by C. S. Harris
“But they couldn’t know that.”
“No.”
“How soon after the elopement did she marry Forbes?”
“Three weeks, I believe.”
“Hasty.”
“It was, yes. But it wasn’t because she was with child, if that’s what you’re thinking. She never had children.”
It was what he’d been thinking, of course. Sebastian took a sip of his tea, found it had gone cold, and set it aside. “If she wasn’t with child, then the pressure Brownbeck put on her to bend to his wishes like that must have been brutal.”
“I suspect it was. She was never the same afterward. And then she and Forbes went off to India.”
“Where her husband helped starve to death something like a million people,” said Sebastian. “I should think that would change almost anyone.”
“Not Forbes. He’s still every bit as arrogant, smug, self-righteous, and insufferable as he’s always been.”
“But rich.” Sebastian pushed to his feet. “Very, very rich.”
Aunt Henrietta eyed him thoughtfully “You will remember you promised to treat what I’ve told you with the utmost discretion?”
“I’ll remember.”
He bent to kiss her cheek and was surprised when she put her hand on his arm and said, “And you will be careful, Sebastian? There’s something particularly ghastly about anyone who could sink a sickle into another man’s back.”
“I’m always careful.”
She lowered her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “No, you’re not.”
But at that, he only laughed.
* * *
Sebastian was walking up the front steps of his Brook Street house, his thoughts lost in the troubled past, when a breathless messenger boy came running up with a note.
“It’s from Sir ’Enry Lovejoy, ’im o’ Bow Street,” said the boy with a gasp.
Sebastian handed the boy a coin and broke the missive’s seal to read Sir Henry’s neat penmanship.
Irvine Pennington found stabbed to death in Cat Alley, Somer’s Town.
Chapter 17
T he tea gardens’ owner lay sprawled on his stomach, arms flung stiffly out at his sides, head turned and eyes open wide as if in shocked disbelief. Flies buzzed furiously around the dried blood on the back of his ripped coat and crawled in and out of his gaping mouth. The heat in the close, rubbish-strewn alley was intense, the stench of death overwhelming. After six years at war, Sebastian was painfully familiar with the sights and smells of death. But sudden, brutal murder still troubled him.
“Looks like he’s been dead for a while, doesn’t it?” he said, hunkering down beside the dead man. “Perhaps as much as a day.”
Lovejoy nodded gravely, a folded handkerchief held over his nose and mouth. “According to his wife, he’s been missing since yesterday morning.”
Sebastian remembered the swift expression of consternation that flitted across Sarah Pennington’s face when he’d asked for her father. We don’t know where he’s taken himself off to. . . .
“Damn,” said Sebastian.
Lovejoy cast a thoughtful look around the noisome alley. “Perhaps we’ve been wrong in our thinking about Nicholas Hayes’s death. Perhaps his murder had nothing to do with who he was and everything to do with where he was. Perhaps we should be looking for a killer with a link to the tea gardens or Somer’s Town rather than to Hayes.”
“Perhaps. Although it’s also possible Pennington is dead because he was working the gardens’ entrance when Hayes’s killer arrived and thus could have identified him. His daughter did say her father spelled her a few times.”
“True.”
Sebastian studied the four or five blood-encrusted slits in the back of the dead man’s coat. “I don’t think our killer used a sickle this time.”
“No.” Lovejoy squinted up at the blazing sun overhead. “I sincerely hope the men from the deadhouse arrive with their shell soon. The stench is appalling.”
* * *
The men from the deadhouse took their time.
While waiting, Lovejoy set his constables to interviewing the villagers in the area. Several people thought they remembered seeing Irvine Pennington the previous day . . . although they weren’t quite sure.
“Passed by here all the time on his way to the Grecian Coffeehouse, he did,” said a stout, middle-aged woman with an oyster stall near the corner. “Always thought it queer. I mean, what’s a fellow with his own tea gardens doin’ goin’ t’ a coffeehouse? Hmm?” But she couldn’t recall for certain if she’d seen him that Friday. “Could’ve been the day before,” she admitted. “One day’s pretty much like the other, ye know?”
The owner of the coffeehouse, a Mr. Ned Dashiell, had the same problem. “I think he was here yesterday, but I couldn’t say for sure. He didn’t come this morning, though. That I do know.”
All the villagers agreed on one point: They hadn’t seen anything or anyone suspicious lately.
Sebastian said, “If Nicholas Hayes’s killer is methodical enough to eliminate the person who took his money at the entrance to the tea gardens, then I suspect he was careful to make certain he wasn’t seen again.”
“I almost hope you’re right,” said Lovejoy, his face pink with the heat, “because whoever this killer is, he’s ruthless. Ruthless and deadly.”
* * *
Clarendon Square lay to the west of Pennington’s Tea Gardens, just on the edge of where the shops and houses of Somer’s Town gave way to the rolling hills and open fields of the countryside. Built in the last decades of the eighteenth century on the site of what had once been a Life Guards’ barracks, the square formed a vast rectangle around an unusual inner ring of newish houses with curving facades known as the Polygon.
When Hero arrived at the square midway through the morning, she found only two performers—a harpist who had set up near the French Catholic chapel and a hurdy-gurdy player on a far corner. But like so many street musicians, both were blind, and the hurdy-gurdy player was so awful that Hero suspected the residents paid him to go away. In the end, she decided to interview a penny-profile cutter—a sad-eyed, middle-aged German woman who cut silhouettes out of black paper for a penny each.
“You only vant to talk to me?” said the woman, her accent thick as she stared at Hero with obvious suspicion. A stocky woman dressed in ragged but clean clothes, she had fading fair hair and a scar from what looked like a saber slash running the length of one side of her face. She said her name was Anja Becker, and that she was originally from Hanover. “I don’t like to just talk.”
“Well, you can cut my profile while we talk, if you’d like.”
“I zink I’d rather do zat.” She picked up her scissors and reached for a piece of paper. “Look at zee Polygon.”
“How long have you been doing this?” asked Hero, watching her. Once, she must have been a pretty woman. “Cutting silhouettes, I mean.”
The old scar across the side of Anja’s face seemed to darken as she squinted assessingly at Hero. “Since I vas fourteen, maybe fifteen. But you need to turn zee head sidevays and look at zee Polygon.”
Hero obediently shifted her gaze to the curving facades of the ring of houses at the center of the square. “You’ve been in England that long?”
“No. Started in Hanover, I did.”
“How did you end up in London?”
“I don’t vant to talk about zat,” said the woman.
Given all that had happened in Hanover in the last twenty-plus war-torn years, Hero suspected it wasn’t too hard to guess at the vague outlines of this woman’s life. She said, “Do you always work here in Somer’s Town?”
“Ach, no. I like to vork here because I can see zee fields and zee hills, but I move all over, I do. If I stayed in one place, I vould soon cut zee profiles of most all zee folks who vant zem, now, vouldn�
��t I?”
“True.”
“Keep zee head turned,” snapped the woman when Hero’s gaze drifted sideways.
“Sorry.”
“I do my best business at zee fairs. Used to be, there vas a fair somewhere around London most every week, at least when zee veather’s fine. But they’re shutting them all down now, more and more. Too rowdy, they say.” Anja made a scoffing noise deep in her throat.
“How did you learn to cut profiles?”
“Learned it from an old voman in Hanover, I did. I vas born in zee countryside, but ended up in zee city after zee French soldiers burned our farm and killed my mutter and vater. At first, I used to just bronze and frame zee profiles zee old voman cut—I can bronze zis one for another fourpence, if you want, and frame it for another ten. But after a while, zee old voman, her hands started shaking so bad, she had to have me do zee cutting too.”
“I should think it would be a difficult thing to learn.”
“You need to have a good eye and a steady hand, ja. I’m not as good as zat old voman was. But I’m good enough.”
“What happened to her?” asked Hero.
“She vas killed by soldiers.”
Hero watched a young man in yellow pantaloons and a coat with a nipped-in waist come down the steps of one of the houses in the Polygon and let himself out the iron gate. “Is it hard to make a living cutting profiles, now that they’re restricting the fairs?”
Anja blinked and glanced away for a moment, her throat working when she swallowed. A gust of naked fear passed over her features before being quickly, ruthlessly suppressed. But that rare moment of raw vulnerability told Hero everything she needed to know. “Hard enough,” said Anja, “especially in zee vinter.”
The woman was so determinedly strong and independent, thought Hero, so formidably controlled. She’d survived so much, her life constantly torn apart by wars begun by kings and princes and a certain upstart Corsican to whom women like Anja meant nothing. Nothing at all. Hero found herself aching for her and all the countless others like her, and had to clear her throat before she could say, “I’m looking for a little boy I’d like to interview—a little half-Chinese boy of eight or nine. Have you seen him?”
“A Chinese boy?” Anja pursed her lips as she thought about it. “I don’t zink so, no.”
“He may be half-English.”
“Don’t zink I’ve seen him. Lots of French around here, but I’ve never seen any Chinese.” Anja set aside her scissors and held up Hero’s profile. Despite the woman’s earlier self-deprecating remarks, it was startlingly good. “So. Do you vant zis framed?”
* * *
Hero was standing on the far side of the Polygon, the framed silhouette in one hand and her parasol in the other, her thoughtful gaze on the feathery tops of a distant line of trees lifting in the hot wind, when she saw Devlin walking toward her.
“Any luck?” he asked, coming up to her.
“Nothing.” They turned to walk together along the lane that ran toward the open countryside, and Hero shifted the parasol to keep the hot sun off her face. “What are you doing here?”
“Irvine Pennington was found stabbed to death in an alley near his tea gardens this morning.”
“Good heavens. Why would anyone kill him?”
“Lovejoy is inclined to think both killings may be related to the tea gardens themselves—that it’s possible Nicholas Hayes’s history had nothing to do with his death at all.”
“But you don’t agree?”
“I don’t. Although I have nothing to base that on besides a gut feeling.” They’d reached the rolling fields and market gardens of the open countryside, and he paused to watch the warm wind ruffle the ripening grain. He said, “You’re familiar with the set that frequents Annabelle Hershey’s salon, aren’t you?”
“I am. Although somehow I doubt that’s an innocent question.”
“Have you ever met Lady Forbes, the wife of Sir Lindsey Forbes?”
“Kate Forbes? Yes, of course. She’s published several fascinating books of the drawings she made of the native plants of the Malabar Coast when she was in India with her husband. Why do you ask? What has she to do with anything?”
“According to Aunt Henrietta, she eloped with Nicholas Hayes six months before he was arrested for killing Chantal de LaRivière.”
Hero turned to stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. It was her father, Theo Brownbeck, who set about the false tale that Hayes had kidnapped some heiress.”
Hero gave an inelegant snort. “Now, that I can believe. No doubt he even has a pet Bible verse to trot out to justify it all. I’ve never understood how such a sanctimonious, pompous hypocrite managed to produce someone like Kate.”
“You like her?”
“I do.”
“Then I suspect he left her upbringing to her mother.”
“No doubt.” Hero was silent for a moment. “However did he manage to set about such a story while still keeping Kate’s name out of it?”
“Perhaps by announcing that she was betrothed to Forbes. The marriage took place just three weeks later.”
Hero’s lips tightened, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath. “What a beastly man.”
Sebastian said, “I could try talking to Lady Forbes about Nicholas Hayes, but it would be rather indelicate.”
“Huh. If Aunt Henrietta is right, it’s going to be indelicate no matter who does it.” When he remained silent, she said, “Let me guess: You want me to approach her?”
His eyes crinkled in a smile, and she cuffed him playfully on the chin.
“Coward.”
Chapter 18
S ir Lindsey Forbes’s impressive town house in St. James’s Square was famous as a showcase for his extensive collection of artifacts, mainly Indian brasses, religious sculptures, and silk paintings but also an impressive number of priceless Chinese porcelains, for the East India Company had long enjoyed a monopoly over British trade with China as well as with India.
Although Hero knew Lady Forbes from Annabelle Hershey’s salon, she had never visited the former Kate Brownbeck at home. When Hero arrived at the square shortly after nuncheon, she half expected Lady Forbes to decline to see her. But a few minutes after Hero sent up her card, the butler returned with a bow to say, “This way, my lady, if you please.”
She followed him up a gleaming broad staircase to a cabinet lined with mahogany shelves filled with row after row of colorful Chinese porcelain jars. Lady Forbes herself stood at the red lacquered table in the center of the room. She had a crisp white apron pinned over her fine muslin gown and was carefully measuring out a portion of what Hero realized must be tea leaves. The rich aroma of fine teas filled the air.
The former Miss Kate Brownbeck was an attractive woman somewhere in her mid- to late thirties, her fair hair as yet untouched by gray, her features strong and even. She had a reputation for grace, poise, composure, and calm self-mastery. But today her eyes were red and puffy, her expression that of a grief-stricken woman struggling to maintain a facade of equanimity. “I hope you’ll pardon me for receiving you like this,” she said, “but I didn’t want to interrupt the process.”
Hero perched on a nearby stool indicated by her hostess. “You’re mixing tea?”
“I am, yes. I’ve made my own blends for years.”
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” said Hero, watching her.
Lady Forbes carefully poured the measure of tea into a larger container, then glanced over at her. “You say that as if you thought I might not.”
“I take it you know why I’m here?”
“I can guess. I’ve heard Lord Devlin is looking into the murder of Nicholas Hayes, and your presence here suggests he’s discovered that Nicholas and I once . . . knew each other.”
“Did you
know Hayes had returned to London?”
“No.” The denial came quick and decisive.
“Do you have any idea why he came back?”
“No. How could I?” She turned to select another jar from one of the shelves, her voice airy and calm and everything Hero knew she was not. “Does Lord Devlin have any idea as to who might have killed him?”
“Not yet.” Hero hesitated a moment, but she could think of no delicate way to phrase it and so simply said bluntly, “Do you think his return could have been motivated by revenge?”
Lady Forbes froze with her arms extended over her head, then slowly lifted the jar she’d been reaching for from the shelf and turned. “What do you mean?”
“Could he have come back here to kill someone?”
She was silent for a moment, obviously giving the idea—or at least her response to it—some thought. “No. Nicholas wasn’t like that.”
“Twenty years ago, perhaps not. But a brutal life can change people. I notice you don’t say you can’t think of anyone he might have had reason to kill.”
Lady Forbes’s face hardened unexpectedly. “Who wouldn’t be tempted to kill the man who destroyed his life?”
“You mean the Count de Compans?”
“Yes.”
“You’re suggesting Hayes didn’t actually kill the Count’s wife?”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I know him.” She paused, then said more softly, “Knew him.”
The sound of the entry door opening floated up from below, followed by a man’s crisp voice asking something Hero didn’t catch and the butler’s murmured reply.
Hero said, “Can you think of any other reason he would risk coming back to England?”
Kate Forbes shook her head as approaching footsteps sounded on the stairs. The anxious fear in her eyes was unmistakable. “No. It makes no sense. But please—”