by C. S. Harris
“Twenty minutes? Perhaps half an hour. No more. She left very quickly.”
“She came by carriage?”
Madame Champagne shook her head. “Hackney, of course.”
Sebastian nodded. St. James’s Street was the gentlemen’s preserve. For a gentlewoman simply to walk down St. James’s Street was considered a social solecism. But for a woman of quality to be seen entering a gentleman’s lodgings, alone, would mean swift and certain ruin. No wonder the woman—whoever she was—had taken care to hide her face. “And then?”
“An hour or two after the woman’s departure, a gentleman in evening clothes went up.”
“And he arrived—how?”
“Walking. But there’s no use asking me anything more about him because I really couldn’t tell you. He wore a hat pulled low and an opera cape with the collar turned up, and he took care to keep his head down.”
Sebastian smiled. “One of Ross’s ‘dangerous men’?”
“Exactly.”
“He stayed how long?”
“Longer than the woman. An hour. Perhaps longer. I’d say it was close to nine or ten when he left.”
“There’s nothing you can tell me about him?”
“Not really. He was neither remarkably tall nor short, corpulent nor excessively thin. His clothes were very much those of a gentleman—silk stockings and knee breeches. Oh—and he carried a walking stick.”
Sebastian himself possessed an elegant ebony walking stick. The silver handle was artfully contrived to conceal a stiletto. He said, “Mr. Ross himself never stepped out that evening?”
“If he did, I didn’t see him.”
“Is there another way out?”
“There is a door to the court, but it doesn’t lead anywhere.” Madame Champagne sipped her coffee for a moment, then said, “Ross had one more visitor that night.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “Shortly before I retired for the evening, another gentleman went up. But he came back down almost immediately.”
“You mean, as if he had found Mr. Ross not at home?”
“Yes. Or as if Mr. Ross were already dead.”
Chapter 11
Sebastian studied the Frenchwoman’s fine-boned face, the single, half-hooded eye. “And how was this second gentleman dressed?”
“Much the same as the first. Evening cape and knee breeches.”
“Could they have been the same man?”
She frowned, as if considering this. Then she shook her head. “I do not believe so. They moved differently. Or at least, it must have seemed so to me at the time, for it never occurred to me that they might be the same man.”
Sebastian said, “Had you seen these men visit Mr. Ross before?”
“Them, or men like them.”
“But you’ve no idea who they might be?”
She started to say something, then hesitated.
“What?” he prompted.
She leaned forward. “Men may hide their faces but forget that their accents can tell their own story ... to those who know how to listen.”
“What kind of accents are we talking about?”
“Mainly Russian. But also Swedish and Turkish. And the occasional Frenchman, of course.” She kept her gaze on his face. “You’re wondering how I could know, yes?”
He gave a wry smile. “I doubt I would be able to identify a Swedish or a Russian accent. Or distinguish a Turk from, say, a Greek.”
“My father was an official at Versailles when I was a child. I grew up surrounded by accents from all over Europe—and beyond. It was a game my brother and I played, imitating them.”
Sebastian watched her nostrils flare on a quickly indrawn breath and he knew without being told that her brother, like her husband, was dead. He said, “You knew none of these men?”
“I recognized one of the Russians—a colonel attached to the embassy, by the name of Colonel Dimitri Chernishav. I understand he and Ross were friends from Ross’s time in Russia.”
The name meant nothing to Sebastian. “Anyone else?”
She made a face. “Well, there’s Antoine de La Rocque.”
“Who is he?”
“Once, he was a priest. He fled France in the first wave, more than twenty years ago now. He has something of a reputation as a collector of rare, old books. He has opened part of his collection to the public—to the paying public, of course, although he claims that is only to keep out the riffraff.”
“Where is this?”
“Great Russell Street, near the museum. Although he can frequently be found prowling the bookstalls in Westminster Hall.”
“Could de La Rocque have been one of the men you saw that night?”
“He visited Alexander Ross regularly. But was he one of the men I saw that night?” Again, that enigmatic smile. “Who knows?”
Sebastian was beginning to suspect she knew considerably more than she was willing to reveal. But all he said was, “The second man—the one you say went upstairs and came back down again so quickly—at what time was this?”
“Somewhere around half past midnight. It was shortly before I retired for the night. I keep rooms in another house I own near here,” she explained, “on Ryder Street. So it is always possible someone could have arrived to see Monsieur Ross after I left here. Or Monsieur Ross himself may have stepped out. I would not know.”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “You’ve been most helpful, Madame; thank you.”
She gazed up at him thoughtfully. “Yet you wonder why, when I know your reason for asking these questions, I have given you the name of one of my countrymen—a fellow émigré. Hmm?”
He had, in fact, been wondering exactly that.
The skin beside her remaining eye crinkled with her smile. “For some time now, those of us in the émigré community have suspected that there is a traitor in our midst. One who claims to despise Napoléon and all the while secretly passing information back to Paris.”
Sebastian had heard such rumors. He said, “You think de La Rocque could be the traitor?”
She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “He claims he fled France to avoid being put to death as a nonjuring priest.” Tens of thousands of priests had fled Revolutionary France rather than take the antipapal oath of religion; those who stayed faced either death or deportation to a penal colony. “Yet he will also laugh and tell you he lost his faith in God at the age of ten. Both cannot be true.”
“That doesn’t make him a traitor,” Sebastian said.
“No. But it makes him a liar. Remember that when you speak to him.”
Hero Jarvis sat at the heavy oak table in the library of the Jarvis town house on Berkeley Square. She held a pen in one hand; piles of maps and books lay scattered about her. She had intended to devote the afternoon to a survey she was preparing on the few surviving traces of London’s lost monastic houses. But the ink had long ago dried on the nib as she stared unseeingly at the garden beyond the room’s tall windows.
She’d told Lord Devlin the truth when she said it had been her intention never to marry. She might work hard to change England’s draconian marriage laws and the unconscionable powers granted husbands over their wives, but she was realistic enough to know that real change was still generations away. And so she had poured the energy that other women her age devoted to their families into studies and articles and draft legislation. She’d told Devlin she intended to continue her efforts, and she did. But she was no fool, and she suspected her life was about to change in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine and didn’t want.
There was also the matter of who would take over from Hero the management of her father’s big house on Berkeley Square. Hero’s grandmother, the Dowager Lady Jarvis, had long ago retired to her rooms on the second floor and rarely ventured forth to do more than complain or criticize; Hero’s own mother, Annabelle, Lady Jarvis, was so feeble both physically and emotionally that the mere thought of trying to select a menu or deal with tradesmen was enough to send her tottering toward he
r couch, vinaigrette in hand.
Hero would need to find a companion for her mother, someone capable of both overseeing the household and sheltering her ladyship from the worst of her husband’s venom. Jarvis did not suffer fools lightly, and Lady Jarvis’s mental stability was always at best precarious. Hero was running a list of possible candidates through her head when the butler appeared bearing a sealed missive on a silver tray.
“A message from Lord Devlin, Miss Jarvis,” he said with a bow, his face impassive.
“Thank you, Grisham.” She set aside her pen but waited until the butler had withdrawn before breaking the seal and spreading open the single, folded sheet. The message was brief and to the point.
Brook Street, 24 July
I have made arrangements with Canterbury for the ceremony to be held at eleven o’clock Thursday morning, in the Lambeth Palace chapel. Pls advise if this is convenient.
The signature was a simple, scrawled Devlin.
She sat for a time, conscious of an uncharacteristic disquiet yawning deep within her. It was one thing, she’d discovered, to analyze the various unpleasant options available to one and choose what appeared to be the most reasonable course of action. But it was something else entirely to find oneself actually catapulting toward that fate.
Especially when that fate was marriage to a man like Devlin.
Resolutely refusing to allow herself to dwell on all such a marriage would involve, she dipped her pen in the ink and scrawled a simple, three-word answer.
It is convenient.
She sealed the note and entrusted its delivery to one of the footmen. Then she went in search of her mother.
Chapter 12
The ancient, well-worn paving of Westminster Hall bustled with self-important clusters of barristers and judges in wigs and gowns, who pushed their way through the motley crowds gathered around the stalls of the sempstresses and milliners, law stationers and old booksellers, who lined the entrance of the vast, soaring hall.
A few discreet questions brought Sebastian to a stall halfway down the eastern row, where a thin, middle-aged man dressed in gently worn buckskin breeches, a ruffled shirt, and an old-fashioned green velvet coat stared with thoughtful concentration at a slim volume bound in battered brown leather and marbled paper. He had a sallow complexion and wispy, strawcolored hair he wore cropped short, which had the unfortunate effect of accentuating his unnaturally long neck and small head.
“Monsieur de La Rocque?” asked Sebastian, walking up to him.
The Frenchman turned to give Sebastian an intense, unexpectedly hostile look. He had pale blue eyes and a narrow face, his nose high arched and long. “That’s right,” he said. “And you are ... Devlin, no?”
“I am.”
De La Rocque held up the volume and said in French, “An early copy of Newton’s Method of Fluxions, from the library collected at the Château de Cirey by Voltaire and his mistress, the Marquise du Châtelet. Here it sits, at the stall of some ignorant secondhand book dealer on the banks of the Thames. Bizarre, no?”
“Will you buy it?” asked Sebastian, answering in the same language.
De La Rocque tucked the book back into its row of tattered old volumes and switched to English. “If it is still here tomorrow, perhaps.”
They turned to walk together beneath the soaring medieval windows. Sebastian said, “I understand you trained as a priest.”
De La Rocque gave a faint, polite smile. “Under the ancien régime there were but two careers open to a nobleman’s son: the sword and the church. My three older brothers chose the Army. I was the bookish one, which meant I was consigned to the Jesuits at the tender age of seven. If things had worked out differently, I would have been a bishop by the age of thirty. Now—” He spread his arms wide, taking in the stalls displaying ribbons and gloves, the maids buying white scarves, the law students with their pale complexions and shiny coats, then dropped his hands back to his sides. “Behold my noble see.”
“And would you have enjoyed being a bishop?”
Rather than answering, he simply smiled and let his gaze drift away. “As flattering as your visit is, Monsieur le Vicomte, I’m afraid I can’t help but wonder why you have sought me out.”
“I’m told you were acquainted with Alexander Ross.”
“I was. But I fail to see—” The man’s eyes suddenly widened, his lips puckering as he chewed distractedly at the inside of his cheek. “Mon Dieu. Ross was murdered? Is that it?”
“You obviously find the possibility somewhat disturbing,” said Sebastian. “Why?”
“It is a natural reaction, is it not? To be troubled when one learns of the murder of a friend.”
“Was Alexander Ross a friend?”
“Of a sort.”
“And what sort was that?”
“Ross had a burgeoning interest in rare and old books.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s small, narrow face. There’d been a few books on Ross’s shelves, but none of them had struck Sebastian as particularly old or rare. “He did?”
“Mmm. From time to time I came into possession of a choice volume that interested him.”
“Any kind of books in particular?”
“Many of my books come out of France. With the dissolution of the monasteries there, countless volumes of astonishing antiquity have been thrown on the market.”
“In France.”
De La Rocque laughed. “Yes, well ... there are ways, you know.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
De La Rocque shrugged. “Last week sometime, I suppose. Wednesday or Thursday, perhaps?”
“Not Saturday night?”
De La Rocque frowned as if with thought, then shook his head. “No. It was earlier. Wednesday. Yes, definitely Wednesday.”
“Interesting. You see, I spoke to someone who rather thought they saw you leaving Ross’s rooms last Saturday night.”
It was a lie, of course. But it was curious to watch the Frenchman’s reaction. Rather than appearing alarmed or angered at the possibility he might have been observed, he merely shrugged and said, “Saturday? No. Whoever told you that was mistaken.”
“But you did sometimes visit Ross at his rooms?”
“From time to time.”
“Any idea who some of his other sources of old books might have been?”
The Frenchman shook his head. “Sorry. No.”
“How familiar were you with some of Ross’s other activities?”
The Frenchman looked confused. “Other activities?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about.”
De La Rocque paused at the top of the steps, his gaze on the crowded, noisy square below. “There is a diplomatic revolution under way in Europe at the moment,” he said slowly. “The man who is your friend this morning may be your enemy this evening, and vice versa. That was Alexander Ross’s world. If I were you, Monsieur le Vicomte, I would tread carefully. Very carefully, indeed. You are wading into treacherous waters.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A threat?” The Frenchman twisted to face him, the light from the hot summer sun falling across his features. “Mais non. Consider it merely a friendly warning.” He nodded across the square, to where the walls of the Houses of Parliament rose, tall and soot stained. “More than mere lives are at stake here. The fates of kingdoms hang in the balance. Russia. Sweden. Austria. Prussia ... Believe me, nothing is as it seems.”
It all sounded rather grandiose and flamboyant—like de La Rocque himself. Sebastian said, “Who would benefit from the death of Alexander Ross?”
“I suppose that would depend on what Ross knew.”
“About what?”
De La Rocque’s eyes narrowed with his smile. “Ah. But if I knew that, then I too would be at risk. And believe me, Monsieur le Viscomte, I am a man who believes in minimizing risks.”
“Yet you’re not, obviously, averse to taking risks, when necessary.”
“When
the odds are good.”
“The odds? Or the price?”
Rather than being offended, the Frenchman laughed. “Both, actually.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “There is one man you might find it productive to speak with. A Swede.”
“A Swede?”
“Tall man, blond. Name of Lindquist. Mr. Carl Lindquist.”
Sebastian frowned. “Who is he?”
“To all appearances, he is a trader.”
“Meaning that appearances in this case could be deceptive?”
De La Rocque smiled. “Appearances generally are.”
Chapter 13
His modest round hat gripped in both hands, his mind swirling with conjecture, Sir Henry Lovejoy followed a succession of clerks through the warren of damp, badly lit corridors that led to the Downing Street office of Sir Hyde Foley.
He found the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs seated behind a broad, old-fashioned desk, its surface covered with what looked like dispatches and stacks of reports. The room was large and darkly paneled, with a massive mantel of carved sandstone and a window of diamond-paned, leaded glass overlooking a court below. As the somber clerk bowed himself out, Foley leaned back in his chair and breathed an exasperated sigh. “Well. It’s about time. I expected you an hour or more ago.”
Lovejoy gave a slight bow. “My apologies. I was in Bethnal Green, at the scene of a murder.”
Foley grunted, obviously unimpressed. He did not invite Lovejoy to sit. “I called you here because I want to know what the devil is going on.”
Lovejoy blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m referring to this business about Alexander Ross. The man died of natural causes. So what precisely is Bow Street doing, poking around and asking questions about his death? It presents a very odd appearance. Very odd indeed.”
Lovejoy dredged up a faint recollection of reports of a young man attached to the Foreign Office who had died the previous week. “To my knowledge, we’re not doing anything, Sir Hyde.”
The Undersecretary’s nostrils flared. “Don’t even think of playing me for a fool, Sir Henry. I had Devlin questioning me this morning.”