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

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian said, “Did you see Digby again the night of the murder? After he gave you the message to take to Park Lane, I mean.”

  Ben shook his head. “I didn’t go back that night. Had no reason to.”

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  The question seemed to take the boy by surprise. “Digby? How would I know?” A faintly malicious gleam of amusement lit up his dark brown eyes. “Heard he was found stripped to the skin in that alley up by Chesterfield House. He wouldn’t have liked that. He wouldn’t have liked that at all. Proud and fussy, he was.”

  “Do you have any idea why the killer would take Digby’s clothes?”

  “What makes you think the killer done that? As long as they say he was left layin’ there, I reckon somebody musta come along, found him, and took the clothes to sell. He was always a natty dresser, Digby.”

  It was a simple explanation that for some reason had never occurred to any of them, but it made sense. Even if the back of the valet’s shirt, waistcoat, and coat had been bloody and shredded, their fine material would still have been worth a great deal to that desperate army of poor men, women, and children who scoured the streets for rags, bones, and dog droppings.

  Sebastian said, “Why did you run away from Curzon Street?”

  “Why d’ye think?”

  “You know who killed Ashworth?”

  The boy shook his head slowly from side to side, but Sebastian saw his sun-darkened throat work as he swallowed.

  “Then what made you run, Ben?”

  “I seen him,” said the boy, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Who?”

  “That old man. The Marquis. He come to Curzon Street.”

  “You mean the morning after Ashworth’s murder?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And that frightened you? Why?”

  “I dunno. It was jist . . .”

  “Just—what?”

  “Somethin’ I seen in his eyes. He was gettin’ outta his carriage, and he looked over and saw me. Gave me the creepy-jeepies, it did. I learned a long time ago to trust me creepy-jeepies. I mean, he might be an old man, but he’s still Ashworth’s da, ain’t he? And that Viscount, he was like one o’ them things the vicar used to preach to us about on Sundays when I was little—you know, them things you think look like men, but they’ve really got shaggy hair and hooves, or maybe claws and wings like bats? They’re always lurkin’ in the shadows, tryin’ to hurt folks. That was Ashworth, all right.”

  “You mean, demons?”

  Ben gave a faint shiver that he tried to suppress. “Aye. That’s it. You’d look at that lord, and he seemed all rich and handsome-like. But underneath it all, he was really ugly and evil. A demon.”

  Chapter 46

  The Marquis of Lindley was taking his afternoon constitutional around Hyde Park when Sebastian fell into step beside him. The old man’s gait was slow but steady, his face only faintly flushed by the exertion.

  “If I might have a word with you, my lord?” said Sebastian.

  A spasm that looked like hope flashed across the old man’s features. “Yes, of course. Have you discovered something that will lead to the arrest of my son’s killer?”

  “Not exactly. But I have learned that Ashworth’s valet used to send messages to you via one of the neighborhood’s crossing sweeps. I’m wondering why you didn’t tell me that.”

  Lindley was silent for a moment, his aged, lined face heavy with sadness. “Why? It’s rather obvious, isn’t it? It’s not something I’m proud of—paying my son’s valet to keep an eye on his employer and send me periodic reports.”

  “He sent you a report the night your son was killed?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did, yes. But nothing of any importance, unfortunately.”

  “May I see it?”

  “Sorry, I never kept them. I had no desire to have such a record of my son’s foibles fall into anyone else’s hands.”

  “You knew what your son was like?”

  Something painful glittered in the old man’s eyes, something hidden by quickly lowered lids. “I knew he gambled too much, drank too much, even experimented with opium. And I knew his sexual tastes were . . . Let’s just call them unorthodox, shall we?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  Lindley’s jaw hardened, his mouth pressing into a tight, pained line. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. “I’d hoped marriage and a family might settle him down. Perhaps in time it would have done so. But now we’ll never know.”

  Sebastian gazed across the park’s wide, open swath of grassland toward the shimmering waters of the Serpentine in the distance. “Was there anything in the reports from your son’s valet that might give some hint as to what happened?”

  “No. Nothing. If there were, I would have told you.”

  Sebastian wasn’t so sure about that. But all he said was “I wonder, would it be possible for me to have another look inside the Curzon Street house?”

  The Marquis stumbled, so that Sebastian had to put out a hand to steady him. “Whatever for? Bow Street went over everything.”

  “They might have missed something.”

  Lindley tugged at his lower lip with a thumb and forefinger. “Well . . . I’m in the process of closing the place up, you know. I’ve dismissed most of the staff except for Fullerton and a couple of housemaids I’m having drape everything in holland covers. But perhaps we could set up something next week. I’ll let you know. I’d like to be there myself. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes, of course. Do let me know.” Sebastian started to turn away, then paused to look back and say, “By the way, when did you start paying Digby to report to you?”

  “A year, perhaps a year and a bit ago. No longer.”

  It was a lie, of course. Ben King said he’d been carrying Digby’s messages to Park Lane for more than four years. It could mean nothing—a simple reluctance on the old man’s part to admit how long he’d been watching his son’s activities. But Sebastian suspected it was more than that. Far more.

  “I see. Thank you, my lord.” Sebastian touched his hand to his hat. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything more.”

  He was aware of the old Marquis watching him as he walked toward his waiting curricle. And he wondered whether the chill that ran up his spine despite the warmth of the spring day would qualify as one of young Ben King’s “creepy-jeepies.”

  * * *

  After returning to his curricle, Sebastian sat for a time, his thoughts on the often tense, painful relations that could develop between fathers and sons. He considered the ways in which sons and fathers could differ, and the many ways in which they were sometimes startlingly similar.

  Then he turned his horses toward Bethnal Green.

  Bethnal Green was a wretched, impoverished hamlet on the eastern outskirts of London, an area of French weavers and market gardens, of brickfields and almshouses and lunatic asylums. Not too many years ago, Ashworth and his friend Sir Francis Rowe had rented a modest brick house there. The things they’d done in that house still haunted Sebastian’s dreams.

  He’d decided to drive out to Bethnal Green because he wanted to talk to an old man named Corky Baldoon. Fifty years before, in the days of the present Marquis of Lindley’s father, Baldoon had been a farmer on one of the Marquis’s estates down in Devon. But then the old Marquis and his son had pushed an Enclosure Act through Parliament, stripping Baldoon and others like him of their land and ancient common rights. That winter, Baldoon’s wife and two of his children died in the poorhouse, and Baldoon drifted up to London.

  Sebastian knew Baldoon’s opinion of Lindley was colored by the cruelties of those days. But he suspected the former tenant farmer’s assessment of the nobleman was probably more accurate than that of those who knew Lindley only as a suave, gently smiling figure who m
oved sedately through London’s best drawing rooms and gentlemen’s clubs.

  Corky Baldoon was feeding chickens in his dusty yard when Sebastian drew up his curricle before the old man’s ramshackle cottage and hopped down. “I remember you,” said Corky, his mouth pulling into a toothless grin. A white-haired, bony old man with bowed legs, he had pale, nearly lashless eyes and surprisingly nimble liver-spotted hands. The smile faded. “Yer the feller was interested in the Marquis of Lindley, God rot his soul forever.”

  “I’m still interested in him,” said Sebastian, pausing out of pecking reach of the hens.

  Baldoon cast a handful of grain to his chickens. “Heard that son o’ his got hisself kilt the other day.”

  “Yes.”

  “That why yer here?”

  “It is, actually. Most people think of the Marquis of Lindley as a charming, gentle old man. But as I recall, you had a somewhat different opinion.”

  Baldoon kept his gaze on the chickens squawking and jostling around his scuffed boots. “Oh, he was always a smooth one, no doubt about that. Smiling and quiet-spoken and gentle-sounding as he could be. But he was a mean son of a bitch, for all that. Just like his da, the Marquis before him.”

  “Could he kill, do you think?”

  Baldoon turned his bucket upside down and slapped the bottom, emptying the last of the grain. “Saw him kill, once. It was just a few days after he and his da posted their bloody Enclosure Act on the church door. One of the cottagers, a fellow by the name of Hugh Platt, he stopped his young lordship as he was riding through the village. Closed his fist around his lordship’s bridle and called him all sorts of names. Said the bastard and his da weren’t gonna get away with what they was tryin’ to do. Lindley—or Ashworth, as he was then—pulled out a pistol and shot Hugh in the face, just as cool as you please.” Baldoon sniffed. “Nobody never did nothin’ about it, of course. ‘Self-defense,’ they called it, on account of Hugh grabbing his lordship’s bridle. But it weren’t self-defense. All Hugh done was challenge his high-and-mighty lordship, and he paid for it with his life.”

  Baldoon paused, his eyes becoming unfocused as his thoughts drifted in the past. Then he glanced over at Sebastian. “That answer yer question?”

  “It does, yes. Thank you.”

  * * *

  On the way back to Brook Street, Sebastian swung by Tower Hill, where he found Alexi Sauvage spreading a salve on an old woman’s burned arm.

  “Paul is at St. Bartholomew’s,” said Alexi, barely throwing Sebastian a glance.

  “Actually, you’re the one I wanted to see. You said foxglove can create a kind of stupor. Is it used for anything? Anything medicinal, I mean.”

  “It is, yes. An extract is prescribed for the heart. It can be amazingly effective.” She looked up then, her eyes narrowing. “You have a suspect with heart problems?”

  “I do, indeed.”

  * * *

  He went next to Bow Street but had to track Sir Henry Lovejoy from the Public Office to the Brown Bear before finally running him down in a chandler’s just off Covent Garden.

  “My lord,” said the magistrate, looking up in surprise. “If you’d sent word, I would gladly have come by Brook Street—”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Sebastian. “Just one quick question. I’ve been thinking about the knife that was used to murder Ashworth. If the killer found the weapon in the Viscount’s bedroom, it suggests a crime of desperation, or at least opportunity. But if the killer brought the knife with him—or her—then we’d know we were dealing with a level of premeditation that completely shifts our understanding of what happened that night.”

  “Yes,” said Lovejoy with a faint frown.

  “So my question is: Did your constables find a cache of knives when they searched Ashworth’s bedchamber?”

  “No. But then, we were never able to conduct more than a cursory search of the premises before the Marquis put a halt to our efforts.”

  “He did?”

  “Mmm. Said it was an unnecessary invasion of his son’s privacy and a waste of time—time that could be better employed elsewhere. My lads had only searched perhaps half the chamber when they were forced to leave.”

  “You didn’t find that curious?”

  “Not really, no. The lads had just come across Ashworth’s collection of bonds and whips. I could understand a father’s reluctance to allow us to discover more evidence of his son’s depravity.”

  “That is one explanation,” said Sebastian.

  Lovejoy looked at him in surprise. “You’re suggesting there’s another?”

  * * *

  “You think Lindley killed Ashworth?” said Hero, who was kneeling on the nursery floor with Simon and his blocks when Sebastian came upon her. “His only surviving son? But . . . why?”

  Sebastian hunkered down beside his wife and child. “He told me at Ashworth’s inquest that he has dedicated his life to protecting the Ledger name and expanding the estates entrusted to him by his own father, with the aim of someday passing that proud inheritance on to his son. The problem is, between his nasty sexual tastes and his gambling habits, Ashworth was a threat to both the honor of the family name and the family’s wealth.”

  Hero was silent for a moment, her arms creeping around Simon to hold him so close, the boy fussed and she had to let him go. “Could Lindley have known about the houses in Bethnal Green and Clerkenwell?”

  “With Digby sending him regular reports for the last four-plus years? Oh, he knew, all right. In fact, he’s known what his son was like for a long time. Remember the whispers about Ashworth and Rowe’s exploits up in Cambridge—the ones Lindley paid to keep quiet?”

  “But to kill his own son?” She watched Simon begin to load his wooden blocks into a bin with studied care. “It’s . . . unthinkable.”

  “For you or me, yes. For someone like Lindley? Perhaps not.”

  “But why now? Why kill Ashworth now if he’s known what his son was like for the past fifteen or more years?”

  “Because, thanks to Stephanie, he finally has another heir. Two, in fact.”

  “Dear God,” she said softly. “It makes an awful kind of sense.”

  “It does, indeed.”

  “You think he’s been planning this? That it’s why he pushed Ashworth to marry and beget an heir? So he could kill him?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Surely no one could be so diabolical.”

  “This is Ashworth’s father, remember.”

  She was silent for a moment. Thoughtful. “Could Digby have been in on Ashworth’s murder?”

  “He must have been. The events of that evening were very carefully timed and orchestrated. I suspect Lindley arranged to have Digby send word the next time Ashworth was ‘entertaining’ one of his filles publiques.”

  “So it was Lindley who came to the door when Ashworth was plying Sissy Jordan with wine and charm?”

  “I think so. By that point, the old butler and the rest of the servants had retired to their rooms for the night—and they’d learned long ago to ignore any strange sounds they might hear coming from below. So the only person around at that point was Digby, who showed his lordship to the library and then went upstairs to tell the Viscount that his father was there wanting to see him.”

  “That’s why Ashworth was annoyed but went down anyway,” Hero said quietly. “His father was the one person he didn’t dare refuse to see.”

  Sebastian nodded. “Ashworth told the girl he’d be right back. But Digby went to the drawing room, paid her off, and told her to leave. Meanwhile, in the library, Lindley probably poured his son a brandy and, unless I am mistaken, added something to the drink.”

  “Would he have that kind of knowledge?”

  “Stephanie told me he has a heart condition. I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover someone pre
scribed him a tincture of foxglove—and warned him of the dangers of accidentally overdosing with it.”

  “So then what?”

  “The way I see it, Ashworth begins to feel unwell. He probably asks his father to ring for Digby. But Digby doesn’t come, so Lindley himself offers to help his son up the stairs and into bed.”

  “At which point Ashworth passed out?”

  “Or was too incoherent to understand what was happening. With his son essentially unconscious, Lindley stabbed him—”

  “Over and over again? Why?”

  “Perhaps he wanted to be certain Ashworth was dead. Or perhaps he wanted to make it look as if the killer were caught up in a passionate frenzy. Once Ashworth was dead, Lindley must have searched the room for his son’s erotic paraphernalia, tied him up, and scattered his clothes in a line from the door to the bed to make it look as if they’d been torn off in the heat of sexual desire. Presumably he also planted the woman’s stocking under the bed. That was an inspired touch.”

  “He brought it with him? And the knife too? It was all that carefully planned?”

  “It had to have been. That room was an elaborate tableau of deliberate misdirection—a stage set. And I fell for it.”

  “Not entirely,” said Hero. “You noticed that the knots in the cords hadn’t been pulled as tightly as they would have been by a man desperately straining against his bonds.”

  “Yes. But there were other explanations for that.”

  “So then what?” she said quietly as Simon began taking his blocks out of the bin again.

  “I suspect Lindley cleaned himself up with Digby’s help, then asked the valet to walk him home. Park Lane isn’t far, and despite his age and failing health, the Marquis takes a morning and afternoon constitutional in the park, so he’s surely capable of it. At some point between Ashworth’s house and the alley where he was found, the valet must have divulged Sissy Jordan’s name and direction to Lindley. For all we know, Lindley was annoyed with the man for paying the girl off. At any rate, once he had the information he needed, Lindley killed him.”