by C. S. Harris
“Because of your friendship with his wife, you mean?”
Firth looked suddenly, unexpectedly young and vulnerable. “I don’t know if I’d call us friends, exactly.”
“Oh? What word would you prefer? ‘Acquaintances’?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know,” said Sebastian. “Trying to hide whatever is between you and my niece.”
Firth stiffened in a way that reminded Sebastian that while the man might be young, he had the kind of courage and fortitude necessary to travel alone for three years through war-torn Europe and the wilds of the Middle East. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you know,” said Sebastian, and walked back toward his curricle.
* * *
Half an hour later, word came from Sir Henry Lovejoy that Ashworth’s valet had been found. Dead.
Chapter 12
The naked body of Edward Digby lay sprawled against the soot-stained wall of a rubbish-strewn alley not far from Ashworth’s Curzon Street house. He was turned almost onto his left side, face out, his arms flung up over his head, eyes wide and staring. In life he’d been a plump little man with thinning dark hair, a simpering, superior manner, and fastidious ways. It occurred to Sebastian, looking at him, that the valet would be mortified if he could see himself now, lying amidst mushy cabbage leaves and reeking puddles of urine, the pasty white flesh of his body smeared with the alley’s muck. Something—probably either a foraging pig or rats—had been nibbling at the man’s feet. But except for a faint trickle of dried blood beside his mouth, there was no hint as to how he’d died.
“Who found him?” asked Sebastian, hunkering down beside the dead man.
Sir Henry Lovejoy stood near a pile of broken crates, his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, his shoulders hunched against the cold, damp wind that was kicking up. “A baker’s boy who ducked into the alley to relieve himself.”
Sebastian touched the valet’s hand. He was utterly cold, and when Sebastian carefully moved the dead man’s arm back and forth, he found the stiffness of rigor mortis nearly gone. A faint greenish hue was even beginning to creep into the dead man’s face and neck.
“Gibson will know better than I,” said Sebastian, “but it looks to me as if Digby might have been killed the same night as Ashworth.”
“Telling, I suspect,” said Lovejoy. “Although I’m not sure what it tells us.”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “Have you had a look at his back yet?”
“Not yet.” Lovejoy nodded to one of his constables, who stepped forward to roll the dead man onto his stomach.
Digby landed facedown in the muck with a soft plop, his right arm flinging out in a way that for one horrible instant came close to imitating life.
“Ooff,” said the constable, his breath leaving his lungs in a rush as he leapt aside. The dead man’s back was ripped and crusted with dried blood.
Lovejoy stepped forward, peering over the rims of his spectacles. “So he’s been stabbed. Not with the same violence as Ashworth, but a fair number of times.”
Sebastian cast a thoughtful glance around the narrow alley with its piles of stinking rubbish. “I wonder what the hell he’s doing here, a couple of blocks from Ashworth’s house?”
“It’s hard to believe he could lie here for a day and two nights without someone seeing him,” said Lovejoy. “Except why would anyone kill him, keep his body someplace else for thirty-six hours, and then dump him here?”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the once prim and proper man now lying naked at their feet. “And where the hell are his clothes?”
* * *
Lord Ashworth’s aged butler, Fullerton, had a cold. His nose was red and running, his eyes more watery than ever. He sat in a chair before the fire in the servants’ hall, a shawl wrapped around his shoulders and a cup of hot tea cradled in both hands.
“My lord!” he exclaimed when Sebastian was shown into the basement by a flustered footman. “What was Alan thinking, bringing you down to the servants’ hall like this? Let me just—”
“No, please, don’t get up,” said Sebastian as the old man struggled to heave himself out of the chair. “The footman told me you weren’t well, which is why I had him bring me here. I have some questions I need to ask you about Lord Ashworth’s valet.”
Fullerton settled back in his chair. “Edward Digby?”
“That’s right.”
The old butler sniffed. “Heard he’s been found dead in an alley up the street.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“From the kitchen maid, Nell. She had it from the baker’s boy.”
“Ah.” Sebastian settled into a nearby chair. “I’d like to know more about Digby. You said he was originally from Kent?”
“Aye. Still has family there, I’m told—although he didn’t have much contact with them that I could tell.”
“He’s been with the Viscount five or six years?”
“Five. I gave it some thought and realized it was only five. A little less, actually.”
“Do you know who he was with before he came to his lordship?”
Fullerton frowned. “I did know. Let me think on it. It might come. I seem to recall the fellow died.”
“Five years is a long time. He and Ashworth got on well?”
“Well enough,” said the old family retainer, more guarded now that the conversation was circling back to Ashworth.
“What manner of man was he?”
“Digby?” Fullerton drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose. His movements were slow and deliberate, as if he were using the time to choose his words. “Can’t say I knew him well. Kept pretty much to himself, he did. Bit uppity, you see.”
“Yet over the course of five years, a butler with your experience in dealing with servants must have formed a measure of the man.”
“True, true.” Fullerton sat up a bit straighter. “Very careful of his dignity, was Digby. Considered himself above the touch of everyone else in the hall, he did—and he wasn’t the least hesitant to show it either. Always let everyone know he was in the master’s confidence in ways the rest of us weren’t. Lorded it over the others, he did, casting hints about how he knew things no one else did.”
“What sort of things?”
Fullerton looked away, his watery eyes blinking rapidly. “His lordship’s appetites were . . . Let’s say they were prodigious and unusual.”
“His sexual appetites, you mean?”
“All his appetites. Believed in living life to the fullest, did his lordship.”
“Did Digby form a friendship with anyone in the household?”
“Digby? Hardly. Like I said, weren’t any of us up to snuff, as far as he was concerned. Added to which, of course, nobody liked him.”
“Because he was proud and disdainful?”
Fullerton threw a quick look around as if to make certain they were alone in the hall. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Wasn’t just that. He was a sly, sneaky thing. You never knew what he was up to, that one.”
“Oh? Do you think he was the sort someone might have bribed?”
Fullerton gave a snort. “If somone’d offered him enough money? Of course.”
Sebastian studied the butler’s aged, wrinkled face and sunken eyes. “I’m told the front door was found unbarred the morning after Ashworth was killed.”
Fullerton nodded and settled more comfortably in his chair again. “That’s what Jenny said.”
“Jenny is one of the housemaids?”
“Mmm. Jenny Crutcher. Said she found the bar down and a bloody handprint on the door’s inside panel. Time was, I always locked up at night myself. But Digby’s been doing it more and more for the past few years. And he always handled it on t
hose occasions when his lordship was entertaining a female guest.”
“So Digby would put the bar in place after he’d escorted his lordship’s lady friend from the house?”
The butler nodded.
“What sort of females did his lordship ‘entertain’?”
Fullerton wiped his nose again. “I was never privy to his lordship’s confidences in that regard,” he said with great dignity. “But . . .”
“But?”
“Digby did like to talk, you see. To hear him tell it, his lordship’s tastes varied at a whim, from ladies of quality to bits of muslin or whatever pretty young shopkeeper’s assistant might catch his eye and take his fancy.”
“Did Digby say anything about the woman Ashworth planned to entertain the night of his death?”
The butler sneezed hard and blew his nose. “I don’t recall it, no, my lord.”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “I think I’d like to have a word with the housemaid you say found the door unbarred yesterday morning. Jenny, wasn’t it?”
Fullerton nodded. “Jenny Crutcher. But I’m sorry, my lord; she’s not here anymore.”
Sebastian knew a quiet bubble of concern. “Are you saying she’s missing too?”
“No, my lord; she quit.”
“Quit? When?”
“Yesterday evening, my lord. Packed her things and left, she did, without even waiting for the wages that were owed her.”
“She’s the one I heard screaming hysterically yesterday?”
“No, my lord; that was Alice. She’s always been more than a tad harebrained, has Alice. Jenny’s nothing like that.”
“Do you know where I might find Jenny?”
Fullerton scratched his cheek with the nail of one middle finger. “Can’t say’s I do, my lord. But I can ask the staff if you’d like. One of them might know.”
“Yes, please do.”
* * *
Sebastian was descending the front steps of Ashworth’s town house when an elegant carriage drawn by four highbred bays and with a familiar crest on the door drew up before him with a rattle of chains and a clatter of hooves. The near window was let down with a bang.
“Fortuitous,” said the King’s powerful cousin Charles, Lord Jarvis. “Climb in. I wish to speak with you.”
Sebastian looked up to meet his father-in-law’s hard gray eyes as a liveried footman hurried to open the door and let down the steps. “Why?”
“Do you seriously expect me to shout what I have to say in the street for all to hear?”
The relationship between Sebastian and Hero’s father had always been strained, but never as much as it was now, thanks to the events of the previous September. Sebastian was tempted to tell him to go to hell. Instead, he said, “Wait while I tell my tiger to follow us.”
Sebastian turned to have a word with Tom, then came back to leap up into the carriage. The footman was still closing the door when Jarvis said, “What the devil were you doing talking to Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg?”
Sebastian studied his father-in-law’s full, still-handsome face, the arrogant aquiline nose and sensitive lips that were so disconcertingly similar to Hero’s. “I presume you’ve heard Ashworth is dead?”
“Of course I’ve heard,” snapped Jarvis. “What has that to do with the Grand Duchess?”
“Nothing that I know of. But there’s a Princess Ivanna Gagarin in the court of the Tsar’s decidedly colorful sister. I’m told she arrived in London some weeks ago to prepare for Her Imperial Highness’s visit.”
“She did, yes.”
“How much do you know about her?”
“She’s the widow of Prince Mikhail Gagarin, who fell at the Battle of Borodino. The Gagarins were once the sovereign rulers of Starodub and are still highly influential in Russia. I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that she had something to do with the death of your niece’s unpleasant husband?”
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, given that she is said to share at least some of Ashworth’s more unusual sexual interests.”
Jarvis withdrew a pearl-studded gold snuffbox from one pocket. “Something I trust you intend to keep to yourself—for your niece’s sake if nothing else.”
Because you care so much about Stephanie, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “If your dear cousin were still alive, we could add him to our list of suspects. Fortunately, he’s not.”
Eyes narrowing, the older man flipped open his snuffbox, lifted a pinch to his nostrils, and sniffed. His movements were slow and unruffled. But Sebastian knew his father-in-law well; knew by the tightening of his lips that Sebastian had touched a nerve.
“I won’t have you causing an international incident by involving the Tsar’s sister in some tawdry murder.” Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap. “Leave the Grand Duchess and her delegation alone.”
Sebastian signaled the coach driver to pull up. “I’ll keep your concerns in mind,” he told his father-in-law. Then he pushed open the door and hopped down, ignoring the footman who was rushing to let down the steps.
“I mean it,” said Jarvis, leaning forward.
Sebastian turned to look back at him. “I’ve no doubt that you do.”
Chapter 13
They called them “bone pickers,” “rag gatherers,” “rag-and-bone men,” or sometimes simply “street finders.” A thousand-strong army of grimy men and women, they fanned out across London every day from sunup to sundown, carrying tattered bags bulging with their finds and sticks with spikes or hooks they used to turn over heaps of refuse in their search for the rags and bones that formed the bulk of their trade.
“It’s a good enough livin’,” said Bill Mullet, the rag-and-bone man who’d agreed to talk to Hero for a shilling. “Good as most, I reckon.”
Because of the damp, cold wind, they stood in the protective lee of the high brick walls of a sprawling brewhouse that fronted the Thames not far from St. John’s Churchyard. Hero’s coach and two footmen waited beside them, for this was a gloomy section of the City of Westminster, crowded with almshouses, bridewells, charity schools, woodmongers, and wharfs. And yet just a short walk up Millbank Street and Abingdon lay Old Palace Yard and the Houses of Parliament.
“I don’t ever see children doing this,” said Hero, her notebook braced against her ribs as she scribbled notes.
“That’s ’cause they really can’t, m’lady,” said Bill Mullet. He was a sandy-haired, lean man somewhere in his forties or fifties, with bloodshot eyes, unshaven cheeks, and an unhealthy yellowish cast to his skin. His ragged coat and breeches were greasy from the bones that formed the bulk of his stock-in-trade, and his shoes were so broken down that Hero noticed he limped when he walked. “Bag’s too heavy.”
“How heavy does it get?”
He kicked the bulging sack he’d set down for their interview. “Can weigh as much as forty pounds by the end of the day, I reckon. You see some women doin’ it if they’re strong. But it ain’t easy, walkin’ twenty t’ thirty miles a day, haulin’ a load like this.”
“How many hours a day do you work?”
“Get up before dawn, I do, and keep at it as long as there’s light. Then I go home and sort what I got in me bag.”
“Sort it?”
“Aye. Got t’ sort the rags,” he said in a tone that suggested he thought her a bit slow, not to know something so obvious. “The rag shops and marine-store dealers, they’ll give ye two t’ three pence a pound fer white rags. But if they’re colored, or even if they’re white but dirty, ye’ll only get tuppence fer five pounds of ’em.”
“So how much do you earn in a day?”
“On a good day, I can get as much as twelve, maybe fourteen pence—as long as it don’t rain. Ye can’t sell wet rags.” He squinted up at the ominously gray sky and shook his head.
“That must make things di
fficult in winter,” said Hero.
“Oh, aye. That it does, m’lady. But folks eat more meat in winter, so I tend t’ find more bones then.” He gave a sudden grin, displaying a mouth containing swollen gums and no more than half a dozen teeth. “Once I found a handkerchief with two shillings tied up in the corner. That was the best day I ever had.”
Hero felt a painful ache swell in her chest. “What sort of diet do you typically consume?”
He looked confused. “Diet?”
“What do you usually eat?”
“Oh. Well, I have me bread about midday. Then I’ll have a bit more bread fer me supper.”
“Just bread?”
“Sometimes a householder’ll give me a bone with some meat on it, so I’ll save that and have it with me supper.”
Good Lord, thought Hero. Aloud, she said, “How long have you been a rag-and-bone man?”
“Oh, long time. Me da used t’ work on the docks, only he died when I was a wee lad. At first, I couldn’t do much more’n run errands, but then I got big enough to do this. Course, I couldn’t carry much in them days, so I was only making four or five pence a day.” A cloud of apprehension shadowed his features. “It’s the same way when ye get old. Ye cain’t walk as far nor carry as much.”
“Do you pick up anything else besides rags and bones?”
He gave another grin. “If’n I find somethin’ I can sell, t’ be sure. I see cigar ends, I always pick ’em up and put ’em in me pocket till I get enough t’ sell. I’ll pick up anything if I can sell it.”
“Have you ever been married?”
A faraway look of sadness crept into his eyes. “Once, long ago. Her name was Marie, and she was the prettiest little thing you ever did see. But—” His voice caught, and he had to swallow before he could continue. “She died one winter, and that was that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hero, her own throat tight.