by C. S. Harris
“And late Sunday night?”
The Baronet’s eyes gleamed with amusement that bordered on derision. “Sorry; I think I’ve indulged your vulgar curiosity more than enough.” He pushed away from the counter. “I wonder; have you thought to check the area’s numerous houses of correction for this missing brat? If I were you, that’s where I would start, given that she’s no doubt a thief—just like her brother.”
And with that he nodded to the jeweler and walked out of the shop.
Chapter 29
It seemed unlikely, but on the off chance Rowe might be right, Sebastian spent what was left of the afternoon visiting every metropolitan prison from Newgate and the Bridewell to the Marshalsea and the Clerkenwell House of Correction.
He undertook the task himself rather than sending an inquiry or delegating the chore to someone like Constable Gowan because he wanted to be certain the negative responses he received were reliable. At each somber, noisome, high-walled slice of judicially sanctioned hell, he asked after not only Sybil Thatcher but also Mary Cartwright and Mick Swallow, the missing boy Jem Jones had mentioned. All were unknown to London’s prison authorities.
As the shadows lengthened toward dusk, Sebastian sent Tom home with the tired horses and turned his steps toward Covent Garden Market.
At this hour the market was given over almost entirely to the flower sellers, their stalls of chrysanthemums, lavenders, Michaelmas daisies, and viburnum forming gay splashes of gold, purple, blue, and red against the shadowy, timeworn sandstone columns of Inigo Jones’s Italianate arcades. He was here looking for Kat, and he smiled fondly when he spotted her wandering the rows of flower stalls, the handle of a wicker basket looped over one arm, a vague smile on her lips. She often came here before her performances, both because she loved flowers for their own sake and, he suspected, because they formed an elusive link to her lost mother.
“Devlin,” she said when she saw him. “How did you know to find me here?”
“I know you,” he said simply, and she smiled.
They turned to walk along the piazza’s arcade, the scents of the flowers mingling with the stronger odors of brewing coffee, roasting meats, and spilled ale. He said, “Someone recently suggested that the comte de Brienne supports his lavish lifestyle in ways he’d rather not have advertised. Do you know anything about that?”
She hesitated just a shade too long before answering, and Sebastian said, “He works for the French, doesn’t he?” It was a time-honored technique: Paris provided a cash-strapped émigré with the financial resources required to live comfortably in exile, in return for which the émigré provided Paris with a steady stream of information.
She glanced over at him. “You know I can’t answer that.”
“I know.”
Kat herself had once passed information to the French, not because she had any love for Napoléon but because she longed to free her mother’s people, the Irish, from the onerous yoke of their English conquerors. Given what the English had done to her mother, Sebastian had never been able to blame her for that. And while she had severed her ties with the French months ago, she still knew more about their operatives in London than almost anyone—except, perhaps, Jarvis.
He said, “So what does the comte do? Coax secrets from his lovers? Tempt those with useful knowledge into playing his erotic games and then use the threat of embarrassing exposure to extract secrets from them?”
“Something like that.” Kat stared off across the crowded marketplace. She was no longer smiling. “But surely you don’t think de Brienne killed that boy they found in Clerkenwell?”
“I don’t know what to think. How well do you know him?”
“Not well. He’s a self-absorbed, vain, and selfish man. But I can’t say I’ve ever felt there was any real evil in him, despite the somewhat unorthodox nature of his sexual interests.”
“Those he blackmails into betraying their country might disagree with you.”
“True,” she said.
“He arrived here—when? ’Eighty-nine? ’Ninety?”
“Later, I believe; perhaps as late as 1793. From what I’ve heard, his early life was difficult. His parents died when he was a young child, and the uncle who raised him was quite brutal. There are even rumors . . .”
“Yes?” he prompted when she hesitated.
“I’ve heard it said he killed his uncle and two cousins with his own hands—that he fled France not so much because of the Revolution but to escape the consequences of what he’d done.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“Honestly?” She swung to face him, the setting sun shining fleetingly through the shifting clouds to light her face. “I think it could be.”
“Yet you say you think there’s no malice in him.”
“He’s a very complicated man.”
“Most killers are.”
• • •
Sebastian found Amadeus Colbert, the comte de Brienne, eating a large beefsteak in solitary splendor at an exclusive little inn on Mill Street known for the quality of its dinners.
“Mind if I join you?” asked Sebastian.
De Brienne paused with a slice of rare beef on his fork. “And if I said yes, I mind? Would you go away?”
“No.” Sebastian slid into the seat opposite with a smile. “In the course of a murder investigation, it’s inevitable that the names of innocent people will come up. But when someone is suggested by two very different sources, I do tend to take notice.”
De Brienne chewed his slice of meat and swallowed. “People have been talking about me, have they?”
“You did say you have a number of enemies.” Sebastian leaned forward and kept his voice low. “But then, those who engage in blackmail generally do. Especially when they force their victims to betray their country’s secrets.”
De Brienne’s lips relaxed into a smile. “Actually, in my experience, people resent being blackmailed into revealing state secrets far less than they resent being bled of their own money.”
“I suppose I must bow to your superior knowledge of the subject. Although I’m surprised to hear you admit it so readily.”
“Oh? Why?”
“The sort of activities we’re discussing do tend to be hazardous to one’s health.”
De Brienne looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed, although Sebastian noticed that his eyes had narrowed. “Precisely who told you about me?”
“Does it matter?”
The Frenchman threw a quick glance around, but they were quite alone in this corner of the restaurant. “I had assumed it must be your father-in-law. But obviously in that I was mistaken.”
“If Jarvis knew you were passing information to Paris, you’d be dead.”
“And so I would be—if he hadn’t maneuvered long ago to control the contents of the information Paris receives from me.”
Sebastian studied the comte’s strongly boned, aristocratic face. “You would have me believe you are Jarvis’s tool?”
“The phraseology is somewhat indelicate, but you could say that, yes.”
“And Paris suspects nothing?”
De Brienne’s lips curled into a smile as he spread his arms wide. “I’m still here, am I not? Like Jarvis, Napoléon does have a tendency to eliminate those he knows have betrayed him.”
“Napoléon is somewhat distracted these days.”
“Not that distracted.”
Sebastian watched the Frenchman carefully rest knife and fork on the edge of his plate. “Will your family’s ancestral estates be returned to you, do you think? In the event of a restoration?”
“Oh, there will be a restoration. Make no mistake of that.”
“And does the soi-disant King Louis XVIII know you killed your noble uncle and cousins?”
The skin pulled oddly across de Brienne’s bony cheeks, as if hi
s entire face had tightened up. He was no longer smiling. “My uncle and his sons were such fervent adherents of the Revolution that not even the excesses of Robespierre and the massacres in the Vendée could cool their ardor. They died the week Robespierre fell, and there is no one in France or here in England amongst the émigrés who mourns their passing.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question,” said Sebastian, watching him push back his chair and rise to his feet.
“No? I rather thought it did.” The French count executed an elegant bow. “And now you must excuse me, my lord.” He started to turn away, then paused to say, “I fail to understand what you imagine my ties to Paris—or to Jarvis—could possibly have to do with the death of that boy in Clerkenwell.”
“You did read Les 120 journées de Sodome, did you not?”
Something passed over the Frenchman’s tight features, something that looked oddly like a quiver of revulsion. “De Sade was a very sick man when he wrote that book. It is the ravings of a madman. A dangerous madman with a dark and twisted soul.”
“Whoever killed Benji Thatcher is a madman. His friends and family simply haven’t realized it yet.”
“I’m not convinced you could hide that level of depravity—not from those who actually knew you.” De Brienne bowed again. “Monsieur.”
• • •
Sebastian contemplated the Frenchman’s words as he left the inn and turned toward Brook Street. He had the sense that he was missing something—something important that kept hovering just beyond his thoughts, taunting and yet maddeningly elusive.
He walked on, turning his collar against a biting cold wind that had driven most people indoors and left the narrow street largely deserted in the misty lamplight. He could see only a stout man with a muffler wrapped about his lower face studying the wares displayed in the window of a nearby haberdasher and a second man who leaned against a spiked iron fence mounted atop the low stone knee wall that separated the footpath from the dark apse of St. George’s, Hanover, at the corner.
As he neared the looming bulk of the church, Sebastian studied the slim young man who stood there, seemingly absorbed in the task of loading tobacco into his clay pipe. He wore a buff-colored coat rather than a green one, but there was no mistaking that thin, ordinary face: It was the same man who had followed Sebastian through Covent Garden.
Sebastian felt himself tense in anticipation. Without his flintlock or a walking stick, he was left with only the dagger sheathed in his boot. And his wits.
“I take it you’re waiting for me?” said Sebastian, his voice ringing out loud and clear in the damp air as he approached the church.
He thought the man might deny it, or maybe even run away as he had before. Instead, the man stayed where he was, his head coming up as he tucked away his pipe. “Didn’t expect you to recognize me,” he said, his French accent faint but unmistakable.
Sebastian drew up some feet away. “Why? Because you changed the color of your coat?” He was aware of the sound of running footsteps coming up the street behind him, fast.
Then the slim man pushed away from the fence and threw himself at Sebastian.
Chapter 30
Sebastian grabbed the younger man’s coat front and swung him around, putting this assailant’s body between Sebastian and the second, unknown assassin now running toward him with a knife clenched in one hand: the stout man in the muffler.
“You sons of bitches,” swore Sebastian, driving his knee toward the buff-coated man’s groin. “Who sent you?”
Buff Coat twisted his hips at the last instant, grunting as Sebastian’s knee slammed into his thigh, hard. The impact sent the thin man stumbling off the kerb and bought Sebastian just enough time to yank the dagger from his boot.
The stout man came at him with a guttural snarl, his knife driving straight at Sebastian’s stomach. Sebastian swung his left forearm in a blocking sweep that deflected the man’s blade as Sebastian stepped in to bury his own dagger in the assailant’s chest.
The stout man’s eyes widened, blood spilling from his mouth. But such was the momentum of his attack that he kept coming, bowling Sebastian over to knock him off his feet. Sebastian slammed his right shoulder and the side of his face against the knee wall. The dying man landed on top of him.
“Hell,” swore Sebastian. Hands sticky and wet with blood, he shoved the heavy body aside and fought to free his dagger as the buff-coated man came up out of the gutter to lunge at him again—this time with a blade in his hand.
Sluing around, Sebastian kicked up to smash both feet into his would-be killer’s chest with enough force to send the man staggering back. Then Sebastian jerked his dagger from the stout man’s chest and threw it.
The blade whistled through the air to sink deep into the base of the slim man’s throat. He gurgled, dark red blood spraying in all directions as he crumpled.
“Hell,” said Sebastian again, swiping the blood from his face with a crooked elbow as a distant shout went up, followed by the familiar whirl of the watch’s rattle.
• • •
Charles, Lord Jarvis, was in his chambers at Carlton House, penning detailed instructions to the Regent’s representative in Vienna, when Devlin strode in the door. Jarvis’s clerk followed, ineffectually sputtering and fluttering at the Viscount’s heels.
“We need to talk. Now,” said Devlin. His hat was gone, his cravat askew and soaked with blood, his coat ripped and smeared with more gore. It looked as if he’d made an attempt to wipe the dried blood from his face, but a fresh line trickled down the side of his cheek from a cut above his eye.
Jarvis nodded the clerk’s dismissal. “Leave us.”
Devlin said, “First of all, tell me this: Was Sir Francis Rowe with you and the Prince last Friday evening?”
“As a matter of fact, he was. Why do you ask?”
“For how long?”
Jarvis set aside his pen and leaned back in his chair. “From midafternoon to early Saturday morning. Please tell me you’re not so foolish as to suspect Rowe of killing this wretched little thief you’re so obsessed with.”
“He strikes me as someone you might have an interest in protecting.”
“And so I would, if there were any need.” Jarvis let his gaze travel over the man before him. “You’re looking decidedly more disheveled than usual.”
“Two men just tried to kill me.”
“And they failed? How . . . disappointing.”
Devlin bared his teeth in a hard smile. “Did you send them?”
Jarvis reached for his snuffbox. “Did they say I did? Is that why you’re here?”
“Unfortunately, they neglected to name their employer before they died.”
“In that case I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t drag their corpses here with you.” Once, Devlin had dumped a dead would-be assassin on Jarvis’s drawing room carpet. The bloodstains were still there.
Devlin came to flatten his palms on the top of Jarvis’s desk and leaned into them. “Did you send them?”
Jarvis opened his snuffbox with a flick of one thumbnail. “Why—apart from my natural desire to rid the world of annoyances—do you imagine I sent men to kill you tonight?”
Devlin pushed away and went to stand at the window overlooking the lamplit palace forecourt. “I’m told the comte de Brienne is a double agent. That you discovered he was blackmailing sensitively placed government officials and, rather than eliminate him, you decided to use your inimitable persuasive skills to convince him to funnel tainted information to Paris. Is that true?”
“And if it is?” Jarvis raised a pinch of snuff to one nostril. “Do you intend to inform Paris of this discovery? Because otherwise I fail to conceive why I should be interested in eliminating you.”
Devlin held himself very still. “So it is true? De Brienne is your creature?”
“Of co
urse he is.”
“How much do you know about the unusual nature of his sexual interests?”
Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap. “Frankly? Far more than I’d like.”
“Then perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn there is a very real possibility he was involved in the recent torture and murder of the boy found in Clerkenwell.”
Jarvis slipped the snuffbox back into his pocket. “Oh? And you think this information should alarm me? Because let me hasten to assure you, it does not.”
Something flared in the Viscount’s unpleasant yellow eyes. “It’s possible Benji Thatcher is not the only child de Brienne has killed in this way. The boy’s sister is also missing, and there may have been others.”
Jarvis laced his fingers together and rested his hands on his stomach. “If you’re right—if de Brienne is a killer—then after Napoléon is defeated, you may have him. But not before. I trust I make myself clear?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. The information de Brienne feeds Paris is too valuable for me to allow you to harm him in any way—particularly at this critical moment. As far as I’m concerned, defeating Bonaparte is worth the life of each and every ragged urchin ever to infest the streets of London. Most of them only grow up to hang anyway.” Jarvis reached for his pen again, then paused with the nib suspended above his ink. “If you do anything to interfere with what I have so painstakingly set up—anything—then believe me, I will send men to kill you. And this time, you won’t see them coming.”
“You’d best hope I don’t,” said the Viscount.
For one lethal moment, the two men stared at each other.
Then Devlin turned on his heel and left.
Chapter 31
“So who of the many people you have angered over the past three days would want to kill you?”
Hero asked the question as Sebastian leaned back in his tub, the steam from the hot water rising around him. He swiped a hand across his dripping face and looked over to where she stood with her hands cupping her elbows to hold her arms close to her chest. Both the flippancy of the words and the tone were belied by the tension of her posture.