What Darkness Brings sscm-8 Read online

  A loud clap of thunder shook the room, and they laughed together.

  She wrapped her other hand around his, their fingers entwining. “‘The flowers appear on the earth,’” she whispered. “‘The time of the singing of birds is come, and the vines with the tender grape give good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’”

  “I think you left out a couple of lines,” he said, pressing her back against the wall so that he could get at the ties of her dressing gown.

  She brought up one bare leg to wrap around his hip and let it slide slowly, provocatively down the hard length of his thigh. “I was in a hurry,” she said, and caught his laugh with her kiss.

  Chapter 45

  Friday, 25 September

  Early the next morning, Hero walked into the dining room of Jarvis House in Grosvenor Square to find her father looking over a stack of reports while consuming a solitary breakfast. Wordlessly, she closed the door in the footman’s face and leaned back against it.

  “This is ominous,” said Jarvis, his gaze still fixed on the papers in his hand.

  She pushed away from the door and came to stand in front of him. “You knew Devlin was not Hendon’s son, yet you chose not to tell me. Why?”

  He looked up, his face-as always-inscrutable. “Under the circumstances, I saw no point. Are you suggesting it would have altered your decision to marry, had you known the details surrounding his birth?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  He dropped the report he held beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. “So Devlin finally told you himself, did he?”

  “Yes.” She pulled out the chair beside him and sat. “Devlin says he doesn’t know who his father is. Do you?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Believe me, I have tried over the years to discover the man’s identity. One never knows when such information might prove useful. But none of my attempts have thus far met with success.” He templed his hands before him. “Did Devlin also tell you that his mother still lives?”

  “She what?”

  “Omitted that little detail, did he?” Jarvis reached for his snuffbox and calmly opened it with the flick of a finger. “Oh, yes. She’s still quite alive. Although as it happens, he does not know where she is.”

  Hero watched him lift a delicate pinch to one nostril. “But you do, don’t you?”

  He inhaled sharply and smiled. “I think perhaps I shouldn’t answer that question.”

  Her gaze met his. “You just did.”

  It occurred to Sebastian that the more he learned about Daniel Eisler, the more he found it a wonder that someone hadn’t killed the nasty bastard years before.

  Eisler’s life had been populated by an endless stream of desperate men and women upon whom he inflicted financial ruin, sexual degradation, and burning humiliation. Sebastian knew the names of some of his victims-but only some. The number of people who’d wished the man dead must have been beyond counting. And Sebastian had less than twenty-four hours to find the one who’d finally given in to his-or her-lethal urges.

  Both Blair Beresford and Jacques Collot had admitted wanting to kill the diamond merchant. Would someone who actually followed through on his murderous impulses admit to them? Sebastian didn’t think so. But then, he’d learned long ago the fallacy of assuming others shared his own nature.

  Yet he also found himself wondering, Why now? After decades of successfully cheating, blackmailing, and exploiting those unfortunate enough to stumble into his web, why had Eisler finally paid the ultimate price for his greedy machinations? Had he simply misjudged the wrong man? Or had he fallen afoul of forces too powerful for him to control?

  Sebastian was seated at his breakfast table pondering these questions when a distant peal sounded at the front door. A moment later, Morey appeared to clear his throat and bow.

  “A gentleman to see you, my lord. Colonel Otto von Riedesel apologizes for the incivility of calling upon your lordship at this hour but wishes to stress the importance of his errand.”

  “Show him in-and bring him a tankard of ale.” Sebastian glanced down at the black cat seated on the rug at his feet. “And you behave.”

  Green eyes gleaming, the cat flicked its tail and looked vaguely evil.

  The colonel came in with a quick step that jangled the spurs at his boots and swirled the black cape he wore thrown over his shoulders. “Please, do not get up,” he said. “My apologies for interrupting your repast.”

  “May I offer you something, Colonel?”

  “Thank you, but no.” He held his black shako beneath one arm; raindrops quivered on the ends of his mustache and on the high blue collar of his black dolman. “I require only a moment of your time.”

  “Please, sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  Von Riedesel sat, bringing with him all the scents of a rainy morning mingled with the odor of warm horseflesh, as if he had only just come in from exercising his hack in the park. He smoothed the splayed fingers of one hand down over his face, wiping the moisture from his mustache. Then he hesitated, evidently at a loss as to how to begin.

  Sebastian said, “I take it you’ve heard of the death of Jacques Collot?”

  Von Riedesel nodded, his normally ruddy cheeks pale.

  “You knew him?”

  “Me? No. But I knew of him-of his involvement in the theft at the Garde-Meuble.” The man’s voice was strained, his accent more pronounced than usual. “Vhy vas he killed? Do you know?”

  “Presumably because someone was afraid that he might talk.”

  The Brunswicker rested his forearms on the tabletop and leaned into them. “But vhat could he know?”

  “Well, he knew the late Duke once possessed a certain large blue diamond.”

  “Sir!” Von Riedesel sat back sharply. “If you mean to suggest-”

  “That you had a reason to kill him? Well, you did, didn’t you?”

  The Brunswicker surged to his feet. “I refuse to stay here and-”

  “Sit down,” said Sebastian. “Since you’re here, you might as well answer some of my questions. Unless, of course, you prefer that I address them to the Princess?”

  “I ought to call you out for this!”

  Sebastian chewed and swallowed. “But you won’t, because that would draw the attention of the public-not to mention the Prince Regent-precisely where you don’t want it. Sit.”

  The colonel sat.

  Sebastian cut another slice of ham. “Daniel Eisler had a nasty habit of collecting damaging information about people-especially important, vulnerable people.” He paused to glance over at the colonel, who sat staring rigidly ahead. “It occurs to me that he could have discovered something Princess Caroline did not want publicly known. Something such as the details of the sale of her father’s jewels, perhaps? Or was it proof of her extramarital dalliances?”

  “Whoever told you Eisler had damaging information about the Princess was lying.”

  “Actually, you told me.”

  “Me? But I never-”

  “Otherwise, why are you here?”

  New beads of moisture had appeared on the Brunswicker’s full cheeks. Only, this time it was sweat, not rain.

  Sebastian said, “Eisler wasn’t your typical blackmailer. He liked to use his information to torment people, or to bend them to his will. So what did he want from the Princess?”

  “I can’t tell you that!”

  “Did she give him what he wanted?”

  Von Riedesel pressed his lips into a thin, flat line, then nodded curtly. “Yes.”

  Sebastian gave up on his breakfast and leaned back in his chair. “You’ve served and protected the Duke’s daughter for more than a decade. I can’t see you standing idly by while a nasty little diamond merchant threatened her.”

  “You are suggesting-vhat? That I vent to his home Sunday night and put a bullet through him?” If the Brunswicker’s face had been pale before, it was now suffused with color. “As it happens, I s
pent last Sunday evening in the company of a voman of my acquaintance-and no, I have no intention of telling you her name.” He pushed to his feet, the movement so violent the chair toppled over, startling the cat. “Good day to you, sir!”

  He had almost reached the door when Sebastian said, “Tell me this: Did the Prince know about Eisler’s interest in his wife’s affairs?”

  Von Riedesel paused at the door to look back at him. “No. But I’ll tell you who did know.”

  “Who?”

  A gleam of malicious triumph flashed in the Brunswicker’s small brown eyes. “Jarvis. Jarvis knew.”

  Half an hour later, Sebastian was on the verge of leaving to make a formal call on his father-in-law when he received a message from Sir Henry Lovejoy. Jud Foy had been discovered sprawled against one of the tombstones in St. Anne’s churchyard.

  Dead.

  Chapter 46

  Sebastian found Sir Henry standing in the lee of the church’s soot-stained, redbrick walls, his shoulders hunched and the collar of his greatcoat turned up against the morning drizzle.

  Jud Foy still lay sprawled where he had been discovered, half-propped against a mossy tombstone like a man who’d stretched out for a nap. Except that his eyes were wide and staring, and someone had bashed the side of his head into a bloody pulp.

  “Given your interest in the fellow, I thought you’d want to know,” said Sir Henry when Sebastian walked up to him.

  “Who found him?”

  “The sexton. He tells us he heard a commotion late last night but saw nothing when he went to investigate. It was only this morning he noticed the corpse.”

  Sebastian went to hunker down beside the body. In death, Foy seemed to have shriveled to little more than a loose collection of rags drummed into the mud by the previous night’s rain. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out to touch the dead man’s sunken cheek.

  He was cold.

  Looking up, Sebastian squinted through the drizzle to where a couple of constables were working their way across the overgrown churchyard. “Have they found anything?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid.” Sir Henry paused. “I heard about last night’s shooting in St. Giles. You weren’t hurt?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “They weren’t shooting at me.”

  Sir Henry nodded to the dead man beside them. “Does this make any sense to you?”

  “None of it makes any sense to me.”

  The magistrate frowned. “One wonders what he was doing in a churchyard.”

  “Meeting someone, perhaps?”

  “Surely a tavern would have been more suitable. . not to mention warmer and dryer?”

  “It would also have been more public.”

  “There is that.” Sir Henry reached for his handkerchief and wiped his nose with a sniff.

  Sebastian said, “You’ll be sending the body to Gibson?”

  The magistrate’s eyes narrowed in a thoughtful frown. But all he said was, “Indeed. I’ve just dispatched one of the lads to the Mount Street dead house for a shell.”

  Sebastian was pushing to his feet when something half-hidden beneath the dead man’s greasy, ragged coat caught his eye. He reached for it and found himself holding a small leather pouch embossed with the stylized initials DE. He’d seen the device before; it was Daniel Eisler’s.

  Loosening the pouch’s rawhide tie, he shook some half a dozen small stones into the palm of one hand. They winked up at him, somehow snatching a measure of light from the dreary, overcast day and turning it into a brilliant rainbow of fire.

  “What is it?” Lovejoy asked, leaning forward to see.

  “Diamonds,” said Sebastian. “I think they’re diamonds.”

  After the men from the dead house had carried off what was left of Jud Foy toward Tower Hill, Sebastian bought Sir Henry a cup of hot chocolate from a coffeehouse on Leicester Square.

  “Is Foy the ruffian I hear accosted Lady Devlin in Charing Cross yesterday?” asked Sir Henry, his hands wrapped around his steaming mug. His nose was red, and Sebastian noticed he kept sniffing.

  “Yes.”

  The magistrate reached for his handkerchief. “Remarkable woman, her ladyship. Quite remarkable. Not to mention formidable.”

  “She didn’t bash in Foy’s head.”

  Sir Henry’s eyes widened above his handkerchief. “Good heavens. I hope you don’t think I was suggesting any such thing?”

  Sebastian smiled and shook his head. Then his smile faded. “I hear Yates is scheduled to stand trial tomorrow morning.”

  “He is, yes. I’m told they’re so confident of conviction that the keeper has already ordered the construction of the gallows for Monday morning.”

  Sebastian took a sip of his coffee and practically scalded his tongue. “Perhaps the deaths of two men linked to the case will lead the authorities to reconsider.”

  “It might if we were dealing with anyone other than Bertram Leigh-Jones.” Lovejoy touched his handkerchief to his nose again. “Although there’s no denying Foy’s possession of that pouch of diamonds is certainly suggestive.”

  “I don’t think Foy is our killer. But he might well have known who the killer was.”

  “The man was a pauper. How else could he have acquired those stones?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sebastian. But it was only a half-truth. Because Sebastian could think of at least two plausible scenarios. One involved Napoleon’s unknown agent.

  The other implicated Matt Tyson.

  Sebastian spent the next couple of hours talking to several veterans of the Peninsular War, including an organ-grinder in Russell Square who’d lost a leg at Barossa and a sergeant who lived in one of the almshouses funded by Benjamin Bloomsfield.

  By the time he reached Matt Tyson’s lodgings in St. James’s Street, the morning’s rain had ended and the low, heavy clouds were beginning to break up. A ragged, barefoot boy in a cut-down man’s coat held together with string was busy sweeping the mud and manure from the crossing with a worn broom of bundled twigs lashed to a stick. Sebastian tipped him tuppence as he crossed the street and watched the boy’s eyes go wide. It shamed him to realize that before Hero had embarked on the research for her article, the army of half-starved urchins who eked out miserable livings as crossing sweeps had been largely invisible to him, a necessary nuisance whose existence he acknowledged without really questioning it.

  He was just reaching the far flagway when Tyson exited his lodging and paused to close the door behind him. He was as impeccably dressed as always, in buff-colored breeches and a military-styled dark blue coat, his handsome face hardening as his gaze clashed with Sebastian’s.

  “We need to talk,” said Sebastian.

  “I have nothing further to say to you.”

  “Actually, I rather think you do. You see, I’ve just had an interesting conversation with several veterans of the 114th Foot.”

  Tyson ran his tongue across his perfect top teeth. “Very well. Do come in.”

  His rooms on the first floor were spacious and elegantly furnished with the same exquisite taste-and expense-he lavished on the raiment of his person. The hangings were of figured burgundy satin, the furniture of the finest gleaming rosewood. He did not invite Sebastian to sit, but simply stood with his back to the closed door, his arms crossed at his chest. “Say what you have to say and then get out.”

  Sebastian let his gaze rove over the shelves of leather-bound books, the gilt-framed oils, the marble bust of a Roman boy. Tyson appeared to be doing quite well for a younger son who’d just sold his commission.

  As if aware of the drift of Sebastian’s thoughts, Tyson said, “One of my maiden aunts recently died, leaving me her portion.”

  “And then of course there’s whatever you cleared from the sale of the spoils of Badajoz.”

  Tyson tightened his jaw and said nothing.

  Sebastian went to stand before a tasteful oil depicting a foxhunt. “You told me Jud Foy’s injuries came from a mule. Only, that was nev
er actually established, was it? In fact, there’s a good possibility someone tried to cave in his head with the butt of a rifle.”

  “Now, why would anyone want to do that?”

  Sebastian continued his study of the room. “I think you paid Foy to perjure himself. Then you tried to kill him in order to eliminate the possibility that he might be inspired to tell the truth at some point in the future-and maybe even so that you could take back whatever you’d used to bribe him.”

  “Believe me, if I’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead.”

  “Actually, he is dead. Someone bashed in his head last night in St. Anne’s churchyard-fatally this time.”

  Sebastian watched the other man’s face carefully.

  But Tyson remained impassive, his only reaction a faint tightening of his lips into the suggestion of a smile. “I’d be tempted to say, ‘How tragic.’ Except that, given the fact the poor sot’s life was hardly worth much at this point, ‘How ironic’ might be more appropriate. Or perhaps, ‘How poetic’?”

  Sebastian felt no inclination to return the man’s smile. “Interestingly enough, he had a small pouch of loose diamonds in his pocket when he was found.”

  “Am I to take it you’re suggesting the gems implicate me in some way? And here I thought you believed me addicted to stealing jewels as opposed to using them to decorate the bodies of my alleged victims.”

  “I think you failed the first time you tried to kill Foy, after Talavera. But since he couldn’t recall anything, it served your purpose just as well. Only, then he started remembering things, didn’t he? Not everything, perhaps, but enough to realize that you owed him. So he came looking for you, and you decided to shut him up permanently. You lured him into the churchyard on the pretext of paying him off with a pouch of small diamonds, and then you bashed in his head while he was distracted by the gems.”

  Tyson’s smile hardened. “And then left them? What a curious thing to have done.”