Who Speaks for the Damned

by C. S. Harris

  “I know.” Sebastian was silent for a moment, the wind buffeting his face. Then the wind dropped and the air smelled of dust and lichen-covered stone and old, old death. He said, “I should have realized Kate Brownbeck was with child—that only a baby would have precipitated that disastrous, hasty elopement.”

  Hero drew a painful breath. “And then they took her baby away and she never had another. The poor woman.”

  The sun was sinking lower in the sky, bathing the world in that strange brassy light. He said, “I must admit I can sympathize with Nicholas Hayes for coming back here with murder in his heart. I think about the lot of them—Brownbeck, Forbes, Seaforth, and LaRivière—and it’s hard not to be consumed with vicarious rage.”

  “Of the four, I’d say Forbes and LaRivière are by far the strongest and most dangerous characters—and the most likely to kill.”

  “Yes. But weak men can also kill, especially out of fear. And a sickle in the back strikes me as the act of a weak man.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” The church bell began to ring, tolling out the hour, and the mournful peal seemed to press down upon them. The air was heavy with the smell of freshly turned earth, the hard sky crisscrossed with birds coming in to settle for the night. Wordlessly, Hero reached out to take his hand. He laced his fingers with hers, and she said, “Is it wrong that I find myself wishing he’d succeeded in doing what he came here for?”

  “I don’t think so. Not at all.”

  She looked over at him and smiled.

  Chapter 43

  Wednesday, 15 June

  T he next morning, Hero and Calhoun shifted their search for Ji away from the areas around Pennington’s Tea Gardens and the Red Lion.

  Someone had told Calhoun about seeing a boy who might have been part Chinese playing a bamboo flute in Leicester Square. Calhoun had spent hours Tuesday evening combing the area without any luck, but it started him thinking. “Maybe the lad is deliberately staying away from places Hayes’s killer might know about,” said Calhoun. “Maybe that’s why we can’t find anyone who’s seen him.”

  “You might be right,” said Hero. And so with that possibility in mind, they decided to try Clerkenwell.

  Lying to the north of London’s old city walls, Clerkenwell had once been the site of four rich monastic institutions. After the Dissolution, Henry VIII doled out the land to his noble supporters, and for a time Clerkenwell was an area of fine houses and exclusive spas. But those glory days belonged to the past. The nobility had long since shifted west to Mayfair, leaving Clerkenwell to poor tradesmen, artisans, and prisons.

  What was still called Clerkenwell Green no longer bore any resemblance to the idyllic village green it had once been. A narrow space shaped like a squished, elongated triangle, it had the intimidating bulk of the Sessions House taking up the entire wide end and Clerkenwell Churchyard at the point. What wasn’t paved over was reduced to hard-packed earth, and the whole was hemmed in by two converging streets thick with drays, carts, and carriages. The dusty space in between was given over to stalls, pickpockets, stray dogs, and itinerant street performers. It was noisy and crowded and smelled of urine and dung.

  While Calhoun walked up Clerkenwell Close to the church and then back down to St. John’s Square, Hero interviewed the only musician on the green—a lame, blind woman who said her name was Alice Jones.

  “Been blind all my life,” said Alice, who looked to be somewhere in her seventies but said she was only sixty-two. Her clothes were ragged but clean, her soft gray hair neatly platted and wrapped around her head in two braids. Her eyes were an eerie milky white. “Played the hurdy-gurdy all my life too. That’s what they taught me in the blind school, you see.”

  “When did you leave school?” asked Hero, tilting her parasol against the fierce sun.

  “They kicked us out when we turned sixteen. My parents were both dead, so that’s when I started playing on the street.”

  Hero looked up from scribbling notes. “You’ve done this ever since?”

  “Oh, yes. Forty-six years.” Alice Jones laughed at what she must have heard in Hero’s voice. “Can’t imagine it, can you?”

  Hero ruefully shook her head, then remembered the woman couldn’t see her. “How much do you make a day?”

  “Ten or maybe twelve pence, if I’m lucky. More if the weather’s good, less when it’s not.”

  “Do you always play here in Clerkenwell?”

  “Oh, no. You need to move around, you know. Some street musicians just go wherever the fancy takes them, but I’m not like that. Tuesdays for Leicester Square, Wednesdays for Clerkenwell, Thursdays are for Kensington, and so on. I’ve always been like that. Gives a certain sense of order and control to life, if you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  The woman tilted her head as if she were studying Hero, even though her eyes were sightless. “Why’d you say you’re writing this article?”

  Hero didn’t think she had said why, only that she was writing it for the Morning Chronicle. “I believe it’s important for people to understand the life stories of those they see on the streets. Those who are less fortunate than they.”

  The skin beside the woman’s empty eyes crinkled with her smile. “The wretchedly poor, you mean.”

  “Well, yes,” said Hero, oddly uncomfortable to hear it spelled out so bluntly. The wind gusted up, and she had to tighten her grip on the parasol. It wasn’t easy juggling a notebook, a parasol, and a reticule that was heavier than usual, thanks to the little brass-mounted muff pistol she’d started carrying after her unsettling experience in Snow Hill. “I’m particularly interested in interviewing street performers who were born elsewhere. I understand there’s a Chinese boy on the streets, although I’m not sure if he performs. Do you know anything about him?”

  The woman laughed. “All children look the same when you’re blind.”

  “This child may play the flute.”

  “Oh? And he’s Chinese, you say?”

  “Perhaps only half-Chinese. A lad of eight or ten.”

  Alice shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t believe I’ve heard of him.”

  A shout brought Hero’s head around. A ragged boy was crossing the green, his clothes dirty and torn, his head bowed, his lips moving silently as if reciting a prayer. Then someone shouted, “That’s ’im! Grab ’im.”

  The boy’s head came up, his gaze jerking toward the shout as he broke into a run. After nearly a week on the streets, he was dirty and disheveled, his coat torn at the shoulder, his dark, straight hair limp. But Hero recognized him instantly.

  “Ji,” she cried as three men closed on him.

  The boy was running toward Hero. He dodged a stall selling sweetmeats, a plump woman with a shopping basket, a juggler whose balls went tumbling in the boy’s wake. He was young and nimble and frightened, but the men’s legs were longer, and one of the men was particularly fast. Ji had almost reached Hero when the fastest man managed to reach out and catch the boy’s arm. Ji wiggled away. The man swore and was starting after him again when Hero stepped forward to thrust her parasol between the man’s legs.

  He tripped and went sprawling. One of his friends swerved around him while the other leapt right over him. Hero was vaguely aware of the hurdy-gurdy woman whacking the first man on the head with her cane and pounding the second man across the shoulders. The downed man at Hero’s feet lay as if stunned, then rolled onto his back just in time to see her draw the muff pistol from her reticule and point the muzzle at his face.

  “Move and you’re dead,” she said calmly, thumbing back the hammer.

  He froze.

  “Wise,” said Hero. “Now, tell me who hired you.”

  The man looked to be somewhere in his thirties, his face unshaven, his hair badly cut, his coat, waistcoat, and breeches worn and greasy. He stared at her, his jaw sagging. “I cai
n’t tell ye that!”

  “I see you need some persuasion.” She shifted the muzzle slightly to the right and down. “I suppose you might not bleed to death when I shoot you in the arm—if you’re lucky, that is. Of course, you’ll probably lose the arm, but—”

  “You wouldn’t do that!”

  “Oh, believe me,” said Hero, enunciating each word carefully, “I would.” She extended her right arm, her finger tightening.

  “Wait! Don’t do it! Oh, God, don’t shoot me. I’ll tell ye. I’ll tell ye! It’s Seaforth—the Earl of Seaforth. He hired us. I swear to God, that’s the honest truth.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  Greasy Coat’s eyes bulged. “Gorblimey, lady. I couldn’t make somethin’ like that up if’n I wanted to. Some lord, hirin’ me t’ find a half-Chinese lad? Ain’t no way I could come up with a tale that batty.”

  “Did he hire you to kill Nicholas Hayes too?”

  “What? I ain’t never killed nobody!”

  “If you—” Hero broke off as one of the man’s confederates who must have circled back around slammed into her.

  “We lost ’im, Jack!” shouted the man as Hero staggered. “Come on and let’s get outta ’ere!”

  He took off running again, but he had successfully distracted Hero long enough to give Greasy Coat a chance to scramble to his feet. He darted out into the street that ran along the north side of the green, oblivious to the team of shires bearing down on him.

  “Oy there!” yelled the dray’s driver as the near horse reared up in fright, its big, flailing hooves knocking the man down. The driver was reining in hard, but it was too late. The off leader plunged, then reared up to come down on the man as he tried to roll out of the way. The thudding hooves crushed the man’s head with a sickening crunch.

  “Dear God,” said someone behind Hero.

  From the far side of the green came a child’s shout. “I hope you’re reborn as a hungry ghost!”

  But when Hero turned and looked, Ji was gone.

  Chapter 44

  C lad in natty yellow trousers and a coat with exaggerated shoulders, the Third Earl of Seaforth was in Bond Street shepherding three of his sons and a very pregnant wife through Dubourg’s Celebrated Exhibition of Cork Models of Roman Antiquities when Sebastian walked up to him and said quietly, “We need to talk. Now. I’ve spoken to the owner and he has kindly offered to lend us a private room for a few minutes.”

  Seaforth gave a startled laugh. “Good God. Not now, man.”

  He would have turned away, but Sebastian caught him by the arm and hauled him back around. “You sorry son of a bitch,” hissed Sebastian, still keeping his voice low. “It’s only the presence of your family that has kept me from landing you a facer here and now. The men you hired just attacked my wife.”

  “I didn’t hire anyone—”

  “You did. You hired them to get rid of the boy Nicholas Hayes brought back from China. But that’s the problem with hiring killers. They can be a wee bit hard to control.”

  “Papa,” said the eldest of Seaforth’s red-haired, freckle-faced boys, pointing to a projection on one of the buildings. “What’s this supposed to be?”

  Sebastian glanced at the child, who looked to be perhaps eight or nine. “I suggest we take advantage of that private room. You don’t want your wife and children to hear what I have to say.”

  Seaforth yanked his arm from Sebastian’s grasp and stalked toward where an anxious-looking Mr. Dubourg was waiting to usher them into a small, untidy office.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” said Seaforth as soon as the door closed behind them. “I didn’t hire those men to kill the boy. I simply told them to make him go away. I thought perhaps they could sell him to a chimney sweep or something.”

  “He’s too big for a sweep’s boy. Apart from which, nine out of ten children sold to chimney sweeps don’t live to see their freedom, so it’s basically a death sentence anyway. The truth is, you don’t care what happens to that child as long as he disappears.”

  “Of course I don’t care. Are you telling me you wouldn’t do the same in my position?” Seaforth’s voice had taken on the aggrieved tone of a man who always, always, sees himself as the undeserving victim of his own failings and deficiencies.

  Sebastian gave a faint, disbelieving shake of his head. “Is he Nicholas Hayes’s legitimate son?”

  “I don’t know! You think I could afford to take the time to inquire into the particulars?”

  “Did you pay the same men to kill Nicholas?”

  Seaforth’s jaw went slack. “No! I swear it!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask them! They’ll tell you! I hired them the morning after Nicholas was found dead.”

  “Used someone else to kill Nicholas, did you?”

  “No!”

  “Why the bloody hell should I believe you? You obviously not only knew Nicholas had come back to England, but you even knew he’d brought a boy with him. A boy who might well be his son and thus heir to everything you thought was yours.”

  Seaforth’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “You can’t know that. No one knows that. In all likelihood, he’s nothing more than a half-Chinese by-blow. Even if he were by some miracle legitimate, I seriously doubt he could prove it.”

  “I suspect Ji knows. And he could have the papers to prove it.”

  Seaforth looked confused. “Who is Ji?”

  “The child you’ve been trying to kill.”

  A spark of aggrieved fury flared in the Earl’s pale gray eyes. “So what precisely are you suggesting I should do? Allow some dirty little foreigner to claim everything that is mine? Become a peer of the realm?”

  Sebastian was having a hard time keeping his fists at his sides. “How did you know Hayes was in London? Did you see him?”

  Seaforth shook his head. “No.”

  “So how did you know?”

  Seaforth glanced toward the door. But Sebastian was between the Earl and the exit. He was trapped and he knew it.

  “Answer me, damn you,” said Sebastian.

  “Brownbeck! Brownbeck told me.”

  Bloody hell, thought Sebastian. “How did Brownbeck know?”

  “He saw them. I don’t know where or how, but he told me because he thought I should know.”

  “You mean, he told you because he was hoping you might kill them.”

  Seaforth simply stared back at him, the freckles standing out stark against his pale flesh.

  Sebastian said, “Did he tell anyone else?”

  “He didn’t say, but I know he also told Forbes—Forbes and LaRivière. I know because I thought it best under the circumstances to warn them, only both men said they already knew.”

  “Did you tell anyone else?”

  “No. I swear to God.”

  “Right,” said Sebastian with a hard smile.

  “Who else would I tell?”

  “I’ve no idea. Did Nicholas have any other enemies?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Was the boy with Hayes when you killed him in Pennington’s Tea Gardens?”

  Seaforth sucked in a startled breath. “I tell you, I didn’t kill Hayes! I swear it. My wife wasn’t feeling well that day, so I spent the afternoon at my club, had dinner, then went to the Regent’s reception. I won’t deny I wanted the man dead, but I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  “You hire other people to do your killing for you, do you?”

  The other man’s gaze slid away, telling Sebastian all he needed to know.

  Sebastian said, “When did Brownbeck warn you about Hayes?”

  “Last week sometime. Maybe Monday or Tuesday—I don’t recall precisely.”

  “When did you speak to Forbes and LaRivière?”

  “The same day
. I think it may have been Monday, actually.”

  “And you’d have me believe you didn’t hire the men to go after the child until Friday?”

  “I swear it! Ask the men. They’ll tell you.”

  “Unfortunately, the only one who was in custody is now dead.”

  Seaforth’s eyes widened. “You killed him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Sebastian advanced on the other man, backing him up until Seaforth slammed his shoulders against the nearest wall with his hands splayed out at his sides. “When we walk out of here,” said Sebastian, “you’re going to collect your wife and children and take them home. And then you are going to contact those men you hired and you are going to call them off. Am I making myself perfectly clear? You are going to call them off right now. Because I want you to understand this, and I want you to understand it well: If anything happens to either my wife or that little boy, you won’t live long enough to rue the day you were born. Is that clear?”

  Seaforth’s nostrils flared. “You can’t just go around threatening people like this. I am a peer of the realm! I—”

  “What you are, sir, is a fool. Your men threatened the daughter of the Regent’s dear, dear cousin and most trusted advisor. If you think I might hurt you, what do you think Jarvis would do if he found out?”

  Seaforth’s face quivered as his nose began to run. “You haven’t told him, have you? Oh, God. Have you?”

  “Not yet. At the moment you’re more useful to me alive than dead. I suggest you do your utmost to keep me in that frame of mind.”

  From the far side of the door came a child’s voice. “Mama, where’s Papa?”

  At some point, Seaforth’s hat had been knocked to the floor. Sebastian picked it up and handed it to him. “Now take your family and get out of here.”

  Chapter 45

  T heodore Brownbeck came hurrying out of the Bank of England’s massive portal with his head down, his thoughts obviously far away. He had a sheaf of papers tucked up under one arm and was worrying his lower lip with his front teeth. He’d crossed Threadneedle and was almost to Cornhill before he realized Sebastian had fallen into step beside him.