by C. S. Harris
Chapter 47
Half an hour later, Sebastian was in Drury Lane’s darkened pit, one shoulder propped against the nearest column, his arms crossed at his chest as he watched Hector Kneebone. The actor had stripped down to his shirtsleeves and was helping a carpenter make last-minute alterations to the stage. The season had been under way nearly a week now, but the theater was not yet open every night and they were still working the kinks out of their productions. The actor cast him three or four long, frowning looks. Then Kneebone threw down his hammer and hopped off the stage.
He came to stand in front of Sebastian, legs splayed wide, hands dangling at his sides. “You’re doing this to rattle me, aren’t you?”
“Is it working? Are you rattled?”
“What do you think? I have someone trying to pin a murder on me. Who wouldn’t be rattled?”
“Actually, at this point we’re talking about ‘murders,’ plural.”
Kneebone shook his head in a credible display of confusion. “Who else is dead?”
Rather than answer him, Sebastian said, “How familiar are you with the hills above Pentonville?”
“What?”
“Pentonville. It’s a village to the west of Islington.”
“I barely know where Islington is.”
“There’s an ancient, half-timbered farmstead there called Morton House, on Penniwinch Lane. Are you familiar with it?”
“No.”
“Ever spend much time in Bethnal Green?”
Kneebone shook his head again, a shock of nearly black hair falling forward to gleam in the theater’s dim interior. “Bethnal Green? What are you talking about?” His face remained utterly blank except for a faint display of puzzlement. But then, he was an actor; he made his living counterfeiting reactions and emotions.
“I’m talking about a mysterious man named Richard Herbert whom no one seems to have ever met. A brick cottage with some ugly secrets buried in its back garden. A trail of murdered children that stretches back seven years—if not longer. Any of this sound familiar?”
Kneebone’s shirtfront rose and fell with the agitation of his breathing. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“Where were you Saturday night?”
“Where do you think? We had a performance. I was here until at least one. And then I went home. Ask anyone; they’ll tell you.”
Sebastian studied the actor’s handsome, carefully controlled features. All theaters were required to drop their curtains by midnight on orders from the Bishop of London. Even if he’d somehow managed to leave almost immediately, it would have been nearly impossible for Kneebone to make it out to Penniwinch Lane in time to kill Les Jenkins and thoroughly remove anything that might identify him. And Kneebone could never have escaped right after the performance—not this early in the season, when he would be mobbed with well-wishers and admirers.
The inescapable fact was that of the men Sebastian had originally suspected, Hector Kneebone, Sir Francis Rowe, and Viscount Ashworth all possessed solid alibis for at least one of the nights in question, while Icarus Cantrell had been exonerated by the only boy known to have escaped the killer. Which meant that, except for the recent addition of Reverend Filby, Sebastian’s list of suspects now had only one plausible name left on it: Amadeus Colbert, the comte de Brienne.
• • •
De Brienne was inspecting samples of wool cloth with his Bond Street tailor when Sebastian finally tracked him down.
“Walk up the street with me for a moment if you would, monsieur?” said Sebastian, pausing beside the French nobleman.
The comte glanced up, then deliberately returned his attention to the samples spread out on the table before him. “I fail to see why I should,” he said, then addressed the silent tailor at his side. “What is your opinion of this blue Bath?”
“We could of course switch to French,” Sebastian continued in an amicable tone. “Except that Monsieur Bondurant here was born and raised in Calais. And I really don’t think you want what I’m about to say getting out.”
De Brienne seemed to consider this, one cheek poking out as he explored the inside of it with his tongue. Then he said to the tailor, “I shan’t be but a moment.”
“I thought I’d answered all your questions before,” said the comte to Sebastian as they turned to walk down Bond Street.
“Hardly. I asked where you were at certain critical times, and you told me you were playing games. Only you refused to say where or with whom.”
“And you find that surprising?”
“As it happens, the killer has struck again.”
“When?”
“Saturday night. So where were you? Playing games again?”
De Brienne drew up. “This is preposterous. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time for a dozen or more dead children and three dead men?”
“You think I should be interested, do you? In the past twenty years, millions of men have left their bones strewn across the battlefields of Europe, while untold hundreds of thousands of women and children have also died. And you expect me to care about a paltry few dead London pickpockets? Seriously?”
Sebastian studied the Frenchman’s thin, aristocratic face. “I didn’t realize caring is a finite commodity. That deploring the death toll of the war across the Channel means I must remain unmoved by the suffering of street children here in London.”
“Oh, please,” sneered the comte and started to turn away.
Sebastian put out a hand, stopping him. “Let me explain something to you. I’m looking for a monster who tortures and kills poor children for pleasure. Do you understand what I’m saying? Children. I’m going to find out who he is and stop him, even if that means destroying you in the process. So I’ll ask you one last time: Where were you Saturday night?”
The Frenchman’s dark eyes narrowed, his bony face hardening into angry, arrogant lines. “I don’t need to answer that question.”
“I really think you do.”
“Or you’ll—what? Have me hauled before the magistrates down on Bow Street? That will never happen and you know it.”
“It wasn’t Bow Street I had in mind.”
He said it quietly. But his meaning was not lost on de Brienne, who went utterly still. “You can’t be serious. You’re an Englishman; you even fought Napoléon yourself for six years. If you expose me to Paris now, who knows how many of your compatriots will die unnecessarily as a result? You wouldn’t do that.”
“So certain?”
De Brienne poked his tongue into his cheek again and looked away, as if carefully considering his options. Then he said, “You did see the news in this morning’s papers?”
It had been days since Sebastian had done more than glance at a newspaper. “What news?”
“A boatman found the Honorable Sinclair Pugh floating off the Westminster Steps at dawn this morning. The official story is that he must have slipped on the wet steps in last night’s rain and fallen into the river. But you and I both know how improbable that is.”
Sebastian had a vision of the stout Member of Parliament for Gough standing in the opulent front room of Number Three, his full face flushed with anticipation as he viewed the two young girls being offered for his selection. “What are you suggesting? That he was murdered?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But I think it far more likely that he simply killed himself.”
“Why would Pugh commit suicide?”
“Because he’s been quite vocally insistent on the folly of restoring the Bourbons to the throne of France after the eventual defeat of Napoléon. And then he was too stupid to keep from stumbling into the nasty little snare that Jarvis inevitably set for him at a certain nefarious establishment.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I know Pugh was a patron of Number Three, Pickering Place. But I can’t
believe the threat of that getting out would be enough to drive him to kill himself.” Very young girls prostituted themselves on the streets of London all the time and no one seemed to give it a second thought, while as for the Bligh sisters’ other specialty . . . Such activities might bring embarrassment were they to become known. But would that be enough to drive a man to suicide?
Sebastian doubted it.
De Brienne said, “I don’t think you know everything that goes on at Number Three. But Jarvis does; in fact, he orchestrates some of it. If you want to know who’s killing London’s street children, ask your wife’s father.”
Chapter 48
Sebastian went first to the house in Berkeley Square.
Jarvis was not there. But Lady Jarvis heard Sebastian’s voice and sent down a servant to ask him to step up to the drawing room and see her.
He found her seated on a sofa beside the fire, a rug spread across her lap. The change in her appearance was startling, her complexion an unhealthy gray, her eyes sunken and bruised looking. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand up,” she said with a smile, holding out one trembling hand. “Hero has walked down to the apothecary’s with Cousin Victoria to pick up some vile potion the physicians have prescribed me, so I thought I’d seize the opportunity to tell you something I’ve long wanted to say to you.”
“This sounds ominous,” he said with a smile as he took both her hands in his and settled beside her.
He saw a faint, answering gleam of amusement in her cloudy blue eyes. “Not so ominous. I simply want to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“For the joy you have brought my daughter. She never intended to marry, you see.”
“I know.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Yes, I suppose you do. I used to worry about her a great deal. I never thought she’d find someone who could change her mind. I’m glad I was wrong.”
Sebastian smiled. “So am I.”
Lady Jarvis squeezed his hands. “Marriage can be a living purgatory. But it can also be something wondrous and deeply enriching. I can’t tell you what it means to me, knowing that my daughter has found the latter and not the former.” Her head turned as the sound of women’s voices drifted up from the entry hall below. “Ah; there they are. Don’t give me away to Hero, will you? I’ve no doubt she’d ring a peal over me if she knew. And now you must stay and meet my delightful young cousin.”
Sebastian rose to his feet as Hero entered the room with her typical long-legged stride. “Devlin,” she said, her eyebrows rising in puzzlement as her gaze shifted between Sebastian and her mother. “What have you two been plotting?”
“What a thing to say!” exclaimed her mother with a betraying laugh.
Hero bent to kiss her mother’s cheek. “I don’t hear you denying it.”
“I wanted Cousin Victoria to meet Devlin,” said Lady Jarvis. “Where is she?”
“Ignobly bringing up the rear, I fear,” said Victoria Hart-Davis, her cheeks flushed with a combination of cold and exercise and her eyes a bright, sparkling blue. “You must forgive me, my lord,” she said as Lady Jarvis performed the necessary introductions. “But you find me shamefully winded. Cousin Hero sets a shocking pace.”
“She always has,” said Lady Jarvis, smiling fondly. “She was leaving me in the dust by the time she was ten.”
“She’s been known to leave me in the dust,” said Sebastian, bowing over Cousin Victoria’s hand.
“Well, really,” said Hero. “The three of you make me sound shockingly rude.”
“No,” said Sebastian, smiling at her over her diminutive cousin’s head. “Just resolute.”
“Resolute?”
“Resolute.”
• • •
“Your cousin is extraordinarily lovely,” Sebastian said to Hero a few minutes later when she drew him away to the morning room.
“She is, yes. And I must admit, she has been a ministering angel since Mother’s been ill.”
“How is Lady Jarvis?”
“Slightly better, I think. We’ve had half a dozen Harley Street physicians here. They’ve diagnosed everything from consumption to influenza and hopelessly contradicted each other’s prescriptions and treatments. But she is stronger today. “
“Thank God for that.” He searched her face. “Shall I stay a while? I can, you know.”
“What would be the point?”
“To be here for you.”
“I have Cousin Victoria.”
“But you don’t like her.”
Hero gave a soft laugh and pressed her fingers to his lips. “Hush. I’ll be fine. Truly. Now, tell me what you’ve discovered.”
He told her the grisly results of the excavations at Bethnal Green, and their puzzling failure to find anything more at the Penniwinch Lane farmstead. But he left it at that.
In the end she said, “Grisham says you originally came to see Father. Why?”
“He has some information I need.”
Normally she wouldn’t have been content to leave it at that. But she was too distracted by her mother’s worrisome health to question him further, and he saw no reason to burden her with his suspicions.
• • •
Jarvis was crossing the forecourt of Carlton House when Sebastian fell into step beside him and said, “You didn’t tell me of your association with Number Three, Pickering Place.”
Jarvis kept walking. “Why should I have?”
“It seems every time I turn over a rock to expose more of the ugliness that lurks beneath the surface of this city, I find your tentacles there too—first entwined with the comte de Brienne and now with Number Three.”
Jarvis drew up and swung to face him. “I warned you to leave de Brienne alone.”
“So you did.” Sebastian glanced toward the tall, former hussar officer who stood waiting beside one of the arches separating the palace forecourt from Pall Mall. “And you use Number Three for—what? Blackmailing your enemies? Driving them to suicide?”
“If you’re referring to Sinclair Pugh, the man is responsible for his own death. He should have known better than to meddle where he didn’t belong.”
“You mean, in the future of Europe? You don’t think that should concern him?”
“Only a fool tries to turn the tide of history.”
“Are you so certain you know history’s direction? What if you’re wrong? What if the future belongs to republics and democracies?”
Jarvis snorted. “Don’t be preposterous.” He started walking again.
Sebastian walked with him. “I find it difficult to believe that the public exposure of a taste for very young whores or even le vice anglais would be considered shameful enough to drive a man such as Pugh to suicide. So why was he found floating off the Westminster Steps?”
Jarvis’s eyes creased with amusement. “Really, Devlin; use your imagination.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Your capacity for nasty machinations is beyond me.”
“You yourself suspected at one time that the Bligh sisters were working for Paris.”
“So you—what? Tricked Pugh into thinking he’d been compromised at Number Three by French spies?”
“It wasn’t particularly difficult. The man wasn’t nearly as intelligent as he liked to believe.”
“In other words, Pugh committed suicide over a lie.”
“I did say he was a fool. My intent was merely to pressure him to shut up. But this outcome works just as well.”
Sebastian knew a sudden, wild urge to plant his father-in-law a facer. He took a deep breath and forced the impulse down. “You seem to make it your business to know the dirty secrets of everyone who is anyone. So who do you think is torturing and killing London’s street children?”
“Do you seriously believe I’ve given extensive thought to the matter
? The deaths of this city’s gutter spawn are of no interest to me.”
Sebastian studied the big man’s familiar features, the aquiline nose and fierce gray eyes that were so much like Hero’s. And it came to Sebastian that the longer he knew Hero, the better he was learning to read her Machiavellian father. “I don’t believe you. You know who’s doing this. You know, but you’re protecting him for some reason. Why?”
Jarvis’s chin lifted. “I will admit to certain suspicions. But do I know for certain? No. I’ve far more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.”
“So whom do you suspect?”
“If I am correct and he threatens to become an embarrassment, then he will be eliminated. You need have no fear of that.”
Sebastian felt another rush of such pure rage that he was practically shaking with it. “I will find out who’s doing this,” he said, keeping his voice low with difficulty. “And if it’s someone you’ve been protecting, the blood of each and every one of his victims will be on your hands.”
“Oh, please,” said Jarvis with an arrogant sneer.
Sebastian reached out to clench his fist on the neatly tailored lapel of Jarvis’s coat and jerk him around. “You bloody—”
“Is there a problem, my lord?” said Major Edward Burnside, stepping forward.
Sebastian’s gaze shifted from his father-in-law to the former hussar major and back again. He opened his hand, his lips twisting into a smile as he patted Jarvis’s crumpled coat and took a step back. “Each and every death,” he said.
And then he turned and left, before the urge to punch Hero’s father became overwhelming.
Chapter 49
Whom would Jarvis protect?
Sebastian asked himself this question over and over as he sent Giles home with the curricle and turned to walk up the Strand toward Bow Street.