by C. S. Harris
Jem stumbled backward, his elbow knocking painfully against the edge of the Lady Chapel’s intricately carved stone screen as he squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out that horrific vision.
But nothing would ever blot out that smell, the cloying, sickening mingling of blood and candle wax and raw, sexual fulfillment.
Chapter 3
It was almost noon by now, but the light filtering down through the stained-glass windows in the apse of St. Matthew of the Fields was still feeble, diffuse.
Sir Henry Lovejoy, chief magistrate for Westminster at Queen Square, let his gaze travel over the blood-splattered chapel walls, the thick pools of congealing gore standing out dark and cruel against the white marble of the altar steps. He had a theory, that the incidence of crimes of violence and passion was higher on those days when the yellow fog held London in its choking, deadly grip.
But it had been a long time since London had seen a crime like this one.
To one side of the Lady Chapel, a small, ominously still form lay hidden beneath a cloth stained dark and stiff with so much blood that Lovejoy had to force himself to walk over to it. Bending, he flipped back the edge of the fabric, and sighed.
She’d been pretty, once, this woman. And young. Any untimely death was tragic, of course. But no man who’d ever loved a woman, or watched with pride and fear the tentative first steps of a child, could look upon that youthful loveliness and not experience an added weight of sorrow, an extra edge to his sense of outrage.
His knees creaking in complaint, Lovejoy lowered himself into a squat, his gaze still fixed on that pale, blood-streaked face. “Know who she is?”
The question was addressed to the only other person in the chapel, a tall, well-built man in his mid-thirties, with fair, fashionably disheveled hair and an intricately tied cravat. As Queen Square’s senior constable, Edward Maitland had been the first authority of any consequence called to the scene and had been the one handling the investigation to this point. “An actress,” he said now, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his weight rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as if to contain his impatience with Sir Henry’s slow, methodical ways. “A Miss Rachel York.”
“Ah. I thought she looked familiar.” Swallowing hard, Lovejoy eased the cloth from the rest of the girl’s body, and forced himself to look.
Her throat had been repeatedly, viciously slashed in long, savage gashes. Which explained the sprays of blood on the walls, he supposed. So much blood, everywhere. Yet Rachel York’s death had not been quick, or easy. Her fists were clenched as if in endurance, and bruises showed dark and ugly against the pale, bare flesh of her wrists and forearms. The skin high on her left cheek had been split by a harsh blow. The torn, disarrayed emerald satin gown and ripped velvet pelisse told their own story.
“He had his way with her, I take it?” said Lovejoy.
Maitland shifted his weight back onto the heels of his expensive boots and balanced there, his gaze not on the girl but on the high, blue and red stained glass of the eastern window. “Yes, sir. No doubt about that.”
No doubt indeed, thought Lovejoy. The inescapable tang of semen still hung in the air, mingling with the heavy metallic odor of blood and the pious sweetness of incense and beeswax. He let his gaze travel over the girl’s carefully composed limbs, and frowned. “She was lying like this, when you found her?”
“No, sir. She was there, before the altar. Weren’t proper to leave her that way. This being a church and all.”
Lovejoy straightened, his gaze drifting back to those blood-smeared marble steps. Every candle on the altar had guttered down and gone out. She must have lit them all, he thought, before she died. Why? In piety? Or because she was afraid of the dark?
Aloud, he said, “What was she doing here, do you suppose?”
Maitland’s brows twitched together in a swift, betraying movement instantly stilled. It was obviously a question that hadn’t occurred to him. “That I can’t say, sir. The sexton found her when he came to open the church this morning.” He pulled a notebook from the pocket of his greatcoat and flipped it open with the ostentatious display of attention to detail that sometimes grated on Lovejoy’s nerves. “A Mr. Jem Cummings. Neither he nor the Reverend”—there was a brief ruffling of pages—“Reverend James McDermott say they’ve ever seen her before.”
“They lock the church every night, do they?”
“Yes, sir.” Again Maitland consulted his notebook. “At eight sharp.”
Reaching down, Lovejoy carefully replaced the cloth over what was left of Rachel York, only pausing at the last moment to study, once again, that pale, beautiful face. She had a French look about her, with the fair curls and widely spaced brown eyes and short upper lip often found in Normandy. He’d seen her just last week, with Kat Boleyn in the Covent Garden Theater’s production of As You Like it. Seen her and admired her, not simply for her beauty but for her talent. He had a clear image of her upon the stage, her hands held high in the clasp of her fellow cast members as they took their final bow, her eyes bright and shining, her smile wide and triumphantly joyous.
He jerked the cloth back over those still, bloodstained features and turned away, his gaze narrowing as he took in the layout of the old church, the aisled nave and wide transepts, the choir and broad apse. “This Mr. Cummings . . . does he say he came back here, to the Lady Chapel, before locking up last night?”
Maitland shook his head. “The sexton says he glanced back here from the retrochoir and gave a loud halloo, warning that he was about to lock up. But he didn’t actually venture into the chapel itself, sir. And he wouldn’t have seen her from the retrochoir. I checked myself.”
Lovejoy nodded. In the damp coolness of the church, some of the pools of blood had yet to dry. Glossy and thick, they shimmered darkly in the lamplight, and he took care to avoid stepping in them as he walked slowly about the chapel. There’d been so many big, careless feet tramping in and out of the chapel in the past six hours that it would be impossible to accurately reconstruct what the floor had looked like, before the sexton’s arrival. But it seemed somehow disrespectful, a violation of that poor girl lying there against the wall, to be tromping heedlessly through what had once been her life’s blood. So Lovejoy tried to avoid it.
He stopped in front of the small altar’s white marble steps. The blood was thickest here, where she’d been found. A lantern lay on its side, its glass shattered. He twisted around to glance back at his constable. “Any idea who was the last person to use the Lady Chapel?”
Once again, Maitland thumbed through his notebook. It was all for effect, Lovejoy knew. Edward Maitland could recite the entire contents of his notebook from memory. But he thought it gave weight to his pronouncements, to be seen looking up each fact or figure. “We’re still checking,” he said with a slowness that was again for effect, “but it was probably a Mrs. William Nackery. She’s a haberdasher’s widow. Comes to the Lady Chapel here every evening at about half past four and prays for some twenty to thirty minutes. She says the church was empty when she left, just afore five.”
Lovejoy lifted his gaze to the blood-spattered walls, his lips tightening into a smile that had nothing to do with humor. “It appears to be a fairly safe assumption to say she was killed here.”
Warily, Maitland cleared his throat. He always grew uncomfortable when Lovejoy began stating the obvious. “I should think so, sir.”
“Which seems to place our murder between the hours of five and eight last night.”
“That’s the way we figured it, sir.” The constable cleared his throat again. “We found her reticule some two or three feet from the body. It was open, so most of the contents had spilled out. But her pocketbook was still there, undisturbed. And that’s a fine gold necklace and earrings she’s wearing.”
“In other words, no robbery.”
“No, sir.”
“But you say the reticule was open? I wonder if it simply fell open when she dropped it, or if our k
iller was searching for something?” Lovejoy glanced again around the cold chapel, felt the damp chill of the stones seeping up through the soles of his boots. He shoved his gloved hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat, and wished he hadn’t forgotten his scarf. “I’m waiting, Constable.”
The planes of Edward Maitland’s broad, handsome face pinched with puzzlement. “Sir?”
“For you to tell me why you felt it necessary that I come here myself.”
The frown eased into a self-satisfied smile. “Because we’ve figured out who did it, sir.”
“Really?”
“It was this what told us where to look.” Maitland took a small flintlock pistol from his pocket and held it out. “There’s no doubt it was dropped by our murderer. One of the lads found it mixed up in the folds of her cloak.”
Lovejoy took the weapon and balanced it thoughtfully in his hand. It was an exquisite piece, of high-grade steel, with a polished mahogany grip and a brass trigger guard intricately worked with the design of a serpent wrapped around a sword. Forty-four caliber, he decided, from the looks of it, with a rifled bore and a plate that read W. REDDELL, LONDON. There was still enough blood on the barrel to leave a dark smudge across the palm of his kid glove.
“You’ll notice the trigger guard, sir. The serpent and the sword?”
Lovejoy ran the thumb of his left hand across the stain. “Yes, I did notice it, Constable.”
“It’s the device of Viscount Devlin, sir.”
Lovejoy’s grip tightened on the pistol in an involuntary, convulsive movement. There were few in London who hadn’t heard of Sebastian, Viscount Devlin. Or of his father Lord Hendon, chancellor of the exchequer and trusted confidant of the poor old mad King’s Tory prime minister, Spencer Perceval.
Lovejoy flipped the pistol around to hold it out, butt first, to his constable. “Careful, Constable. We’re treading on dangerous ground here. It won’t do to go leaping to any hasty conclusions.”
Maitland met his gaze steadily. He made no move to take the pistol from Lovejoy’s grasp. “There’s more, sir.”
Lovejoy dropped the pistol into his own greatcoat pocket. “Let me hear it.”
“We’ve spoken to Rachel York’s maid, a woman by the name of Mary Grant.” This time Maitland made no pretense of needing to consult his notes. “According to Mary, her mistress went out late yesterday to meet St. Cyr. She told the maid, and I quote, ‘His lordship’ll pay handsomely, never you fear.’ ” The constable paused as if to allow sufficient time for the effect of his words to penetrate, then added, “It was the last anyone saw of her.”
Lovejoy held his constable’s light blue eyes in a steady stare. “What are you suggesting? That she was blackmailing the Viscount?”
“Or threatening him in some way. Yes, sir.”
“I take it you’ve checked into Viscount Devlin’s whereabouts last night?”
“Yes, sir. His servants say he left the house at about five. Claimed he was on his way to his club. But according to his friends, Devlin didn’t arrive at Watier’s until just after nine.”
“And where does the Viscount say he was?”
“We haven’t been able to locate the Viscount himself, sir. His bed was never slept in last night. Word about town is that he was set to fight a duel this morning.”
Lovejoy brought one cupped hand to his mouth and blew thoughtfully against his palm and fingers before letting the hand fall again. “Whoever did this must have been drenched in blood. If Devlin is our man, he would have needed to return home for a change of clothes and a wash before going on to his club.”
“It had occurred to me, sir.”
“So? What do Devlin’s servants have to say about that?”
“Unfortunately, before he went out, Devlin gave his entire staff the night off. His lordship seems to be a most generous employer.” There was something about the way it was said—a clipping of the vowels, a tightening of the lips—that betrayed a hint of an emotion Maitland generally kept discreetly hidden. He was no radical, Maitland. He believed in the social order, in the Great Chain of Being and the hierarchy of man. But that didn’t stop him from craving wealth and position, and envying those, such as Devlin, who’d been born to what Maitland himself couldn’t even aspire.
Lovejoy turned away to wander about the small Lady Chapel. “His valet would know if a set of evening clothes had disappeared from his lordship’s wardrobe.”
“His lordship’s man claims to have found nothing missing. But you know what these manservants can be like. Loyal to a fault.”
Lovejoy nodded absently, his attention caught by an enormous painting of the Virgin ascending into heaven that hung high above the altar. He himself had evangelical, Reformist tendencies—a dangerous inclination he was careful to keep private, of course. He didn’t hold with stained glass and incense and smoke-darkened Renaissance canvases in heavy gilded frames; considered them sinful popish remnants that had nothing to do with the austere God Lovejoy worshiped. But he noticed that blood from Rachel York’s repeatedly slashed throat had sprayed across the painted Virgin’s bare foot in such a way that it echoed, hauntingly, other images he had seen, of Christ on His cross, blood trickling from the wounds in His impaled insteps. And he wondered again, what the woman had been doing here, in this half-forgotten, inconsequential old church. It seemed a strange site for a beautiful young actress to select for an assignation. Or for blackmail.
Maitland cleared his throat. “I’m to tell you that Lord Jarvis is wishful of seeing you, sir. At Carlton House. As soon as you’ve finished here.”
The phrasing was deliberately delicate and Lovejoy knew it, for this was a summons no magistrate could refuse. All the Public Offices, whether at Bow Street or Queen Square, Lambeth Street or Hatten Garden, had standing orders to report to Lord Jarvis immediately if it appeared a crime might involve some sensitive person, such as the mistress of a royal duke or the brother of a peer of the realm. Or the only son and heir of a powerful cabinet minister.
Lovejoy sighed. He had never exactly understood the precise nature of Lord Jarvis’s influence. In addition to a mammoth townhouse on Berkeley Square, the man kept offices in both St. James’s Palace and Carlton House, although he held no government portfolio. And while it was true that he was tied by blood to the royal family, the relationship was that of cousin only. It had often seemed to Lovejoy that Jarvis’s position could best be described by that vague, medieval phrase, the power behind the throne, although how Jarvis had acquired that power and how he had maintained it through the course of King George’s long descent into madness, Lovejoy could never understand. He only knew that the Prince of Wales now depended on the man as much as the King ever had. And that when Jarvis summoned a magistrate, the magistrate went.
Lovejoy swung back to his constable. “You’ve already sent him word of this?”
“I thought he’d want to know right away. Devlin’s father being so close to the Prime Minister and all.”
Lovejoy blew out a long, tense breath that turned into a frosty mist in the cold air. “You do realize the delicacy of the situation?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lovejoy’s gaze narrowed as he studied the constable’s impassive face. Odd that it had never occurred to Lovejoy to wonder until now about Edward Maitland’s politics. But then it had never really mattered, until now. Lovejoy tried to tell himself it still didn’t matter, that their job began and ended with the need to investigate and solve this murder, and punish the malefactor. And yet . . .
And yet the Earl of Hendon, like Spencer Perceval and the other ministers in the King’s cabinet, was a Tory, whereas the Prince of Wales and the men with whom he surrounded himself were Whigs. At any time, for the son and heir of a prominent Tory to be accused of such a crime would have been explosive. For the accusation to come now, when the old King was about to be declared mad and the Prince made Regent, could have profoundly far-reaching implications. Not just for the composition of the government, but for th
e nature of the monarchy itself.
Chapter 4
The privileged inhabitants of fashionable London were just leaving their beds when Sebastian climbed the short flight of steps to his Brook Street home. Only the distant, fog-muffled rumble of traffic from New Bond Street and the squeals of children playing chasey in the charge of nursemaids in nearby Hanover Square disturbed the noonday silence.
There was a kind of sweet oblivion in exhaustion, a blessed numbness, and Sebastian felt it now. Morey, his majordomo, met him in the hall, an unusually anxious look drawing the man’s features together into a frown. “My lord—” he began.
Sebastian’s gaze fell on a familiar cane and top hat resting on the hall table. He was suddenly, intensely aware of his crumpled cravat and the blood-encrusted graze across the side of his forehead and the inevitable toll taken by all the brandy-tinged hours that had passed since last he’d slept. “I take it my father’s here?”
“Yes, my lord. The Earl awaits you in the library. But I believe it imperative that you first be made aware of an incident which occurred this morn—”
“Later,” said Sebastian, and crossed the hall to open the library door.
Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, sat in a leather armchair near the fire, a glass of Sebastian’s brandy cradled in the hand that rested on one knee. At his son’s entrance the Earl looked up, his jaw working back and forth as it had a tendency to do when his emotions were aroused. At sixty-five, he was still a powerful man, with a barrel chest and a thick shock of white hair above a heavily featured face. He had the most startling, deep blue eyes Sebastian had ever seen. For as long as he could remember, Sebastian had watched those brilliant eyes flare with an emotion he could never quite identify each time Hendon’s gaze came to rest upon his only surviving son. And for the past fifteen years or more, Sebastian had watched that blaze of emotion quickly disappear beneath a tide of pain and disappointment that was all too easy to read.