Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Author’s Note

  THE SEBASTIAN ST. CYR MYSTERY SERIES

  What Angels Fear

  When Gods Die

  Why Mermaids Sing

  OBSIDIAN

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, November 2008

  Copyright © The Two Talers, LLC, 2008

  All rights reserved

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Harris, C. S.

  Where serpents sleep: a Sebastian St. Cyr mystery/C. S. Harris.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-29167-5

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  In memory of

  Dr. Robert D. Harris, December 1921-August 2007.

  Scholar, mentor, friend.

  “…who knows where serpents sleep?”

  —ANONYMOUS

  Chapter 1

  MONDAY, 4 MAY 1812

  The girl stared out the window, one hand sliding up and down her shawl-covered arm in a ceaseless, uneasy motion. Outside, a thick fog leached the light from the dying day and muffled the sounds of the surrounding city.

  “You don’t like the fog, do you?” Hero Jarvis asked, watching her.

  They sat together in a pool of golden light thrown by the lamp on the plain tea table where Hero had laid out her notebook, pen and ink, and the standard list of questions she’d drawn up to ask. The girl jerked her gaze back to Hero’s face. This one was older than some of the other prostitutes Hero had interviewed, but still young, her face still smooth, her skin clear, her green eyes sharp with intelligence. She said her name was Rose Jones, although in Hero’s experience women in this business seldom gave their true names.

  “Who does like fog?” said Rose. “You can never tell what’s out there.”

  The girl’s accent was disconcerting: pure Mayfair, without a trace of Cockney or any country inflection. Studying the girl’s fine bone structure and graceful bearing, Hero knew a flicker of interest mingled with something both more personal and less admirable that she didn’t care to examine too closely. How had this girl—surely no more than eighteen or nineteen years old and so obviously gently born and bred—ended up here, at the Magdalene House, a refuge run by the Society of Friends for women who wished to leave prostitution?

  Reaching for her pen, Hero dipped the tip into her inkwell and asked, “How long have you been in the business?”

  A bitter smile touched Rose’s lips. “You mean, how long have I been a whore? Less than a year.”

  It was said to shock. But Hero Jarvis was not the kind of woman who shocked easily. At twenty-five years of age, she considered herself immune to the excesses of sensibility that afflicted so many of her sex. She simply nodded and went on to her next question. “What sort of work did you do before?”

  “Before? I didn’t do anything before.”

  “You lived with your family?”

  Rose tipped her head to one side, her gaze assessing the other woman in a way Hero did not like. “Why are you here, asking us these questions?”

  Hero cleared her throat. “I’m researching a theory.”

  “What theory?”

  “It is my belief that most women enter prostitution not because of some innate moral weakness but out of economic necessity.”

  A quiver of emotion crossed Rose’s face, her voice coming out harsh. “What do you know about it? A woman like you?”

  Hero set aside her pen and met Rose’s gaze without flinching. “Are we so different?
”

  Rose didn’t answer. In the silence that followed, Hero could hear the voices of the other women drifting up from downstairs, the clink of cutlery, a quick burst of laughter. It grew late; soon Hero’s carriage would return to take her back to Berkeley Square, to the safety and comfort of her privileged world. Perhaps Rose was right, in a sense. Perhaps—

  The sound of a fist pounding on the front door below reverberated through the house. Hero heard a woman’s startled exclamation, mingled with a man’s harsh growl. A cry of outrage turned suddenly to a scream of terror.

  Rose leapt from her chair, her eyes wild. “Oh, God. They’ve found me.”

  Hero pushed to her feet. “What do you mean? What’s happening?”

  She could hear the voices of more men now, the crash of overturned furniture, the smashing of crockery. Women shrieked. Someone pleaded, tearful, her voice trailing off into a whimper that ended abruptly.

  “They’re here to kill me.” Rose whirled around, her gaze sweeping the room to fix on an old walnut cupboard, which took up most of the near wall. “We must hide.”

  From below came the sound of running feet and a woman’s scream transformed, hideously, into a throaty gurgle. Rose yanked open the cupboard door. Hero reached out a hand, stopping her. “No. That’s the first place they’ll search.”

  Crossing the room, Hero threw wide the casement window that overlooked the mist-swirled alley below. The window opened onto the sloping roof of what was probably the kitchen or a washroom. “This way,” said Hero. She sucked in a quick breath, the damp, coal smoke-tinged air biting her lungs as she threw one leg over the low sill and ducked her head through the frame.

  Covered with moss and condensation and soot, the slate roofing tiles felt treacherously slippery beneath the smooth leather soles of Hero’s kid half boots. She moved cautiously, one hand braced against the rough brick of the house wall as she turned to help Rose through the narrow opening.

  As she eased the window closed behind them, Hero heard a man shout from inside the house, “She’s not here.”

  Another man answered, his voice lower pitched, his footsteps already heavy on the staircase. “She’s here. She must be upstairs.”

  “They’re coming,” Hero whispered, and felt Rose’s hand tighten around her upper arm in warning.

  Following the direction of the girl’s shaky, pointing finger, Hero discerned the figure of a man looming out of the fog below. A guard, stationed at the back door to make certain none of the women in the house escaped to the alley.

  Hunkering low, Hero crab walked down the slippery slope of the roof to its edge. She watched the man below pace back and forth, his hat pulled over his eyes, his shoulders hunched against the dampness.

  Moving as silently as she could, Hero swung her feet over the edge, her stocking-clad legs showing creamy white against the white of the mist as the hem of her fine blue alpaca carriage dress caught on the edge of the tiles and hiked up. She waited until the guard paused just below her. Then she pushed off from the eaves to drop straight down on him.

  The force of the impact knocked him to his knees with a grunt and threw Hero to one side. She landed on her hip in the mud, hard enough to bring a small cry to her lips, but she scrambled quickly to her feet. The man was still on his hands and knees when Hero’s heel caught him hard on the side of his head and sent him staggering back against the house wall to land in a slumped heap. He lay still.

  Rose slid over the edge of the roof to come down in a rush of tearing petticoats and scraped skin. “Good heavens. Where did you learn to do that?”

  “I used to play with my brother.”

  The sound of the upstairs window being thrown open brought both their heads up. A man’s voice cut through the fog. “Drummond? You there?”

  Rose grabbed Hero’s hand and they ran.

  They raced up an alleyway of mud and ancient half-buried cobbles hemmed in by soaring walls of soot-blackened brick. Breathing hard, her fingers gripping the other woman’s hand tightly, Hero sprinted toward the square patch of white at the alley’s mouth, where the silhouette of a carriage appeared out of the mist. They had almost reached the footpath when Hero heard the boom of a gun behind them. Beside her, Rose faltered.

  Turning, Hero caught the girl as she began to crumple. The bullet had torn a gaping, oozing hole through her chest.

  “Oh, no. No,” Hero whispered.

  Rose’s lips parted, spilling dark red blood down her chin. Hero could feel the girl’s blood running warm and wet over her hands, see the light in Rose’s eyes ebb, dim.

  “No!”

  The boom of a second shot echoed up the alleyway. Hero imagined she could feel its passing like the whisper of a ghost beside her cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing slightly as she eased Rose down into the mud and ran on.

  Chapter 2

  TUESDAY, 5 MAY 1812

  The morning dawned overcast and unseasonably cool, the air heavy with the scent of coal smoke and the last lingering wisps of the fog. Winding westward toward the City, a lady’s yellow-bodied carriage persistently shadowed a gentleman’s curricle as he wove around tumbledown hackneys and towering drays driven by men in smocks and leather aprons. When they reached the Strand, the curricle’s driver reined in before the last in a row of small, bow-fronted shops, his pair of blood chestnuts snorting and throwing their heads, restless. Leaning forward, the lady signaled her own coachman to draw up.

  “They were ’opin’ fer a good run,” said the gentleman’s tiger from his perch at the curricle’s rear, the sharp Cockney tones of his voice carrying clearly in the damp air.

  “They’ll get it soon enough,” said the gentleman, handing the reins to the young groom.

  The gentleman’s name was Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. The fourth child and youngest of three sons born to the Earl of Hendon and his Countess, Sophia, he had only succeeded to the heir’s title on the death of his two older brothers. Now nine-and-twenty, the Viscount was said to have been badly affected by his experiences in the Wars, although few in London seemed to know the exact nature of the circumstances that had led to his decision to sell his commission some two years before and return to England. Until the previous autumn, he had kept the famous actress Kat Boleyn as his mistress, but that liaison had ended abruptly for reasons also shrouded in mystery.

  The lady in the carriage watched as the Viscount hopped down from his curricle, his multicaped driving coat swirling around him, his head falling back as he glanced up at the wooden sign with a dagger and a pair of crossed swords that swayed gently in the breeze. He was built tall and lean, with hair that was dark—darker even than that of his father in his prime. But whereas the father’s eyes were a piercing blue, the son’s were a feral yellow that brought to mind the howl of wolves in the night. Once, his lordship had made the apprehension of murderers his specialty. But for the past eight months, he had given himself over to drinking and gambling and riding to hounds with a reckless abandon that seemed calculated to get him killed sometime in the very near future.

  The lady in the carriage watched as the Viscount entered the shop. “Wait here,” she ordered her coachman, and signaled to the footman to let down the steps.

  Sebastian balanced the dagger in his hand and carefully tested its heft. It was a splendid piece, its ebony hilt inlaid with silver and brass in a delicate Moorish design.

  “It arrived just this week from Spain, my lord,” said the shopkeeper, a short rounded man with full rosy cheeks and a balding pate who hovered behind the counter of his discreet little establishment in the Strand. “The finest Toledo steel. And the workmanship on the hilt is unusually exquisite, wouldn’t you say?”

  Nodding, Sebastian whirled to send the dagger flying toward the dartboard on the shop’s back wall. The blade bit just left of center, quivered a moment, then stilled.

  The shopkeeper’s hands fluttered in dismay. Devlin never missed. “Obviously there is an unseen flaw. Let me show you anot
her—”

  “No. The blade flew true.” Sebastian rubbed his eyes with a splayed thumb and forefinger, aware of a faint tremor in his hand born of too many sleepless nights, too many bottles of brandy, too many dinners left uneaten. “I’ll take it.” He was reaching for his purse when the bell on the door jangled and a gentlewoman in an ostrich-plumed hat and a hunter green pelisse entered the shop, bringing with her the scent of the cool spring morning.