by C. S. Harris
“Trying. You’d be amazed at the number of people who wanted to murder him—and for very good reasons.”
She glanced over at him. “Frankly, I’m glad he’s dead.”
“That seems to be a common sentiment shared by almost everyone I’ve spoken to so far, with the notable exception of his father and best friend.”
“The father, I can understand. But what kind of man has a monster like Ashworth as a friend?”
“Someone who’s a bit of a monster himself, I suspect. Although Sir Felix hides it better than most.”
“Hendon is afraid people will start to suspect Stephanie.”
“So am I.”
They walked on in silence for a time. The shadows were beginning to deepen with the approach of evening, and he could smell the briny tang of the sea on the incoming tide as they drew closer to the river. He said, “Are you familiar with a tarot card reader named Marie-Claire Blanchette?”
“Yes, of course; she’s quite well-known. Why?”
“Ashworth raped her daughter. When the girl discovered she was with child by him, she killed herself.”
“Dear God. Surely you aren’t suggesting Madame Blanchette might have murdered him in revenge?”
“I think it’s certainly possible.”
“I’d have expected such a woman to find a more creative way to make him suffer.”
“You know her?”
“Not well. But I have met her.”
“Is there any truth to the rumor that she passes information to Paris?” The question was not as odd as it might have seemed to someone who didn’t know Kat, for there’d been a time when she herself had spied for the French. She was no longer active, but he knew she kept in contact with some who were. Her allegiance was not to France but to Ireland, the conquered land of her mother’s people, and he’d never been able to hold it against her. How could he, when he knew what England had done to Ireland?
What they’d done to Kat’s mother.
“I don’t believe so, no,” she said.
“But you don’t know for certain?”
Kat was silent for a moment. They had reached the Strand now, and the breeze was stronger here. She put up a hand, holding her hair back from her face. “How much have you heard about her background?”
“Virtually nothing. Why?”
“I don’t know anything about her early life. But at some point during the Directory, she read Josephine Beauharnais’s cards and predicted she would marry a handsome young officer who would someday become emperor.”
“Surely the tale is apocryphal?”
“Perhaps. But there is no doubt that Josephine set great store by her predictions. As a result of her patronage, Madame Blanchette became enormously popular. And then, shortly after Napoléon crowned himself emperor, Josephine badgered Madame Blanchette into reading his cards. She didn’t want to, but how could she refuse?”
“So what did she tell him?”
“She told him he had the capacity to achieve greatness, to bring freedom and peace to all of Europe. But she also warned him against trying to exceed the fame and conquests of Alexander the Great, saying he would ultimately fail and die in disgrace.”
“That can’t have been popular.”
“It wasn’t. Napoléon was so enraged that she had to flee France.”
Sebastian watched a boy dart past, shouting something he didn’t quite catch. “It does seem unlikely that she would now be spying for him—unless of course he’s forcing her to cooperate by threatening family members still in France.”
“It’s possible. But I suspect the rumors are simply malicious, begun by someone who wanted to discredit her—someone she angered or frightened. She often knows things about people that they think they’ve managed to keep hidden. Whether she ‘sees’ the information with the help of her cards or acquires it from talkative servants, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”
She turned her head as a shout went up farther down the Strand, a huzzah that rippled through the crowd around them.
“What the devil?” said Sebastian.
And then they saw her: Grand Duchess Catherine, waving to the people from her open-topped barouche, her smile wide, her luxuriously dark curls fluttering beneath the poke-fronted bonnet that people were beginning to call “the Oldenburg” in her honor. Beside her, Princess Ivanna Gagarin looked both smaller and more subdued, and yet still managed to be a forceful presence. The mustachioed Colonel Demidov sat on the bench facing them, his arms crossed at his chest, his expression alert as the Grand Duchess played to the crowd, turning to acknowledge first one side of the street, then the other. Watching her, Sebastian found himself wondering if someone had told the Tsar’s sister how much the crowds’ cheering of her infuriated the Regent, so that she now encouraged it simply to annoy him.
Kat remained silent as the Russian women rolled past. Then she said, “I hear she arrived in London early as part of a scheme to catch herself a new husband.”
Sebastian looked over at her. “Not one of Prinny’s fat old brothers, surely?”
“Hardly. I believe her intended target was the Regent himself.”
“But Prinny already has a wife—however much he might despise her.”
Kat raised her eyebrows. “Inconvenient wives are easily eliminated if one is ruthless enough. And the Grand Duchess is reputed to be quite ruthless. Her lady-in-waiting, Princess Ivanna, is said to possess a special talent for poisons.”
“She does?”
“Mmm.” Kat was still staring after the Tsar’s sister. “I wonder if the Princess of Wales realizes how lucky she is that Her Imperial Highness has taken such an instant, intense dislike to the Regent.”
Sebastian studied her faintly smiling profile. “I won’t ask how you know all this.”
She gave a soft laugh and turned their steps back toward the theater. “No, don’t.”
* * *
Paul Gibson was in his surgery tending a boy’s broken arm when Sebastian arrived at Tower Hill.
“Ah,” said the Irishman, glancing over at him. “I was hoping you’d stop by. Give me a moment to finish up here; I want to show you something.”
The boy’s name was Alan, and he looked to be about fourteen. A butcher’s apprentice, he was big and strong and grim faced as Gibson set the arm and wrapped it up. “Be smart and don’t try to use that arm for six weeks,” Gibson told the lad. “If you listen to me, you shouldn’t lose it.”
“Ole Grimes won’t like it.”
“Tell Ned Grimes he’ll have to answer to me if he gives you any trouble.”
“And what will you do to ‘Ole Grimes’ if he ignores your warning?” asked Sebastian after the boy had taken himself off.
“Refuse to treat his gout,” said Gibson with a smile. He picked up the flickering oil lamp that rested on a nearby table, for darkness was beginning to fall. “I finished your dead valet right before the lad, Alan, showed up.”
“And?” said Sebastian as Gibson’s lantern cast wobbly patterns of light and shadow across the yard.
Gibson unlocked the outbuilding’s door and pushed it open. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”
Edward Digby lay facedown on the stone table in the center of the room. Gibson hung the lantern from the chain suspended over the slab, and for a moment it swung back and forth, the golden light playing over the dead man’s back. The gaping knife wounds and startling purple-and-white patterns of lividity—caused by the way his blood had settled—were rendered hideous by the shifting shadows.
Gibson put up a hand to still the lantern. “From the looks of things, I’d say it’s more than likely he was killed the same night as Ashworth—maybe even by the same knife.”
“Huh,” said Sebastian, walking around the body.
“He wasn’t attacked with quite
the same fury as Ashworth, but whoever did it wasn’t very neat or experienced.”
“You think the killer kept stabbing to make certain he was dead?”
“It’s definitely a possibility.” Gibson pointed to the purple-red and white splotches discoloring the dead man’s back. “What I wanted to show you was this. See the evenness of the pattern? It suggests he was lying flat on his back for quite some time after he was killed.”
“But he wasn’t found on his back. He was on his side, propped against the alley wall.”
Gibson nodded. “That’s what the fellows who brought him here told me.”
Sebastian looked up. “Bloody hell. Why move the man’s body hours after he was killed?”
“That I can’t tell you. But I can tell you this: He wasn’t naked when he was killed. There were threads in his wounds.”
“So he was killed and then stripped and moved? That’s even more bizarre.”
“I’d say so, yes. Given that he was left not far from Ashworth’s house, it isn’t as if the killer could have been hoping the body might not be identified.”
Sebastian went to stand in the doorway, his gaze on the dark, deceptively peaceful garden beyond. If he were the type to leap to conclusions, he’d probably assume that the valet’s death—and the bizarre circumstances surrounding it—meant that this murderer couldn’t possibly be a woman. But Sebastian had learned long ago the danger of hasty deductions, particularly when his thinking was clouded as it was now by his own emotional involvement.
When he was desperate to find something—anything—that could point the finger of suspicion away from the niece he loved.
He swung around abruptly to stare at the shrouded form lying on one of the wide shelves that ran across the old building’s rear wall. “That’s Ashworth?”
“Yes.”
He went to draw back the sheet, exposing the dead nobleman’s waxen face. “You said there’s no way to tell if he was poisoned?”
“Depends on the poison. The effects of some are so violent, it’s hard to miss. And sometimes with cyanide, you get a faint, almond-like smell, although not always. The fact is, the world is full of poisons, and we’ve no reliable way to detect any of them.”
“What about a drug that would leave a man alive but unable to move or fight back?”
“A large enough dose of laudanum would do that. Was he an opium eater?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me, though.”
“You’re back to thinking Ashworth might have been drugged rather than simply passed out?” Gibson looked thoughtful. “There are other substances that would have an effect similar to laudanum, but in a small enough dose that it might conceivably have been slipped to him. A purer tincture of opium, perhaps. There are others, but I don’t know that much about them.”
“Know anyone who does?”
“Alexi, actually. She’s off delivering a babe at the moment, but I can ask her about it.”
Sebastian drew the sheet back over Ashworth’s face, conscious of a rising tide of anger and frustration thrumming through him. “The bastard caused such untold pain and suffering in life. Now he’s dead, and he’s still causing it.”
“At least he’s dead,” said Gibson.
“Yes. And yet the killing goes on.”
Chapter 19
Hendon was looking over The Quarterly Review in the reading room of White’s, a glass of brandy on the table at his elbow, when Sebastian came upon him.
“Take a walk with me?” he asked.
The Earl looked up, his eyes narrowing. “What happened to your chin?”
“It ran into a fist.”
Hendon set aside his paper with a noncommittal grunt and rose to his feet.
Outside, a wind was kicking up, the air growing colder, the night alive with voices and laughter and snatches of music. This part of London was considered the gentlemen’s pleasure haunt, a land of exclusive men’s clubs, ruinous gaming hells, fashionable supper rooms, and the kind of women a man of birth and breeding was not supposed to take to wife.
“I hear Ashworth’s missing valet was found dead this morning,” said Hendon as they pushed their way through the well-dressed crowds thronging St. James’s Street.
“Gibson thinks he was killed the same night as Ashworth. Perhaps even by the same knife.”
“Pity. I was hoping he’d be found to be the killer and put an end to this nightmare.” Hendon brought up a splayed hand to rub his eyes. “Why kill the valet? It makes no sense.”
“It does if Digby—that’s the valet—could have identified the murderer.”
“Yes, I suppose; I didn’t think of that.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t explain some of the more bizarre circumstances surrounding the body’s discovery.”
Hendon looked over at him. “Such as?”
“He was stripped naked and the body moved after he was killed.”
“Dear God.”
Sebastian said, “I’ve heard it suggested that the Grand Duchess arrived in London so far in advance of the Allied Sovereigns because she had hopes of contracting a marriage alliance with the Regent. Do you think that’s true?”
Hendon stared out over the somber redbrick walls of the Tudor palace that seemed to squat at the bottom of the street. Beyond it the trees in the park were no more than dark, shifting shadows. “I suppose it wouldn’t be surprising if she did have such aspirations. After all, it’s no secret that Prinny has spent the last ten years trying to divorce his wife. But if that was her ambition, nothing will come of it now. She took an instant dislike to him, and the feeling is quite mutual.”
“So why is she staying in town? Her brother isn’t expected for another two months or more. Why not go on an extended tour of the Lake District or Scotland and come back to London when the Tsar arrives?”
Hendon started to say something, then hesitated.
“What?” asked Sebastian, watching him.
“It’s not going to be easy, putting Europe back together after more than twenty years of war and revolution and republican fervor. We’re looking at months and months of tricky negotiations before it’s all sorted out. Grievances will need to be forgotten or at least buried and old alliances reaffirmed—and new ones forged.”
Sebastian studied the Earl’s troubled face. “What exactly are you saying?”
Hendon cast a quick look around and noticeably lowered his voice. “Word is, Russia is unhappy with the prospect of a strong British-Dutch alliance—especially one cemented by the marriage of Princess Charlotte to William of Orange.”
“Hence the Russians’ interest in a possible marital alliance between the Regent and the Tsar’s sister?”
Hendon nodded. “But with that now out of the question, they might be looking for some other way to interfere with the British-Dutch alliance.”
“Such as?”
“I wish I knew.”
They walked on in silence for a time. The night air was dense with the smell of hot lamp oil and coal smoke and horses, the pavements of Pall Mall splashed with light from the tall, classically fronted buildings that rose up on either side. The crowds of half-inebriated men were nearly as thick here as on St. James’s, and as he looked out at that sea of gay, laughing faces, Sebastian felt himself for one suspended moment to be oddly apart from it all, as if he were a witness rather than a participant. But then, perhaps he was. These men were here on a quest for life’s pleasures, or at least a semblance of such, whereas his thoughts were on the dead and the hidden darkness of those who had made them so.
Hendon said, “Why this sudden interest in the Russians?”
“It seems Ashworth was playing his erotic games with one of the Grand Duchess’s ladies.”
“Good heavens. What could it mean?”
“I don’t know. To my knowledge, the only thing Ash
worth cared about was his own pleasure, not foreign alliances and diplomatic maneuverings. But I think I may have just changed my mind about not attending the Russian ambassador’s ball tonight.”
* * *
“We already sent Countess Lieven our regrets,” said Hero, who was dressing for dinner when he told her of his plan.
“I know.”
She looked over at him and laughed.
* * *
Invitations to Countess Lieven’s balls were always amongst the most coveted prizes of the London Season. Technically it was her husband, Count Lieven, who represented the Tsar at the Court of St. James. But people in diplomatic circles liked to joke that Russia actually had two ambassadors in London, and that by far the shrewder and more capable one was Lieven’s wife, Dorothea. Born into a noble Baltic family, she’d married at the age of fourteen and was now just twenty-eight years old. Despite having been in London only a year, she’d somehow managed to conquer the heights of society and reigned as one of the powerful patronesses of Almack’s.
Arriving shortly after eleven, Sebastian and Hero found the ambassador’s residence ablaze with light and throbbing with music and laughter. A red carpet stretched from the front door to the street, with constables holding back the crowds of gawkers who typically gathered to enjoy such spectacles, their necks craning as they jostled for glimpses of the Quality in all their finery.
“Cousin Victoria says Countess Lieven is not a fan of the Grand Duchess,” said Hero quietly as they waited their turn to be announced. It was late enough that the worst of the crush of arrivals had already passed, but it still took some time to wind their way up the stairs.
“Not surprising,” said Sebastian, leaning in so that his lips were close to her ear. “Two highborn Russian women famous for their allure, wit, and enormous self-regard in one foreign capital? The mind reels.”
Hero smothered a soft laugh. “It’s a good thing Her Imperial Highness will be gone in a few months.”