by C. S. Harris
“Too many, if’n ye ask me. The Pulteney Hotel’s got eight of the danged things. We’re always havin’ to go there.”
“Eight?”
“Aye. Chesterfield House has ’em too.”
Chesterfield House was an elegant detached mansion built in the previous century by Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, on the corner of South Audley Street and Curzon just several blocks down from Viscount Ashcroft’s town house. Hero looked up from her notes, her breath quickening with interest. “You empty the cesspits at Chesterfield House every week?”
“Aye.”
“What nights?”
“Tuesdays.”
“Ah,” said Hero in some disappointment.
William Bell took another swig of his gin and smacked his lips. “You’d be surprised the things we see, workin’ the streets at night. Why, I’ve found a good half dozen dead bodies in me day. Dead bodies and other things.”
“Oh?” She hesitated a moment, then said with studied nonchalance, “I assume you’ve heard about the Viscount who was murdered on Curzon Street last week?”
“Oh, aye.”
“Did you ever empty his cesspit?”
“Aye. Emptied it last December, we did. I remember ’cause it was durin’ the Great Fog.”
“Did you ever see anything unusual at his house?”
“Not when we was emptying his cesspit. But queer things was always goin’ on around there.”
“What sort of ‘queer things’?”
William Bell leaned forward as if imparting a secret, and Hero felt her stomach lurch as the intensified stench of excrement and cheap gin washed over her. “One time we was drivin’ down the street, headed fer Chesterfield House, and this woman come runnin’ outa his lordship’s house stark staring naked. Naked and covered in blood, she was.”
“When was this?”
“While ago. Don’t recall exactly. But there’s been several times we’ve heard screamin’ comin’ from in there. Why, just last week we seen a lady standin’ at his door with a gun in her hand.”
“A week ago this last Tuesday?”
“Aye.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“Couldn’t see her face on account o’ she was wearin’ a hat wit’ a veil. But she looked like a young thing—slim, she was, and tall for a woman.”
“Could you tell if she was fair haired or dark?”
“Oh, she was fair, all right. The lantern was still lit over his lordship’s door, and the light was shining right on her guinea gold hair—on her hair and on the gun in her hand.”
“You’re certain it was a gun?”
The night-soil man looked vaguely affronted. “Course I’m certain. Ain’t nothin’ wrong wit’ me eyes.”
“What did she do when she saw you?”
“Acted real startled, she did. Come down the front steps in a hurry and took off walkin’ up the street.”
“What made you think she was a lady?”
“Dressed real fine, she was. And she had that air about her. There’s jist somethin’ about the way a gentry mort holds herself and moves. Ye can always tell, can’t ye?”
It was a surprisingly astute observation from a man who’d spent his life cleaning out other people’s privies. Hero said, “Do you remember what time this was?”
“Musta been about midnight. We always go to Chesterfield House first thing on Tuesday nights, and we ain’t allowed to work ’cept between midnight and five.”
Hero glanced at the watch she wore pinned to her bodice. “So what will you do between now and midnight?”
William Bell held up his gin bottle and grinned. “Prepare.”
* * *
Hero arrived home to find Devlin seated cross-legged on the floor of the library with a number of rumpled newspapers scattered around him.
“What are you doing?” she asked when he looked up, a lock of dark hair falling across his forehead.
He raked his hair back from his face with splayed fingers, then linked his hands behind his neck as he arched his back. “When I spoke to Stephanie last Saturday, she described the way Ashworth was found in detail, right down to the clothes strewn around the room and the red silk bonds. Not just silk bonds, mind you, but red silk bonds. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, but something Aunt Henrietta said tonight set me to wondering. So I was looking to see if any of the papers mentioned the color of the ropes.”
Hero tugged off her gloves. “And?”
“And the answer is no. They didn’t.”
“So how did Aunt Henrietta know?”
“Hendon told her. And I told Hendon. But you can be damned sure he didn’t divulge those details to Stephanie.”
“Perhaps Ashworth always used red silk bonds. She would know that.”
Devlin shook his head. “I sent a message to Lovejoy asking if his lads found any other color bonds when they searched the chamber. He said there were also lengths of black and gold cord in a chest.”
Hero carefully removed her hat. “He could have always used the red ones with Stephanie.”
Devlin drew a heavy breath. “That’s ghastly to think about, but I suppose you could be right.”
She went to the table holding the brandy decanter, poured a generous measure in a glass, and came back to hand it to him.
“What’s this for?” he asked, looking up from neatening the papers into a pile.
“I suspect you’re going to want it when you hear what I have to say.”
Chapter 44
The night was blustery, with a cold wind that stirred the budding limbs of the trees in Hyde Park and tossed ghostly whispers of gossamer-fine clouds across a black sky.
Sebastian stood in the shadows of an elm, his gaze on the soaring classical facade of Lindley House. As he watched, an old-fashioned landau bearing the Marquis’s crest on its panel drew up before the gate. A moment later, the Marquis himself emerged from the house, the light from the carriage lamps gleaming over his satin knee breeches and diamond-buckled formal shoes. He exchanged pleasantries with his driver about the weather, then climbed into the carriage and drove off.
Sebastian’s gaze shifted back to the house. He felt a heaviness in his chest that was part sorrow, part something else he hated to acknowledge. He didn’t want to believe that Stephanie might actually have killed her dangerous, dissolute husband, but he was becoming more and more afraid that she had. With Firth’s assistance, she might even have been involved in the death of his valet, Edward Digby. But Sebastian refused to believe she’d had anything to do with the murder of the child prostitute, Sissy Jordan. Surely he couldn’t be that wrong about the passionate, troubled niece he’d loved since her birth.
Could he?
But if Stephanie had killed Ashworth and Digby, then who murdered Sissy Jordan—and, in all likelihood, the missing crossing sweep, Ben King, as well? The obvious answer was someone who loved Steph and was utterly ruthless in his efforts to protect her from the repercussions of what she’d done. Someone such as Russell Firth.
It fit.
It all fit only too well.
* * *
Stephanie was embroidering a tiny baby cap in a high-backed chair by the hearth when Lindley’s dignified butler showed Sebastian to the drawing room.
“Uncle,” she said, setting aside her needlework and folding her hands in her lap.
He went to stand before the fire. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
Her head fell back as she looked up at him. “Did you think I would refuse?”
“The idea had occurred to me.”
She gave a little shake of her head. “My abigail told me you were here this morning.”
“Did she happen to mention what we discussed?”
“She did.”
“Tell me about As
hworth’s visit the Monday night before he died, Steph.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her chest rising and falling with the agitation of her breathing. And he wondered what she saw in his face, because she suddenly pushed up from her chair and retreated behind it. “So are you back to thinking I killed him, Uncle? Or did you ever stop?”
Rather than answer, he said, “When I spoke to you last Saturday, you mentioned that Ashworth was found tied to his bed with red silk cords. How did you know that?”
“I assume I read it in the newspapers.”
“A logical assumption. Except that I checked, Stephanie. None of the papers’ articles mentioned the color of the cords—or even the fact that they were silk. You also knew his clothes were strewn across the floor. How, Steph?”
“Lindley must have told me about it.”
“Somehow I can’t see Lindley dwelling on the lurid details of his son’s erotic murder scene in his conversations with his newly bereaved daughter-in-law.”
Her nostrils flared on a quickly indrawn breath. “Someone obviously told me.”
“That’s one explanation.”
When she simply stared back at him, her head held at a stiff angle, he said, “The Tuesday morning before Ashworth was killed, you bought a muff pistol from Howard and Mercers’. I already knew that. But now I discover that Tuesday night, at midnight, you went to Curzon Street. You were seen, Steph. With the pistol in your hand.”
“But no one—” She broke off, one hand coming up to touch her lips before falling again. “Dear God. The night-soil men.”
“That’s right.”
She dug her curled fingers into the high back of the chair before her. “You can’t prove it was me. No one can.”
“Because you were veiled, you mean? No, I can’t prove it—not that I had any intention of trying.” He reached out to rest his hand over one of hers. “I wish you’d be honest with me, Steph.”
She wrenched away from him and retreated to the far side of the room. “I didn’t kill him!”
He stayed where he was, watching her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did, Steph. I wanted to kill him myself.”
“Oh, God! How many times must I tell you I didn’t do it?”
“Then be honest with me. Tell me what the hell happened that last Monday when Ashworth came here to Lindley House. I know there was a row. Was it over Russell Firth? Did Ashworth accuse you of being unfaithful? Did he threaten to divorce you?”
“Divorce me?” she gave a harsh, ringing laugh. “Hardly. He needed a wife to keep Papa’s money flowing, remember? But it seems that while he felt no need to honor his own marriage vows, he had no intention of allowing me any similar liberties. He came here to tell me that if he ever heard my name linked with Russell again, he’d kill one of the twins. He then illustrated the threat by holding a knife to first James’s throat, then Adrian’s. He said his father didn’t need two young heirs; one would do. The choice as to which he killed could be mine.”
“Good God,” said Sebastian softly.
“I bought the gun the next morning and went to Curzon Street that night. What he said about killing one of the boys—it wasn’t an idle threat, Uncle. Once he had an idea like that in his head, he wasn’t going to let it drop. Whether he did it to punish me for some real or imagined transgression, or simply for the sheer pleasure of hurting me, he would eventually have done it. He was like that.”
“I know.”
“I meant to kill him that night. But the bar was already up on the door when I arrived. I was still deciding what to do when I saw the night-soil men’s cart coming down the street, so I . . . walked away.”
“And went back again on Thursday?”
He thought she might deny it. He knew by the sideways slide of her gaze that she thought about denying it. Then she sucked in a quick gasp of air and nodded. “But I didn’t kill him, Uncle. I swear it. The door was unlatched and partly ajar when I got there. I thought it strange, but Ashworth always kept an irregular household, and it was a windy night. I assumed a gust must have blown it open.”
She paused for a moment, her head cocked to one side as a strange smile played about her lips. She said, “Does that horrify you, Uncle? That I could calmly decide to kill my husband and then coldly set about doing it? What do you think I should have done? Let him kill one of the twins?”
“You didn’t tell anyone what he threatened to do?”
She gave a ragged laugh that sounded more like a tearing of her soul. “Tell whom? Lindley? You think he would have believed such a tale? About his precious only surviving son?”
“He might have. I’ve heard he once paid off the parents of some innkeeper’s daughter Ashworth raped up at Cambridge.”
“Perhaps. But threatening to slit the throat of one of his own sons? Lindley would never have believed it of him. And, of course, Ashworth would have denied it—said I was hysterical. And you know what they do with ‘hysterical’ females, don’t you, Uncle? Bedlam is full of inconvenient, unwanted wives.”
“You could have told me, Steph.” When she simply stared at him silently, he said, “So, what happened that night? The night he died.”
“I pushed open the door and went inside. The library and dining room were dark, but a brace of candles was burning on a chest in the entrance hall, and I could see the glow of a lamp from the upper landing. I climbed the stairs to the first floor, but the drawing room and morning room were also dark, so I went up to the next floor. His bedchamber was ablaze with light.”
Her voice quivered, but she pushed on. “I honestly don’t know if I’d have had the courage to shoot him when the time came. I hope I would have. But in the end I never had the chance, because he was already dead.”
She paused. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she went on. “He was lying in the shadows cast by the hangings of the bed, so I didn’t realize he was dead until I’d drawn quite close to him.” She brought up her hands to cover her nose and mouth, then let them fall and set her jaw. “It was . . . a ghastly sight.”
“Yes, it was.”
Her eyes widened as she searched his face. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
She gave a little nod, as if he had only confirmed what she’d already suspected.
He said, “How did you come to be covered in blood, Stephanie? The clothes thrown into the Thames were yours, I take it?”
She nodded again. “I don’t know. It’s the oddest thing. I can remember walking up to the bed. I had the pistol in both hands, ready to shoot him. Then I realized . . . something was wrong. At first it made no sense. The candlelight was flickering over this strange, dark, wet sheen, and he was just lying there. I thought he was asleep. I remember saying his name—I wanted him to wake up and see me.” She gave another of those odd little expulsions of breath that was not really a laugh. “It seemed wrong somehow to kill him in his sleep. But then I realized he wasn’t sleeping; he was dead, and the dark gleam of wetness was his blood.” She swallowed hard. “So much blood.”
“What did you do then, Stephanie?”
“That’s the part I don’t remember very well. I think . . . I think I dropped the gun. I didn’t mean to. And then . . . I couldn’t find it. I suppose that’s how I came to be so covered in blood—looking for the gun.”
“But you did find it.”
“I did. And then I ran down the stairs and out of the house. I ran all the way home. I haven’t run like that since I was a child.”
“How did you keep from tracking blood across the carpet? You must have been standing in it, but there were no bloody shoeprints leading back to the door.”
“I took off my shoes and carried them. I don’t know how it occurred to me to do it, except that I didn’t want to leave any sign that I’d been there. I was terrified Ashworth’s valet would see me and
think I was the one who killed him.”
“Did you see Digby?”
“No.”
“If what you say is true, he was probably already dead.”
A bitter smile curled her lips. “‘If,’ Uncle?”
“What did you do then?”
“I told you. I came back here.”
“How did you manage to get in and out of Lindley House without any of the servants seeing you?”
“I crawled out a window in the dining room, and I came back the same way.”
“And then you bundled up your bloody clothes and threw them off Westminster Bridge?”
She nodded.
“With your abigail, Stephanie? Why the hell did you involve your woman?”
She stared at him bleakly. “I couldn’t go all the way to Westminster alone in the middle of the night. Wandering around Mayfair was terrifying enough. Besides, Elizabeth was waiting for me in the dining room, so she saw the blood all over me. At first, she thought it was mine, that I was hurt. It was her idea to throw everything away. She said she’d never be able to wash the clothes without the other servants seeing and asking questions.”
“And your shoes? Why weren’t they in the bundle with everything else?”
“I don’t know what happened to my shoes. By the time I reached Park Lane, they were gone. I must have dropped them without realizing it. I don’t know why I didn’t put them back on—I cut my feet dreadfully.”
“And the pistol? Did you lose that too?”
She shook her head. “We threw it in the Thames—but separately.” Her hands tightened into fists. “I should have tied it up in the clothes. Perhaps then the bundle would have sunk too quickly for that blasted wherryman to retrieve it.”
“Perhaps. But if it didn’t, he would have found it too. And the pistol would have been easily identified by Howard and Mercer’s. You’re lucky your modista didn’t identify the gown.”
“I had it made in Brighton last autumn.”
“Do any of the other servants know?”
“No. No one.”