by C. S. Harris
“It’s . . . delicate,” said Sebastian. “It involves the reputation of a lady, which makes it difficult for me to talk about. Let’s just say both men had a very good reason to worry that Nicholas Hayes had returned to England specifically to kill them.”
“And yet neither felt moved to make a report to Bow Street when they realized he had returned?” The magistrate’s voice was rough with his disgust. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Yes. And suggestive.”
Lovejoy looked over at him. “Meaning?”
Sebastian chose his words carefully. “Brownbeck came right out and admitted that he considered going to Bow Street but decided against it because he didn’t want the embarrassment of having the past dredged up again. It’s a sentiment shared by Seaforth and Forbes and, presumably, LaRivière as well.” He’d decided against telling Lovejoy about Hamish McHenry. Forbes’s casual mention of the major had been too pat not to be suspect, and Sebastian wanted to talk to Hamish himself, first. “I’m beginning to think the four men may have made a pact—either explicitly or implicitly—to simply have Hayes quietly killed.”
“But he wasn’t killed quietly,” said Lovejoy.
“No, he wasn’t, which makes it damnably confusing.”
Lovejoy’s face tightened into a pained expression. “The involvement of two prominent men such as Seaforth and LaRivière was bad enough. But now you’re saying Forbes and Brownbeck are implicated as well? Merciful heavens. We’re fortunate the palace is preoccupied at the moment with the visiting Allied Sovereigns. When are they due back from Oxford?”
“Tonight.”
* * *
The Green Man was not a favorite with military men. Located in an ancient, tumbledown part of Westminster, the tavern was a place of dark, low ceiling beams, age-blackened wainscoting, and uneven flagstone floors. The medieval glass in the leaded windows was thick and wavy, the tables and benches were all scarred, and stray dogs regularly ran in and out looking for scraps.
Hamish McHenry sat alone in a darkened corner, a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a glass on the table before him. His head fell back and he blinked when Sebastian slid onto the bench opposite him. “How the blazes did you find me here?”
“Were you hiding from me?”
The major raised his glass to his lips and took a deep drink. “Not exactly.”
Sebastian turned to order a brandy, then waited until it arrived before saying, “You didn’t tell me you were in the Foreign Office with Crispin Hayes—before you bought yourself a pair of colors and went off to do your best to get yourself killed.”
One corner of the man’s lips quirked up into a shadow of a smile. “How did you know?”
“That you went to war hoping to die? I did something similar myself . . . although for a slightly different reason.”
“Ah.” He lifted his glass in a half salute. “Who told you I was with the Foreign Office?”
“That was Forbes.”
“He’s a nasty, sneaky son of a bitch.”
“That he is. I assume he told me in an effort to deflect suspicion from himself onto you.”
“And did it work?”
“Not exactly. Although I’ll admit it helped me see a few things more clearly.”
McHenry leaned back against the old-fashioned bench, his forearms lying limply on the table before him. “Then I suppose he achieved his purpose, didn’t he?”
Sebastian said, “Tell me about Chantal de LaRivière.”
McHenry brought up both hands to scrub them down over his haggard face. “She was so beautiful. She had the smile of an angel, a laugh like the gentle peal of the bells of heaven, and a body that could tempt a man to sell his soul to the devil.”
“And did you? Sell your soul to the devil, I mean.”
McHenry’s bloodshot eyes met Sebastian’s. “Metaphorically speaking, I suppose you could say I did.”
“She seduced you?”
McHenry reached for his glass and drained it. “In every way.”
“Let me guess. And then her suitably outraged husband caught you in flagrante delicto.”
The major splashed more Scotch into his glass. “Not a very original scheme, I’ll admit. But nevertheless highly effective. The Count played the outraged husband to perfection. At first he threatened me with a crim. con. case, of course. I was twenty-three years old and a frightened fool. I told him I had no money.”
“And so he said he was willing to allow you to pay him with what you did have: access to information.”
McHenry wrapped his hands around his glass, but did not drink. And for a moment he seemed to shrink in on himself, becoming less than what he had been a moment before.
Sebastian said, “How long did it go on?”
The major sucked in a deep breath and took a drink. “Not nearly as long as LaRivière hoped, as it turned out. I made a wretchedly unsatisfactory traitor, you see. Took to drinking. Considered killing myself. Showed up to work falling-down pissed and puking on myself. Grenville—he was the Foreign Secretary at the time—was an old friend of my father’s, but even he couldn’t put up with it for long and dismissed me. I suppose in some weak, twisted way it was what I was hoping would happen.”
“And so LaRivière set his wife to seducing Crispin Hayes next?”
McHenry nodded, his jaw clenched. “I was so sunk in my own misery and a useless orgy of self-loathing that I didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. It was simply by chance that I saw them together in the park one day and realized what she must have been doing. I tried to warn Crispin, but of course he wouldn’t listen. He was hopelessly in love and utterly convinced Chantal was in love with him. Then I came along, trying to tell him she was a scheming little whore. He almost killed me for it.”
“You told him she was trying to get him to spy for France?”
Dark color stained the major’s cheeks and he shook his head. “Not exactly. I was too ashamed to be as explicit as I could have been. I only told him she was playing with him. Using him. Setting him up.”
“How long between when you told him and the night he killed himself?”
“Less than a week. I don’t know for certain exactly what happened, but I assume that somewhere in there Chantal and the Count sprang their trap and Crispin got caught. It’s the only thing that makes sense of what happened next, isn’t it? Crispin found out that he’d been fooled—that the woman he loved so desperately was using him. And then he either killed himself or he confronted LaRivière in a rage and LaRivière killed him.”
“Which do you think is the most likely?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
A half-grown pup bumped its head against Sebastian’s hand, and he reached down to pet it. “After Crispin was found dead, when Nicholas came to see you, did you tell him the truth? That LaRivière was using his wife to seduce young clerks in the Foreign Office, I mean.”
McHenry scraped his hands down over his face again and nodded. “I thought I was being noble—finally doing the right thing, coming clean, making amends for being a weak, sniveling coward. Except that all I ended up doing was ruining Nicholas’s life.”
“Why didn’t you come forward after he was arrested and tell the truth?”
McHenry let his hands fall. “You don’t want to know.”
Sebastian met his gaze. “Yes, I do.”
“I tried. I had a long, extraordinarily difficult talk with Grenville. Then I went back to my rooms, expecting to be arrested. Instead, I received a visit from . . . someone. Someone important. He told me that a Frenchman like LaRivière could be useful. That rather than be exposed and ruined or killed, LaRivière had agreed to act as a double agent, sending false information back to Paris. I was warned that if I said anything more, I would simply disappear. It was suggested that I leave the country and that I might find the army a good new care
er.”
“Why didn’t Nicholas say anything?”
The major lifted both shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Maybe he was willing to be a martyr for king and country. Maybe he did it to preserve his brother’s good name. Maybe he didn’t believe they were really going to find him guilty of murder and ship him off to Botany Bay. Or maybe my visitor threatened someone he loved. I don’t know.”
Sebastian drew a deep breath, his chest so tight it hurt. “It was Jarvis, wasn’t it? The man who came to see you and warned you to keep your mouth shut about LaRivière. It was Lord Jarvis.”
McHenry started to take another drink, then changed his mind and pushed the glass aside. His gaze met Sebastian’s, and after a moment he gave a slow, silent nod.
Chapter 47
C harles, Lord Jarvis, was tired. In the past three days he’d traveled to and from Woolwich, then up to Oxford and back to London again. He’d attended more dinners, banquets, balls, levees, and various other ceremonies than he could count. As he climbed the steps of his Berkeley Square town house, he was thinking about a drink, a bath, dinner, and his bed.
“Good evening, my lord,” said his butler, taking his hat and helping his lordship off with his dusting coat.
“It’s good to be home,” said Jarvis.
Grisham paused with Jarvis’s coat over one arm, his expression one of wary resignation.
“Well, what is it?” snapped Jarvis, watching him.
“Mrs. Hart-Davis is dining with friends this evening,” said the butler, referring to the cousin of Jarvis’s late wife. “But Lord Devlin is here to see you, my lord. In the drawing room, my lord.”
“What the devil?”
“He’s been here for some time, my lord. Quite insistent he was in waiting for your lordship.”
Jarvis was already heading for the stairs. “Oh, he was, was he?”
He found his son-in-law sprawled in a high-backed chair by the cold hearth. “What the devil is the meaning of this?” demanded Jarvis, closing the door behind him with a snap.
Devlin had been reading a book—one of Jarvis’s own books, he realized, recognizing the distinctive burgundy leather binding that characterized the volumes of his extensive private library. But at Jarvis’s entrance, the Viscount set the book aside and rose to his feet.
“You didn’t tell me LaRivière was passing false information to revolutionary Paris for you. I assume he continued to do so well into the Napoleonic era?”
Jarvis walked to the table that held a selection of carafes and poured himself a glass of burgundy. “I’d offer you some,” he said without looking up, “but I know you well enough to assume you’d have helped yourself if you’d been thirsty.”
“I’m not thirsty. Thank you.”
Jarvis carefully replaced the carafe’s stopper and turned, glass in hand. “It’s a peculiar fantasy you nourish, this idea that I should impart all sorts of privileged information to you simply because you have taken it upon yourself to right all the perceived wrongs of the world.”
“Not all of them. Mainly murders.”
Jarvis gave a noncommittal grunt and took a sip of his brandy.
Devlin said, “Was the information he was feeding to Paris false before or only after the death of his wife?”
“Only afterward. Before the lovely Chantal’s demise, the information he was sending was quite genuine—although not, fortunately, of a particularly sensitive nature.”
“So you didn’t know of his activities until after Hamish McHenry had his little conversation with Lord Grenville? How . . . remiss of you.”
Jarvis’s eyes narrowed. He took another drink.
Devlin said, “Did LaRivière kill Crispin Hayes?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Nor do you care?”
“Of course not. Why would I? The man was a fool.”
“I’m surprised you allowed Hamish McHenry to live.”
“He can thank Lord Grenville and the Foreign Secretary’s friendship with his father for that. I assumed the wretch would die soon enough in India, but he seems to have the devil’s own luck.” Jarvis sipped his brandy. “So, are you here for a reason or simply to blow off steam over what you imagine to be my reticence?”
The younger man’s nostrils flared. “Did you have Nicholas Hayes killed?”
“Why would I?”
“To keep him from killing you. And to keep LaRivière’s secret, obviously.”
Jarvis huffed a soft laugh. “Do you realize how long ago that was? Virtually every Frenchman of title or property has switched sides and danced a duet with either the revolutionary government or Napoléon at some point in the last twenty years. The Bourbons understand these things.”
“And yet you warned me away from inquiring too closely into LaRivière’s affairs just a few days ago. Why was that? I wonder.”
“Surely it’s not such a puzzle that I have no desire to see the French King’s representative accused of murder in the midst of the Regent’s grand fete.”
“So you have reason to think LaRivière did kill Nicholas Hayes?”
“I see it as a vague possibility—presumably for the same reasons as you.”
“Because he feared Hayes’s revenge? Or because LaRivière has reason to fear the Bourbons might not be so understanding after all?”
“He may fear it. That’s not to say such fears are reasonable. But then, fears often are not.”
Devlin’s jaw hardened. “Eighteen years ago, you allowed an innocent young man to be convicted and transported to hell for a murder you knew he didn’t commit.”
“I don’t know what happened to Chantal de LaRivière eighteen years ago, any more than you do. Nicholas Hayes went to Dover Street that night with murder in his heart. But whether or not he actually killed that woman pales to insignificance when seen in the larger context of affairs of state. In case you’ve forgotten, we were at war—in the first years of what would be a long, brutal, bloody war we were by no means guaranteed to win. The benefits to be derived from turning someone like LaRivière to our purposes far outweighed the paltry considerations of whatever injustice some hotheaded young man may have suffered.”
“Paltry considerations.”
“That’s right.”
Something blazed in his son-in-law’s eyes, something so hot and dangerous that Jarvis instinctively took a step back.
“You and your ilk sicken me,” said Devlin.
Then he turned and left.
For a moment Jarvis stayed where he was. Thoughtfully, he drained his glass and, setting it aside, walked over to lift the book Devlin had been reading and left open on the table beside the chair.
It was a selection of Montaigne’s essays, and Jarvis found his gaze caught by a familiar line. A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
Chapter 48
G ilbert-Christophe de LaRivière was drinking a glass of port in solitary splendor at his own table when Sebastian walked into the Frenchman’s dining room, trailed by the Count’s French butler frantically sputtering, “Mais, monsieur le vicomte! Vous n—”
LaRivière’s languid gaze met Sebastian’s. Then he glanced at the butler now wringing his hands and said, “Leave us.” Leaning back in his chair, the French Count took a slow sip of his port. “Bit high-handed even for you, isn’t it, Devlin?”
Sebastian shut the door in the butler’s face. “We need to talk. Now.”
LaRivière waved one slim white hand in the general direction of the two long rows of empty chairs. “By all means, do have a seat.”
“Thank you, but I’ll stand.”
A faint suggestion of a smile hovered about the Frenchman’s thin lips. “As you wish.”
“You know why I’m here?”
“I presume it has something
to do with the events that gave rise to the rather hysterical message I recently received from Lord Seaforth.”
“Something. But not all.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
Sebastian wandered the room, taking in the gleaming walnut wainscoting, the exquisite Venetian chandelier, the heavy Sheffield plate. The life-sized painting of one of the most beautiful women Sebastian had ever seen.
“Your wife?” said Sebastian, pausing before the portrait.
“My late wife.”
She was breathtakingly exquisite. She’d been painted with her glorious fair hair loose and unpowdered and her gown slipping off her shoulders in a style that was reminiscent of the Restoration era. Her face was heart-shaped, her enormous eyes a brilliant violet, her mouth full and pouting and seemingly made for kisses and everything sinful. It was a beguiling combination of innocence and seduction, vulnerability and power that had beckoned more than one man to his doom.
“She was lovely,” said Sebastian.
“That she was,” agreed the Frenchman, still lounging at his ease.
“Was she a willing participant in your little seduction schemes? I wonder. Or did you force her compliance?”
“Oh, Chantal enjoyed seducing men, believe me.” Again, that faintly derisive aristocratic smile. “You’ve been talking to someone, have you?”
“Several people.”
The Count gave a very Gallic shrug. “It was inevitable, I suppose.”
“Is that why you tried to have me killed?”
The amusement deepened. “Did someone try to kill you? How . . . distressing.”
“That they tried? Or that they failed?”
“What do you think?”
Sebastian continued his perambulation of the room. “Eighteen years ago you set your lovely wife to seduce a green young man with a promising career at the Foreign Office. He tumbled desperately in love with her and in due course also tumbled into bed with her. At which time you—playing the part of the outraged husband, no doubt to perfection—charged in and caught them in flagrante. It’s an old, rather tired game, but it still works, doesn’t it? The husband threatens a crim. con. case that would both disgrace and bankrupt the victim, and the victim begs to settle out of court. Only, in this instance the victim had no money. He did, however, have access to information—information that could be passed on to Paris. Not for ideological reasons, mind you, but for vulgar monetary gain.”