy, and Hannah off the floor last Tuesday and returned the next night to kill them, it was the abbess of the Orchard Street Academy, Miss Lil. The problem was going to be getting past the broken-nosed pugilist who guarded the brothel’s door to talk to her.

  The oil lamp mounted high on the Academy’s front had already been lit against the gathering gloom, the flame flickering in the evening breeze to throw patterns of light and shadow across the house’s stone facade. Sebastian mounted the shallow brown steps, his hand on the flintlock in his pocket as he prepared to either bluff or bully his way inside. But at the top of the steps, he hesitated. The door stood unlatched and slightly ajar.

  His hand tightening around the handle of the pistol, Sebastian drew it from his pocket, every sense coming to tingling alertness. Drawing back the flintlock’s first hammer, he used his shoulder to nudge the door open wider.

  The familiar tang of freshly spilled blood hit him first, overlaying the scents of candle wax and dry rot and decadence. The hall looked much as he remembered it, the once grand carpet and soaring plasterwork illuminated by bronze sconces with mottled mirrors. The dim golden light showed him the door-man, Thackery, half sitting, half lying in a huddled heap against the wall just inside the entrance.

  Stepping cautiously into the hall, Sebastian gave the man a nudge with the toe of one boot, which sent the pugilist flopping sideways in a heavy, slow-motion roll. His eyes were closed, his plump cheeks as soft and flushed as a sleeping babe’s. His pistol held at the alert, Sebastian reached down with his left hand and felt the man’s still-warm neck for a pulse. Then his gaze fell to the dark stain of blood visible beneath the edge of the man’s coat. Flipping back the brown corduroy, Sebastian studied the neatly sliced waistcoat. It was the kind of cut left by a dagger aimed well and deep.

  He straightened, aware of the unnatural quiet of the house around him. He threw a quick glance into the small room to his right but found it, mercifully, empty. He moved on, his heart pounding in his chest. How many women would a house like this one employ? he wondered. Two dozen? More? Add to that their customers . . .

  He paused at the heavy velvet curtain of the arch, the polished grip of the pistol slick with sweat in his hand. At his feet lay a stout man of perhaps fifty with heavy jowls and graying dark hair. A customer, by the looks of him, at the wrong place at the wrong time. He sprawled on his back, his arms flung wide like a crucifixion victim.

  Moving cautiously, Sebastian stepped past him, into the parlor with its fading emerald hangings, the tawdry splendor of moldering mirrors grand enough to have graced the halls of Versailles in an earlier, less decadent life. The light from the branches of candles on the chipped marble mantelpiece flared up warm and golden, showing him two more dead women.

  The Cyprian lying near the settee was unknown to him. Turning her over, he found himself staring into wide, vacant blue eyes. Her hair was the color of cornsilk, her teeth as small and white as a child’s. A spill of blood trickled from the corner of her open mouth to pool on the carpet like a misshapen black rose. Beyond her, near the base of the staircase, he found Miss Lil.

  Sebastian crouched down beside the Academy’s abbess. She lay curled on one side, her hands thrust out as if she’d sought to fend off her assailant. He touched her cheek and watched her head loll unnaturally against her shoulder. He didn’t need Paul Gibson to diagnose the cause of death.

  Four dead. Sitting back on his heels, Sebastian lifted his gaze toward the first floor above. Surely one of them had cried out in alarm or terror before they’d died. Had no one upstairs heard? Or were the inhabitants of this house so accustomed to the sound of screams and shouts that no one had paid any heed?

  Pushing to his feet, he was about to mount the steps when he became aware of another scent hanging in the air, mingling with the odor of blood and decay. The hot, pungent scent of a quickly extinguished candle.

  His gaze shifted to the lacy alcove to the right of the hearth. When he’d been here before, the alcove had been lit by a candle that had shown him the wraithlike silhouette of a woman and a harp. Now all was darkness and silence.

  He crossed the room with rapid strides to snatch back the lace curtain. The alcove smelled of hot wax and charred candlewick and raw fear. The harp stood abandoned in the center of the alcove, the low stool beside it overturned. Just inside the curtain, a tall, gaunt-faced woman pressed her back to the wall, her hands splayed out beside her as if she could will herself to disappear into the paneling.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gently. “You’re safe.”

  The woman’s thin chest jerked with her ragged breathing. “God have mercy on me,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They’re dead, aren’t they? All dead.”

  Sebastian studied her pale face, the straight brown brows and sharply edged bones so obvious beneath the inadequate flesh of cheek and forehead. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her speech was cultured, her gown rigorously high-necked and modest. And judging by the milky-white glaze that obscured her eyes, she was quite blind.

  He said, “How long ago did this happen?”

  “A minute. Maybe two. Not long.”

  Sebastian’s gaze lifted to the stairs. He had walked the length of Orchard Street, the Academy always in his line of sight. If anyone had left the house a minute or two before his arrival, he’d have seen them. He felt his body tense. “Where did they go? The men who did this, I mean. Upstairs?”

  Even as he asked the question, he heard a thump from overhead followed by a woman’s high-pitched laugh and the lower tones of a man’s voice.