by C. S. Harris
Sebastian went first to Lower Sloan Street, an area of modest but respectable brick row houses with white-painted double-hung windows and small front gardens filled with colorful splashes of roses and foxgloves and lilies.
He found Mrs. McHenry puttering about her rosebushes with a basket hooked over one arm and a pair of secateurs in hand. She was a small, white-haired woman probably in her late sixties or early seventies, dressed in a black stuff mourning gown and a wide-brimmed straw hat that threw a hatched pattern of light and shade across her plump face. When Sebastian introduced himself and asked after her son, her soft brown eyes crinkled with her smile.
“I’m afraid you’ve just missed him, my lord,” she said with a lilting Scottish burr. “He was here for a bit and then went off again. Said something about meeting his mates for a pint, although he didn’t say where. You might try the Scarlet Man in Cockspur Street. I hear all the officers go there these days, although when my George was alive they were always at the Bedford Arms.”
“Your husband was in the Army as well, Mrs. McHenry?”
“Royal Marines,” she said proudly. “Lieutenant Colonel George McHenry. Served from India to Gibraltar to America, he did. Can’t believe my Hamish will be going back there now to fight another war—to America, I mean. After all these years.”
“When does his regiment set sail?”
“Soon, they say.”
Sebastian watched her snip a spent bloom and place it in her basket. “Did you know Crispin Hayes?”
Her gaze flew to his, then slid away as her smile faltered. “I didn’t, no. My George and I were living in Plymouth in those days. And now they’re saying his brother is dead too.” She turned to snip at another bush. “Shall I tell Hamish you’re looking for him?”
“Yes, please,” said Sebastian with a bow. “Thank you for your time.”
She nodded, her smile once more firmly in place. But he was aware of her watching him as he walked away, the sun hard on her face and her secateurs slack in her hand.
* * *
Sebastian checked the Scarlet Man, the Bedford Arms, and several other pubs and coffeehouses popular with military men, all without any luck. Giving up on the major, he went in search of the Third Earl of Seaforth.
With its classical facade, gleaming black-painted door, and neat rows of silk-swagged windows, Ethan Hayes’s elegant town house in North Audley Street was virtually indistinguishable from the other impressive residences in the street, a monument to its owner’s wealth and status. But Sebastian found himself pausing at the top of the steps as he reached for the knocker.
Once, this house—like the Irish estates and titles that went with it—had belonged to a man whose three sons were now dead. Nicholas Hayes had grown up in this house, played in its nursery as a child, broken into its library as an anguished young man in search of something he considered his. Had his ghost haunted the current Earl all these years, troubling his conscience and dimming his pleasure in the enjoyment of what should never have been his? Somehow, Sebastian doubted it. Men like Seaforth always managed to find excuses for their own worst behavior, even as they loudly condemned the slightest transgressions committed by others.
Pushing the thought away, Sebastian let the knocker fall.
It was close enough to the fashionable dinner hour that Sebastian wouldn’t have been surprised to be told that the Earl was already dressing. But Seaforth simply directed his butler to show Sebastian up to his dressing room.
Attended by a fussy, middle-aged valet, Seaforth stood in the center of the room, clad only in a long, open-necked shirt and drawers. His bare calves were pasty white and skinny despite the small potbelly that showed against the loose folds of his shirt. He dismissed his valet with a nod and said, “This is getting tiresome, you know. I only agreed to see you because I wouldn’t put it past you to follow me to my dinner engagement and harangue me there.”
Sebastian closed the door behind the valet and leaned back against it. “Acute of you.”
The Earl reached for a pair of formal black breeches and pulled them on. “What do you want now?”
“I was wondering why you didn’t tell me Crispin Hayes killed himself.”
“I thought I did.”
“No. You told me he drowned.”
Seaforth buttoned the breeches, then smoothed on white silk stockings and pushed his feet into diamond-buckled shoes. “I suppose some people do fall into the Thames and drown by accident, but there can’t be many.”
“So why did he kill himself?”
Seaforth selected one of the neatly pressed cravats laid ready by his valet and turned toward the mirror. “I really don’t know, although I always assumed it was a matter of unrequited love.”
“Crispin Hayes was in love? With whom?”
Seaforth carefully wound the length of extraordinarily wide linen around his neck. “Chantal de LaRivière, of course.” His gaze met Sebastian’s in the mirror, and he laughed. “You really don’t know much about those days, do you?”
“Obviously not. Care to enlighten me?”
“It’s not a complicated story. The Countess was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and Crispin fell madly, hopelessly in love with her.”
“You’re saying Crispin and Nicholas were in love with the same woman?”
“That’s right.” Seaforth kept his gaze on his reflection in the mirror as he tied the cravat. “To tell the truth, I’ve sometimes wondered if perhaps Crispin’s death wasn’t actually a suicide.”
“Meaning . . . what?”
“Well, given what we now know about Nicholas, I wouldn’t be surprised if he simply pushed his brother off the bridge in a fit of jealousy. Would you?”
Watching this smirking, condescending man calmly tie his cravat in the dressing room of the house that had come to him only through his betrayal of his cousin, Sebastian felt a wave of revulsion so intense that it was a struggle to keep his voice even. “You’re suggesting Nicholas had a reason to be jealous of his brother? Why? Did the Countess favor Crispin?”
“That I wouldn’t know.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s self-satisfied, smug face. “Are you familiar with a man named Titus Poole?”
Seaforth kept his gaze on his reflection in the mirror as he smoothed the folds of his cravat. “Poole? No, sorry; never heard of him. Why do you ask?”
“I understand he was once a rather famous Bow Street Runner, although he now works privately as a thieftaker.”
“Oh?” Seaforth swung away from the mirror to reach for his white silk waistcoat. “I’m afraid I don’t keep up with such people. What has he to do with anything?”
“He was seen following Nicholas shortly before he was murdered, and it’s been suggested that someone had hired the man. You don’t know anything about that?”
Seaforth tried to tuck his chin against his chest so he could see to work the waistcoat’s buttons, but given the exorbitant width of his cravat, it wasn’t easy. “No, of course not. How could I?”
“You didn’t hire him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He reached for his coat. “Are we about finished here? I promised my wife I’d look in on the nursery for a few minutes before we leave.”
“Of course,” said Sebastian. He turned toward the door, but paused with his hand on the knob. “Just one more thing. I’ve been wondering, was Crispin planning to buy a pair of colors like his brother and his friend Hamish McHenry?”
“Crispin? Hardly. He was never army mad like Nicholas.”
“Oh? So what did he do?”
“I really don’t recall. Why?”
“Just curious,” said Sebastian, and let himself out.
Chapter 28
T he evening breeze billowing in through the Brook Street house’s open windows was warm and dry and smelled strongly of horse droppings.
; Jules Calhoun sat in one of the chairs beside the library’s cold hearth, his hands clasped between his spread knees and his head bowed. He’d been out most of the afternoon searching for Ji in the back alleys and crowded courts around the Red Lion, and he looked hot, tired, and uncharacteristically disheveled. “I don’t know why I didn’t say Crispin Hayes had killed himself,” said the valet in answer to Sebastian’s question. “I guess it didn’t seem relevant.”
“Is it possible that Nicholas Hayes killed his own brother?”
Calhoun’s head came up. “Good Lord, no. Crispin defied the old Earl by continuing to visit Nicholas after their father disowned him. Anyone who saw the brothers together could tell how close they were. Nicholas was devastated when Crispin died.”
“I’ve seen people devastated by the death of someone they loved but killed. Sometimes men act in anger, with little thought or conscious intent, and then regret it.”
“No. I was with Nicholas when he heard about his brother’s death. He wasn’t simply grieved. He was shocked and horrified. He couldn’t understand why his brother would kill himself.”
“What did Nicholas do?”
Calhoun dug his palms into his eyes, rubbing back and forth. “He went off somewhere—I don’t know where. When he came back to the Red Lion, he was in a tearing mood. I’d never seen him like that before.”
“In what sense?”
“He was drinking heavily, but with a dark purposefulness rather than his usual reckless good cheer.”
“How close was this to when Chantal de LaRivière died?”
“She died that night. Nicholas spent the better part of the day drinking, then went over there.”
“To Dover Street, you mean? This was the same day his brother died?”
Calhoun shook his head. “No. He didn’t hear about his brother until a good twelve hours after the body was found. So it was the next night.”
“There was no suggestion of foul play in the brother’s death?”
Calhoun looked at him blankly. “Not that I ever heard about.”
“What do you know about a man named Mott Tintwhistle?”
A faint gleam of amusement lightened the valet’s tense features. “The old cracksman? What about him?”
“Did you know he helped Nicholas break into his father’s house?”
“I remember hearing about it. Why?”
“Do you know what they were after?”
Calhoun was thoughtful for a moment. “I did know, once. But I don’t remember now. It was something Nicholas wanted—something he said was rightfully his.”
“His grandfather’s watch?”
“That was it. I remember thinking it was daft—breaking into the old Earl’s house for something like that. Although to be honest, I suspect the watch was only part of it. I think he did it mainly to get back at the old man—show him he could.”
“Did they also take some banknotes?”
“No. That was just a tale the old Earl spread around to make people see him as the victim of a ‘bad son.’ What kind of a father does that?”
“A horrible one.”
Calhoun was silent for a moment. “It’s funny, because I remember Nicholas as mature, sophisticated, and cultured—everything I wasn’t but knew as soon as I met him that I wanted to be. I think of him as older and more mature than me because he was then. But looking back on it now, I realize he’d only just come down from Oxford. He was still a young man—very young. And he made a young man’s mistakes.”
“You don’t have any idea where he went after he found out about his brother’s death and before he started drinking?”
“No. He never said. When he came back, he just called for a bottle of brandy and started working his way through it. My mother tried to talk to him, but he asked her politely to leave him alone, so she did. And then he left for Dover Street.”
“He said he was going to see the Countess?”
“No. The Count.”
“Did he say what he was planning to do?”
“He said somebody had to stop those bastards, and it might as well be him.”
“Those bastards? Not that bastard?”
“That’s the way I remember it. But I could be wrong. It was so many years ago.”
“How long was he gone?”
“A couple of hours. He came back covered in blood, but he wasn’t hurt. He never tried to hide what had happened. Told my mother he and the Count had struggled over the gun and it went off, grazing LaRivière’s forehead but killing his wife.”
“Whose gun was it?”
“He said it was the Frenchman’s.”
“Hayes didn’t take a pistol with him?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Calhoun thrust up abruptly and went to stand at the open window, his gaze on the darkening street now thick with the carriages of Mayfair’s wealthy residents on their way to their evening’s entertainments.
“If Hayes was drunk,” said Sebastian, watching him, “he might not have remembered exactly what happened.”
“He wasn’t that drunk. He could hold his liquor like nobody I’d ever seen—until I met you.”
Sebastian studied the taut, tired profile of the man at the window. “Did you know Hayes was dying of consumption when he came back to England?”
Calhoun swung to face him. “No. You’re certain?”
Sebastian nodded. “He didn’t give any indication?”
“No. I mean, I remember him coughing badly, but he said it was nothing. I asked why the hell he’d come back, and all he’d say was that there was something he needed to do. I told him he was daft, that nothing was worth dying for. And he said, ‘This is.’”
“But you’ve no idea what he was talking about?”
“No.”
“Did the boy say anything?”
“Nothing about why they were in London.”
“How good is the lad’s English?”
A smile lighted the valet’s eyes. “As good as yours, my lord. Plop him down in Eton or Winchester—or the Court of St. James, for that matter—and he’d sound right at home. Even if he didn’t stand out for anything else, you’d think a ragged lad living on the streets who sounds like a lordling would be remembered.” A clock tower in the distance began to toll the hour, the dull chimes ringing out over the rattle of harness and the clatter of hoofbeats and iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones. Calhoun glanced again toward the yawning darkness of the open window. “I can’t believe we still haven’t found him. Where could he be?”
“Any chance your mother could be hiding him?”
A faint suggestion of color rode high on the valet’s prominent cheekbones. “No. I asked her—when she told me you’d figured out Hayes had been staying with her.” He paused, then added, “I honestly hadn’t known about that, my lord.”
“I never thought that you did.”
Calhoun nodded. “She said the boy went off with Hayes the afternoon of the murder and never came back.”
“Hayes didn’t tell you anything at all about the child?”
“Only that he’d come from Canton with him.”
“Did he tell you much about his life in China?”
“He told me about the Hong merchant he worked with, and how strange he found everything at first. He said their culture was so different, it took him a long time to adjust. He said that in many ways it was more cruel than ours, but there were some ways in which he thought it was better. And the longer he lived there, the more respect he came to have for their religion.”
Sebastian thought about the Buddhist prayer beads left curled up beside the portrait of a smiling Chinese woman. “How much do you think he’d changed from the man you knew before?”
Calhoun was silent for a moment. “It’s hard for me to say for certain. I mean, I’m different, aren’t I? He was older t
han the man I’d known, obviously. But it wasn’t only that. When I knew him before, there was a kind of coiled restlessness about him, a—a passionate, wild recklessness. That was gone. The man I met in Oxford Market was calm. At peace. There was nothing peaceful about the Nicholas Hayes I knew before. Nothing peaceful at all.”
“Sometimes people who know they’re going to die manage to find within themselves an unusual measure of serenity.”
“Maybe that was it,” said Calhoun.
Although he didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Chapter 29
Monday, 13 June
T he inquest into the death of Nicholas Hayes was held at eight o’clock the next morning at the Swan, a tidy brown brick inn on the edge of Somer’s Town that dated to late in the reign of George II. Because there was no officially designated site for inquests, they were generally held in the nearest inn or public house large enough to accommodate the crowds such affairs typically attracted. But the Swan was relatively modest in size, and the murder of an earl’s notorious son had drawn massive attention. By half past seven, the inn’s public room was filled to overflowing with spectators and prospective jurors and a swarm of ragged, lithe children doubtless taking advantage of the occasion to pick the pockets of the unwary.
“This shouldn’t take long,” said Lovejoy, holding a handkerchief to his nose. The atmosphere in the close room was stifling hot and smelled strongly of spilled beer, sweat, and death, thanks to the presence of Nicholas Hayes’s four-day-old corpse.
Sebastian tried not to breathe any more than he had to. “Hopefully.” He let his gaze drift over the pushing, shoving crowd of gawkers eager for a glimpse of the bloody remains of the infamous murderer-turned–murder victim. “I don’t see the Earl of Seaforth.”
“He may not come. My office contacted him about making arrangements to release the body to him after the inquest, and he said he doesn’t want it.”
“He what?”
Lovejoy nodded. “He says we can dump the remains in the parish’s poor hole for all he cares—which is what it looks like we’ll be doing.”