Why Mermaids Sing: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  Lovejoy rose awkwardly. “Please forgive us for intruding on you, Reverend. We won’t trouble you any longer.”

  The Reverend passed a trembling hand across his eyes. “But you must stay for tea.”

  The magistrate gave one of his peculiar little bobbing bows. “Thank you, but no.”

  Sebastian pushed away from the window, conscious of a sense of frustration. What could possibly be the connection between this clergyman’s serious, studious son and a spoiled nobleman’s son like Dominic Stanton, or a sophisticated town buck like Barclay Carmichael? He remembered what Kat had said about the seeming randomness of the killings making everyone feel vulnerable. He wondered if that was why he was so anxious to find some link among the three murdered men: because the lack of a link in these savage murders made the act somehow that much more horrifying.

  “Are you from around here, Mr. Thornton?” he asked suddenly.

  The Reverend shook his head. “I come from Nayland, in East Suffolk. Near Ipswich. This living was presented to me by my wife’s uncle. When I was a young man, it was always my intention to devote my life to missionary work, carrying the good news of our Lord to the unfortunate heathens dwelling in sin and darkness in the benighted regions of the world. I never thought to have a parish of my own, let alone a benefice of this size.”

  Sebastian knew a flicker of interest. “Did you ever go on a mission?”

  Mr. Thornton pushed himself up straighter in his chair. “As a matter of fact, yes. I spent six years in the Horn of Africa before I married. And then Mrs. Thornton and I had occasion to go on another mission nine years ago, when I was able to leave my parish in the care of a curate.”

  Nine years ago, Sebastian thought, Nicholas Thornton would have been ten years old. “And Nicholas?” Sebastian asked. “Did he go with you?”

  “Oh, no. Nicholas was at Harrow by then. He never did come out, even for a visit. Mrs. Thornton was very jealous of the child’s health, and she feared he’d take ill in such an insalubrious climate. He spent his school holidays with her brother.”

  “Where precisely did you and Mrs. Thornton go?” asked Sir Henry, although Sebastian knew the answer even before Thornton gave it.

  “India.”

  “A coincidence, surely?” said Sir Henry, when Sebastian told him of the conversation with Sir Humphrey Carmichael. They were crossing the village green, headed toward the doctor’s rambling white frame house. As they walked, a gaggle of white geese scattered, complaining, before them, the sun bright on the birds’ gleaming feathers. “I daresay thousands of Englishmen have visited the Indian subcontinent at some point in their lives. Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “There. You see? Besides, we don’t know that Lord Stanton has ever been to India.”

  “No, we don’t.” Sebastian stared off across a cluster of stone cottages half hidden beneath a riot of climbing roses putting on a final display of fall blooms. “All the same, if I had a son, I think I’d be worried.”

  Chapter 22

  Dr. Aaron Newman was a slim man in his mid-to late forties, with the prematurely silvered hair and kindly yet strained face of a man whose job required him to witness the private joys and agonies of too many lives.

  He received them in a parlor furnished simply with good, old furniture, and listened while Sir Henry explained the purpose of their visit. He offered them brandy, which Sebastian accepted and Sir Henry, predictably, declined.

  “It’s been over five months now, and I still haven’t managed to come to terms with what happened to Nicholas,” said the doctor, pouring himself a drink. “Such a tragedy. Reverend Thornton and his wife were childless for so many years, and then they had the boy. He seemed a special gift from God, a child conceived so late in his parents’ lives.” Newman removed his spectacles and rubbed a hand across his eyes, his face slack with emotion. “But God took him back, didn’t he?”

  Sir Henry cleared his throat uncomfortably. “How long have you known the Reverend?”

  “Since he took up the living here in the village, more than twenty years ago now. I assisted with Nicholas’s delivery, you know.” Dr. Newman replaced his spectacles and came to settle in one of the deeply upholstered chairs encircling the tea table. “Tended him through all his childhood illnesses.”

  Sir Henry nodded sympathetically. “I understand the Reverend found the boy?”

  The doctor’s lips tightened into a grimace. “I’m afraid so. Lifted Nicholas into his arms and tried to carry him here. He collapsed halfway across the green.”

  “He suffered a seizure?” asked Lovejoy.

  The doctor nodded. “It affected his left side. He has gradually regained the use of his arm, but I’m afraid he still doesn’t walk well.”

  “We understand the boy was left in the churchyard.”

  A spasm of distaste crossed the doctor’s features. “Yes. Reverend Thornton saw him when he went to open the church that morning. It was horrible, quite horrible. The killer had left the body atop one of the old tombs near the south transept door. It’s the door the Reverend always uses.”

  “Interesting,” said Sebastian. “Whoever killed the boy must be familiar with the Reverend’s habits.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. “I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “What can you tell us of your examination of the body?” asked Sir Henry.

  Dr. Newman pushed up from his seat and went to a writing table covered with a scattering of books and notes, one hand restlessly riffling the pages of a worn volume lying near the edge of the table. It was a moment before he spoke. “Nicholas’s throat had been slit.”

  “From behind?” asked Sebastian.

  The doctor hesitated. “I couldn’t say, actually.” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I console myself with the thought it was a relatively merciful death, considering what came after.”

  “There were other wounds?”

  The doctor nodded. “The torso had been slit open and the heart, lungs, and liver removed. Rather inexpertly, I might add.”

  “Hacked in anger?” Sebastian asked.

  Newman looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t have said so, no. There were no extraneous wounds to the body. Just the slice across the throat, the opening of the body cavity, and the removal of the organs.”

  Lovejoy pressed a cleanly folded handkerchief against his tightly held lips.

  “Had the blood been drained from the body?” Sebastian asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?”

  “From the condition of the two most recent victims found in London.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “There would seem to be, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But…Do you have any idea who’s doing this? Any idea at all?”

  “We’re working on it,” said Lovejoy, tucking his handkerchief away. “Had the Thornton boy been bound and gagged before he was killed?”

  “I’m a physician, Sir Henry, not a surgeon. I’m afraid I have never made such things a study.” It was said with gentle pride, for in the hierarchy of medicine, physicians were gentlemen. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, they could discourse at length in Latin on the medical texts of the ancients. They used their learning—and their observations of their patients’ pulse and urine—to prescribe drugs, or physics. They did not involve themselves in such vulgar practices as physical examinations; nor did they deal with broken bones. They certainly did not perform surgeries or carve up cadavers in an attempt to learn the secrets of life. Because of the rarified nature of their husbands’ activities, the wives of physicians, like the wives of barristers, could be presented at court; the wives of solicitors and surgeons such as Paul Gibson could not.

  The doctor drew a pocket watch from his waistcoat and smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid you gentlemen must excuse me, but I’ve an elderly patient I promised to see before two o’clock. I’ll ask my housekeeper to bri
ng you some tea, shall I?”

  “Thank you, but no.” Lovejoy pushed to his feet. “If you think of anything else that might be considered relevant, you will contact Queen Square?”

  “Yes, of course.” Rather than ringing for the housekeeper, Dr. Newman walked with them to the front door himself. As they passed the stairs, an old beagle stretched to its feet and padded over to the physician’s side.

  “By the way,” said Sebastian as he prepared to follow Lovejoy into the bright sunshine, “did Nicholas Thornton have anything in his mouth when he was found?”

  “Actually, yes.” Newman bent to pull absently at the dog’s ears, his face troubled. “I can’t imagine how I could have forgotten to mention it. It…it looked like a star. A silver papier-mâché star.”

  Chapter 23

  There was a peace to be found in graveyards. Sebastian had always felt it as a gentle acceptance of the passage of time and the cycles of life. A peace tinged with sorrow, perhaps, but rarely with violence.

  Standing beneath an ancient elm tree near the south transept of the ancient Norman bulk of St. Andrews, Sebastian looked out over a churchyard of neatly scythed grass dotted with moss-covered headstones and crumbling gray tombs. Bees buzzed a nearby scarlet rosebush that was scattering spent petals across the grass. Yet there was no peace to be found here, Sebastian thought; the very air seemed charged with expectation and unassuaged anger.

  Sir Henry cleared his throat. “This one, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sebastian turned to find the magistrate peering at a low tomb that lay just off the worn path leading from the rectory to the ancient iron-banded door of the south transept. Sebastian walked over to stare down at the simple stone monument formed of gray stone sides some eighteen inches high surmounted by a cracked flat slab. Its inscription was so weathered and encrusted with lichen as to be virtually unreadable.

  “Probably.” He glanced up. From here he could see the High Street and the village green, and beyond that, the stone bridge that arched over the stream. “A rather public spot for a killing, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sir Henry nodded. “According to the Reverend, the boy disappeared in the afternoon while fishing. They searched the woods and fields behind the rectory to no avail. It wasn’t until early the next morning that his body was discovered here. Which would suggest the boy was killed, then taken to an out-of-the-way spot to be butchered before being brought back here to be found by the Reverend at first light.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Nicholas Thornton’s throat was slit. If the boy had been killed beside the stream, the men who searched for him that evening would have seen blood. They didn’t. Whoever killed the boy might have overpowered him in the wood, but I suspect he was killed wherever he was butchered.”

  “Yes, of course.” Sir Henry stared off across the churchyard, lost deep in thought. “I wonder how many others there have been,” he said after a moment, half to himself. “There could be a dozen or more such killings scattered across the length of England and beyond. How would we know? I learned of this one only by chance.”

  “I suspect this was the first,” said Sebastian.

  Sir Henry swung to look at him. “How could you possibly assume that?”

  Sebastian squinted against the bright sunlight. “Are you familiar with the poetry of John Donne?”

  “Somewhat. Why? Whatever has Donne to do with any of this?”

  “The objects left in the victims’ mouths,” said Sebastian.

  Sir Henry shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”

  “They’re from a poem.” Sebastian hunkered down to search the grass beside the weathered tomb. “‘Go and Catch a Falling Star.’ Do you know it?”

  “I don’t believe so, no.”

  “I don’t remember all of it. Only the beginning. But listen…

  “‘Go and Catch a Falling Star

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

  Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.’”

  “Merciful heavens,” said Sir Henry. “The killer is following the poem. First the star, then the page from the ship’s log, and now the goat’s hoof. Only the mandrake root is missing.” His lips tightened into a grim line. “There must have been another murder. A murder that took place at some point between April and June that we have yet to discover.”

  Reaching out, Sebastian traced the faded, incised cross on the tomb with his fingertips. “Perhaps. Or perhaps the killer simply skipped that line for some reason.”

  “Skipped it? What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing?”

  “I suspect he has a reason for everything he’s doing.” Brushing off his fingertips, Sebastian pushed to his feet. “The objects left in each man’s mouth. The different ways in which each was mutilated. The manner in which each body was displayed after death. It’s all been very deliberate. This killer has a reason for it all. And if we’re to have any hope of stopping him, we need to find out what that reason is.”

  Chapter 24

  The drawing rooms and ballrooms of Mayfair would forever be barred to women such as Kat Boleyn—women who displayed their charms on the stage, who had known a succession of men in their beds. But Kat was a frequent and welcome guest in those salons of Bloomsbury and Richmond, where the entrée depended not on birth or wealth but on possession of a keen wit and a sharp intellect, where conversation turned not so much to fashion, horses, and hunting as to art and philosophy, literature and science.

  On the afternoon following her fateful meeting with Jarvis, Kat put in an appearance at the select salon of a general’s daughter named Annabelle Hershey. Miss Hershey was a small woman with pale skin and dark hair, green eyes, and a mind that might have made her an Oxford don had she been born a man.

  She greeted Kat with a peal of merry laughter. “Miss Boleyn, you have been sent by the very gods! You find us in desperate need of a Shakespearean expert to solve our dispute. Do tell us, please: in The Merchant of Venice, is Jessica’s father Shylock or Tubal?”

  Kat cast a quick glance around the crowded salon. The assembled company ranged from scientists such as Humphrey Davy to the renowned literary hostess Miss Agnes Berry and a moody, brilliant, but little-known poet named Lord Byron. The man Kat sought was not here. “Shylock,” Kat said. “Tubal is his friend.”

  Annabelle Hershey threw up her hands in mock surrender. “You were right, Miss Berry! It’s back to the schoolroom for me.”

  From there the conversation slipped easily into a discussion of the rebuilding of the Drury Lane Theater. Kat stayed chatting for some fifteen minutes, and was about to take her leave when Aiden O’Connell strolled into the room. Kat flashed him a wide smile, then immediately looked away.

  He approached her a few minutes later. A lean man in his late twenties, he had beguiling green eyes and a dimpled smile that made him a favorite with the ladies despite his unfortunate position as a younger son. “Any other man in the room would be in transports to have received such a welcoming smile from the most beautiful woman in London. So why am I filled with trepidation?”

  “Because you’re not the fool you would have others think you, perhaps?”

  He opened his eyes wide. “Do I play the fool?”

  “Very well.” She leaned into him under cover of flirtatious laughter. “I must speak with you. Urgently and alone.”

  His gaze met hers, and whatever he saw in her eyes drove the amusement from his. “When and where?”

  “I am being watched. Come to my dressing room at the theater. Tomorrow night after the performance.”

  He was silent for a moment, considering this. “Very well. Until then.” He moved away from her, to where Sir Thomas Lawrence was entertaining a small group with a tale of the antics of his latest subject’
s ferocious pet parrot.

  Kat watched the Irishman out of the corner of her eye. It had occurred to her that by warning Aiden O’Connell, she was running a serious risk. If he knew she meant to betray him, he could very well decide to have her killed himself. Yet it was a risk she had decided she must take. She could not betray him to Jarvis without first giving the Irishman an opportunity to escape.

  How she would deal with Jarvis’s fury when he discovered his quarry flown was a quandary she had yet to satisfactorily resolve.

  That evening, the wind blew in from the northeast, bringing with it the biting chill of the North Sea. Devlin sat in a wing chair beside the fire in Kat’s bedroom, a volume of John Donne’s poetry open on his lap. He was flipping through the pages when Kat came to stand behind him and loop her arms over his shoulders.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Listen to this,” he said, and began to read.

  “‘Go and Catch a Falling Star

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

  Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.

  “‘If thou be’st born to strange sights,

  Things invisible to see,

  Ride ten thousand days and nights,

  Till age snow white hairs on thee.

  Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,

  All strange wonders that befell thee,

  And swear,

  No where

  Lives a woman true and fair.

  “‘If thou find’st one, let me know,

  Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

  Yet do not, I would not go,

  Though at next door we might meet.