by C. S. Harris
He was dressed in a pair of ragged breeches so big he had to hold them up with a length of rope. Once his shirt might have been white, but those days were far in the distant, forgotten past. His coat was a motley collection of patches, and the hat he clutched was so battered that half the brim hung loose from the crown.
“Good God,” said Sebastian when he saw him. “I’m surprised Morey didn’t turn you away at the door, thinking you were some grubby beggar.”
Tom grinned, his face so smeared with dirt that his scattered freckles were invisible. “Look the part, don’t I?”
“It’s amazing. Have you eaten?”
“Aye, gov’nor. I nicked some sausages with Waldo Jones.”
“Bonding over theft? I suppose that’s one way to gain his confidence—as long as you don’t get taken up by the watch.”
The boy looked vaguely affronted. “I ain’t lost me touch.”
Sebastian ducked his head to hide a smile. “What did you discover about Ben King?”
“’E’s definitely missing—took off scared the mornin’ Ashworth was found dead. But I don’t reckon Waldo knows where ’e is. Waldo’s afraid ’e’s dead.”
“Any idea where the lad used to sleep?”
“Waldo says ’e’d get a pallet in one o’ the flea traps near St. Martin’s whenever ’e ’ad a couple extra pennies. I thought I’d go there tomorrow.”
Sebastian thought about the stacks of corpses in the deadhouse of St. Martin’s workhouse and felt a heavy weight of unease settle low in his gut. “Just be careful, you hear?”
Tom eyed the sticking plaster on Sebastian’s forehead and gave him a jaunty grin.
* * *
Wednesday, 6 April
“I received a visit late last night from one Major Edward Burnside,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy when he and Sebastian met in a coffeehouse near Bow Street early the next morning. “We’re instructed to stay away from both the Grand Duchess’s household and the Russian ambassador and his lady.” Lovejoy paused. “I take it you’re getting uncomfortably close to something?”
Sebastian took a deep swallow of his scalding coffee and grimaced. Major Burnside was one of Jarvis’s most trusted minions. “You heard two Russians tried to kill me last night?”
Lovejoy nodded. “You’re quite certain as to their nationality?”
“Yes.”
Lovejoy nodded again. “The major expressed the palace’s concerns over the recent rise in violent crime on the city’s streets and suggested we might want to conduct a sweeping arrest of undesirable elements. Presumably one or more of them could then be charged with recent events.”
“Tidy.”
Lovejoy sipped his hot chocolate. “Have you seen Gibson since he completed the Jordan girl’s autopsy?”
“Not yet.”
Lovejoy let out his breath in a long, painful rush. “It’s disturbing. Most disturbing.”
* * *
Sissy Jordan lay pale and waxen on Gibson’s stained stone slab. In the morning light streaming in through the outbuilding’s open door, she looked even younger than she had in the dim horror that was St. Martin’s deadhouse. Her nose was small and childlike, her chin firm, her eyebrows delicately arched. Looking at her, Sebastian was struck again by the tragedy of both her death and her short life. And he felt a rush of rage so all-consuming that he was practically shaking with it.
“You all right?” asked Gibson, watching him through narrowed eyes.
Sebastian turned away and went to slap his open palm against the doorframe as he stared out at Alexi Sauvage’s dew-dampened garden. “Damn. Damn, damn, damn. She was only fifteen years old—thirteen when she had to start selling herself on the streets so she could eat. What the bloody hell is wrong with us? What kind of society turns its back on the neediest amongst them?” He flung his arm through the air in a sweeping motion that took in the awakening city. “They call themselves Christians; they smugly go to church every Sunday and pat themselves on the back for being so damned holy. And then they allow this?”
“‘For I was hungered and ye gave me no meat,’” quoted Gibson softly. “‘I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger and ye took me not in.’”
Sebastian turned to look again at the dead child prostitute. “Can you tell me anything?”
Gibson stood with his hands tucked up under his armpits. His face was unshaven and sallow, his eyes sunken and bruised-looking in a way Sebastian had learned to recognize. “Well,” said the surgeon, “she was stabbed, but not with as large a knife as Ashworth or Digby—probably more like a dagger. And unlike the other two, she fought back. There are cuts on her hands from when she tried to either grab the knife or at least deflect it.” He picked up her nearest hand and turned it over to show the lacerations on her palm and fingers. “See?”
“Brave girl.” Sebastian shifted his gaze to the bloody wounds in her chest. Sissy had been stabbed again and again, but not nearly as many times as Ashworth or Digby. “I wonder why the differences. Think we could be dealing with two different killers?”
“No way to tell, really. Perhaps your killer is simply gaining confidence as he gains experience.”
“Now, there’s a frightening thought.”
The sound of a door opening drew Sebastian’s attention to the ancient stone house where Alexi had appeared on the stoop wearing an old gown and a simple hat with a wide brim. Her gaze met his across the yard. Then she turned away to kneel at a patch of some dark green herb, a trowel in her hand.
Sebastian said, “I’ve discovered there’s a boy missing too—a crossing sweep named Ben King who carried a message from Digby the night Ashworth was murdered. He disappeared the next morning.”
Gibson reached for the sheet and drew it up over the dead girl’s face. “Please tell me you’re close to figuring out who’s doing this.”
But Sebastian could only shake his head, any possible reply he might have made lost in a swirl of frustration and fear.
* * *
Later, after Gibson applied a foul-smelling ointment and a fresh sticking plaster to Sebastian’s head wounds, he walked across the yard to where Alexi Sauvage still knelt in her garden. Her hands were deep in the dirt, the sun warm on her back, her face a study of serene contentment. Then his shadow fell across her and she looked up. Her expression of peace drained away.
She said, “Paul tells me you were asking about soporifics. Something that might have been used to render Ashworth unconscious so he wouldn’t fight back when he was killed.”
“Do you know of something?”
She tugged at a stubborn clump of grass. “There are dozens of possibilities. Laudanum would do it, although he’d need to take it himself, because it would require too large a dose for someone to slip to him unawares. The same is probably true of herbs such as valerian and skullcap. Henbane can cause a stupor, but it usually also provokes convulsions, and Paul says he saw no evidence of anything like that on his body.”
“What else?”
She thought for a moment. “Most plants that cause paralysis can also cause death if you’re not careful and don’t know what you’re doing. Although given that your killer’s plan was to then stab Ashworth, I suppose that wouldn’t matter. So if you’re not deterred by the fear of accidentally killing someone, the number of possibilities expands dramatically. There’s a pretty yellow-flowering vine from America called Carolina jessamine that would do it. But many more-familiar garden plants can also be dangerous. I’ve heard of people falling unconscious from breathing in the smoke of burning oleander branches or even after eating food stirred with a twig. And simply chewing a foxglove leaf can cause temporary paralysis—or stop your heart if you’re unlucky.”
“Something as common as foxglove?”
“Yes. But if I were to pick the most likely culprit, I’d probably go with belladonna, or deadly nightshade a
s it is sometimes called. The wives of the Roman emperors Augustus and Claudius are said to have used it to dispose of their husbands, but it can also be used to create hallucinations or a stupor. It was supposedly a favorite of witches, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
“And there’s no way to detect it?”
“No.”
“How common is this knowledge?”
“It’s probably less common in London than in the countryside, where these things are passed down from mother to daughter. But the city is full of apothecaries who would know.”
Sebastian blew out a long, harsh breath as he watched her set to work trimming a woody, upright shrub with long ovate leaves. “What’s that?”
She looked up and smiled, her lips parting on a laugh he didn’t understand until she said, “Nightshade.”
Chapter 35
Sebastian was walking down Tower Hill toward where he’d left his curricle, when he spotted a lanky man with protuberant lips who was leaning against the front of one of the older houses.
“Why the bloody hell are you following me?” Sebastian demanded, stopping in front of him.
Sid Cotton straightened with a slow, insolent smile. “I’m hurt, I am, ye talkin’ to me like that. And me thinkin’ you’d be grateful I took the trouble to look ye up, seein’ as how I’m told ye was askin’ after me last night at the pub.”
“Yes. Right before someone tried to kill me.”
“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”
“If true, that’s probably the first honest thing you’ve said to me.”
Cotton splayed a hand over his heart. “I keep tellin’ ye I had nothin’ to do with that viscount’s death neither, and that’s the gospel truth.”
Sebastian grunted. “You were seen following Lord Ashworth on Bond Street just days before he died.”
Cotton’s eyes crinkled with a grin. “Course I was followin’ the bugger. I thought ye knew that.”
“Not exactly.”
“’Twas my way of givin’ him a friendly reminder about how I ain’t forgot what he owed me.” Cotton squinted down the lane toward the soot-stained walls of the ancient castle. “Ye can learn a lot about a man, following him.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“Seen some things, I did—seen ’em and heard ’em. Some things ye maybe don’t know about. Some things ye maybe don’t want to know about.”
“Meaning?”
Cotton threw up his hands as if to ward off Sebastian as he took a menacing step toward the man. “Meanin’ I’ll tell ye, but ye gots t’ promise not to take it out on me if’n you don’t like what I got to say.”
Sebastian rested his fists on his hips. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
Cotton sniffed and wiped the back of one hand across his nose. “That day I was following his lordship and saw him on Bond Street with his da? Well, I also seen him with another feller. A young buck.”
“What young buck?”
“I dunno his name. But I heard some of what they was saying.” Cotton’s loose fish mouth pulled into a wide smile. “Accused this young buck of cuckolding him, he did. Said something about babies too, but I wasn’t entirely clear on that part.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s strange, mobile face. He was beginning to notice there were times when Cotton forgot to drop his “g’s” and allowed his syntax and accent to slip into something considerably less in keeping with his affected persona. Something that suggested origins far from Seven Dials. “Where did this happen? It’s hardly the sort of discussion one would have in public.”
“There are ways to hear, even when folks think they’re being private.”
“You know who Ashworth was talking to?”
Sebastian wondered what Cotton saw in his eyes, because the man sidled a few feet away from him. “Said I didn’t!”
“Well, at least your instincts for self-preservation are in order. See that your ignorance likewise remains intact.”
“Whatever ye say, yer honor.”
Sebastian grunted. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Slipped my mind, it did.”
“Right.”
Sebastian knew Cotton’s waxing and waning memory served his own purposes. But that didn’t mean the information Cotton was feeding him was false.
Sebastian started to walk away, then paused to look back. “One more thing: Go anywhere near my wife again, and I’ll have you taken up for murder. Is that clear?”
“But I ain’t killed nobody!”
Sebastian gave a slow smile that showed his teeth, and shook his head.
“But I ain’t,” shouted Cotton as Sebastian walked away. “I ain’t!”
* * *
Half a dozen workmen were tossing the last of the rubble from the dismantled Swallow Street pub into a wagon bed when Sebastian paused to ask about Russell Firth.
“Don’t know fer sure where he’s at,” said one of the workers, a wiry, sun-darkened man who looked to be in his fifties if not older. “Ye might try lookin’ down on Piccadilly.”
“Piccadilly?”
“Aye. They’re fixin’ to put in a circus there.”
“On Piccadilly? Where?”
“Right smack on top o’ Lady Hatton’s house and gardens,” another of the men said with a grin. “Hear she ain’t too happy ’bout it.”
“Understandable,” said Sebastian.
A busy thoroughfare that ran from the Haymarket in the east to Hyde Park turnpike and Knightsbridge in the west, Piccadilly was home to numerous fashionable pubs and inns as well as such venerable booksellers as Hatchards. Sebastian half suspected the workmen might be wrong—until he saw Firth standing beside Lady Hatton’s garden wall, a notebook and pencil in hand.
“Here?” said Sebastian, leaving his horses with Giles and walking up to the young architect. “You’re going to put a circus here?”
Firth’s face broke into a wide grin that made him look likable in a way Sebastian found oddly troublesome. “It’ll be grand. You’ll see.”
Sebastian grunted. “I’ll believe it when it happens.”
Firth nodded toward the Stuart-era church that stood farther down Piccadilly. “The Regent originally wanted his New Street to wipe out St. James’s and its churchyard, but the uproar was too great. Turns out people object to having their loved ones dug up.”
“Imagine that.” Sebastian glanced down the street toward the church’s brick bell tower. Madame Blanchette had said her daughter, Giselle, was buried in St. James’s, Piccadilly.
Firth’s grin widened. “Shockingly selfish of them, isn’t it? I’m told the Regent is still having a hard time finding his way to understanding it.”
Sebastian brought his attention back to Firth. “You do realize that if you’re trying to protect Stephanie, the best way to do it is to be honest with me.”
Firth’s smile faded. “I beg your pardon?”
“Cut line. Ashworth not only knew you were in love with his wife; he suspected the twins might not be his. And it infuriated him enough that he confronted you about it just days before he died.”
Firth cast a quick, anxious look around and lowered his voice. “I didn’t kill him. I swear it.”
“Did Ashworth threaten you with a crim. com. case?” Under common law, crim. con.—short for criminal conversation or adultery—was a tort. Husbands had been known to sue their adulterous wives’ partners for as much as twenty thousand pounds. And they usually won.
“No,” said Firth, not quite meeting Sebastian’s eyes.
“Why not?”
“Presumably because he was too proud to tell the world he’d been cuckolded.”
“So you admit you and Stephanie were lovers?”
Firth sucked in a quick breath. “No. Never.”
Sebastian
studied the younger man’s even, strained features. “If you’re innocent—which at this point is a big if—I’ll do my best to keep this from coming out. But you should know I’m not the only one asking questions.”
Firth’s eyes narrowed. “How did you find out what was said that day? I mean, who could know? Surely Ashworth didn’t tell anyone?”
“Your conversation was overheard.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Not really. Ashworth had a lot of enemies—and several of them were following him.”
“Dear God,” whispered Firth under his breath.
“If there is anything else—”
“No! I swear it.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Sebastian. And then he turned and walked away before his desire to manhandle the bastard overcame his already beleaguered self-restraint.
* * *
Sebastian spent the next half hour prowling the crowded churchyard of St. James’s, looking for a four-month-old grave.
Built of red brick with Portland stone dressings, the church of St. James’s, Piccadilly, dated back to the days of Charles II and Sir Christopher Wren. Its extensive churchyard was divided into two sections, one to the west fronting Jermyn Street and another to the north, separated from Piccadilly by the rectory, a watch house, and a stable.
He finally found Giselle Blanchette’s grave in the far southwestern corner of the churchyard. She was lucky her suicide hadn’t condemned her to an ignoble midnight burial at the crossroads with a stake through her heart. But the rector of St. James’s had nevertheless buried her as far from his church as he could. The grave bore only a small stone inscribed GISELLE MARIE BLANCHETTE, 1794 TO 1813. And, below that, EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED, AND THEY THAT HATE THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL BE DESOLATE.
He stared at that inscription for a long time, his thoughts on the grief-stricken mother who had undoubtedly chosen it. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud to the dead girl. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him in time to save you. I’m sorry someone didn’t stop him long ago. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. And it came to him that he was doing a lot of apologizing to graves lately.