What Darkness Brings sscm-8 Page 15

  “How much did you lose the second time?”

  “Five hundred pounds. I was winning at first-”

  “You always do.”

  “But then my luck turned. Quite suddenly and rather disastrously. I did have the sense to quit. Only, not soon enough.”

  “If you’d had any sense, you wouldn’t have gone back there at all.”

  Beresford’s eyes flashed with resentment. “You think I don’t know that now? I came damned close to putting a pistol in my mouth. There was no way I could go to Hope and admit I’d lost another five hundred pounds.”

  “So you went to Eisler instead. How the devil did you imagine you would ever repay him? Were you planning to take to the high toby next?”

  The rat-a-tat-tat of a drum sounded from the top of the street, accompanied by the tramp of marching feet. Beresford glanced toward the sound, a deep stain of shame spreading across his fair cheeks. “He. . I. . That is to say, I agreed to perform certain services for him.”

  Sebastian was beginning to understand at least part of Perlman’s motivation in sending him to Beresford. “You mean, you undertook to regularly provide him with whores.”

  Beresford’s eyes widened, his throat working painfully as he swallowed. “How did you know?”

  “Call it a good guess. Did you provide Eisler with a whore last Sunday?”

  “Sunday? No. But I know he had at least one other person doing the same thing I was.”

  Sebastian studied the younger man’s handsome, strained face. He struck Sebastian as earnest and basically decent, if dangerously inexperienced and naive. For the most part, he was probably telling the truth.

  But only for the most part.

  Sebastian said, “Where were you that evening?”

  “You mean when Eisler was shot? I was with Matt Tyson, at his rooms in St. James’s. We were drinking wine. . playing a friendly game of whist. . that sort of thing.”

  Not for the first time, Sebastian found himself wondering at the friendship between the older, battle-hardened lieutenant and this young, fresh-faced Irish boy barely down from Oxford. “How long have you known Tyson?”

  “Six weeks or so, I suppose. We met at a musical evening given by a mutual acquaintance.” His gaze darted back to where his cousin had appeared in the doorway of the milliner’s shop, her head turned as she conversed with someone behind her. “There’s Louisa. I really must-”

  “One more question,” said Sebastian as a column of soldiers swung into view, red uniforms clean and new, brass buttons glinting in a gleam of sunshine. “What can you tell me about the blue diamond Eisler was selling for the Hopes?”

  The younger man’s features slackened in a convincing expression of puzzlement. “Blue diamond?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it. Henry Philip Hope is the one who collects gems, and I’ve only met him a few times.”

  “It’s possible Thomas Hope purchased this diamond five or six years ago, perhaps for your cousin.”

  Beresford looked thoughtful. “I know he gave Louisa some ridiculously expensive pieces when he was courting her-I remember my mother referring to them rather sardonically as ‘bribes.’ But I couldn’t say exactly what they were. I never saw them. And Louisa actually prefers to wear smaller, more delicate jewelry.”

  Louisa Hope’s voice floated across to them. “Blair?”

  Beresford gave a quick, flustered bow. “Excuse me. Please.”

  Sebastian let him go.

  He stood and watched the young man lope back down the street, dodging two turbaned matrons making their slow, ponderous way arm in arm up the flagway, and nearly colliding with a liveried footman burdened with a pile of packages. He was aware of the column of soldiers drawing abreast of him, side drum tapping, boots tramping out their familiar cadence. They looked to be new recruits, probably on their way to the port, where a ship would carry them away to as-yet-unfought battles in distant lands.

  He turned to watch them, his gaze studying the rows of freshly scrubbed faces. Most appeared pathetically eager and excited; a few were anxious. But one or two bore the distant, focused stare of a man who has seen his own death and yet marches inexorably toward it.

  Chapter 30

  In Sebastian’s experience, men like Blair Beresford rarely committed murder. There was something sad and gentle-almost fragile-about the young man that argued against the kind of passion and violence that murder usually entailed. But he’d learned long ago that most people, however calm and tender, however controlled and even-tempered, were capable of murder if pushed hard enough or put in the wrong situation.

  He couldn’t see Beresford killing Eisler over a debt of five hundred pounds, although he had only Beresford’s word for it that the debt actually was five hundred pounds and not ten times that. Would Beresford kill for five thousand pounds? Ten thousand?

  Sebastian still didn’t think so. But if Eisler had goaded or taunted the young man? If he had threatened to expose Beresford’s debt and the way in which he was repaying? Was Blair Beresford capable of killing a nasty, evil old man while in the grip of a rage born of fear and shame?

  Sebastian couldn’t be certain, but he thought it possible.

  Turning toward his own curricle, Sebastian found himself wondering once again why Samuel Perlman had given him Blair Beresford’s name. And it occurred to him now that the object of Perlman’s animosity might not be Beresford himself so much as Thomas Hope. If whoever killed Daniel Eisler also stole the valuable blue diamond Eisler was handling, then as Eisler’s heir, Perlman would be responsible for compensating the diamond’s owner for its loss-assuming, of course, that the owner could prove Eisler had had the gem in his possession.

  Sebastian suspected a man as astute as Hope would have kept detailed records of any such transaction.

  But if the blue diamond was indeed the motive for Eisler’s murder, that would require the killer to have known that the old man had the gem in his possession. So how many people would have been privy to that information? Francillon, obviously, and Hope-if the diamond was truly his. Samuel Perlman? Perhaps. Blair Beresford? Possibly. Matt Tyson? Again, possibly, if Beresford knew.

  Only, how had Jacques Collot come to hear of it? And who else might have known?

  Sebastian started to head back toward Brook Street. Then he changed his mind and turned his horses toward the Strand and the discreet establishment of the lapidary John Francillon.

  The shutters were already up on the windows of Francillon’s small shop on the Strand when Sebastian pushed open the door, the jingle of the brass bell filling the air.

  Francillon was behind the counter, his back turned, his head bent as he slid a tray into a tall wooden cabinet. “Sorry, we’re closed,” he said without even bothering to look up. “You can come back in the morning, if you like. We open at ten.”

  Sebastian said, “I have a few more questions I need to ask you.”

  Francillon spun around, the shop’s single oil lamp throwing his lithe shadow across the counter and up over the rows of paintings and specimens on the far wall. “But I have already told you everything!”

  “This isn’t about Eisler’s diamond, exactly.” Sebastian placed his forearms on the polished countertop and leaned into them. “I want you to tell me about the theft of the French Crown Jewels.”

  Francillon turned to carefully close the cabinet door behind him. “What makes you think I know more than what I have already told you?”

  “Because jewels are your business, and this was probably the greatest jewel theft in history. Because your people came from France, so I would imagine you’ve watched the events unfolding there very carefully. And because I don’t think you’re the kind of man who’s comfortable with the idea of letting someone who’s innocent hang for a murder he didn’t commit.”

  Francillon smoothed his hands over his hair, as if to reassure himself of its neatness, although there was not a strand out of place. Then he came to rest one hip on a high stool, his
laced fingers resting against his thigh, his gaze far, far away. “Very well. Let me see. . You know that the revolutionary government confiscated the Crown Jewels from Louis XVI after he attempted to flee the country with his family in the summer of 1791?”

  “Yes.”

  “To give you an idea of the amount of treasure involved, an inventory was made at the time. It ran to something like fifty pages.”

  “That much?”

  Francillon nodded. “The Bourbons had what was probably the largest collection of jewels in Europe. All together, they were valued at more than twenty-four million livres; the French Blue alone was estimated to be worth three million livres.”

  “So what did the revolutionary government do with them?”

  “The Crown Jewels were declared the property of the people and placed under guard in the Hotel du Garde-Meuble on the Place Louis XV-what later became the Place de la Revolution.” He paused, a spasm crossing his face. The Place de la Revolution had become famous as the site of the guillotine.

  “Go on,” said Sebastian.

  “The jewels were then put on display. The thinking was that since they belonged to the people, the people ought to be allowed to see them. So every Monday, the hotel was opened to the public. The jewels remained on display for over a year, until August of 1792, when a decision was made to close the exhibit due to the growing instability in Paris.”

  “But they were still kept in the Garde-Meuble?”

  “Oh, yes. In locked cabinets in a chamber located just above the ground-floor entrance. The chief conservator responsible for the treasures complained constantly that he needed more guards, but. .” Francillon shrugged. “It was September of 1792; the entire nation was falling apart.”

  “So at the time of the theft,” said Sebastian, “the exhibition was closed?”

  “It was. But before the visits were suspended, a man named Paul Miette had gone to the Garde-Meuble every Monday for weeks, studying the habits of the guards, the various approaches to the treasure room. There is some evidence he also managed to acquire inside information about the habits of the guards, but that was never proven.”

  “So what happened?”

  Francillon pulled at his earlobe. “On the night of 11 September, Miette and some half a dozen of his cohorts simply propped a ladder against the wall at the front of the building, cut a hole in an upstairs window, and climbed inside. There was so much to steal that they couldn’t carry it all away with them. But when they realized the theft had not been noticed, they came back two nights later, and again two nights after that. By their fourth visit, they’d become so bold that they turned the theft into a drunken revelry, complete with whores, food, and wine. Everything from jeweled swords to statues to bells was simply tossed out the windows to friends waiting in the street below.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Sebastian.

  Francillon sighed. “I wish I were not. They were finally spotted by an officer of the National Guard, who sounded the alarm. But it took him so long to convince the building’s watchmen to open the chamber’s doors-which were, of course, still sealed-that the thieves managed to escape.”

  “You’re saying none of them were caught?”

  “One or two who were too drunk or too stupid to run were taken up at the scene; a few more were arrested later. But none of the actual ringleaders were ever apprehended. In the end, several men were executed. A few were given short prison sentences and then quickly pardoned.”

  “That sounds rather suspicious.”

  “It does, does it not?” Francillon cleared his throat. “At the time, the public was naturally outraged by the theft of the nation’s treasure. Some tried to place the blame for the theft on the Queen, Marie Antoinette-which was ridiculous, given that she was under guard herself at the time. Others thought it was a counterrevolutionary plot to destroy the Revolution by stealing France’s wealth. But there were those who suspected that forces within the revolutionary government itself had been responsible. You see, the Minister of the Interior had actually suggested back in August that the Crown Jewels be sold and the proceeds used to support the Revolution’s paper currency and defray other expenses-in particular the looming war with Austria and Prussia. But there was such an outcry that the scheme was abandoned.”

  “At least publicly,” said Sebastian.

  Francillon met his gaze, his expression solemn. “Exactly.” His eyes slid away. “One interesting point is that the thief who is credited with devising the scheme in the first place-Paul Miette-was actually imprisoned in La Force until shortly before the theft, as were nearly a dozen of his colleagues. There have been suggestions that their release was arranged by men within the government.”

  “You say Miette was never captured?”

  “Never. He simply disappeared. Some of the smaller stones were recovered in Paris in the days and weeks following the theft. But the major pieces-the French Blue, the Bazu, and many, many others-have never been seen again.”

  “Do you know the names of any of Miette’s colleagues?”

  Francillon frowned with the effort of memory. “Let me see. . There was Cadet Guillot; he is probably the best known, along with a man named Deslanges. And, of course, Collot.”

  “Collot?” said Sebastian sharply. “You mean Jacques Collot?”

  Francillon looked at him in surprise. “You have heard of him?”

  “I have. He claims he comes from a long line of Parisian lapidaries.”

  Francillon threw back his head and laughed. “I suppose he can certainly claim to come from a long line of ancestors with a marked interest in jewels. But I’m afraid the Collots’ talents have never been those of a lapidary.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The Collots are thieves,” said Francillon, his lean features hardening. “And they have been for a hundred and fifty years or more.”

  Sebastian was in his dressing room rubbing ashes into his face when Hero came to stand in the doorway behind him, the black cat perched regally in her arms.

  He looked over at her and smiled. “So, where was he?”

  “He’d somehow contrived to get himself shut in the tack room in the stables.”

  “Someone needs to tell him about curiosity and the cat.”

  With a contemptuous lashing of its long, fluffy tail, the cat jumped from her arms and ran off. “I did,” she said. “He didn’t appreciate it.”

  She brought her gaze back to his worn breeches and leather waistcoat, the disreputable coat and grimy shirt gleaned from the secondhand clothing stalls in Rosemary Lane. He’d also wrapped padding around his waist that effectively altered both his silhouette and his gait. “Do I take it you’re not planning an evening at your club?”

  He leaned forward, his gaze on the mirror as he dabbed more ashes mixed with grease from the kitchen onto the dark hair at his temples. “I’ve just had an interesting conversation with the lapidary, Francillon.”

  “Oh?”

  “He tells me there’s a strong possibility the theft of the French Crown Jewels was actually engineered by the revolutionary French government.”

  Pushing away from the doorframe, she wandered the room, fiddling first with a box of collars, then with one of the ragged coats Calhoun had assembled for Devlin’s selection. “What makes you so certain this blue diamond is in any way connected to Eisler’s death?”

  “At this point, I’m not certain it is. I’m also hearing credible stories about the man’s cutthroat lending practices and certain aberrant sexual practices that could very well be what ended up getting him killed.”

  She glanced over at him. “Define ‘aberrant.’”

  “Compelling attractive young women to lie with him when they-or their husbands-fell behind on interest payments.”

  A wave of revulsion flickered over her face. “I’d say that goes beyond aberrant, all the way to downright evil. The more I hear about Eisler, the more I think whoever killed him deserves a reward rather than punishment.”


  Sebastian wiped his hands on a towel. “I might agree, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whoever murdered Eisler is about to let an innocent man hang for what he did.”

  “True.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “So why this continuing interest in the French Crown Jewels?”

  “Because for some reason, the more I look into Eisler’s affairs, the more the French Blue keeps coming up. It obviously fits into all this somewhere; I just can’t figure out where or how.”

  “Which is why you’re dressed like a fat publican down on his luck?”

  Sebastian reached for a battered black hat and settled it low on his forehead. “I’ve decided I need to have another conversation with my friend Jacques Collot. A candid conversation.”

  Hero smiled. “And what do you expect him to tell you?”

  “Mainly, what happened to the French Blue between the time it disappeared from the Garde-Meuble in Paris and when it reappeared in Daniel Eisler’s possession shortly before his death.” Propping one foot on the edge of a bench, Sebastian loosened the dagger he kept in a sheath in his boot, then straightened to slip a small double-barreled pistol into the pocket of his tattered greatcoat. “And maybe-just maybe-where the bloody diamond is now.”

  Chapter 31

  By the time Sebastian reached the parish of St. Giles, the darkness of the night was complete, the sickle moon and few dim stars that had been visible earlier at dusk hidden now by a haze of coal smoke and scattered clouds. The smell of cook fires and a pervasive dampness left from the day’s rain hung heavily in the air, underlain by the inevitable stench of effluvia and decay. As he paid off his hackney driver, a tousle-haired woman in a tawdry, low-cut red gown emerged from the shadows of a nearby doorway to smile archly. “Lookin’ fer some fun, gov’nor?”

  Sebastian shook his head and turned to push his way through the raucous, drunken crowds of costermongers and day laborers, thieves and pickpockets, doxies and beggars, his gaze carefully scanning the sea of rough, dirty faces.