What Darkness Brings Page 13

  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

  “I

  t’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 four 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 ex
tensive 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?”

  “Probably not. But there might be something here we’re missing. Something important.”

  Hero was aware of Abigail fixing her with a steady stare. “I gather Lord Devlin has taken an interest in Daniel Eisler’s death?”

  Hero nodded. “He doesn’t believe that Russell Yates—the man who has been arrested for the crime—is guilty.”

  “Ah.” Her friend’s gaze shifted again to the children playing in the garden. For a moment, Hero thought she was about to say something. But she didn’t.

  Hero said, “Do you know where I could find an English version of The Key of Solomon?”

  Miss McBean rose to her feet in a waft of lavender mixed oddly with musk. “I have several. I’d be happy to lend you one.”

  “Thank you, but I couldn’t let you do that.”

  “No, please; none of the copies I have are especially valuable. Let me do this.”

  “All right. Thank you.”

  The version she lent Hero was smaller, only about eight inches tall, but written in a beautiful, flowing hand and exquisitely illustrated in rich shades of ultramarine and cinnabar and vermilion. Hero glanced through it, her eyes widening. “You said most spells deal with wealth, sex, power, or revenge. Which would you say interested Eisler the most?”

  Miss McBean thought about it a moment. “He seemed particularly obsessed with invocations to constrain the spirits of the dead.”

  “Invocations to— Good Lord.”

  “I’m not so sure the good Lord has aught to do with any of this,” said Abigail McBean, her plump, pretty face taking on an oddly pinched look, her frizzy red hair like a flame in the rainy day’s gloom. “Read the book. You’ll see.”

  Outside Abigail McBean’s deceptively normal-looking little house, a faint drizzle was still falling from the gray sky. The air hung heavy with the smell of wet grass and fading roses and the acrid bite of smoke from the endless rows of chimneys. As she walked down the short garden path to where her carriage waited at the kerb, Hero’s attention was all for the task of keeping the rain off the two manuscripts in her arms. She didn’t notice the dark-haired man in the slouch hat and too-big coat until he reared up before her.

  “There y’are. Been waitin’ for you, I have,” he said, his grin wide and vacuous, like a man who laughs at his own private joke—or long ago took leave of his senses.

  Hero’s gaze flew to her yellow-bodied carriage, the horses’ hides gleaming blue-black in the rain. She saw her footman, George, start forward, face going slack with sudden alarm. She knew she was in no real danger. Yet she felt her skin crawl, her breath quicken in that way common to all living things when confronted with evidence of madness.

  “Excuse me,” she said, making to go around him.

  Bony and filthy, his hand snaked out, his fingers digging into the sleeve of her carriage dress. “Don’t go yet. Got a message for the captain.”

  Quivering with revulsion, Hero jerked her arm away from the man’s grasp with such force that she nearly sent the two manuscripts in her hands flying. “What captain?”

  “Captain Lord Devlin. Tell him I’m owed what I’m owed, and he ought by rights to see that I get it. Maybe he don’t remember Jud Foy. But he should. Oh, yes, he should.”

  “My lady?” said George, coming up beside her. “Is this person bothering you?”

  Foy held his splayed hands up and out to his sides. His grin never faltered and his gaze never wavered from Hero’s face. “You tell him. Hmm?”

  Then he thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat and sauntered away, elbows swinging, lips puckered into a tuneless whistle quickly lost in the patter of the rain.

  Chapter 27

  S

  ebastian arrived back at Brook Street to find Hero seated at the library table calmly cleaning a tiny muff flintlock with a burnished walnut stock and engraved gilt mounts that had been a gift from her father.

  He said, “Is this general maintenance, or did you shoot some-

  one?”

  She looked up at him. There was no humor in her face, only a cold purposefulness that reminded him disconcertingly of Lord Jarvis. “Ever hear of a man named Jud Foy?”

  He thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Why do you ask?”

  “Because he was waiting for me when I came out of Abigail McBean’s house today—the same man who was watching this house last night. He said his name is Jud Foy, and he wanted me to give you a message.”

  “Bloody hell. How did he know where you were?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no notion. But he called you ‘captain.’ He said, ‘Tell the captain I’m owed what I’m owed.’”

  “‘Owed’? What does he think he’s owed?”

  “He didn’t specify. Whatever it is, though, he seems to believe it’s your responsibility to see that he gets it. You may not remember him, but he obviously thinks you should.”

  Sebastian walked over to where a bottle of burgundy stood with glasses on a tray. He poured himself a drink, then stood with the glass in one hand, his thoughts far away.

  Jud Foy. Jud Foy? He tried to put the name together with the wet, disheveled, skeletally thin man from last night, and knew it again, that vague sense of an elusive memory gone before it was quite grasped.

  Hero said, “You told me last night that you thought he looked familiar.”

  “He did. But I still can’t place him.” Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “I thought last night that he must have something to do with my investigation into the murder of Daniel Eisler. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Because he knows you were in the army?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Although I suppose it’s possible he’s linked in some way to Matt Tyson. When he said, ‘I saw you coming out of his house,’ I assumed he was talking about Eisler’s house. But he could have meant Hope’s house.”

  She listened to him, her face impassive, while he told her of his conversations with Francillon and Perlman. Then she said, “Is it
possible Foy could have something to do with your friend Rhys Wilkinson? You’ve visited his lodgings several times in the last few days, haven’t you?”

  “I suppose that’s possible too, although I doubt it.” He set aside his glass and reached for his hat and gloves.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To ask Sir Henry to look into this Foy. And then I think it’s time Lieutenant Tyson and I had a little talk.”

  “Jud Foy?” Sir Henry Lovejoy frowned, his lips pursing thoughtfully as he shook his head. “The name’s not familiar to me. But I can ask one of the lads to look into him. Do you want him arrested?”

  “He hasn’t exactly done anything,” said Sebastian.

  They were walking down Bow Street. The rain had eased up again, but the narrow lane was dark and wet and crowded with a crush of ragged costermongers and squeaky carts overflowing with produce from the nearby market of Covent Garden. The scent of damp earth and sweaty, unwashed bodies hung thick in the air.

  Sir Henry said, “I had a visit yesterday evening from Mr. Bertram Leigh-Jones.”

  Sebastian looked over at him. “Oh?”

  “Your name came up in conversation. He made a number of demands.” Sir Henry pulled at his earlobe, the faintest hint of a smile playing about his normally serious features. “Unfortunately, I can’t seem to recall what any of them were.”

  “He’s a very prickly magistrate, Mr. Leigh-Jones.”

  “Most West End magistrates are—with good reason.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  They turned down the short stretch of Russell Street that led to the open market square. The press had become a nearly intolerable squeeze, and Sebastian noticed that Lovejoy was careful to keep his hand in his pocket, guarding his purse.

  The magistrate sniffed. “Let’s just say that a parliamentary inquiry into the licensing of pubs in a number of parishes might uncover a pattern of irregularity.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Mmm. After he left, I decided to send one of my lads over to Fountain Lane to make a few inquiries. Given the quick apprehension of Mr. Yates, I suspected Lambeth Street might have neglected to interview some of the locals not directly involved.”