What Darkness Brings sscm-8 Page 12

  “Mother and child are doing just grand, thank you.” Gibson’s eyes focused on Sebastian’s face. “You don’t exactly look too chipper there yourself, you know.”

  Sebastian grunted. “The more I find out about Daniel Eisler, the more of a tangled mess events surrounding his murder appear to be.” He told Gibson of his previous night’s visit to the ancient house in Fountain Lane, of the young man who died in his arms, and of his interesting conversation with the lapidary, Francillon.

  “Have you spoken to this nephew, Perlman?” asked Gibson.

  Sebastian shook his head. “Not yet. I wanted to drive out to see Annie again first. I take it you’ve finished Wilkinson’s autopsy?”

  “I have.”

  “Anything?”

  Gibson shook his head. “I’ve listed the likely cause of death as Walcheren fever.”

  Sebastian hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he let it ease out in a long, forceful exhalation. “Annie will be glad to hear that.”

  “Think she’ll believe it?”

  Sebastian met his friend’s troubled gaze. “Are you saying it isn’t true?”

  “It could be. I did say ‘likely.’ The truth is, I simply don’t know for certain.” He took another deep draft of ale. “It must have been a living hell for a man like Wilkinson, to find himself reduced to a weak invalid.”

  “Yet he told me recently he thought he was getting better.”

  Gibson met Sebastian’s gaze and held it. “He lied.”

  Leaving Tower Hill, Sebastian drove down to Kensington, where he found Annie Wilkinson seated on a bench in the small walled garden of the square near her lodgings, her gaze resting thoughtfully on Emma, who was sailing a small red boat in a puddle left by the rain. The day was misty and cool, but both mother and child were wrapped up warmly, and Sebastian thought he could understand the need that had driven them here, away from the memories that surely haunted their small rooms down the street.

  “Devlin,” said Annie, rising quickly to her feet when she saw him. “Have you heard anything?”

  “I’ve just spoken to Gibson. He says he’ll be reporting to the coroner that Rhys died of Walcheren fever.”

  She pressed the fingers of one hand to her lips. “Thank God.”

  They turned to walk together along the path, with Emma skipping happily ahead of them, her little wooden boat clutched in one fist. He said, “Annie, you told me Rhys went for a walk that night at around eight or nine. Do you know why?”

  “He did sometimes, right before bed.” She looked over at him, her soft gray eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Had he seemed unusually troubled by anything that day?”

  She drew up short, her head jerking back, her features tightening. “If he had, do you think I would tell anyone?”

  “Annie,” he said gently. “I’m on your side. I just want to make certain we’re not missing anything.”

  She brushed a soft tendril of hair off her forehead with a shaky hand. “I’m sorry.” She hesitated a moment, as if considering his question, then said, “Rhys hadn’t been himself for some time now. It can’t be easy, watching your health crumble, finding yourself unable to do even the simplest things. But he seemed no different Sunday than he had the day or the week before.”

  “Had he any enemies that you know of?”

  “Rhys? Good heavens, no. You knew him. He could sometimes be quick to judge, but he was never the kind of man who collects enemies. What are you suggesting? Surely you don’t think someone could have. . that someone might have murdered him?”

  “I don’t think it, no. But I wanted to be certain.”

  They paused again as Emma squatted down to launch her boat in a new, larger puddle that ran along the edge of the path.

  Watching her, Annie said quietly, “She remembers Rhys now, but she won’t for long. Soon he’ll just be someone she hears her mother talking about, someone no more real to her than the tortoise and hare in that book of fables you gave her.”

  “She might remember him-or at least the warm glow of his love for her, even if it’s only because she grows up hearing you speak of it.”

  “But she’ll never actually know him, just as he’ll never have the joy of watching her grow up into the woman she will become. And when I think of it, it’s almost more than I can bear.”

  He wanted to say, Then don’t think about it. Dwelling on it now will only twist the pain of his death that much deeper. But he kept the thought to himself because he knew the truth was that no newly bereaved woman could help thinking these things.

  As if echoing his thoughts, she said, “How dreadfully maudlin and female I must sound.”

  “You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, Annie. It’s all right to give yourself time to grieve.”

  She shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed hard. “You know what one of the worst parts of all this is? I find myself thinking that in some ways I lost Rhys-the Rhys I fell in love with-three years ago, when he sailed for that damned, diseased-ridden island. He was never the same afterward. Only, then I feel so small and selfish and contemptible that I can’t stand myself.”

  “Annie, I understand.”

  She pulled a face that reminded him so much of the girl she’d once been that he found himself smiling. “Listen to me,” she said. “More maudlin pap. And I haven’t even thanked you for coming all the way out here again to see me.”

  “I’ll come again tomorrow, if I may. Perhaps next time Emma will let me read her a story.”

  “I think she’d like that.”

  He was aware of mother and child watching him as he let himself out of the garden and climbed up to his curricle’s high seat. But when he looked back, it was to see Annie hunkering down beside her daughter, the hem of her black mourning gown trailing unheeded in the puddle as she gave the small red boat a powerful push that sent it skimming across the water before an ever-expanding wake.

  Chapter 25

  By the time Sebastian finally tracked Samuel Perlman to Tattersall’s Subscription Rooms, he had learned much about Daniel Eisler’s flamboyant nephew.

  Despite Francillon’s use of the term “lad,” Perlman was actually forty-two years old. A patron of the most exclusive establishments in Bond Street and Savile Row, he lived with his new bride in a lavish mansion on the north side of Hanover Square. The source of his wealth was a vast mercantile empire he had inherited from his own father some ten years before and then immediately turned over to competent managers, preferring to devote himself to a life of pleasure and excess. As far as Sebastian could discover, he did not gamble, he kept no mistress, and he was not in debt.

  Perlman was looking over the points of a delicate white-stockinged bay mare in Tattersall’s yard when Sebastian walked up to him. The rain might have eased off, but the colonnaded open market still glistened with scattered puddles through which men and horseflesh splashed. For one intense moment, Perlman’s gaze met Sebastian’s over the back of the mare. Then he rolled his eyes, blew out a weary, bored sigh, and said, “Oh, God, you’ve found me.”

  “Were you hiding from me?” Sebastian asked pleasantly, propping one shoulder against a nearby column and crossing his arms at his chest.

  Perlman huffed an incredulous laugh and returned his attention to the mare. “Hiding? What a fatiguing-not to mention decidedly plebian-activity. Hardly.”

  He was tall and gangly, with curly dark hair framing a balding pate, and a sadly receding chin-a defect unfortunately accentuated by the excessively high shirt points and extravagantly tied cravat he affected. His coat was made skintight and nipped in at the waist; his pantaloons were of the palest yellow, his waistcoat of figured silk. Daniel Eisler’s extravagant nephew obviously had pretensions to dandyism.

  Sebastian smiled. “If you know I’ve been looking for you, then I assume you also know why.”

  “I gather you’ve taken an interest in my uncle’s murder. Although to be frank, I can’t imagine why,
given that the brute responsible is already locked up fast in Newgate awaiting execution.”

  “You mean awaiting trial.”

  Perlman waived one long-fingered, exquisitely gloved hand through the air. “Technicality. The man is clearly guilty. I myself found him standing over my poor uncle’s lifeless body.”

  “So I’m told. I was wondering: Why were you there?”

  Perlman froze. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why did you choose to visit your uncle that night?”

  “Why not? He is-or, I suppose one should say, he was-my only near relative.”

  “And he disliked you excessively.”

  Perlman gave up inspecting the horse and turned toward him. “I don’t know if I’d go that far, although I won’t deny we weren’t close. Still, one must do one’s duty to one’s elderly relatives, you know.”

  “Especially when one has expectations from those elderly relatives.”

  “What a decidedly vulgar consideration.”

  “The truth frequently is rather vulgar, I’m afraid.” Sebastian reached out to run his hand down the mare’s white-blazed nose. “I’m told your uncle threatened to disinherit you.”

  Perlman gave a tight-lipped smile. “Only every other day. He swore if I didn’t mend what he liked to call my ‘extravagant ways’ that he’d leave everything he owned to charity. But it was never going to happen.”

  “So certain?”

  “My uncle didn’t believe in charity. He’d burn down his house and everything in it before he’d give one penny to the poor and needy.” He drawled the words “poor and needy” the way another man might say “flotsam and jetsam.”

  “He could always have decided to leave his fortune to someone else. Someone he liked. . better.”

  “He didn’t like anyone better. Yes, my uncle despised me, but then, he despised everyone. The difference is, I am his sister’s son. And when all was said and done, that mattered to him. Not much, mind you. I doubt he’d have walked across the street to save my life. But he believed in keeping money in the family. So if you’re trying to insinuate that I might have had reason to kill my uncle, I’m afraid you’re sadly wide of the mark-in addition to being damned insulting.”

  “I would imagine Russell Yates finds your accusation of murder rather insulting, as well.”

  Perlman’s nostrils flared, his fashionably pale face now infused with angry color. Every affectation of boredom and insouciance had disappeared, leaving him trembling with fury and something else, something that looked very much like fear. “I walked into my uncle’s house and found Yates standing over the body. How the devil are you imagining I might have been the one who shot him?”

  “It’s fairly simple, actually. You shoot him. Yates knocks at the door. You panic, run out the back, and then nip around to come charging in the front and accuse Yates of what you yourself have done.”

  “That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard. I know nothing about guns. I’ve received no military training. I’m not even a sporting man!”

  “You don’t need to be an expert shot to hit someone who is standing right in front of you.”

  The rain had started up again, pounding on the gallery roof and rapidly clearing the yard of men and horses. Perlman squinted up at the lowering sky. “Enough of this nonsense. I’m not going to stand here and listen to this drivel.” He nodded curtly to the mare’s handler and started to turn away.

  Sebastian stopped him by saying, “Tell me about the blue diamond.”

  Perlman pivoted slowly toward him again. If his face had been red before, it was now white. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The big, brilliant-cut blue diamond your uncle was selling. You do know about it, don’t you? I would imagine it’s worth a tidy sum.”

  “My uncle had no blue diamond.”

  “Oh, but I’m afraid he did. At least, he had it in his possession while he arranged a sale for its proper owner. You’re not telling me it’s been lost, are you?”

  The tip of Perlman’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, or perhaps you have simply misunderstood something that was said to you.”

  “Perhaps.” Sebastian smiled. “I hope for your sake that’s true. Otherwise, things might become. . awkward, hmm? I mean, when the diamond’s original owner attempts to reclaim his property from the estate?”

  Still vaguely smiling, Sebastian walked away, leaving Perlman standing in the open yard, oblivious to the driving rain that splattered mud on his pale yellow pantaloons and melted the high starched points of his ridiculous collar.

  Chapter 26

  “It’s an interesting copy,” said Abigail McBean, carefully turning the manuscript’s worn, browned pages.

  They had settled in a crowded room on the first floor overlooking the wet garden. Hero suspected the chamber had probably been designed as a morning room. But Abigail had turned it into a combination morning room / library, with most of the walls covered by towering bookcases stuffed with old books and a curious assortment of objects. She had The Key of Solomon open on the table and apologized to Hero for failing to offer her refreshment by saying, “I make it a practice never to have food or drink around while viewing a valuable old manuscript.”

  “I quite understand,” said Hero, watching her friend. “Is it valuable?”

  “From a scholarly standpoint, yes. Monetarily? I’m not the one to judge. Going by the writing style, I’d say this copy probably dates to the middle of the sixteenth century.”

  “Which is a century after the invention of the printing press. So why is it handwritten?”

  Miss McBean turned the next page and frowned down at an illustration of strange geometric design. “The Key of Solomon has been translated into Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and to a lesser extent into English. But to my knowledge it has never been published. Even grimoires that have been printed are frequently also found as manuscripts. There is a belief that handwritten texts contain inherent magical forces of their own, so they’re considered more powerful than the printed versions.”

  “So it’s-what? Basically a magic textbook?”

  “Yes. It tells you how to make talismans and amulets, how to cast magical spells, how to invoke angels or demons-that sort of thing.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “The usual: sex, money, and power.”

  “What about revenge?”

  “That too.”

  “All the typical motives for murder,” Hero said softly.

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I suppose you’re right.” Miss McBean’s hand stilled on the pages. “Where did you get this?”

  “It was smuggled into England for a man who was murdered last Sunday.”

  “You mean Daniel Eisler?”

  “You knew him?”

  Miss McBean carefully closed the manuscript’s worn leather cover and set it aside. “I did, actually. He was obsessed with the occult. And I don’t mean in a scholarly sense-although he did try at first to convince me that that was his motive.”

  “You mean he believed in it?”

  “I eventually came to realize that he did, yes. He was continually approaching me for assistance in translating some difficult passage or tracking down obscure references.”

  “You’re saying you helped him?” Hero asked, not quite managing to keep the surprise out of her voice.

  Miss McBean went off into one of her hearty gales of laughter. “If you’re asking did I assist him in summoning demons and casting spells of ruination and destruction, the answer is no. What I was doing up there”-she nodded toward the attic room above-“was just my way of wrapping my head around what the writers of these texts were up to.”

  She was silent for a moment, her gaze on the scene outside the window, where her towheaded niece and nephew, umbrellas in hand, could be seen splashing gleefully through rain puddles under the watchful eye of a nursemaid. The girl looked to be about eight, the boy perhaps three or fou
r years younger. The boy squealed with delight, the girl shouting something Hero couldn’t quite catch.

  Abigail smiled; then her smile faded. “I suppose in a sense I did help him at first, inadvertently. When he told me his interest was scholarly, I naturally believed him. I mean, why wouldn’t I? It was only gradually I began to realize he was deadly serious about what he was doing. He actually believed in the power of the old rituals and incantations. He had an extensive collection of grimoires.”

  Hero nodded to The Key of Solomon on the table between them. “What can you tell me about this one?”

  “Well. . it’s generally considered one of the most-if not the most-important of all the grimoires. It purports to date from the time of Solomon, although in reality it was probably written during the Renaissance. Most of them were.”

  “For some reason I always tend to associate magic with medieval times, not the Renaissance.”

  Miss McBean nodded. “Folk magic was widespread during the Middle Ages. But by the Renaissance there was a growing sense that magic had degenerated since the days of the Egyptians and Romans. Then, with the fall of Constantinople and the expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain, places like France, Germany, and England saw a huge influx of some of the truly ancient magic texts that had been lost to Europe. As a result, in the fifteenth century there was a veritable explosion in the writing of new grimoires. You’ll find a lot of Jewish kabbalistic magic, Arab alchemy, and Greco-Roman-Egyptian influence in these works.”

  She ran her fingertips over the edge of the battered old manuscript, then sat staring at it thoughtfully.

  “What is it?” Hero asked, watching her.

  “I was just thinking. . The newspapers said Daniel Eisler was shot. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It doesn’t sound to me as if his interest in the occult had anything to do with what happened to him. I mean, it’s not as if he were found spread-eagled on a pentacle with a Hand of Glory burning on his chest.”

  “A hand of what?”

  Abigail McBean’s eyes crinkled in quiet amusement. “You don’t want to know.” The amusement faded. “Do you really think this”-she indicated the old grimoire-“has something to do with his death?”