by C. S. Harris
“How much of that did you hear?” Sebastian asked her.
“Enough to be impressed by the extent to which you kept your temper.”
Sebastian went to pour himself more ale and drank deeply. “Pompous ass. How do you think he learned of your visit to St. James’s Square so quickly?”
“I could be wrong, but I doubt he heard it from Kate. Which means Forbes himself must have sent word to his father-in-law.”
Sebastian nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Hero went to stand at the front window, her gaze on the sunbaked street. “What do you make of his tale of Hayes hiring someone to burgle his father’s house?”
Sebastian came up beside her as Brownbeck’s carriage pulled away from the kerb. “I think I need to pay another visit to Chick Lane.”
* * *
Sebastian found the Red Lion’s ancient taproom filled with a hot, sweaty, boisterous crowd and Grace Calhoun focused on filling six tankards of ale.
“Was wondering when you’d be back,” she said, throwing him a quick glance as he walked up.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Rather than answer, she scooped up all six tankards at once and carried them to a table of what looked like highwaymen huddled in the murky depths of the room.
When she came back, he said, “Have you seen Ji?”
She scooted behind the bar without even looking at him. “No.”
Damn, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Can you think where he might be hiding?”
“No.”
Sebastian studied the woman’s handsome, hard face. “I’m told Hayes befriended a cracksman when he was staying here eighteen years ago.”
“He was a right personable fellow, Nicholas. Made friends easy, he did.”
“Did he?”
“When he wanted to.”
“I’m told he used this cracksman to break into his father’s house. Do you know anything about that?”
“Me? Why would I?”
“Because I suspect you know your customers better than a vicar knows his parishioners.”
A gleam of amusement shone in her dark eyes, but she remained silent.
Sebastian said, “Is he still around, that cracksman?”
“Been a long time. Maybe he’s dead.”
“I’d like to talk to him if he isn’t.”
“What makes you think he knows anything?”
“I don’t know that he does.”
Grace Calhoun swiped at a pool of some spilled liquid on the surface of the bar with a rag. “Heard tell the owner of them tea gardens got found dead over in Somer’s Town.”
Sebastian nodded. “This morning.”
“Why you think that happened?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked up at him. “Don’t you? Seems to me you ain’t lookin’ for no common cracksman.”
“I never said I suspected the cracksman of killing Nicholas Hayes. I’m hoping he can tell me more about what happened eighteen years ago.”
Grace Calhoun tossed the rag aside. “There’s lots o’ folks could tell you about what happened eighteen years ago.”
Sebastian watched her turn away to start stacking dirty glasses in a tub. “Were you here that night? The night Hayes killed Chantal de LaRivière?”
“He didn’t kill her.”
“So certain?”
“I reckon I’m a pretty good judge of a man’s character.”
Sebastian couldn’t argue with that. She had to be to have not only survived but flourished in her business. He said, “Did he come back here that night? After the shooting, I mean.”
“He did.”
“And?”
“I wanted him to hide.”
“Where?”
Again, that faint gleam of amusement that was there and then gone. “We’ve places.”
Sebastian had heard about the Red Lion’s “places.” Secret doors and false walls and hidden passages that enabled those wanted by the authorities to simply disappear. “But he wouldn’t do it?”
“No. Said he hadn’t done nothing wrong. Said he wasn’t gonna hide like he had.”
“How was he caught?”
“His cousin—him that’s now the Earl of Seaforth. He told on him. Constables picked Nick up near Smithfield Market.”
Nick, noted Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Seaforth betrayed him?”
“That’s right. Only, he weren’t the Earl of Seaforth then. He was just Mr. Ethan Hayes, son of a younger son and lookin’ at a humdrum life spent as a simple barrister. But he’s sure enough an earl now, ain’t he?”
Chapter 21
E than Hayes, the Third Earl of Seaforth, sat sipping a glass of fine brandy in the Reading Room of White’s, his eyes narrowed in a squint as he leafed through the latest copy of an arch-Tory publication called The Anti-Jacobin Review.
Sebastian settled in the red bucket chair beside him and said, “Good evening.”
Seaforth scowled and cast a quick glance around, as if to ascertain who might be near enough to overhear them. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“As it happens, I am a member.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Ah. Well, you see, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Here?”
“That’s a problem? Have something you don’t want to get around, do you?”
A faint flush darkened the other man’s cheeks. “Of course not.”
Sebastian signaled for a brandy. “I’ve been trying to get a better picture of what happened eighteen years ago, when Nicholas Hayes was accused of killing Chantal de LaRivière.”
“He wasn’t simply ‘accused’ of killing her. He did kill her.”
“So certain?”
“He was convicted.”
“Innocent men have been found guilty before.”
“Not this time. You didn’t know Nicholas. I did.”
Sebastian settled more comfortably in his seat. “So tell me about him.”
Seaforth continued to hold his journal open in both hands in a not-too-subtle expression of his attitude toward this interruption. “What is there to tell? He was wild and reckless to a fault, quick-tempered and heedless of all conventions and norms, and utterly lacking in either the virtues of his class or any semblance of Christian morality.”
“Is that why you informed on him?”
Seaforth was silent, his nostrils flaring on a quick intake of air. Then he said, “Who told you that?”
“So you did, didn’t you? How did you even know where he was?”
“Crispin had told me some months before. Not the exact inn, but that it was near Smithfield Market. That was enough.”
“Your cousin Crispin must not have known you well.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Rather than answer, Sebastian said, “I understand Crispin and Nicholas were close.”
“They were.”
“How long before Chantal de LaRivière’s murder did Crispin die?”
“A day or two. Something like that. Why?”
“He drowned?”
“That’s right.”
“In the Thames?”
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Crispin? Nothing like Nicholas, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Yet they were close?”
“They were. I could never understand it. Crispin was everything Nicholas wasn’t—sober and responsible and upright in every way.”
“I’m told Nicholas was planning a military career.”
“He was, yes. He was always army mad, from the time we were boys.”
“From the sound of things, I suspect he’d have made a fine officer.”
> Seaforth stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“But I am.”
Seaforth shook his head and reached to take a sip of his brandy.
Sebastian said, “Tell me about the older brother, Lucas. I take it he and Nicholas were not close?”
“No. But then, there were eight or nine years between them. And Lucas was always sickly. If I remember correctly, by that time he was virtually bedridden.”
“He died—when?”
“Ten or twelve years ago, at least. Before his father.”
“He never married?”
“No. To be honest, no one expected him to live as long as he did. Consumption, you know.”
“So at the time you informed on your cousin Nicholas, his eldest brother was known to be dying and the second brother was already dead.”
Seaforth stiffened. “I take leave to tell you I resent the implication of that statement.”
“You mean the implication that you informed on Nicholas because you had ambitions of inheriting his father’s titles and estates in his stead? You have my leave to resent the implication as much as you like. It’s rather glaringly obvious, you know.”
“You would have had me do what instead? Shelter a murderer?”
“You weren’t exactly hiding him in your basement.”
Seaforth sat up straighter in his chair and adjusted his cravat. “I behaved as any honorable man would have done.”
“Somehow I doubt Nicholas saw it that way.”
“What difference does it make how Nicholas saw it? As if I care what the scoundrel thought of me.”
“Not then, while he was in custody, or now that he’s dead. But if you heard he was alive and on the loose and had returned to England? I can see you being afraid that he might decide to pay you back for what you did to him all those years ago.”
Seaforth sucked in a quick breath, then hissed, “What are you suggesting?”
“You know what I’m suggesting.”
A naked succession of emotions flickered across the Earl’s face, consternation mingled with outrage and fury and something that looked like fear. “Don’t be ridiculous. If I’d known Nicholas was in town, all I’d have needed to do would be to inform the authorities and let them kill him.”
“If you knew where he was. But if you didn’t?”
Seaforth pushed up from his chair with such force that he sent it thumping back across the carpet. “You go too far, Devlin. You hear me? You go too far.”
Sebastian rose slowly to his feet, his hands curled loosely at his sides. “Believe me, I’ve only just begun.”
He thought for a moment that Seaforth might try to throw a punch. But the man simply tossed his journal aside and strode rapidly away.
* * *
Having sent Tom home with the curricle, Sebastian walked the hot, dusty streets of Westminster, his thoughts on the past. The sun was sinking low in the sky, casting long shadows. But even close to the river, the heat was still oppressive.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the man Nicholas Hayes had once been—an earl’s youngest son, army mad, reckless, headstrong, and passionate. A man much like Sebastian himself. But Hayes’s life had gone disastrously awry, beginning with an ill-fated elopement that led to banishment and a dangerous refuge. And then . . . what? Theft? Attempted rape? Murder?
Sebastian found himself doubting it all. Yet he knew too that his tendency to see his own life reflected in the life of Nicholas Hayes could be blinding him to an ugly reality.
So what do we actually know? thought Sebastian as he reached the Thames. He paused to look out over the sun-sparkled expanse of the river and felt a welcome evening breeze lift off the water to cool his face. What do we know for certain?
The truth was they knew almost nothing about the man found dead up in Somer’s Town except that he’d spent three miserable years as a convict before using a rock to obliterate the features of a corpse and stealing its identity to escape the living hell to which he’d been condemned. Then after fifteen years of freedom he’d risked it all by returning to England. Why?
The only explanation that made sense was a burning desire for revenge unquenched by the passage of time. So then the question became, revenge on whom?
His cousin, the new Earl of Seaforth, for betraying him to the authorities and appropriating the inheritance that should by rights have been his? The Count de Compans—particularly if the Frenchman had lied about the circumstances surrounding his wife’s death?
Who else?
Theo Brownbeck, for refusing to allow Hayes to marry his daughter? Also possible, Sebastian decided, although that seemed more of a stretch.
So, LaRivière and Seaforth, and possibly Brownbeck. But as he stared off across the darkening waters of the river, Sebastian found his thoughts returning to the flintlock pistol he’d found lying at the bottom of the sea trunk in the Red Lion. If Nicholas Hayes had been planning to meet either LaRivière or Seaforth that night in Pennington’s Tea Gardens, surely he would have taken the pistol with him. So why hadn’t he?
The obvious explanation was that he’d gone to the gardens that night planning to meet someone else. So who?
Who?
Chapter 22
S omeone was following him again.
Sebastian became aware of the man’s persistent presence as he walked up Cockspur Street toward home. The light was fading slowly from the sky, casting the street into deep purple shadow. The breeze from the river was growing stronger, flickering the flames of the recently lit streetlamps and scuttling a loose playbill along the gutter.
When Sebastian paused to gaze into a pastry shop’s window, the following footsteps stopped. When he walked on, the footsteps started up again, carefully matching Sebastian’s speed.
He caught a glimpse of the man as he crossed Piccadilly: a middle-aged tradesman, by the looks of him, in a shabby corduroy coat and greasy waistcoat. They continued up Berkeley Street to the square, then Davies. Whistling softly, Sebastian abruptly turned into the narrow entrance to John Street and flattened himself against the brick wall of the corner shop. The unknown shadow was perhaps fifteen steps behind him. Sebastian could hear the man pick up his pace lest he lose his quarry.
He came around the corner quickly, a man with several days’ worth of grizzled beard on his face and the pasty flesh and bloodshot eyes of someone who spends too much time in gin shops. Stepping away from the wall, Sebastian grabbed the man by the arm and shoulder to swing him around and slam him face-first against the bricks.
“’Oly ’ell!” yelped the man, his head craning around sideways, eyes wide as he attempted to see who’d grabbed him. “Wot’d ye want to go and do that fer?”
Sebastian tightened his hold on the man’s arm and bent it back at an awkward angle. “You’re following me.”
“Oy! That ’urts, it does.”
“Why are you following me?”
“She said ye wanted t’ talk t’ me. Never said nothin’ about ye meybe manhandlin’ me.”
“Who? Who said I wanted to talk to you?”
“Miss Grace.”
“Grace Calhoun sent you?”
“Aye. Said ye wanted t’ know ’bout the nob what got shipped off t’ Botany Bay back in ’ninety-six.”
Sebastian took a step back and let the man go. “You’re the cracksman?”
The man turned cautiously to face him, then set about straightening his clothes with a calm dignity. “Not anymore. Cain’t hold it against a feller wot ’e did in ’is salad days, now, can ye?”
“And what do you do now?”
“Got me a dolly shop in Cheapside, I do. Down by St. Mary-le-Bow.”
A dolly shop was—ostensibly—a pawnshop. But most dolly-shop owners were also to some extent fences. “So you’ve graduated from theft to receiving, have you?”
Th
e man looked affronted. “Me? No. Never.”
“Right. What’s your name?”
The former housebreaker snatched off his hat and clutched it to his chest with a bobbing little bow. “Tintwhistle. Mott Tintwhistle, at yer service.”
Sebastian eyed the man’s haggard, lined face. “How good is your memory, Mr. Tintwhistle?”
The retired cracksman wet his lips with his tongue. “Works better wit a few quid and meybe a bit o’ Blue Ruin t’ lubricate things.”
“That can be arranged.”
* * *
They retreated to the George and Dragon at the corner of Bond and Brook streets, where Sebastian bought a bottle of brandy and two glasses from the stunned barman and retreated to a dark corner lit by a guttering candle.
“Now, tell me how you came to know Nicholas Hayes,” said Sebastian, splashing alcohol into the glasses.
Mott Tintwhistle threw back his shot and smacked his lips. “Right good stuff, this. Better’n Blue Ruin any day.”
Sebastian poured the man another generous measure. “Nicholas Hayes.”
“Aye.” Tintwhistle pursed his mouth and took a more judicious sip. “’E was staying at the Red Lion in them days, ye see.”
“Yes.”
A strange, faraway light shone in the cracksman’s eyes. “Miss Grace, she’s a fine-lookin’ woman yet today. But twenty years ago, she was somethin’ else, I’m tellin’ ye. Reckon we wuz all more’n a bit in love wit ’er.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his own brandy. “Yes?” he prompted when the man paused as if momentarily lost in thoughts of the past.
Tintwhistle swiped a hand across his mouth and took another drink. “Well, when she asked me t’ ’elp that young nob, I done it.”
“Grace Calhoun asked you to help Nicholas Hayes?”
“Aye.”
A vague suspicion was beginning to form in Sebastian’s mind. But all he said was “So you broke into the Earl of Seaforth’s house?”
“Me? No. I jist ’elped that young gentleman get into ’is da’s ’ouse and take wot was ’is t’ take. That’s all.”