by C. S. Harris
She broke off as Sir Lindsey Forbes appeared in the open doorway. “Ah, there you are, my dear. I was—” He gave a faint start, as if only becoming aware of Hero’s presence even though she knew he must surely have learned of it from his butler. “I do beg your pardon, Lady Devlin. Am I interrupting?”
He was a good-looking man, probably in his late forties or early fifties, with thick, prematurely silver hair, dark eyebrows, and a strong chin. The fourth son of a Devonshire reverend, he had joined the East India Company as a simple cadet at the tender age of sixteen and distinguished himself in the campaign against Hyder Ali on the Malabar Coast. After that, he’d risen quickly to become quartermaster general of the Bombay Army. It was the kind of position that enabled a man to accumulate an extraordinary fortune in a short time, if he was ruthless enough—and from everything Hero had heard, Forbes was more than ruthless. Under his stewardship, the company had forced the area’s farmers to shift from growing grain to the production of opium. When a famine hit, close to a million people starved to death. But whenever the topic came up, Forbes would simply shrug and say India was overpopulated anyway. As far as Hero was concerned, that sentiment told her all she needed to know about the man.
“I saw your father at this morning’s reception for the Allied Sovereigns at the Bank of England,” he told Hero with a smile.
“Was the Bank on today’s schedule of events?” said Hero pleasantly. He had the soft blue eyes and ageless, angelic face of a choirboy, and it was all so disconcertingly misleading that she found it chilling.
“It was—along with a banquet this afternoon and a visit to the Opera this evening. Do you and Devlin attend?”
“Probably not.”
“It should be entertaining. There’s a rumor the Princess of Wales plans to put in an appearance. Needless to say, the Regent is in a pother over the possibility. If he could have his way, I suspect he’d have her locked up for the rest of the Allied Sovereigns’ visit.”
“Well, he’s managed to bar his wife from Court and from all official receptions and banquets. But I doubt he’ll succeed in keeping her from the Opera.”
Forbes caught his wife’s eye and something passed between them, a silent exchange that Hero couldn’t begin to decipher. Then he said, “Has Kate been showing you our selection of teas? We have samples from nearly all the tea-growing regions of China. One of these days the company is going to get its hands on the secret process the Chinese use to make the stuff, along with some seedlings of their precious Camellia sinensis, and then we’ll be able to grow and produce tea ourselves in India. No more having to deal with these ridiculous Qing emperors and their grasping Cantonese Hong merchants. It’s either that, or send in the British Navy and force them to be more reasonable in their trade with us.”
Hero looked at him with interest. “Have you been to Canton?”
“A few times, when I was in Bombay. They’re impossible people to deal with, you know—the Chinese, I mean. They insist we pay for their silks, porcelains, and tea with silver because they have no interest in anything Europe produces. And the one thing we could use to trade with them, opium, they refuse to allow into the country.”
“Rather understandable, is it not?”
“It’s outrageous—that’s what it is. They can’t deny the market is there. The Chinese people can’t get enough of it, and we could produce tons of the stuff in India. But we have to smuggle it in, which the emperors have made shockingly risky.”
“Shocking, indeed,” said Hero with a tight smile. To Lady Forbes, she said, “It was good seeing you again. No need to ring for a footman; I can show myself out.”
She thought Sir Lindsey might offer to walk with her to the door, but he did not. Instead he stood at the entrance to the tea-blending room and watched her walk away with such intensity, she fancied that she could feel his gaze boring into her back.
Chapter 19
A fter Hero left to pay a visit to St. James’s Square, Sebastian drove east to Tower Hill, where he found Paul Gibson easing the sturdy shoes off the still-dressed cadaver of a small older woman laid out on his stone slab. Four other corpses rested on the shelves behind him: Nicholas Hayes’s, Irvine Pennington’s, and two blood-drenched corpses in workingmen’s clothes unknown to Sebastian.
“What is all this?” asked Sebastian, pausing in the open doorway. Despite the thick stone walls, the heat in the room was intense, the smell of death even more acute than usual.
Gibson swiped at a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. “The woman’s a former milliner, found near Soho Square, while the two navvies appear to have killed each other in a knife fight in an alley over by Ratcliffe Highway. I presume you know about the tea gardens’ owner. If you ask me, this heat is making everyone cranky and short-tempered.”
Sebastian studied the distorted features of the woman on Gibson’s table. Her gray-streaked dark hair was wildly untidy, her face swollen and discolored, her eyes projecting grotesquely. A wide purple bruise such as might have been left by a strap showed just above the high neck of her modest black stuff gown. “Who’d want to strangle an aging milliner?”
“Footpads, I’m afraid. Her earrings are missing.” Gibson nodded to her bloody left hand. “And her knuckles are so swollen from arthritis, they had to cut off her finger to get her wedding ring.”
“Good God.” Footpads were still a dangerous menace on the streets of London; it was the reason they so often served as a ready excuse whenever the palace wanted to deflect public attention from a delicate death. Sebastian shifted his gaze to the shelves running along the back wall. “I take it you haven’t finished Hayes yet?”
Gibson shook his head and blew up a hard breath that ruffled the tousled graying dark hair on his damp forehead. “I wanted to take a preliminary look at the rest of this lot before going back to him. His inquest isn’t till Monday morning, so there’s time.”
“Did the Earl of Seaforth come to view his cousin’s body yet?”
Gibson set aside the woman’s first shoe and went to work on the other. “No. No one’s come. Why? Were you expecting him to?”
“I thought he might. He asked Sir Henry where the body was.” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “If someone were to suddenly show up claiming to be my long-dead cousin and the rightful heir to the titles and estates I’d been calling my own for years, I think I’d want to take a look at the fellow and see if he really was my cousin.”
Gibson set the second shoe beside its mate. “So would almost anyone, I suspect. So why do you think he hasn’t?”
“The most obvious answer is that he already knew Nicholas Hayes was alive because he’d seen him.”
“And then killed him?” said Gibson, going to work on the woman’s sensible stockings.
“Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“So why bother to ask Sir Henry about the body?”
“Perhaps he thought it was expected of him.” Sebastian circled the room to stare down at the two dead navvies. Both were heartbreakingly young, surely no more than sixteen or seventeen, their faces smooth and beardless, their features relaxed now into a semblance of calm serenity he found oddly disturbing, given the way they’d died. They had managed to slash each other to ribbons before blood loss and shock completely overcame them; their clothes were ripped and soaked a gory red.
“So then, why didn’t he come?” said Gibson, watching him.
“I’ve no idea.” Sebastian wiped the back of one wrist across his damp forehead as he turned away from the dead boys. “Damn this heat.”
* * *
As he drove away from Tower Hill, Sebastian found himself going over and over everything they knew about Irvine Pennington, trying to see if it cast any kind of light on the death of Nicholas Hayes. But the heat made it hard to think. The streets of the City were miserable, the aging, close-packed buildings trapping both t
he brutal heat and all the noisome smells of too many people and too many horses jammed into too small an area. Even the air wafting up from the river smelled pungent and dead.
“I’m thinkin’ meybe somebody’s followin’ us, gov’nor,” said Tom as Sebastian passed through Temple Bar.
“Bloody hell.” Sebastian resisted the urge to glance back over his shoulder. “Describe him.”
“’E’s just an ordinary-lookin’ cove on a bay. ’E ain’t stayin’ real close, but I seen ’im before, when we was up in Somer’s Town.”
“You’re certain it’s the same man you saw before?”
“Oh, aye. I noticed ’im when ye was talkin’ to Sir ’Enry. The cove was jist standin’ there, ’oldin’ ’is ’orse, when this dog comes nosin’ along, and that cove, ’e went outta ’is way to try to kick that poor old dog.”
“What color coat?”
“The man or the dog?”
Sebastian found himself smiling. “The man.”
“Brown.”
He pulled up outside a chandler’s shop and handed the boy the reins. “Wait here.”
Hopping down, Sebastian got his first look at the cove on the bay. Of medium height and build, he looked to be perhaps thirty or thirty-five, with brown hair and a nondescript face. His brown corduroy coat and round hat were respectable without being fashionable, his horse serviceable but not showy. He was utterly forgettable, and Sebastian suspected Tom would never have noticed him if not for that act of cruelty toward a stray dog.
The man checked for only an instant before riding past the stopped curricle. But as Sebastian turned to go into the chandler’s, Brown Coat reined in farther up the street, his gaze drifting over the surrounding shops as if he were looking for something.
“May I help you, sir?” said the boy behind the chandler’s counter.
“Sorry,” said Sebastian. “Wrong shop.”
Walking back out into the sunshine, Sebastian turned up the street to where the man still sat on his horse, studiously looking at anything and everything except Sebastian.
“Have something you care to say to me?” said Sebastian, walking right up to him.
The man gave a start of surprise that Sebastian suspected was utterly genuine. “Yer honor?”
“I assume you’ve been following me for a reason. If you didn’t have something you wished to say, then I can only conclude that your interest in me is less than benign.”
The man’s eyes widened. “I don’t know nobody named Ben Nigh.”
“Oh? So who set you to following me?”
“I ain’t been followin’ ye!”
“You’d have me believe we’ve simply been coincidentally visiting the same parts of a metropolis of one million people?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I ain’t been followin’ ye.”
“Well, there’s obviously no point in you continuing to do so, because if I see you again, I’ll set the constables on you—”
“But I ain’t done nothin’! Ain’t no crime in a free Englishman ridin’ his horse down the street.”
“—so you may as well tell your employer—whoever he is—that he needs to find a new hireling.”
“I ain’t been followin’ you,” said the man again.
Sebastian took a step back. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jack. Jack Smith.”
“Right then, Mr. Jones—”
“It’s Smith!”
“Mr. Smith. I’m going home now. If I see you anywhere near me or mine again, I might not bother calling the constables. I might just shoot you.”
“You can’t do that!”
Sebastian took another step back. “I suggest you not try testing that theory. Now, get out of here.”
Chapter 20
S ebastian was in his library, pouring a tankard of ale from a fresh pitcher, his thoughts far, far away, when an angry, insistent knock sounded at his front door.
“A Mr. Brownbeck to see you, my lord,” said his majordomo, Morey, appearing at the library door a moment later.
Sebastian took a deep swallow of ale. “Show him in.”
Theo Brownbeck came in with a quick, decisive step. A stout, self-important little man in his late fifties or early sixties, he had thinning iron gray hair, heavy jowls, and thick, bushy eyebrows. His dress was typical of the older merchants and bankers of the City, his silver-buttoned coat cut square and with a stand-up collar, his waistcoat long with flap pockets, his short breeches buckled at the knee. He drew up just inside the door, his breathing agitated, his color high, his face damp with perspiration. “You know why I’m here,” he said without preamble.
“Actually, I don’t,” said Sebastian. “But please, do have a seat.”
“Thank you. I prefer to stand.”
“May I offer you some ale?”
The banker looked as if he’d prefer to refuse, but he was hot enough that temptation overwhelmed him. “Please,” he said grudgingly. “I’m told Lady Devlin visited my daughter a short time ago.”
Sebastian went to fill another tankard with ale. “Who told you that?”
“Good God, man, that’s not the issue here.”
“Oh? So what is the ‘issue’?”
“I’ll not have my daughter’s name dragged through the mud by that villain’s reappearance.”
Sebastian held out the ale. “By which I gather you’re referring to the murder of Nicholas Hayes?”
Brownbeck wrapped a meaty fist around the tankard, then pointed a shaky finger at Sebastian. “You stay away from my daughter, you hear? You and Lady Devlin both.”
Sebastian took another sip of his own ale. “Did you know Nicholas Hayes was in London?”
Brownbeck’s eyes widened. “Merciful heavens, of course not. If I’d the slightest suspicion he was anywhere in England, I’d have gone straight to the authorities.”
Sebastian studied the older man’s red, angry face. “Would you?”
“Of course I would—as would any right-thinking man.”
“It’s curious that he returned, don’t you think?”
“To be honest, I hadn’t given it any thought.”
“Can you think of a reason why he would come back?”
“In my experience, it’s useless to try to ascribe rationality to the dangerous incorrigibles of this world. And while Hayes may have been an earl’s son, he’d long ago betrayed his birth and breeding and cast himself down into the gutter.”
“You must get on well with the Count de Compans.”
Brownbeck looked vaguely baffled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He sounds just like you.”
Brownbeck’s lip curled. “I know Lady Devlin believes that the poor are somehow the innocent victims of society’s inequities, but those familiar with the frailties of the flesh and the ways of our world know better. The unfortunate, painful truth is that what the kindhearted mistake for misfortune is actually the predictable result of a fatal lack of discipline, sobriety, decency, and prudence—as Hayes’s descent into opprobrium so glaringly illustrates.”
“I’ve been wondering if revenge might have had something to do with Hayes’s return,” said Sebastian, carefully keeping his voice even.
Brownbeck sniffed. “I wouldn’t know. As I said, it’s a waste of time attempting to discern the motives of such a degenerate. If you ask me, the authorities would do well to look for his killer amongst the denizens of the underworld.”
“A footpad, you mean?”
Brownbeck snorted. “Footpads, prostitutes, sharpers—he consorted with them all. After his father disowned him, the scoundrel actually hired a thief to break into Seaforth’s house and steal from him.”
“Oh? Where did you hear that?”
“The old Earl told me about it himself.”
“Some
one burgled the late Earl of Seaforth’s house, and he blamed his own son? Bit of a stretch, wasn’t it?”
“It was obvious.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“Because of what was taken, of course.”
“What was taken?”
“A stash of banknotes whose location was known only to the rogue, and a watch that once belonged to the First Earl and that the lad had long coveted.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“So what led the Earl to leap to the conclusion that Nicholas had hired a thief? Couldn’t he simply have entered the house and taken the stuff himself?”
Brownbeck shook his head. “Not unless the cad had recently acquired some specialized skills. It was a professional job, no doubt about that. The wastrel sank fast, you know, after Seaforth disowned him. Took to consorting with the lowest sort of company. I can’t imagine why you’ve decided to concern yourself with his death. The man ought by rights to have been hanged eighteen years ago.”
“That seems to be a common consensus.”
“I should think so.” Brownbeck drained his tankard. “To be frank, I was hoping none of us would ever have reason to think of the scoundrel again.”
“Yes, I can see how that would have been more convenient for you.”
Brownbeck’s jaw sagged. Then his features tightened. “Amuse yourself by dabbling in the detection of murder if you must. But you keep my daughter’s name out of this, do you hear?”
Sebastian gave the man a hard smile. “Shall I ring for a footman to show you out?”
Brownbeck set aside his empty tankard with a thump. “I’ll see myself out. Thank you.”
“One question,” said Sebastian as the man turned to leave. “Have you ever seen something like this before?”
Brownbeck glanced at the small bronze token Sebastian held out. “No. What is it?”
Sebastian closed his palm around the mysterious disk. “I’ve no idea.”
Morey was closing the door behind their visitor when Hero came down the stairs.