Why Mermaids Sing sscm-3 Page 2

  “So it’s true, is it?”

  Sebastian brought his plate to the table. “It’s true.”

  Hendon waited until Morey set the ale before him and withdrew. Then he leaned forward, his arms on the table, his vivid blue gaze hard on Sebastian’s face. “Why, Sebastian? Why are you doing this?”

  “Why? Because she’s my mother. When I first found out the truth about what happened in Brighton that summer, I was angry. With you. With her. Maybe even with myself for believing all the lies I was told. I’m still angry, but I’ve also realized there are things I’d like to ask her.”

  “But she’s on the Continent.”

  “That’s where I’m looking.”

  Hendon’s bushy white eyebrows drew together in a frown. “There’s still a war on, you know.”

  “It’s a complication, I admit, but not an insurmountable obstacle.”

  Hendon grunted and reached for his ale. The relationship between father and son had never been an easy one, even before Kat, even before the revelations of last June. The marriage of the Earl of Hendon and his gay, beautiful countess, Sophia, had produced four children: the eldest child, a girl named Amanda, and three sons, Richard, Cecil, and Sebastian. Of them all, it was Sebastian, the youngest, who had been the least like his father. Yet for most of Sebastian’s childhood, the Earl had been content to let his youngest son go his own way, secure in the knowledge that the strange boy with the feral eyes and a fascination for poetry and music would never be called upon to inherit the estates and the exalted position that went with them.

  Then death had taken first Richard St. Cyr, then Cecil, and Sebastian had found himself the new Viscount Devlin. There had been times, particularly during the long, hot summer of Cecil’s death and Lady Hendon’s mysterious disappearance, that it had seemed Hendon hated his youngest son. Hated him for living when both his brothers had died.

  “Your aunt Henrietta tells me you’ve refused her invitation to this ball she’s giving tomorrow night,” said Hendon, his heavy jaw jutting forward in that way it did when he knew he was about to start a fight.

  “I have a previous engagement.”

  Hendon gave a scornful laugh. “Where? At Covent Garden Theater?”

  Sebastian took a deep breath and let his father’s barb slide past. “If Aunt Henrietta is particularly desirous that I attend her ball, it’s because some acquaintance of hers has a marriageable daughter she’s determined to fling in my path.” The remark might have sounded arrogant, but it wasn’t. Sebastian knew well that if he were still the youngest of three sons, no ambitious mother in London would let him anywhere near her daughter.

  “You need someone casting marriageable young females in your path,” said Hendon tartly. “You’ll be nine-and-twenty in a month.”

  “The last eligible female my dear aunt inflicted upon me did nothing but prate endlessly about Alcibiades and the Sicilian Expedition.”

  “That’s because when she introduced you to the Duke of Bisley’s daughter, you described the girl as a pretty widgeon with more hair than sense.” Hendon cleared his throat. “I hear the young woman Henrietta has in mind this time is quite out of the common.”

  Sebastian laid down his fork. “I already have a woman in my life, as well you know.”

  “A man can have both a mistress and a wife, for God’s sake.”

  Sebastian met his father’s fierce gaze and held it. “Not this man.”

  Hendon growled a crude oath and pushed up from his chair. He was nearly at the door when Sebastian stopped him by saying, “Rather than wasting your time trying to find me a wife, I wish you’d bend your purpose instead to finding me a new valet.”

  Hendon swung around. “What? I thought you just hired a new man last summer.”

  “I did. He quit.”

  “Quit? Why?”

  Sebastian hesitated. In actual fact, the valet had quit because he’d spied Sebastian’s tiger teaching the second footman how to pick pockets, but Sebastian wasn’t about to tell Hendon that. Instead he said, “Do you know of anyone?”

  “I’ll have my man look into it.”

  After his father left, Sebastian tried again to apply himself to his breakfast, but soon gave it up. He thought about going over the stack of valets’ credentials in his library, or perhaps applying himself to some overdue correspondence. But he knew he wasn’t going to do either of those things.

  He was going to the City to hear what Dr. Paul Gibson could tell him about the death of young Mr. Dominic Stanton.

  Chapter 5

  “It’s the wound across his throat that killed him,” said Paul Gibson, tying what looked like a stained butcher’s apron around his waist.

  They were old friends, Sebastian and this one-legged Irish surgeon with a scholar’s mind, a healer’s touch, and a secret burning hunger for the sweet relief to be found in poppies. They had met on the battlefields of Europe. Theirs was the friendship of men who’d faced death together, who knew each other’s greatest strengths and private demons. No one in all of England could analyze the dead like Paul Gibson. Sebastian knew it, and he also knew why. The human body was Gibson’s bible; he ministered to its ills and injuries, he studied and taught it, and on dark nights when men with muffled lanterns prowled the churchyards of London, Paul Gibson was known to offer a ready market for what they had to sell.

  They were in the small stone building behind Gibson’s surgery near the Tower, where Gibson performed his autopsies and dissections. The mist had long since burned away, revealing a clear, blue-sky morning. Through the open door Sebastian could see the bright golden sunshine of a warm September day, hear the sweet song of a lark and the faint buzzing of bees around the overgrown roses in the yard that stretched between the outbuilding and the surgery itself. But in here the air was close and dank and scented by death.

  Sebastian stared down at the naked, ravaged body of Dominic Stanton lying on the thick granite slab before them. Gibson hadn’t yet progressed beyond the preliminaries in his postmortem. But even to Sebastian’s untrained eye, the slice across the boy’s throat looked neat and precise—in sharp contrast to what had been done to his legs.

  “I hope for his sake that was the first cut.”

  “It would appear so.” Moving awkwardly on his one good leg, Paul Gibson limped around to the other side of the table. He’d lost the lower part of his left leg on a battlefield on the Continent. “The slash was made from left to right. Probably from behind.”

  Sebastian looked up at his friend’s lean, dark face. “But there was hardly any blood on the cravat.”

  “I suspect it was removed along with the coat, waistcoat, and shirt before his throat was slit. The body was then drained of its blood and dressed again.”

  “Jesus. Just like Barclay Carmichael.”

  Gibson frowned. “You mean the man who was killed last June?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Sebastian studied the body lying stiff and rigid before them. His experiences in the war had taught Sebastian more than he cared to know about the changes the passing hours bring to the remains of the dead. “At about what time would you say Stanton was killed? Around midnight?” The youth appeared to be in the full grip of rigor mortis.

  “Probably. Give or take a few hours either way.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “A struggle? No. But this is interesting.” Gibson picked up one of the body’s arms. “There are abrasions on his wrists. See? And signs of irritation at the corners of his mouth.”

  “He was bound and gagged,” said Sebastian.

  “So it would appear.”

  Sebastian studied the boy’s well-developed shoulders and tall frame. Dominic Stanton might have been young, but he was still a big, strong lad. It wouldn’t have been easy for one man to overpower him. “Any sign of a head wound?”

  “No.”

  Sebastian had to force himself to look at what was left of the boy’s legs. “Doesn’t strike me as a particularly professional job,” he sai
d after a moment.

  “No. It’s quite clumsy in fact. Done with some sort of cleaver, I’d say. Postmortem, thankfully.”

  “Do you know a Dr. Martin, at St. Thomas? According to Lovejoy, he did the autopsy on Barclay Carmichael last June.”

  The Irishman’s mouth thinned into a humorless smile. “The man’s a bloody pompous ass, but I’ll try talking to him. See if he noticed anything that didn’t make it into his report.”

  The stench in the room was starting to get to Sebastian. He went to stand in the open doorway and draw the clean, fresh air of the day into his lungs.

  From behind him, Gibson said, “Sir Henry Lovejoy told me he’s asked for your help. And why. He said you hadn’t agreed.”

  “I haven’t.” Sebastian narrowed his eyes against a sun so bright it hurt. “The boy was obviously brought to the Old Palace Yard after being killed and cut up someplace else. Any idea where?”

  Gibson turned away to reach for a scalpel. “Ask me tomorrow.”

  Chapter 6

  Sebastian was crossing Whitehall, headed toward St. James’s Park and the site where the first victim’s body had been found, when he heard an imperious voice call, “Devlin.”

  He turned to find Alfred, Lord Stanton striding toward him. A haughty-looking man in his late forties, Stanton had the broad shoulders and substantial height of his son. But when Sebastian looked into the Baron’s brown eyes and bony, sun-darkened features, he found himself thinking that the boy, Dominic, must have taken his fair coloring and full cheeks from his mother.

  “I understand you’re responsible for my son ending up in the hands of some common Irish surgeon.”

  Sebastian stood and let the Baron walk up to him. “It’s within the magistrate’s power to refer a murder victim’s body for a postmortem.”

  “Bloody hell. This is my son we’re talking about. My son. Not some back-alley whore to be handed over to a bog Irish nobody.”

  Sebastian stared off beyond the Guards toward the park and tried to make allowances for the anguish of a father who’d just lost a son in one of the worst ways imaginable. Although from the sounds of things, it wasn’t the postmortem Stanton was objecting to as much as the social status of the surgeon conducting it.

  “Paul Gibson is the best student of anatomy and death in London. If anyone can help discover who killed your son, it’s he.”

  Stanton’s jaw jutted out. “And what business is it of yours, who killed my son?”

  There were those, Sebastian knew, who still believed him guilty of the terrible rapes and murders that had frightened London the previous winter. It was always possible that Lord Stanton was one of that number, although Sebastian doubted it.

  “Do you know if your son had any enemies?” he asked, as much to see the man’s reaction as anything. “Someone who might wish him harm?”

  Stanton’s face darkened with anger. Sebastian could see a father’s grief in the man’s slackened facial muscles and bruised eyes. But there was something else there, too. Something that looked very much like fear.

  Stanton poked the air between them with one meaty finger. “You stay out of this, you hear? It’s no affair of yours. None!”

  Sebastian watched the big man stride away toward the Privy Gardens, the September sun golden on his broad shoulders.

  “Well, that was interesting,” said Sebastian.

  He followed the canal in St. James’s Park to a slight rise with a single black mulberry tree, where on a warm summer’s morning three months before the rising sun had shed its rays on another butchered young man.

  Barclay Carmichael had been found with his ankles lashed together by a stout rope thrown over an arching branch of the mulberry. Hoisted high, his mangled arms dangling toward the grass, he’d been found at first light. Just like Dominic Stanton.

  Two wealthy young men, thought Sebastian, one eighteen, the other seven-and-twenty. One the son of a powerful banker, the other the scion of one of England’s oldest families. Both bodies butchered and left as if on display in very public spaces.

  Standing on the rise, Sebastian turned in a slow circle. From here he could see the Palace of St. James’s and the Houses of Parliament, the Old Admiralty Building and the Horse Guards Parade.

  Why here? he wondered. And then he thought, Where next?

  He found Sir Henry Lovejoy descending the steps of the Public Office on Queen Square. At the sight of Sebastian, the magistrate paused and made to swing around. “My lord. Please, come in.”

  “No. I won’t keep you,” said Sebastian. “I just had a few questions I wanted to ask. I take it you’ve had the opportunity to speak with Lord Stanton?”

  An indefinable quiver passed over Sir Henry’s normally bland features. “Yes. Unfortunately, his lordship was rather upset by the choice of surgeon for his son’s postmortem.”

  “As well as by my possible involvement in the investigation into the circumstances of his death, I gather?”

  Sir Henry blinked. “As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?”

  Sebastian simply shook his head. “Where does his lordship say his son spent last night?”

  “It seems the boy made one of a party of friends who rode down to Merton Abbey for yesterday’s prizefight.”

  Bare-knuckle boxing was illegal and could, technically, be stopped by the magistrates, which is why the matches were typically held several hours’ ride from London. But the match between the Champion and his Scottish challenger, McGregor, had been the subject of such intense speculation there couldn’t be a magistrate in the area who hadn’t been aware of it.

  “They set out from London for Merton Abbey as a group, just before eleven yesterday morning,” Sir Henry was saying.

  “So what happened?”

  “Mr. Stanton was expected home for a dinner party his mother was giving. He never arrived.” Sir Henry paused. “Lady Stanton is said to be hysterical.”

  The bells of Westminster Abbey began to chime the hour, the rich notes floating out over the city. “Do you have the names of these friends?”

  “Yes. Young Lord Burlington, Sir Miles Jefferies’s son Davis, and a Charlie McDermott. At the moment they’re gathered at a pub in Fleet Street. I was just on my way there to interview them.”

  Sebastian squinted against the bright September sun. “Let me approach them first.”

  He was aware of Sir Henry studying him. “I didn’t think you were interested in the case, my lord.”

  Sebastian gave a grim smile and turned away. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  Chapter 7

  The Boar’s Head on Fleet Street was one of those comfortable old pubs with dark paneled walls and low ceilings that reminded their patrons of winter evenings spent tucked away in the cozy Jacobin inns of Leicester and Derby, Northampton and Worcestershire. Sebastian supposed it was that warm familiarity that had made it an attractive refuge for three young men with bruised spirits and aching memories.

  Ordering a pint of ale, Sebastian paused beside the low, ancient bar. The three friends huddled around a table in the corner, unaware of his presence. A somber group, they sat with shoulders hunched, hands cupped around pewter tankards, chins sunk in ambitiously tied cravats. Occasionally one would make a comment and the others would nod. No one laughed.

  The eldest of the three, Davis Jefferies, was but twenty, a slight, incredibly gaunt young man who looked more like sixteen. To his left sat Charlie McDermott, another slim youth with the pale skin and flaming red hair of the far north. Only Lord Burlington, a baron’s son from Nottingham who’d come into his title as a child, approached Dominic Stanton in size and bulk.

  Sebastian watched the men for a time, then walked over to their table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Three startled pairs of eyes turned toward him. “I’d like a few words with you gentlemen,” he said quietly, “if you don’t mind?”

  The three exchanged hurried glances. “No. Of course not,” said Jefferies, stammering slightly. “How may we help you, my lord?”


  “I understand you attended yesterday’s mill down at Merton Abbey.”

  Jefferies hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.”

  “With Mr. Dominic Stanton?”

  The redheaded Scotsman, McDermott, spoke up, saying in a rush, “I beg your pardon, my lord, but what is this about?”

  Sebastian leaned back in his chair. “I’m wondering if you know of anyone Stanton might have angered lately. A gentleman annoyed by Mr. Stanton’s attentions to his lady, perhaps? Or perhaps someone he bested in a game of chance or a wager?”

  The three were silent for a moment, thinking. Then Jefferies shook his head and said, “Dominic wasn’t much in the petticoat line. And he never could pick a winner—or run a bluff.”

  “Was he in any way acquainted with Mr. Barclay Carmichael?”

  “Are you roasting me? A bang-up Corinthian like Carmichael? No. We all admired him, but…that was it.”

  Burlington spoke up suddenly. “You’re trying to figure out who did it, aren’t you?” The boy’s face was pale and puffy. When Sebastian looked into his soft gray eyes, Burlington glanced quickly away.

  “Do you have any ideas about what happened to him?”

  All three boys shook their heads, their eyes wide.

  “Where did you gentlemen go after yesterday’s fight?”

  “To the White Monk,” said McDermott. “Outside Merton Abbey.”

  “Until when?”

  “Just before midnight. But Dominic left long before that. His mother wanted him home for some dinner party she was giving.”

  “So he left alone?”

  Again, the three exchanged glances. It was Burlington who swallowed and licked his lips before answering. “He asked me to go with him. Said he didn’t want to ride back to London by himself. But I just laughed at him. Made fun of him. Told him he was acting like a shrieking little housemaid.” The boy’s voice cracked and he looked away again, blinking rapidly.

  “What time did he leave?”

  “About half past five, I’d say?” McDermott looked around the table for confirmation. The other two nodded their heads. “Yes. Half past five.”