by C. S. Harris
“And what he’d heard was someone digging a grave?”
“Yes. The digger ran off when the soldier shouted at him.”
“Was this soldier able to provide your Constable Gowan with a description of the killer?”
“Not much of one, I’m afraid. He claims there were actually two men—one doing the digging and another fellow who stayed with the horse and cart.”
Devlin’s gaze met Gibson’s. The thought of even one person capable of committing such an abomination was troubling enough; the existence of two such men seemed incomprehensible.
Devlin said, “You say Benji has a younger sister?”
Gibson nodded. “Sybil. Constable Gowan says he’s tried to find her, to tell her about her brother. But no one’s seen her.”
Something leapt in Devlin’s eyes. “For how long? How long has she been missing?”
Gibson felt a cold dread wrap around his guts and squeeze as he realized the implications of what he was about to say. “Three days.”
Chapter 4
Sebastian left Gibson’s surgery and walked toward the old stone watering trough where his young groom, or tiger, waited with his curricle and pair.
A slight, gap-toothed lad, Tom had been Sebastian’s tiger for nearly three years now, ever since that cold, dark February when Sebastian had found himself accused of murder and on the run. In those days Tom had been a hungry pickpocket left behind to fend for himself when his mother was transported to Botany Bay—just like Benji Thatcher. And Sebastian found himself thinking about the difference in the ultimate fates of the two boys as he watched Tom bring the chestnuts around and draw up, his sharp-featured face alive with curiosity.
“Is it murder?” said Tom. “Are we gonna solve it?”
“We?”
Tom grinned. “So it is murder?”
“It’s definitely murder,” said Sebastian, hopping up to the high seat to take the reins. “And yes, I am going to try to find the killer. If I don’t, no one will.”
Tom scrambled back to his perch at the curricle’s rear. “So who’s dead?”
“A fifteen-year-old Clerkenwell thief named Benji Thatcher.” Sebastian saw no reason to burden Tom with the horrors of what had been done to the boy before his death. “Ever hear of him?”
Tom shook his head. “Reckon ’e picked the wrong cove’s pocket?”
“I suppose that’s one possibility,” said Sebastian, and turned his horses into the Minories.
The district known as Clerkenwell lay on the northern outskirts of London, just beyond the line of the old city walls. In medieval times it had been the site of three grand monasteries: the London Charterhouse, the nunnery of St. Mary’s, and the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem. After the Dissolution, ambitious courtiers and favored nobles had taken over the district, while the area’s numerous natural springs spurred the development of such fashionable establishments as New Tunbridge Wells, Spa Fields, and Sadler’s Wells. By the early seventeenth century the gentle hills overlooking the city were thick with pleasure gardens, tearooms, bowling greens, and skittle grounds.
But those days were in the past. Tradesmen and artisans had long since moved into the once grand houses left vacant when “persons of quality” shifted to the West End. The erection of a smallpox hospital and three different prisons further accelerated the area’s decline. Now rubbish dumps, gravel pits, and livestock pens dotted the once scenic hills.
The abandoned buildings of the Rutherford Shot Factory lay in the open fields beyond Clerkenwell Green and the close, on the banks of the sluggish remnants of the River Fleet. During the American revolt, Rutherford had produced a significant portion of the lead fired by Britain’s armies and navy. But the facility had closed around the turn of the century, and after more than a decade of standing idle, the factory was a ruin, the windows of its warehouses broken and draped with cobwebs. The lichen-covered slate roofs were beginning to collapse, and tangled vines ran rampant over the old brick buildings.
“Gor,” said Tom as Sebastian drew up beside the remnants of an old stone wall that had once enclosed the property. “Goosey-lookin’ place, this.”
Sebastian handed Tom the reins. “That it is.”
He dropped lightly to the ground, his head tipping back as he stared up at the old shot tower. Soaring a hundred and fifty feet in the air, it looked much like a tall brick smokestack, only considerably larger. Once, molten lead would have been poured through carefully sized sieves at the top of the tower, with the lead droplets becoming round as they cooled and plummeted down to splash into a deep basin of water kept below. Then, loaded on carts and hauled to the brick warehouses beyond the tower, the shot would be dried, sorted, polished, and packed into bags or kegs for shipment. But those days were in the past. Now the overgrown field around the factory was strewn with everything from old grinding wheels to rusting pulleys and broken cartwheels.
Sebastian found a low, broken section in the old wall and picked his way across the uneven ground. He came upon the unfinished grave a dozen or so feet before the shot tower itself.
The area around the shallow hole had been hopelessly trampled and muddled by the heavy feet of the various parish and public office authorities called in to deal with the newly discovered body. But a shovel still lay abandoned amidst the nearby pile of loose earth.
Crouching down beside the grave, Sebastian reached out to touch the shovel’s handle and found the wood smooth against his fingertips. It wasn’t a brand-new shovel, but neither was it weathered and rusted, and he was frankly surprised to find it still here. But then, the official inquiry into Benji Thatcher’s death had been both slapdash and brief.
Curling his hand into a fist, he shifted his gaze to a battered hat that rested upside down at the base of the hole. Benji Thatcher had been found naked, which suggested the hat in all probability belonged not to the boy but to his killer.
“Ye don’t look like no constable nor magistrate I ever seen,” said a raspy voice.
Glancing up, Sebastian found himself being steadily regarded by a ragged, painfully thin man leaning on a crutch. He stood at the gaping entrance to one of the old warehouses, a scarecrow of a figure with long, stringy ginger hair and gaunt cheeks matted with several weeks’ growth of beard.
“You were here late Sunday night—early Monday morning?” said Sebastian.
“I was.” The man lurched forward, crutch swinging, and Sebastian saw that his right leg ended midthigh. “Name’s Inchbald. Rory Inchbald.”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “What can you tell me about the man who was digging this grave?”
Inchbald drew up on the far side of the pile of loose earth. He was younger than he’d first appeared, Sebastian realized, probably still in his thirties. But he looked ominously underfed and unwell, his skin a clammy, dirty gray.
“Weren’t no man. Weren’t more’n a lad. Sixteen, meybe seventeen.”
“A lad?”
“Aye. The man was waitin’ for him in a cart pulled up just over there.” The scarecrow raised one clawlike hand to point to where Tom walked Sebastian’s horses up and down the lane.
“Can you describe him? The man with the cart, I mean.”
Inchbald lifted his thin shoulders in a vague shrug. “Wot’s to describe? Reckon he was jist yer typical gentleman.”
The midmorning sun felt uncomfortably warm against Sebastian’s back. “What makes you think he was a gentleman?”
“Oh, ain’t no doubt about that.”
“You heard him speak?”
“No.”
“But he was well dressed?”
Inchbald pursed his lips. “Not flash, but more’n respectable.”
“So he could have been a merchant or tradesman.”
A ghastly cough racked the ex-soldier’s body. At the end of it, he turned his hea
d and spat. “Nah. He was a gentleman, all right. Served under enough of the bastards in India to know when I’m lookin’ at one of the buggers. Can’t miss ’em.” His mouth pulled into a grin that showed the gaping black holes of missing teeth. “Just like I knows you was in the army. An officer, wasn’t ye?”
Sebastian met the ex-soldier’s glittering, hostile stare. “Would you say the same about this man you saw? That he was an officer?”
“Nah. Not him.”
A crow swooped in to land on the brick sill of one of the deep, arch-topped windows that pierced the thick walls of the tall shot tower. Looking up, Sebastian watched the bird’s beak open, its raucous caw-caw echoing across the deserted, windblown field. “So tell me more about him. Was he thin? Fat? Short? Tall?”
“How’m I to know, with him wearin’ a cloak and sittin’ up on that cart?”
“Could you tell if he was dark haired or fair?”
“Nope. He had on a hat. But I reckon he was on the young side. Leastways he sat up straight and moved like a young man.”
Sebastian supposed that was better than nothing. “You say he was driving a cart?”
“Aye. A two-wheeled cart with one horse. And don’t go asking me what color horse, because I couldn’t tell ye. It was dark.”
“The horse?”
“I meant the night. But yeah, I reckon the horse was dark.”
Sebastian said, “Gentlemen don’t usually drive carts.”
Inchbald snorted. “Gentlemen don’t usually haul around dead bodies, neither, now, do they? What ye expect him to be drivin’? The family carriage? With a crest on the door and two footmen standin’ up behind and a body under the front bench?”
Sebastian studied the ex-soldier’s gaunt, hostile features. “Did you see the gentleman and the lad take the body out of the cart?”
“Nah. Didn’t see nothin’ till I found the lad diggin’ the grave.”
“At approximately what time was this?”
“Half past one.”
“So certain?”
“Mmm. The church bells was strikin’ just as I was hollerin’ for the watch.” Inchbald’s watery gray eyes narrowed. “Why ye here askin’ all these questions? You bein’ an officer ’n’ a gentleman ’n’ all?”
“I’m trying to discover who killed Benji Thatcher.”
“Why?”
Rather than answer, Sebastian said, “Did you know him? Benji, I mean.”
Inchbald shrugged. “There’s a heap o’ children on the streets hereabouts. All look the same t’ me.”
“What about the lad digging the grave? You were considerably nearer to him than to the man in the cart. Did you recognize him?”
“Nah. But like I keep tellin’ ye, it was right dark. And the mist was comin’ in.”
Sebastian reached to pick up the battered hat. “This his? The digger’s, I mean.”
“Could be. Fell in the hole he did, when I shouted at him. I s’pose he coulda lost it then. But can’t say as I remember one way or the other.”
“It’s hardly a gentleman’s hat.”
“Didn’t say the boy was a gentleman, now, did I?”
“You’re saying he wasn’t?”
Inchbald’s eyes narrowed. “How’d ye be dressed, if’n you was gonna be diggin’ a grave?”
Turning the hat in his hands, Sebastian glanced beyond the ex-soldier to the row of crumbling brick warehouses. “Are there others who sleep here at night?”
“Not so much.”
“No? Why not?”
“Most folks think the place is haunted.”
“You don’t?”
Inchbald’s bloodshot eyes danced with amusement. “I been sleepin’ here since midsummer and ain’t seen nothin’ till last night. And that lot sure weren’t no ghosts.”
Sebastian handed the crippled soldier two shillings and his card. The man was probably illiterate, but he could always get someone to read it for him. “The name’s Devlin. If you should think of anything else that might be relevant, you can contact me at Number Forty-one, Brook Street. I’ll make it worth your while.”
The coins disappeared into the soldier’s rags. But he continued to hold the card awkwardly between his index and middle fingers, his lips twisting into a sneer when he glanced at it. “Ah. Not only an officer ’n’ a gentleman, but a nobleman too. Viscount Devlin.” He coughed and spat a stream of spittle that this time came perilously close to Sebastian’s gleaming top boots. “I hear tell that dead boy was a pickpocket. So tell me, why ye care what happened to some worthless young thief?”
“I care,” said Sebastian and watched the sneer on the other man’s face slide into something less confident, more confused.
• • •
Sebastian spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes walking the rubble-strewn grounds of the factory and poking about the abandoned warehouses. He didn’t expect to come across anything of interest, and he didn’t.
He arrived back at the curricle to find Tom squinting up at three crows perched in a row along the crenelated parapet at the top of the shot tower, his freckled face pinched and strained. “Ye reckon that boy was killed here?” the tiger asked as Sebastian leapt up to the high seat.
“Probably not. Most likely this was simply a convenient, out-of-the-way place to dispose of the body.” The nearest cluster of cottages lay a good quarter mile away, by the crossroads. There were tile kilns on the far side of the lane, but they would have been deserted at night, while the open land beyond the factory’s stone boundary wall was controlled by the New River Company and empty except for a network of wooden pipes that carried water to the city.
“So where was he killed?” asked Tom.
“I’ve no idea.” Sebastian paused, the reins in his hands, to let his gaze drift down the hill, beyond the sprawling, high-walled complex of the Middlesex House of Correction, to the City itself. The ground here was high enough that he could see where the winding lanes of old Clerkenwell blended seamlessly into the vast, crowded streets of London—see all the way to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral rising massive and gleaming in the morning sunlight, and beyond.
He had no way of knowing how much credence to give to Rory Inchbald’s words. But he suspected that the basics of what the ex-soldier had told him were true. Which meant that somewhere out there on the streets of London roamed not one but two vicious killers: a man and a youth who had snatched Benji Thatcher and brutally tortured him for days before casually snuffing out his life with a strap tightened around the homeless boy’s thin neck.
And what of Benji’s little sister? Sebastian wondered. Had the killers taken Sybil Thatcher too? Did they still have her? Were they even now doing to her what they had done to her brother? Or was she already dead?
He felt his hands clench around the reins as a rising tide of tense urgency swelled within him. Who were these people? Where were they? And how the hell was he to find them when he had absolutely nothing to go on?
Nothing except a shovel and a battered hat and the unreliable testimony of a dying ex-soldier with a powerful, burning hatred of officers and gentlemen.
Chapter 5
Hero Devlin sat beside her mother in the morning room of her parents’ vast Berkeley Square town house. A tea tray rested on the table before them, but the woman Hero was here to meet had stepped out for a walk shortly before her arrival and had yet to return.
“So are you enjoying Cousin Victoria’s visit?” Hero asked as Annabelle, Lady Jarvis, reached for the teapot. “And be truthful.”
Lady Jarvis smiled as she poured the first cup. “I am. Truly.” Unlike her daughter, Annabelle Jarvis was small and delicately built, with pretty blue eyes and pale blond hair now gently fading to white. “Victoria is a lovely woman.” She handed the cup to Hero, then added, “I was hoping to show off my grandson to her this morning.”
&nb
sp; “I thought about bringing him, but he’s teething—and screaming his indignation and fury to the world. I didn’t think Cousin Victoria would appreciate such a visit.”
“Simon does have very powerful lungs,” agreed his doting grandmother.
“Very.” Hero took a sip of her tea. “I take it Cousin Victoria has no children of her own?”
Lady Jarvis shook her head and poured a second cup. “Unfortunately, no, despite being married and widowed twice.”
“Twice?”
“Yes, poor thing. Her first husband was aide-de-camp to Wellesley but died of fever shortly before the regiment was to leave India.”
“How tragic. Did she always live in India?”
“From childhood, yes. Her father was with the East India Company.”
“And her second husband was also in the army?”
“Mmm. John Hart-Davis, eldest son of Lord Hart-Davis. He was killed at the siege of San Sebastián last month. She’s only just arrived in England.”
“She was with her husband in Spain?”
“She was, yes—as well as in Ireland and South America.”
“What a tragic and yet extraordinarily adventurous life she’s lived,” said Hero, who had always longed to travel the world.
Lady Jarvis’s eyes crinkled in a smile of understanding. Mother and daughter might be opposites in many ways, but Annabelle still knew her daughter well. “I think you’ll like her. She’s quite brilliant. Speaks Hindi and Urdu as well as Spanish, French, and Portuguese—” She broke off at the sound of soft, quick footsteps on the stairs. “Ah; here she comes now.”
Hero couldn’t have said precisely what she was expecting—perhaps a sturdy, no-nonsense woman in bombazine with sun-browned skin and hair pulled into a tight bun like a bluestocking? It certainly wasn’t the ethereal, extraordinarily attractive woman with a halo of golden curls who swept into the room wearing an exquisite gown of French black silk.
“Cousin Hero!” she exclaimed, advancing on Hero with hands outstretched. “Thank goodness I didn’t miss you! The garden in the square is so lovely, I fear I tarried far longer than I should have. I am so sorry.”