Who cries for the lost, p.13
Who Cries for the Lost, page 13
“It worked, didn’t it? No one knows who the man is.”
“Yes. Except why hasn’t this second victim been reported missing?”
“That’s the part that doesn’t fit either scenario—either the one with a sick, random killer or the one in which the second killing is linked to the first by something we don’t understand because we don’t know who he is.”
Hero pressed her forehead to his, her warm breath mingling with his. She said, “I keep coming back to the fact that Sedgewick told Isabella about Fouché’s list—but he didn’t tell anyone else. What if someone in the government—or one of our allies—thought he might sell or somehow betray the contents of the official correspondence he’d been dispatched to bring back?”
He met her troubled gaze. “Someone like Jarvis, you mean?”
“Well, I can’t see either Castlereagh or Bathurst ordering one of their own men killed. But I wouldn’t put it past Jarvis.”
“Neither would I,” Sebastian admitted. “Although if that were true, I wouldn’t have expected him to admit so freely that he didn’t trust Sedgewick’s discretion.”
“There is that,” she said with a wry smile. “In which case, if this isn’t simply the work of either a cuckolded husband or a madman, that leaves our dear allies the Bourbons.”
“Or their enemy, Napoléon,” he reminded her.
Or someone with a reason to worry about the names on that list. Someone like Kat Boleyn or Hendon. Neither of them said it, but the reality of it hovered in the air between them.
He said, “I think I need to have another conversation with the Weird Sisters.”
“Oh, Lord. In the daylight this time, please?”
He laughed softly and kissed her warm, soft mouth. “If you think it will help.”
Chapter 24
Friday, 16 June
Paul Gibson stood in the midst of Alexi’s garden, his arms spread wide at his sides. It was the hour just before dawn, the vast city around him still quiet with sleep, the air cool against his hot face.
He smiled, feeling the warmth and relaxation spreading slowly through his body. It was like a balmy breeze on a sunny day or the rush of euphoric peace that comes in the moments after a man has pleasured a woman. It was heaven on earth.
He tipped back his head, eyes blinking at the universe of stars that whirled hazily above as he let himself sink deeper and deeper into that peaceful, pain-free place that beckoned like a calm refuge. He heard a door open behind him, but it only registered on the periphery of his consciousness, so that Alexi’s voice came to him as if from out of a dream.
“You never finished the last autopsy, did you?”
He turned toward her, moving slowly, as if he were under warm water. “I can do it today.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.”
He licked his dry lips and gave a faint shake of his head. A part of him knew he should worry. Worry about the work that lay unfinished, worry about Alexi leaving him, worry about the looming menace of the investigation into Sedgewick’s death that threatened them both. But why worry? Everything was going to be all right.
For a moment he was aware of a distant, roaring fear that it wasn’t going to be all right, that he and Alexi were both in grave danger. But then the fear receded beneath another wave of warmth and the stars above disappeared from sight.
* * *
The sun rose on a cloudy day, with a fetid, oppressive atmosphere that seemed to press down on the rain-soaked city, the air heavy with the fecund odors of damp coal smoke, manure, and old, dank stone.
In the early-morning light, the narrow, wretched streets of St. Giles were populated mainly by ragged costermongers and an assortment of scavengers picking through the refuse left from the previous night. Pushing open the door to the Weird Sisters’ shop in Seven Dials, Sebastian found an unknown woman behind the counter, her head bowed as she read the newspaper she had spread open there. She was younger than the woman he’d seen here before, tall and slender, with rich tawny skin, an elegant long neck, and a thick mass of tight dark curls that cascaded around her shoulders.
“You must be Rowena,” he said, closing the warped door behind him.
She straightened slowly, her face unreadable. “Ah, it’s his lordship, back again. Sibil told us about you.”
“She did? What did she tell you?”
“I told them you’re trouble,” said Sibil Wilde, coming through the low doorway at the back of the room. Today she wore a Tudor-style gown of a rich green silk, with fitted sleeves and a kirtle bodice with a square neckline edged in petite white lace.
His gaze met hers. “Am I? Why?”
“You know why.”
He gave a faint shake of his head. “I saw you at Drury Lane once; you were playing Ophelia. It was an amazing performance. I’ve never forgotten it.”
She frowned. “How old were you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Huh. That was a long time ago.” She glanced tellingly at Rowena, then said to him, “Follow me.”
She led him to the same small, opulently furnished room he’d seen before, although this time the cloth on the round table was gold and a deck of cards already rested before the tall chair facing the door.
He walked around the table to pick up the cards and fan them open in his hands. It was a Marseilles deck, an Italian version of the tarot that had been popular in France for hundreds of years. “It’s an interesting occupation for a woman with your talents—reading cards and studying natal charts, I mean.”
Her nostrils flared on a quick intake of air. “I am very good at what I do. Or were you referring to my acting talents? What precisely would you have had me do after someone did this to me?” One hand flashed up to touch her scarred face. “Hmm? Dwindle into some pitiful wardrobe mistress, condemned to stand in the shadows and watch while other women play the roles I once loved? Or perhaps become a madam, finding protectors for the young women who have no real hope of ever succeeding on the boards?”
“Actually, I hear you do that, too.”
That obviously surprised her. But then she huffed a soft laugh and twitched one shoulder in a shrug. “Men have appetites. I help them find the women to fill them.”
“Is that why Sedgewick came here?”
“Hardly. From what I hear, he had more than enough success filling his own appetites. I told you before: He came for the readings.”
He closed the deck of cards, then cut it in two. “So he believed in the cards?”
She watched him shuffle the deck. “I don’t know if he believed in them, or if he was simply fascinated by the process. Does it matter?”
Sebastian cut the deck again, then turned over the first card. It was the nine of swords. “I was attacked by two men after I left here the other night. One of them was obviously French-born; the other didn’t speak, but he could make a good living exhibiting himself at the local fairs as a giant. You wouldn’t happen to be familiar with them, would you?”
“I did tell you it’s a rough neighborhood.”
“You did. Except the men who attacked me weren’t after my purse; they were delivering a message—a warning, actually—to stop asking questions.”
“A warning you don’t appear to be heeding.”
He turned over the next card: the four of cups.
She said, “Are you accusing me of sending them after you?”
“The possibility did cross my mind.”
“If I had a message for you, I could have delivered it myself.”
“Perhaps.” He turned over the eight of swords. “I hear you collect information to send to Artois. That you were once his lover and you still work for him.”
“Now, where did you hear that?”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in a slight smile. “The implication was that your interest in Sedgewick—or should I say Artois’s interest?—might have led to his death.”
“You’ve surely discovered by now how Sedgewick amused himself when he wasn’t wooing his friends’ wives into his bed. Everyone from the Prince Regent and Lord Jarvis to their minions in Downing Street wants to see the Bourbons restored in Paris; why would Artois harm someone who was working with them toward that end?”
Sebastian turned over another card: the two of swords. “I don’t know. If I had it figured out, I wouldn’t be here.”
She didn’t smile. “Perhaps you should be directing your inquiries toward one of Napoléon’s creatures in London.”
“Now, there’s an interesting idea. Do you have any names to suggest?”
“Me? I only tell fortunes.”
“Of course.” He laid one last card on top of the others, only facedown this time, then set the deck on the table and turned toward the door.
“Did they ever discover the identity of the man found without a head?” she asked, stopping him.
He paused to look back at her. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Suggestive, don’t you think?”
“Is it? Do you have any idea who he might be? Perhaps you could try reading his cards. It might tell you something.”
“Not really. We already know how his story ends.” Reaching out, she turned over Sebastian’s last card. It was the ten of swords. She stared at it a moment, then looked up. “Who were you reading for?”
“No one. I was simply turning over cards.”
She gave a faint shake of her head. “You had a question in your mind. The cards knew, even if you did not.”
Chapter 25
Iwas wonderin’ when ye’d be gettin’ back,” said Tom when Sebastian walked through the slowly awakening streets of St. Giles to where he’d left his tiger with the curricle on Long Acre.
Sebastian leapt up to gather his reins, then glanced back at the boy. “Never tell me you were concerned?”
The tiger pursed his lips and looked away to where a baker’s lad was leaning against the wall of a carriage maker’s, his load of hot buns tilting dangerously as he worked to shorten the strap holding the tray around his neck. “I was jist . . . wonderin’.”
“Huh,” said Sebastian.
He drove next to Paul Gibson’s surgery on Tower Hill, hoping to learn the results of the final autopsy on the headless, handless corpse dragged from the Thames. But he arrived to find the surgery locked, and his knock on the house’s unlatched front door was met with only silence.
He pushed on the door, the unoiled hinges giving a faint creak as the ancient wooden panels swung inward a few inches, then stopped. “Gibson? Anyone here? Madame Sauvage?”
Silence.
Sebastian pushed the door open wider. “Gibson?”
His own voice echoed back to him.
His hand tightening on his sword stick, he stepped inside, his footsteps light on the stone-flagged passage that led to the back of the old house. At the low doorway to the parlor he stopped, his hand clenching again on his sword stick.
Although it was not cold, a fire had been kindled on the hearth. Dressed only in his breeches and a rumpled shirt that hung open at the neck, Gibson half sat, half lay in one of the worn armchairs beside it, his gray-threaded dark hair plastered to his head with sweat, his chin sunk to his chest as he stared blankly at the flames before him. His face was gaunt and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his skin a sickly grayish yellow.
“You look like hell,” said Sebastian, pausing in the doorway.
The Irishman looked up, his pupils so tiny as to be nearly nonexistent. “Devlin?” He struggled to push himself up straighter. “Come in. Have a seat. Pour yourself a brandy.” He turned his head, his eyes narrowing as he searched the room. “There must be some around here somewhere.”
Sebastian stayed where he was. “Did you ever finish the autopsy on the headless man?”
Gibson shook his head from side to side, the features of his face slack, his eyes unfocused. “No. But Alexi did.”
“Where is she now?”
“In her garden. She . . .” He paused to draw a deep, shaky breath. “She doesn’t like it when I get like this.”
So why do you do it? Sebastian wanted to say. He wanted to grab his friend by the shirtfront, haul him up out of his chair, shake him and shout at him and find a way, somehow, to stop him from destroying himself like this. Instead, he turned on his heel and walked out of the house into the windblown morning. The high white clouds were breaking up, allowing fitful gleams of sunshine to chase one another across the dew-glistened beds of roses and honeysuckle and herbs. Alexi Sauvage knelt in a bed of mint near the closed door to the stone outbuilding. She was wearing an old gray gown with a broad-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin by a fading blue ribbon to keep the wind from taking it off, and had her hands deep in the dirt, pulling weeds. She looked up when he paused on the stoop, then settled back on her heels, one hand coming up to shove a stray lock of hair from her eyes with the back of her curled wrist.
“You saw him?” she said as he came up to her.
He was aware of the anger and frustration thrumming through him, along with a sense of helplessness that he didn’t quite know how to handle. “You told me once that there’s something you can do that might rid him of his phantom pains so that he can get off that bloody opium. Why haven’t you done it?”
“Why?” Her hand flashed toward the house in a quick, angry gesture. “Why don’t you ask him why he refuses to let me even try to help him?”
Sebastian looked away, toward the high wall at the base of the yard and the simple stone grotto she had erected for the bones she was collecting from this ground. He blew out a long, painful breath. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
He saw a glitter of what might have been unshed tears in her eyes. But she simply nodded, swallowed hard, and went back to her weeding.
He said, “Gibson tells me you finished the autopsy on the headless man.”
She kept her attention on her task. “I did, yes.”
“Did you find anything? Anything at all that might help identify him?”
“Not really. He was a Caucasian male much closer to forty than fifty. At one time he’d led a more active life, but of late his days had been filled with little physical exertion beyond enjoying his dinner and a good bottle of brandy. But we already knew that, didn’t we?”
“Any idea how he died?”
“No. He was healthy, and there’s no sign of any wound on the part of him that we have. Which means he could have been shot in the face, bashed in the head, or . . .” She paused.
“Or what?”
“Or decapitated while still alive.”
Jesus, thought Sebastian. “No scars anywhere on his body?”
“No. No scars, no birthmarks, no noticeable moles.”
“I wonder what his hands might have revealed.”
She looked up. “You think that’s why the hands were cut off? Because they could have helped identify him?”
“I can’t come up with any other reason.” Beyond the history of what we used to do to people after we tortured them into saying they were witches or werewolves, he thought, but he kept that to himself. “Can you?”
Her gaze drifted away, to a sprawling, ancient rosebush awash in fist-sized, gloriously scented pink blooms, but he did not think she was really seeing it. “The hands are a particularly human part of our bodies, are they not? They’re like the face and the eyes. Students of anatomy frequently find dissecting them . . . disturbing.”
“Yet this killer had no problem at all chopping them off.”
“Perhaps the victim—whoever he was—used his hands to do something that enraged his killer. A man uses his hands for many things, yes? To steal. To wound or kill. To touch a woman.”
It was an explanation that hadn’t occurred to Sebastian, one that might conceivably provide a link between Miles Sedgewick and this unidentified victim—if only they knew who the hell the man was. And he felt it again, that upswelling of frustration and anger that was as useless as it was corrosive.
He glanced back toward the house. “When will Gibson be . . . better?”
“Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“He’s going to kill himself if he keeps this up much longer.”
“Yes.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the Frenchwoman beside him. “What can I do?”
“Help him find the courage to do what he must do—or at least try.”
“How?”
But she simply stared up at him, her face pale and solemn, her eyes defiantly dry.
* * *
That morning, Hero had arranged to interview a wherryman who worked Puddle Dock, just below Blackfriars Bridge. But when her carriage turned onto New Bridge Street, they found the way to the wharves blocked by a pushing, shouting crowd of fishermen and bargemen mingled with everything from costermongers and shopkeepers to beggars and crossing sweepers. The air was filled with excited voices and the barking of dogs.
Putting down her window, Hero stared out over the churning sea of bobbing hats and bonnets, but she couldn’t begin to see what had attracted the mass of people. “What is it?” she called up to her coachman.
He shook his head. “I can’t tell, my lady.”
“I’ll get down here.”
His face went slack. “But, my lady!”
She gathered her skirts. “You heard me.”
She waited while her footman let down the carriage steps, then descended to the pavement. A half-grown leatherworker’s apprentice went to dart around her, but she reached out to snag his arm, swinging him around to face her.
“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened?”
Tall and skinny, the lad looked to be perhaps thirteen or fourteen, with sandy hair and a sunburned nose and a pronounced overbite. “They done found a man’s body lodged up against one o’ the piers o’ the bridge!” he said, his thin chest jerking with his labored breathing. “And he’s missin’ his head, jist like that fellow they found down by the Isle o’ Dogs a few days ago!”
