Where Shadows Dance sscm-6

by C. S. Harris

  “Yes, sir,” said the constable, dashing off.

  Sir Henry shifted his gaze to Sebastian. “I assume you’ll be attending the exhumation of Ross’s body? It’s scheduled for eight tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Sebastian, turning toward the door.

  Hopefully, Alexander Ross would be, too.

  “I trust all is set for tonight?” Sebastian asked sometime later as he prepared for Lady Weston’s ball.

  “It is, my lord,” said Calhoun, smoothing the set of Sebastian’s evening coat across his shoulders. “I’ve arranged to borrow a wagon and a dark mule from my mother, and before he left for Brighton, Jumpin’ Jack kindly lent Dr. Gibson his wooden spades and various other tools of the trade. He also bribed the sexton of the churchyard to oil the gate’s hinges and leave it unlocked.”

  Sebastian adjusted the snowy white folds of his cravat. “What time does Jumpin’ Jack suggest?”

  “Half past two, my lord, as most residents of Mayfair will have found their way home by then. Sunrise is at six. We ought to have a good three hours before the humbler residents of the city begin to stir again.”

  Sebastian cast a glance out the window. Thick clouds had come roiling in shortly after nightfall, obscuring moon and stars. “Let’s hope the rain holds off.”

  “At least it will be dark, my lord.”

  “That it will.” Sebastian slipped his watch into his pocket. “You and Tom take the wagon and collect Gibson and Mr. Ross. I should be back here by two. But if by some chance I’m not, I’ll meet you at the burial ground.”

  Chapter 35

  S ebastian arrived at Lady Weston’s ball at the unfashionably early hour of a quarter past twelve. Miss Jarvis, looking splendid in gossamer-fine silk of the palest pink with rosette-and-pearltrimmed swags around the hem, did not put in an appearance until long past one.

  “I was beginning to think you must have changed your mind,” he said, walking up to her. It came out considerably less gallant and more impatient than he’d intended.

  She held a painted silk fan trimmed with fine lace and had a strand of pearls woven through her hair, but there was nothing either fragile or frivolous about the way she assessed him through narrowed eyes. “Why? Have you a pressing engagement elsewhere?” she said with an insight he found unsettling.

  “At this hour?” He let his gaze rove casually over the glittering rooms, the bejeweled ladies and exquisitely tailored gentlemen, and lowered his voice. “I’m hoping to hear why His Majesty’s government is transferring vast sums of gold to the Swedes.”

  She made a show of fanning her face, the delicate ivory and silk confection stirring up a useless eddy heated by hundreds of dancing candles and the hot press of fashionable bodies. “It’s quite warm in here, don’t you think?” she said for the benefit of anyone who might be listening. “Perhaps you would be so good as to escort me out to the terrace for a breath of fresh air.”

  He smiled and gave a short bow. “With pleasure, Miss Jarvis.”

  The terrace overlooking the darkened gardens was largely deserted, thanks to a gusty wind that had blown out most of the festive hanging lanterns. Heedless of the threat to her carefully curled locks, she walked to the stone balustrade at the edge of the terrace and drew a deep breath. “Smells like rain.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” said Sebastian.

  She glanced over at him in surprise. “Why? We need a good rain to clean the air of dust and wash down the streets.”

  “True,” he agreed. Unfortunately, rain would also make St. George’s burial ground a muddy mess.

  She was silent for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. Then she said, “I am not betraying my father’s confidence in what I am about to tell you. It is known in certain circles, yet the fewer who know, the better.”

  “I understand.”

  “Two weeks ago, at Örebro, Britain signed a treaty with both Sweden and Russia. It is a peace treaty without any alliance obligations, which represents something of a failure for Russian diplomacy, since the Czar has been pushing for more.”

  It was difficult sometimes to remember, but Russia had officially been at war with Britain for the past five years. He said, “Go on.”

  “The war between us was never vigorously pursued by either side, and had been largely maintained by the Czar in order to placate Napoléon. But by invading Russia last month, Napoléon effectively ended the need for that fiction.”

  “Hence the Treaty of Örebro,” said Sebastian.

  She nodded. “Likewise, the Anglo-Swedish War has essentially been a paper war for the last two years. The Swedes’ main argument is with the Russians, who seized Finland.”

  “Losing the entire eastern half of your kingdom is rather difficult to swallow with equanimity,” said Sebastian.

  “True. But the Swedes have now let it be known that they would be willing to allow Russia to keep Finland if they could receive some sort of compensation.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Norway.”

  “But Norway is part of Denmark.”

  “Exactly. And Denmark is an ally of France.”

  “Denmark is an ally of France because we attacked Copenhagen and sank the Danish fleet,” said Sebastian dryly.

  She shrugged. “Such is the price of neutrality.”

  “Well, they’re certainly not neutral anymore.”

  She turned to face him, so that she was leaning back against the balustrade, the wind blowing the short curls around her face. She put up a hand to push them back. “Your perspective is certainly unusual, I’ll give you that.”

  Sebastian said, “Napoléon has been unhappy with Sweden because, despite being officially at war with us, the Swedes still allowed us to station our troops in the Swedish port of Hano and trade with the Baltic states. In fact, as I understand it, Sweden has remained our largest trading partner. In other words, Napoléon’s recent attack on Sweden was driven by exactly the same motive as our attack on Denmark.”

  “And now Sweden is also willing to attack Denmark.”

  “In exchange for Norway.”

  “And certain subsidies,” she said.

  “Ah. Define subsidies.”

  “Gold. Transferred from the British Treasury to the Swedish Embassy here in London.”

  “So that’s how it all comes together,” said Sebastian softly. He stared out over the shadowy shrubbery below. “Tell me, how are these transfers usually effected? I find myself woefully ignorant in the niceties of such details.”

  “It isn’t as if you can simply appropriate the payments from the Treasury, drive a wagon up to the Swedish Embassy, and offload trunks of gold. That sort of activity would be bound to attract unwanted attention and speculation. Generally, deliveries are made in incremental amounts—”

  “Say, twenty-pound bags of gold sovereigns, delivered every few days?” He was remembering the list of numbers he’d found in Ross’s copy of Marcus Aurelius. He thought he knew now what they meant: They were the dates of Ross’s deliveries of gold to Lindquist.

  “Something like that. The gold is typically passed by someone attached to the Foreign Office—”

  “Meaning Alexander Ross?”

  “Evidently. The gold is delivered to an agent of the recipient government.”

  “Carl Lindquist,” said Sebastian.

  “Has Mr. Lindquist been discovered in possession of an inexplicably large number of gold sovereigns?”

  “Mr. Lindquist is, unfortunately, dead.”

  “Good heavens. When did this happen?”

  “This afternoon.”

  She looked thoughtful a moment. Then she said, “Did you kill him?”

  “I did not. But he most certainly had a large trunk of gold in his possession.”

  “How was he killed? In the same method as Ross?”

  “Nothing anywhere near so tidy. Someone bashed in his head.”

  She fixed him with a steady stare. “You say Alexander Ross died from a dagg
er thrust at the base of his skull. Yet you have not told me how you came to know that.”

  One of the tall French doors from the drawing room burst open behind them, disgorging a tangle of laughing young women bedecked in white muslin, satin ribbons, and pearls, and trailed by a clutch of clucking mothers. In the distance, the church towers began to strike the hour.

  Two o’clock.

  Sebastian cast the chattering women a significant glance. “Now is perhaps not the time. May I call upon you tomorrow? There are a number of things we really must discuss—and I don’t mean simply about the death of Alexander Ross.”

  She got that harried look on her face, the one that stole over her every time he attempted to bring the conversation around to their looming marriage. “Not tomorrow,” she said vaguely. “I already have several previous engagements.”

  “Tuesday morning, then.”

  He thought for a moment she meant to refuse him. Then she said, “Very well. Tuesday. At half past eleven?”

  “Half past eleven,” he said, just as the first drops of rain splattered the stone flagging of the terrace.

  Chapter 36

  A fine, misty rain was falling by the time Calhoun reined in his mother’s mule on South Audley Street. Sebastian was waiting for them on the footpath. There’d been no time to return to Brook Street or to change out of his evening dress into something more appropriate for digging up graves.

  “Ah, there you are, my lord,” said Calhoun, handing the reins to Tom. “I was thinking we were going to have to do this without you.”

  The Church of St. George, Hanover, famous as the scene of so many fashionable Mayfair weddings, stood in a narrow triangle of land formed by the confluence of George and Conduit streets. As a result, the parish’s two burial grounds had to be located farther afield. The largest lay to the north of Hyde Park, beyond Edgeware Road. The older and more crowded was situated here, just off Mount Street and South Audley, its side entrance a narrow cobbled passage that ran beside the South Audley Chapel and what was known as the Mount Street dead house.

  “Seems a dead giveaway, so to speak,” said Tom in a loud whisper, “t’ave the wagon sittin’ right outside the churchyard gate. I mean, what’s the watch t’think, if’n ’e ’appens to see me’ere? This t’aint exactly a gentleman’s carriage.”

  “Good point,” said Sebastian, unloading the shovels and coils of stout rope. Between them, he and Calhoun eased the heavy sack containing Alexander Ross off the back of the wagon. Then he nodded to the tiger, who wore a simple dark coat and trousers in place of his usual, distinctive striped waistcoat and livery. “Wait for us in Grosvenor Square. We’ll catch up with you there.”

  “Aye, gov’nor,” said Tom, spanking the reins against the mule’s back. The wagon moved off noiselessly, the axles well greased.

  “Ready?” said Sebastian, shifting his grip on the burlap bag.

  Gibson shouldered the shovels, their ends wrapped in burlap so they wouldn’t clatter when they knocked against each another. “Fine lot of sack-’em-up boys we make—a one-legged Irishman, a lord dressed like he’s going to the opera, and a gentleman’s gentleman.”

  Calhoun laughed.

  They plunged between the high walls of the narrow passageway. The wind gusted up, driving the cool rain against their faces and rustling the leaves of the half-dead trees in the graveyard. “Devilish dark back here,” said Calhoun, nearly dropping his end of the burlap sack as he stumbled over the uneven cobbles. “How the blazes are we supposed to see what we’re doing?”

  “A lantern would be asking for trouble,” said Sebastian. “Too many houses with windows nearby.”

  “Easy for you to say,” grunted Gibson, bringing up the rear. “You’ve got the eyes of a bloody owl.”

  The burial ground opened up before them, a vast enclosed square filled with moss-covered gravestones and rusty iron railings overrun with tangled vines and weeds. “It’s here,” said Sebastian, leading the way to a mound of sodden dark earth in the lea of the dead house.

  “Lord save us,” said Calhoun, burying his nose in the crook of his arm. “What’s that smell?”

  “It’s coming from the dead house,” answered Gibson. “A couple of watermen fished a body out of the river yesterday. I understand it was pretty ripe.” Despite the exclusivity of its neighborhood, the Mount Street mortuary was the destination of all unidentified bodies pulled from the Thames between the bridge and Chelsea.

  Calhoun gazed up at the elegant row of houses that backed onto the burial ground. “Imagine being a fine lord, living in one of those great big places, and having to smell that every time they pulled somebody out of the river.”

  “Maybe they get used to it,” suggested Sebastian, easing Alexander Ross down onto the wet grass beside his empty grave.

  Calhoun studied the dark mound of recently turned earth before them. “You don’t think the sexton will notice the grave’s been disturbed when he comes to dig it up in the morning?”

  Sebastian spread a tarp to catch the soft dirt. “It hasn’t been that long since he was buried, and the rain will help cover any traces we leave.”

  They went to work with the shovels, the rain pattering softly as they threw aside a growing mound of sodden earth. The resurrection men had refined their technique so that they typically dug down only at the head of a coffin, then broke the lid with a pry bar and pulled the body out of its grave with ropes. But since their aim now was to put Alexander Ross back into his grave, they would need to expose the entire casket.

  The shovels bit into the wet earth quietly. They were made of wood rather than metal in order to avoid the telltale, ringing clang that could come from a metal spade unexpectedly striking a rock or hitting wood. They were just scraping the dirt off the top of Ross’s smashed coffin lid when Sebastian raised his head, his acute hearing catching the muffled clop of a horse’s hoof, the scuff of furtive footsteps.

  “What is it?” asked Gibson, watching him. “Company?”

  “Actually, I think we may have competition.” Sebastian slipped the loaded double-barreled flintlock from his pocket. “I’ll take care of them. Just get Ross back where he belongs as quickly as you can.”

  Moving soundlessly, he slipped between the tumbled tombstones, toward the mouth of the narrow passage, and flattened himself behind the coarse stone wall of the dead house.

  “I tell ye,” he heard a man say in a harsh whisper, moving stealthily toward him along the passageway. “I don’t like the looks o’ that wagon sittin’ in the square. I tell ye, somebody’s poachin’ on our territ’ry, they are.”

  “Yer always lookin’ t’ borrow trouble, Finch. That’s yer problem.”

  Sebastian could see them now; two men, one small and gently rounded, the other bigger, burlier. They were loaded down with the burlap-wrapped shovels, the pry bar, the rope, the crumpled muddy sack of their trade. Sebastian stepped from behind the mortuary wall and said softly, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  The first body snatcher—the smaller, rounder one—let out a muffled shriek. “ ’Oly ’ell!” He staggered back, his eyes widening until the whites caught the gleam of light from the distant windows. “Ye near scared the shit out o’ me.”

  His companion—older, bigger, tougher—took a belligerent step forward but drew up abruptly when Sebastian pulled back the right hammer on his pistol with an audible click.

  “This is our territ’ry, ye hear?” said the man, his jaw jutting out mulishly. “Ours.”

  “Actually,” said Sebastian, casually leaning one shoulder against the wall of the dead house, “if I’m not mistaken, this is Jumpin’ Jack’s lay.”

  “Be that as it may, ev’rybody knows Jumpin’ Jack goes to Brighton at the end o’ July. And when he goes, we take over.”

  Sebastian used the muzzle of his gun to tip back the brim of his hat. “Bad time of year for the resurrection trade, I hear. Bodies don’t last long in the heat. And then, with the medical schools closed, there can’t be much o
f a market.”

  “The prices drop in summer; ain’t no doubt about it,” said the other resurrection man soulfully. “But a man’s got to eat.” He winked. “And support ’is other ’abits, if ye know what I mean.”

  Sebastian glanced back toward Alexander Ross’s grave. Between them, Calhoun and Gibson had worked the ropes beneath the empty coffin and lifted it from the grave. Now Calhoun was busy clothing the corpse with his inimitable skill and arranging it in the casket. Bringing his gaze back to the resurrection men, Sebastian said, “The thing of it is, gentlemen, we’re not here to encroach upon your trade.”

  “Get on wit’ ye,” said Finch. “What else would ye be doing here?” He squinted at Sebastian through the darkness. “Although ye must be a regular green ’un, dressin’ like that fer this kinda work.”

  Sebastian could hear the scrape of ropes, the thump of the now laden casket being lowered back into its grave. “Actually, we’re looking for a skull.”

  “A skull?”

  The soft thud of quickly tossed shovelfuls of wet earth hitting the top of the casket drifted across the churchyard.

  Sebastian said, “Just a skull. For Lady Lennox’s masquerade. You see, I rather fancy the notion of going as the angel of death.”

  “The what?”

  “The grim reaper. Death personified.”

  The two resurrection men exchanged guarded glances. The elder one squinted at Sebastian through the misty rain. “Ye must be foxed—or mad. What are ye, then? Some kind o’ bloody lord?”

  “Would a lord be robbing a burial ground?” asked Sebastian, pushing away from the wall as Calhoun and Gibson came up beside him. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, we’ll be on our way.”

  “Lord love us, I need a drink,” said Calhoun, looking faintly green around the gills as he paused on the flagway in front of the chapel to draw in a deep breath of fresh air. “I’ve dressed many a gentleman in my career—sober, drunk, and even dead. But I must say, this is the first time I’ve ever been called upon to dress one who was in bits.”