Who Slays the Wicked (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Book 14)

by C. S. Harris

  He lifted his head to stare across the jumble of graying, lichen-covered stones. The tragedy of Giselle Blanchette’s death lay heavily on his heart. He thought about the child she’d carried in her womb, the child fathered by a dangerous, evil man. Giselle had died rather than allow that child to be born. He firmly believed that all children were innocent of the sins of their fathers. And yet . . .

  And yet Sebastian found himself desperately hoping that Ashworth’s suspicions had been right. That Stephanie’s twin boys were not, in truth, the seed of his loins.

  Chapter 36

  Only a handful of noble London houses were grand enough to stand alone, surrounded by their own extensive gardens. Most of those were ducal residences such as Marlborough House and Devonshire House.

  And then there was Lindley House.

  A massive pile situated on several acres overlooking Hyde Park, it had been built a hundred years before, in the days of Queen Anne, for Ashworth’s great-grandfather, who’d been a great favorite of Her Highness. Like Marlborough House, it had been designed by Wren and built of red brick with stone quoins. And it occurred to Sebastian as he mounted the house’s broad front steps that when the current Marquis died, this grand house would pass along with his titles and the rest of the vast Lindley estates to a tiny infant who might not even be related to that long, august line of Ledgers.

  Sebastian’s knock was answered by a liveried footman who ushered him into a withdrawing room and then went off to ascertain whether Lady Ashworth was receiving. He returned to report apologetically that, according to her ladyship’s abigail, Lady Ashworth had slept poorly the night before and was now resting. Sebastian didn’t believe a word of it, but on the off chance it might be true, he asked to speak with her ladyship’s abigail instead.

  To his surprise, a young woman of about Stephanie’s own age appeared to drop a nervous curtsy and said, “You wished to speak to me, my lord?”

  “Do I take it her ladyship actually is asleep?” said Sebastian. He couldn’t imagine Stephanie allowing the girl to speak to him if she were awake.

  The abigail looked confused. “My lord?”

  She was a small thing and slim, with a childlike nose, pretty brown eyes, and dark, close-cut curls. Discovering the color of her hair was the main reason Sebastian had asked to see her. He said, “What’s your name?”

  “Elizabeth, my lord. Elizabeth Holt.”

  Sebastian gave her a friendly, encouraging smile. “How long have you been with her ladyship, Elizabeth?”

  “Three years, my lord.”

  “So since before her marriage?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “When was the last time her ladyship saw Lord Ashworth?”

  At the sudden, unexpected shift in topic, Elizabeth Holt sucked in a quick breath that jerked her chest. Stephanie had obviously warned the girl at some point to be very, very careful what she said to anyone. “My lord?”

  Sebastian gave her a look that had once commanded men in battle and said, “It’s a simple question, Elizabeth. I suggest you answer it. And don’t even think of trying to pretend you don’t know, because I will find out. You do your mistress no service with your evasion.”

  She laced her fingers together and held her hands tight against her ribs as if finding it difficult to breathe. “A week ago last Monday, my lord. In the evening.” It came out as a whisper.

  “He came here?”

  The girl nodded, her eyes wide with panic.

  “And the Marquis? Did he see his son that evening as well?”

  “Oh, no, my lord. Parliament was sitting.”

  “How long did Ashworth stay?”

  She hung her head. “Not long, my lord.”

  “Did he and Lady Ashworth argue?”

  At that she looked up, her face pale and stricken. “I don’t think I should say, my lord.”

  “I’m afraid you must.”

  She hesitated a moment and then nodded, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

  “About what?”

  “I didn’t hear, my lord.”

  He suspected that was a lie. But he knew by the stubborn tilt of her head that she would tell him no more.

  It didn’t matter anyway. He already knew the answer.

  * * *

  “You think Ashworth went to Lindley House that night to accuse Stephanie of being unfaithful to him?”

  Hero asked the question as they sat in the drawing room after dinner, Hero drinking tea while Devlin nursed a glass of port by the fire.

  “That, and to demand to know if the twins were his,” said Devlin.

  Hero was silent a moment, then said, “Do you think they are?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  She let out a long, troubled sigh. “It’s such a delicate subject for anyone to broach. Who told him, do you think? About Firth, I mean.”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably Cotton. But it could have been anyone.” He turned his head, suddenly alert.

  “What is it?” she asked, watching him. “Tom?”

  He shook his head. “He already reported in.”

  “No luck finding Ben King?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what do you hear?”

  “Someone’s on the front steps.”

  “But I don’t—,” she started to say, then broke off at the sound of the front-door knocker. “Your hearing is unnerving.”

  “Still?”

  She gave a low laugh. “Still.”

  They listened to voices in the hall below; then Morey mounted the stairs with a note on a salver. “From Sir Henry Lovejoy, my lord.”

  Devlin broke the seal and quickly glanced through the missive as Morey bowed himself out. “Ah. They’ve found Ashworth’s missing housemaid, Jenny Crutcher.”

  Hero set aside her teacup and went to stand beside him. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

  “She was as of this afternoon. She’s staying with her aunt—a widow named Travis—in Kennington.”

  “Kennington? Why?”

  Devlin handed her the note. “According to the Bow Street constable who interviewed her, she left Curzon Street because the Viscount’s murder frightened her.”

  “You say that as if you have reason to doubt her.”

  Devlin glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. Too late now to pay the elusive woman a call. “Someone was having hysterics the morning after Ashworth’s murder, but according to the butler, that was the second parlor maid, Alice. Not Jenny. He said Jenny was made of sterner stuff.”

  “So why did she lie?”

  He met her gaze. “Interesting question, isn’t it?”

  Chapter 37

  Thursday, 7 April

  The next morning dawned cool and misty white.

  They drove to Kennington in Hero’s smart yellow barouche drawn by a team of sleek blacks. “I take it the intent is to simultaneously overawe Jenny Crutcher with the grandeur of the carriage and reassure her with my presence?” said Hero as they rattled across Westminster Bridge.

  “Something like that,” said Sebastian.

  Once a simple village a mile south of the Thames, Kennington had grown considerably in the decades since the construction of Westminster Bridge. But it was still an area of built-up roads separated by orchards and market gardens and vast open stretches of meadowland. Jenny Crutcher’s aunt lived in a slate-roofed, whitewashed cottage that overlooked Kennington Common. As they turned into Penton Place, they could see a middle-aged woman picking daffodils in the cottage’s miniature front garden with a flaxen-haired little girl at her side. The girl held a bouquet of flowers in one fist and was laughing. But she looked around slack-jawed as the grand carriage drew up before her house.

  “Look, Mama! They’re stopping here. Whoever could it be?”

&n
bsp; The relaxed smile on the older woman’s face slid away into something apprehensive. “Go inside, Antonia. Quickly.” The little girl ran for the cottage door while her mother stood straight-backed, her hands clenched in the black folds of her mourning gown as she watched Sebastian alight from the carriage.

  “Good morning, madam,” he said, touching a hand to his hat. “You must be Mrs. Travis.”

  The widow dropped a deep curtsy, her gaze flicking to the crest on the carriage’s panel. “Yes, my lord.”

  Sebastian turned to help Hero alight. “Allow me to present you to my wife, Lady Devlin.”

  Hero gave the woman an encouraging smile. “How do you do, Mrs. Travis? Your garden is lovely.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” The widow dropped another curtsy, her gaze straying for one telltale instant toward the cottage door left standing ajar by the child.

  Sebastian said, “Your niece, Jenny Crutcher, is inside?”

  The older woman nodded, her face wooden.

  “We’d like to speak with her, please.”

  As the aunt hesitated, a younger woman of perhaps thirty or thirty-five appeared on the stoop. She had a sharp chin and the same flaxen hair as the child peeking around from behind her. “You’re here about his lordship?”

  “Yes,” said Sebastian, meeting her gaze.

  Jenny Crutcher gave a brisk, decisive nod. “Let me fetch my hat and gloves. I don’t want Antonia hearing this.”

  * * *

  They walked the overgrown paths of the common, the mist cool and damp against their faces, the air heavy with the smell of grass and wet earth and coal smoke.

  “I don’t know nothing about who killed his lordship,” said Jenny in a tight, strained voice. “Truly I don’t.”

  “Then what were you worried Antonia might overhear?” asked Hero.

  The housemaid glanced over at her, her eyes widening as she realized her mistake. But all she said was “This talk of murder isn’t good for the child. It gives her bad dreams.”

  “Who do you think killed Ashworth?” asked Sebastian.

  “Me? I don’t know. Truly I don’t.”

  “But if you were to guess?”

  Jenny stared off across the common to where some half-grown boys were playing cricket. Her eyes were dull, her face haggard. And it came to Sebastian that she must not be sleeping well. She looked exhausted. “I don’t know,” she said again. “But it must’ve been a woman, surely? Whoever tied him to the bed like that.”

  “That’s the only thing makes you think the killer was a woman? The way Ashworth was found?”

  “That and the bloody handprint.”

  “What bloody handprint?”

  “I found it on the inside panel of the front door that morning. The constables were right peeved with me for washing it off, but how was I to know?”

  “It looked like a woman’s handprint?”

  “Oh, yes. Right small, it was.” She held out her own sturdy hand. Her hands were strong and work worn, but they were not large. “Smaller than mine, and real delicate-like. Almost like a child’s.”

  Sebastian felt something twist in the pit of his stomach. Stephanie’s hands were unusually small and delicate.

  He managed to keep his voice steady. “Did you notice anything else when you cleaned the house that morning? I believe you said something to Bow Street about dirty glasses.”

  Jenny nodded. “There was two wineglasses in the parlor and two brandy glasses in the library.”

  “Brandy?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Sebastian and Hero exchanged a quick glance. Women sometimes drank brandy, but it was more a man’s drink. The presence of two brandy glasses in the library suggested that the person Sissy Jordan heard come to the door that night was probably male.

  Unless of course the glasses had been used by some earlier, as-yet-unknown visitor who departed before Sissy’s arrival.

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, there was the branch of candles that had been allowed to burn down on the chest in the entry. I thought it a strange and dangerous thing for Digby to have done, leaving them like that. But that was before I knew he’d gone off and never come back.”

  Sebastian said, “Fullerton tells me you’re an unusually calm young woman.”

  “I try to be,” she said cautiously. She was clever enough to wonder where his statement was leading.

  “So why did you leave Curzon Street so quickly?”

  She drew up abruptly, one hand pressing against her lips. They had reached a part of the common shaded by a thick stand of ancient oaks that looked as if they had been there since the days when Kennington was the site of a royal palace and villagers had grazed their cows and geese here.

  “Miss Crutcher?” he prompted when she remained silent.

  The pale skin of her face looked oddly stretched across the bone, and despite the cool temperature, he could see a sheen of perspiration on her temples. “It was on account of Digby,” she said on a harsh expulsion of breath. “The way he disappeared and never came back. I knew he must be dead too.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “He was a sly one, Digby. Always going out at odd times without any reason. Sending messages by that crossing sweep.”

  “Do you know who he sent messages to?”

  She shook her head. “Somebody was paying him, but I never knew who.”

  “So what made you assume Digby must be dead?”

  She sucked in a quick breath that made her chest shudder. “It was on account of the letter.”

  “The letter?”

  She nodded. “Just the evening before, he’d been bragging to me about how his lordship had given him a letter—a sealed letter he was to take to the Morning Post if something happened to him.”

  “If something happened to his lordship, you mean?”

  She nodded again.

  “You didn’t tell Bow Street about this letter?”

  “No one was asking about Digby that morning. I didn’t even think about it until later, when he still didn’t show up. That’s when I knew something must have happened to him too; otherwise he’d have been playing that letter up for all it was worth. He did love to be seen as important.”

  “So why not go to Bow Street then? Why simply leave?” Why not tell this to the constable who came to see you yesterday?

  Jenny’s voice was now little more than a whisper. “I was afraid. Afraid somebody’d think maybe I knew what was in that letter and kill me too.”

  “Do you know what was in the letter?”

  “No. I don’t think Digby himself knew.” She nodded across the common to a neglected area of half-dead trees and rank grass tangled with thistles and nettles. “See that? That’s where they used to hang people,” she said. “Hang them, and sometimes draw and quarter them too—or burn them alive if they were women. They say the first person ever put to death there was a woman burned for murdering her husband. I remember watching a woman burn here when I was a little girl. But they never burn men for murdering their wives. Why is that, do you think?”

  Sebastian felt the damp wind cold against his face. They burned husband-killers because, under common law, for a woman to kill her husband was more than simple murder. It was also an act of treason—a rebellion against both God and King, who together had placed her husband above her as her master. As a desecration that threatened the God-ordained fabric of society, such an act was therefore seen as a threat—and punished as harshly as witchcraft.

  “They don’t burn women for murder anymore,” he said. “Not for twenty years.”

  He was aware of Hero staring at the housemaid with understanding. “Antonia is Ashworth’s child, isn’t she?”

  Jenny Crutcher’s gaze flew to meet Hero’s before skittering away. She swallowed hard and then gave a faint, quic
k nod.

  Hero said, “Did he acknowledge her?”

  “No. He never knew. Once he . . . Once he was tired of me, he lost interest and never looked at me again. It’s like I wasn’t even there—no more alive than the newel post or a door. And by the time I started getting really big, it was hunting season and he was in the country. He didn’t come back to London till after Christmas, and I’d had her by then.” She paused for a moment, and something about the angle of her head or some trick of the light made Sebastian realize she was younger than he’d first taken her to be, probably closer to twenty-five than thirty-five.

  She said, “Fullerton was good to me. He let me stay on.” Most housemaids who found themselves “in the family way” were summarily dismissed—even when their pregnancy was the result of seduction or rape by the master, one of his sons, or some guest. “My aunt, she never had any little ones of her own, and she offered to take Antonia and raise her for me.”

  “No one ever told Ashworth?”

  “No. Who would?” Her upper lip quivered with disdain. “Well, Digby would. But he didn’t come till after that. And everybody else kept my secret.”

  “I imagine his lordship’s staff kept a lot of secrets,” said Hero.

  Jenny Crutcher brought up a fist to dash away a tear rolling silently down one cheek. “I’m glad he’s dead. He was a vile man who ruined the lives of more people than you’ll ever know. I don’t care who killed him. The world is a better place with him out of it.”

  Will you tell Antonia who her father was? Sebastian wondered, watching her wipe away another tear. Except she wouldn’t, of course.

  And he realized this was one of those painful truths best left untold.

  Chapter 38

  “I think she was telling the truth,” said Hero as they drove away from Kennington Common with a clatter of horses’ hooves and a rattle of trace chains.