BETRAYAL
in TIME
A Kendra Donovan Mystery
JULIE MCELWAIN
For Nikki and Shawn
In Memory of Margaret Leake—a true British lady
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgments
About the Author
BETRAYAL
in TIME
1
Edward Price almost caught the bugger, could actually feel the coarse wool of the boy’s raggedy coat skim across his fingertips as he reached out to snag a bone-thin arm. But the urchin evaded him with a twist of his narrow shoulders, and in a spurt of youthful energy, he sprinted across the cobblestone street, slick with sleet and snow, leaving Edward clutching only cold air.
“Oy!” he shouted. “Halt, thief!”
Even though his watchman duties wouldn’t begin for another eight hours, Edward pelted after the young criminal, annoyed that the boy had gained a sizeable lead already. A more seasoned watchman would most likely have let the brat go, he knew. But he was only two nights into his job—tonight would be his third—and Edward was still filled with the bright earnestness of a new recruit called upon to keep the peace in London Town. He could hardly look the other way when the bold little napper snatched an apple—never mind that it was shriveled and wormy—off the costermonger’s cart right in front of his very own peepers. And certainly not when the costermonger himself and at least a dozen witnesses had turned to fix their eyes on him, expecting him to do something.
“Stop! Stop, I say!” Edward bellowed, his gaze locked on the small figure running ahead. The thief dodged pedestrians and peddlers’ carts with the agility of someone who belonged in the city’s criminal class.
Even though he hadn’t yet reached his nineteenth year, Edward was less nimble. As he raced after the boy, he crashed into three wooden crates stacked on the pavement, having just been hauled off a wagon. He winced when they toppled and the slats cracked, and he had to dodge the potatoes, onions, and turnips spilling underfoot. The two burly men who’d been unloading the wagon stopped long enough to hurl curses after him. Edward gritted his teeth and ignored them—as well as the stitch that had begun to pulse in his side—and plowed on.
He was pretty sure that he was gaining on his quarry. Elation gave him a burst of speed. Edward smiled grimly when the thief tossed him a quick look over his shoulder, his eyes going wide. You’d better be afraid, brat.
As quick as a fox, the boy darted to the right, vanishing from the wider street into a narrow, twisting lane. Edward didn’t waste his breath—he didn’t have any to spare—on ordering the two men loitering outside a candlestick shop to try to capture the urchin, or on again demanding that the boy halt. Instead, he barreled after him, gasping when his boots hit a patch of ice crusted over the dirt road. Arms flapping, he managed to right himself before he fell on his arse.
Bleeding hell. He heard the two men laughing behind him, but he tightened his jaw and renewed his pursuit. The stitch in his side was beginning to feel like someone was jabbing him with a red-hot fire poker. Despite the temperature hovering near freezing, the exertion made him sweat. He could feel perspiration pool in the pits of his arms and slink uncomfortably down the base of his spine.
Still, he ran on. His gaze was fixed on the thief, a small shadow against the area’s crumbling buildings and broken cobblestones. Edward wasn’t sure exactly when it began to dawn on him that no one else seemed to be about. He’d chased the boy into one of London’s more derelict sections. A narrow, unkempt park of dead trees was in the center of the street, creating a poor man’s version of a square. Four- and five-story buildings rose up on either side of the street, the windows either boarded up or the windowpanes broken, the glass like jagged teeth. Snow drifted across steps and stoops, piled in shadowy corners, stained revolting yellows and browns. Even though it was still morning hours, the abandoned buildings cast deep bluish-gray shadows across the square. The back of Edward’s neck prickled with unease.
Bugger it. Edward slowed to an unsteady stop as he sucked in great gulps of cold air, ready to abandon the chase. He swallowed hard, his eyes flitting this way and that. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting someone in London, so it was peculiar to be in a section of the city that was as desolate and silent as this. The only sounds came from pigeons cooing from rooftop ledges, and curtains that fluttered and snapped in the breeze against empty window frames. And his own pounding footsteps and ragged breathing.
The thief glanced back at him, flashing a cocky grin before scampering up the steps of a building across the square and ducking through an open doorway.
Anger surged through Edward. The thief’s blatant insolence renewed his flagging spirits. His lungs were still burning something fierce and the stitch in his side had yet to subside, but he pushed himself forward into a half-running, half-loping gait. A moment later, he was up the short flight of stairs and clearing the doorway. Only when he was through the door did he register that the building was a Catholic church, long since abandoned. The vestibule was barren, with two water fonts carved into the granite walls left dry and filled with spider webs. Puddles, now iced over, spread across the entrance’s flagstone floor.
Chest heaving, Edward slammed through the swinging doors, hinges shrieking, into the nave of the church. Like the vestibule, the nave was empty of its popery trappings. The pews and wall plaques had been removed, the sanctuary stripped bare. A chorus of pigeons cooed from up high, where the birds had made nests in the vaulted ceiling niches. Weak light came through the stained-glass lancet windows, and rainbows fell across the stone tiles of the floor, which was crusted white in places with dried pigeon droppings.
Edward only glanced at the surroundings, as his attention was on the thief. Surprise and triumph flitted through him when he approached his quarry, and saw that the boy had come to a standstill in the middle of the room. The boy looked around, and Edward noticed that the bold smile was gone. Now his small face was pinched, his eyes round with something approaching horror. Still, it never occurred to Edward that the boy’s horror wasn’t about his imminent capture until his gaze dropped to where the scamp stood.
“Good God . . .” Edward came to a stumbling halt, his breath catching painfully in his throat.
For just a moment, he thought that maybe the wretch lying on
the floor was a wax sculpture, like the ones Marie Tussaud used in her traveling exhibits, maybe placed here by schoolboy pranksters. Except who was around to fool?
The man was naked, his flesh nearly blue, his body hair shimmering silver with frost. Edward was no stranger to death. Two nights ago, his first night as a watchman, he’d been the one to discover a poor sod who’d frozen to death huddled outside a coffee shop, across the street from St. Paul’s.
But this . . . this . . .
Edward’s shocked gaze traveled across the dead man’s face, which was swollen and appeared to be twisted into a silent scream. The watchman tried and failed to suppress a shudder.
Someone had cut out the old man’s tongue.
2
The church had probably been beautiful at one time, with its flowing arches, marble columns, and delicate workmanship. But now it had a hollowed-out feeling, Sam Kelly thought, like someone had scooped out its guts, the pews, altar, religious statues, and candles all gone. The church and its congregation had most likely fled these bleak streets for the more prosperous sections of London. Or, rather, for neighborhoods that were more Irish, and, therefore, more Catholic. Sam understood. As the son of Irish immigrants, he’d spent his childhood in those streets and squares that echoed with cheerful brogue and drunken bellows, the latter of which could either end in violent fisticuffs or laughter and friendly backslaps.
“By God, I think it’s colder in here than outside,” complained his companion, Dr. Ethan Munroe, as he blew a warm puff of air into his cupped hands. Though they should have been warm enough, encased as they were in brown kid leather gloves.
Sam shot a sideways glance at Munroe as they entered the space. He was a big man, although anyone above five feet, ten inches seemed big to Sam, who barely scraped the five-six mark. At least a decade older than Sam’s forty-one years, the doctor was blessed with a thick silvery mane that he wore tied back into a queue, a style more suited to the turn of the century than the more modern age of 1816. Sam had always thought it was an odd, old-fashioned quirk for an enlightened man like Munroe, who’d been trained in the prestigious schools of Edinburgh to become a doctor. Why he’d abandoned that respected profession to work as a lowly sawbones and then an anatomist—a profession not even acknowledged by Polite Society—Sam would never understand. But he was grateful. As a Bow Street Runner, Sam had called upon the doctor’s services in more than one murder investigation.
Like now. Sam’s gaze skimmed across the dead man lying on the floor to fasten on the four men huddled together about five paces away from the body. Sam recognized three of the men as constables. The fourth man—tall, chubby, and ridiculously young, with a mop of carrot-colored hair—was a stranger. But it was his gaze that swung toward Sam and Munroe, and he was the one who stepped forward, raising his hand with the puffed-up authority of a new recruit. He ordered, “Hold!”
Sam was already yanking out his baton, with its distinctive gold tip, which identified him as a Bow Street man. “Sam Kelly. This is Dr. Munroe,” he said, thrusting the baton back into the deep pockets of his greatcoat as they approached the circle of men.
“Kelly,” said Dick Carter with a nod. He was as short as Sam, but round, and as dark as a Spaniard. His black eyes glinted with amusement. “Ye’re bringin’ yer own sawbones ter crime scenes these days?”
“Dr. Munroe and I were at the Pig & Sail breaking our fast when I got word. Who found the body?”
Sam wasn’t surprised when the redheaded lad spoke up.
“I did,” he said.
Sam eyed him. “And who are you?”
“Edward Price.” His chest swelled slightly. “Watchman.”
“You’re a bit early for your duties, ain’t you?”
Edward frowned. “I was chasing a thief. Swiped an apple in front of me, as bold as you please.”
“Where is he?” asked Sam. He didn’t bother looking around. He knew the church was empty except for the six of them. And the dead man.
“The little guttersnipe got away when I was flaggin’ down help. But I’ve seen him about. Snake’s his name—”
Sam couldn’t control his start of surprise. “Snake.”
“Aye. Not his real name, mind you—”
“I know who Snake is,” Sam said, cutting off the watchman. In fact, the Bow Street Runner had come into contact with the young scamp the previous year, when Alec Morgan, the Marquis of Sutcliffe, had been accused of murdering his former mistress, Lady Dover.
“You didn’t see nothin’?” asked Sam. He had light brown eyes, so light that they appeared gold, but there was nothing soft about them as he fixed his gaze on Edward Price.
“Nay.” Edward swallowed hard enough to cause his Adam’s apple to click. As though he couldn’t stop himself, he slid his gaze back to the body. “I found him just like that. Why’d anyone want to do that ter his tongue?”
Sam grunted, but ignored the question. He was going on twenty years as a Bow Street Runner, and the profession had given him a decidedly jaundiced view of humanity. Cutting out someone’s tongue was odd, but not the strangest thing he’d witnessed.
He shifted his attention back to the corpse, studying the naked body. He wondered if some scavenger had stolen his clothes after the man was dead, or if the fiend who’d killed him had wanted the victim to be found naked as the day he was born. And if the killer had stripped him—or forced the man to strip before death—why? What was the point of his nakedness?
The body looked frozen. Probably was frozen, given the cold temperatures inside the church. Sam let his gaze travel from the dead man’s chest up to the throat, ghost-pale except for the nasty red abrasion that blazed across it. Obviously strangulation. Sam knew that would account for the man’s swollen, distorted face, and the broken capillaries around the eyes.
But it wouldn’t account for the mutilated mouth. Cutting out the poor wretch’s tongue would require a sharp blade. Christ. The lad asked the right question, he decided. Who would do that? What kind of madman were they dealing with?
Maybe it was that savagery that had been done to the dead man, or maybe it was the bloated features, but it took Sam a full minute to realize that he actually recognized the victim.
“God’s teeth.” Only years of experience kept him from giving a startled jolt. “Do you know who that is?”
“Yes.” Munroe was squatting down to examine the corpse more closely. His black brows, a distinctive contrast from his silver hair, collided in a deep frown. Slowly, he raised his gaze to meet Sam’s eyes. Sam realized the doctor had pinched his round gold wire spectacles onto the bridge of his hawklike nose. Behind the lenses, Sam could see that Munroe’s intelligent gray eyes reflected his own awareness. And wariness.
“Sir Giles Holbrooke,” Munroe identified.
“Shit,” one of the other men muttered.
Munroe nodded at the man who’d issued the profanity, his expression grim. “Former secretary of state of foreign affairs, one-time undersecretary for the Home Department. I believe he is—was—a member of the Privy Council advising the monarchy . . . and by all accounts, a close friend to our future king, the Prince Regent.”
Sam couldn’t shake his sense of disquiet as he followed Munroe down the stairs to the autopsy chamber. That particular room was in the basement of the doctor’s anatomy school, which he’d opened more than two years ago in Covent Garden. Their boots thudded against the stone steps. Even though he’d descended these stairs to the subterranean chamber countless times before, Sam couldn’t control the spasm of distaste as cold air wafted up, brushing against his cheeks like spider webs. Around them, wall torches flickered, causing the thick ebony shadows in the passageway to weave and dodge on the walls, like a pugilist match from the underworld.
A grim atmosphere certainly, and yet it had nothing to do with why Sam’s gut was churning now. That, he knew, had everything to do with the man lying on the autopsy table, awaiting Munroe’s ministrations. Sir Giles’s murder would draw the atten
tion of Polite Society, Whitehall, and possibly even the Prince Regent himself. The idea of presenting himself to the future king of England or one of his palace emissaries to explain that Sir Giles had cocked up his toes with his tongue cut out, naked in what had been a church—a Catholic church, for Christ’s sake—made Sam’s blood run cold.
Of course, it probably wouldn’t come to that. Sir Nathaniel Conant, the chief magistrate of Bow Street, would most likely become involved before any of that. Bow Street and the Home Office had a very close connection, often working in tandem on behalf of king and country. Sam would report his findings to Sir Nathaniel, and Sir Nathaniel would be the one to inform the home secretary, Lord Sidmouth, about the investigation. Lord Sidmouth would then be the liaison to the Prince Regent and his court.
Sam bit his lip to stifle the put-upon sigh that threatened to burst forth. The murder of a man like Sir Giles could easily become a political firestorm.
Munroe shot him a shrewd glance as they walked into the autopsy chamber. But he offered no commiserating words in response to Sam’s sigh; his attention was immediately claimed by the cadaver on his table. Mr. Barts, Munroe’s pallid, weak-chinned apprentice, was already inside the room, lighting lanterns and candles to chase away the gloom.
“’Tis an ignominious end for a man such as Sir Giles,” Munroe finally said, removing his gloves and unbuttoning his greatcoat.
“Perhaps that was the point,” Sam murmured. “Perhaps.”
The doctor tossed his greatcoat on one of the counters that ran the length of a wall, and peeled off his dark gray jacket, leaving him in white shirt, white cravat, and brown tweed waistcoat over black pantaloons and boots. He slipped on the leather apron that he always wore to protect his clothes from the unexpected sprays of bodily fluids. Across the room, Mr. Barts lit two more lanterns, carrying them over to the autopsy table. As Sam watched, he set one down, and lifted the other to attach it to the wheel-like structure centered above the autopsy table. It was a clever contraption that Munroe had designed himself, to infuse the area with light without having wax drip on the corpse below.
Betrayal in Time Page 1