Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Read online

  “You know him?”

  “I attended several of his lectures at St. Thomas’s—on the circulatory system, and on human musculature.”

  It was the last thing Sebastian would have expected her to have done, but he kept the thought to himself.

  “Frankly,” she said, “I’m surprised to see him here. I didn’t think Sir William planned to order autopsies.”

  “He hasn’t. Gibson’s here because he’s a friend of mine.”

  She glanced up at him. “And has he discovered anything?”

  “He says the women were murdered. Most were stabbed, although he thinks at least one was shot.”

  She opened her parasol and raised it against the feeble sun. “You doubted me, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded, as if she had expected as much. In the street before the house, Sir William was now busy supervising the loading of that sad row of charred bodies into the back of the dray. She watched him for a moment, then said, “Has Dr. Gibson’s opinion prompted Sir William to order the women autopsied?”

  “No. I suspect we can thank your father for that.”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it would have happened, even without my father’s interference. Sir William’s attitude toward prostitutes is well-known. Last month, a costermonger came before the magistrates for beating a woman to death in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Sir William let the man go with only a warning.”

  Sebastian studied her clear-skinned face. “Why are you here, Miss Jarvis?”

  The breeze fluttered her hair across her face, but she pushed it back without a hint of artifice. “I’ve been talking to the Society of Friends. It seems a gentleman by the name of Joshua Walden was at the Magdalene House the night Rose first sought refuge with them. He lives in Hans Town. I thought he might be able to tell us more about her.”

  “ ‘Us’?” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I was under the impression this was your investigation, Miss Jarvis. That my role was that of an adviser only and was rapidly coming to a conclusion.”

  She tilted her head back, one hand coming up to hold her hat as she stared up at the crumbling, smoke-darkened walls of the Magdalene House. Something quivered across her face, a breath of painful emotion that was there and then gone. “That was mere subterfuge and you know it. I want to find out who killed these women, Lord Devlin, and why, and I am not too vain to acknowledge that you are far more experienced in such matters than I. I was hoping that if you looked into the incident, even briefly, it would catch your interest.”

  When he made no response, she said, “Do you believe in justice?”

  “As an abstract concept, yes. Although I fear there is little true justice in this world.”

  She nodded toward the blackened ruins of the Magdalene House. “In life, our society failed Rose—failed all these women. I don’t want to fail them, in death.”

  “You are not responsible for society.”

  “Yes, I am. We all are, each in our own small way.” She turned to fix him with a direct gaze. “Will you come with me to Hans Town?”

  He started to say no. But as he looked into her fierce gray eyes, he realized that a part of her actually wanted him to say no, because it would give her an excuse to walk away from all of this, away from the fear and the horror that was that night.

  Turning, he watched the workmen swing the body of the young fair-headed girl into the back of the dray. And in that moment, he wasn’t thinking about Lord Jarvis, or Hero Jarvis. He was thinking about the life that child would never live, and the men who had taken it from her.

  And so he surprised both himself and Hero Jarvis by saying, “Yes.”

  Chapter 7

  Joshua Walden’s home in Hans Town proved to be a modest house of red brick, with neatly painted white shutters, a shiny black door, and window boxes filled with well-tended masses of dianthus and saxifrage.

  A tall, almost cadaverously thin man in his late forties or early fifties with a thick head of graying brown hair, he received them in a plainly furnished parlor. “I am honored by this visit, Hero Jarvis,” he said, inviting them to sit. “Honored. I read thine article on the high rate of mortality amongst children sold by the parish as climbing boys to chimney sweeps. Fascinating work.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Miss Jarvis, giving the Quaker a smile so wide it made Sebastian blink. “Although I must confess the methodology used was not my own.”

  From his seat beside the empty hearth, Sebastian listened, bemused, while Miss Jarvis worked, deliberately and adroitly, to insinuate herself in their host’s good graces. The two crusaders rattled on at length about everything from laying-in hospitals to poor laws. Only gradually did she bring the conversation around, artfully, to the reason for their visit.

  “I understand you were at the Magdalene House the night Rose Jones sought refuge there,” she said.

  “Yes. It was the third night.”

  “The third night?” said Sebastian.

  Walden smiled. “What thou would call Wednesday. I remember it because the weather was dreadful—the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was quite cold. We haven’t been having much of a spring, have we? The poor women were soaked through and dangerously chilled.”

  Sebastian sat forward. “Women?”

  “Yes. There were two of them. I don’t recall the other one’s name. Helen, or Hannah . . . something like that. She didn’t stay long, I’m afraid. Our rules are not harsh but they are firm. We’ve discovered that some of the women who come to us don’t really wish to leave the life. I’m afraid Helen, or Hannah, or whoever she was, fell into that category. She was frightened the night she came, but that soon wore off. She left after only a day or two.”

  Miss Jarvis nodded, neither embarrassed nor shocked by the nature of the conversation. “You say she was frightened?”

  “Oh, yes. They both were. It’s not unusual. Many of the women who come to us are fleeing dreadful situations—virtual slavery, you know. The brutes who keep them have either forced them to sign papers the poor simpletons believe are binding, or have contrived to reduce them to a state of hopeless indebtedness, even renting them the very clothes on their backs so that by fleeing they open themselves up to charges of theft.”

  “Did she give you any idea what kind of situation she’d fled?” Sebastian asked.

  “We generally don’t inquire too closely into such details. But from one or two things Hannah—yes, that was the other girl’s name. Hannah, not Helen. At any rate, from one or two things she let slip, Margaret Crowley received the impression the women had been at a residential brothel.” He paused, his thin chest rising on a sigh. “Margaret Crowley was the matron at the Magdalene House, you know.”

  Miss Jarvis leaned forward to pat his hand, where it lay on the chair’s arm. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”

  “Any idea where the brothel may have been located?” Sebastian asked.

  Walden cleared his throat. “The one girl—Hannah—was very talkative. I believe she mentioned Portman Square.”

  Sebastian nodded. Closed, stay-in brothels were rare in London. More common were lodging-house brothels, where the girls were—nominally, at least—independent. Picking up their customers from the pleasure gardens or the theater or even the streets of the city, they then brought them back to the lodging house where they kept a room. Other girls took their men to “accommodation houses” where they didn’t actually live; they simply hired one of its rooms for the requisite number of hours—or minutes. Others made use of the numerous chop houses, cigar rooms, and coffeehouses that also had bedrooms available for use—their exclusively male clientele making them good hunting grounds, as well.

  “I’m afraid there’s really not much else I can tell you about Rose Jones,” Walden was saying. “Many of the girls chafe at the restrictions we impose upon them, but Rose never did. She never left the house.”

  “Because she was still afraid?”

  “Yes, I thi
nk so.”

  “Did she ever say anything about her life before she . . .” Miss Jarvis hesitated.

  Walden shook his head. “No. Although it was obvious she was gently born. We don’t often see women quite like her. For some reason, many of the women who come to us claim to be clergymen’s daughters, although I suspect few actually are. But I’ve no doubt Rose was very wellborn. Very wellborn indeed.” He looked from Miss Jarvis to Sebastian. “This has something to do with the fire, doesn’t it? Dost thou think it’s possible the fire was not an accident?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  Joshua Walden nodded, his lips pressed together tightly.

  It was when he was escorting them to the door that he said suddenly, “There is one more thing that might help. We had a young girl in the house who called herself Rachel. I don’t think she could have been more than thirteen—a lovely fair-haired child. One evening—just by chance—I overheard Rose say to the child, ‘I was once called Rachel.’ It stuck in my head because Rachel laughed merrily and said, ‘I was once called Rose.’ ”

  He smiled gently at the memory, the smile rapidly fading. “But it may mean nothing. Some girls change their names frequently.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sebastian, pausing in the Quaker’s simple entrance hall. “But it could also be Rose’s real name. Thank you.”

  “That was fortuitous,” said Miss Jarvis as Sebastian handed her up into her waiting carriage. “I hadn’t expected to learn so much.”

  “You think we learned a great deal, do you?”

  “You don’t?” She turned to look at him in surprise. “How many brothels can there be near Portman Square?”

  He took a step back. “Believe it or not, Miss Jarvis, I haven’t the slightest idea. But I know someone who will.”

  Chapter 8

  In addition to the modest estate in Hampshire bequeathed to him by a maiden great-aunt, Sebastian also kept a bow-fronted house in Brook Street. The establishment at Number 41 Brook Street was considerably smaller and less imposing than the Grosvenor Square townhouse of his father, Alistair St. Cyr, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Fifth Earl of Hendon. But Sebastian had not visited either his father’s Grosvenor Square house or his ancestral estates in Cornwall since September of the previous year.

  A distant rumble of thunder shook the cloudy afternoon as Sebastian took the short flight of stairs to his own front door. He handed his hat to his majordomo, Morey, and said, “Where is Calhoun?”

  Jules Calhoun was Sebastian’s valet. The less than orthodox nature of some of Sebastian’s activities had in the past made it difficult for him to retain the services of a gentleman’s gentleman. But it had been eight months now since Calhoun had joined the Brook Street household, and he’d never shown the least tendency to leave in horror or a fit of pique.

  The majordomo, however, was not one of Calhoun’s fans. He sniffed. “Some valets might have more sense than to invade the kitchen this close to the dinner hour,” said Morey in sepulchral tones. “Unfortunately, Calhoun is not of their company.”

  Sebastian hid a smile. “Brewing boot polish, is he?”

  A muscle bunched along Morey’s tight jaw. “If Madame LeClerc should quit over this—”

  “Madame LeClerc quit because Calhoun has chosen to spend some time in the kitchen?” Sebastian jerked off his gloves. “Not likely.”

  Madame LeClerc would have banished any other valet with a pot of boot polish to the stables. But the cook was called “Madame” solely out of courtesy; she was actually a young French-woman in her late twenties, a softly rounded woman with black hair and laughing eyes and a short upper lip. And Jules Calhoun was a very dashing gentleman’s gentleman.

  Morey sniffed again. “Would you like me to have him wait upon you, my lord?”

  Sebastian swung off his driving coat. “Good God, no.” Boot polish was serious business. “I’ll go to him.”

  Morey bowed in majestic silence and withdrew.

  The descent of the Viscount into his own kitchens caused something of a flutter. The kitchen maid dropped a pot of half-shelled peas, while Madame LeClerc gasped and said, “Ees something wrong, my lord? You deed not like the sole I fixed for last night’s dinner, perhaps?”

  “The sole was wonderful,” said Sebastian, carefully avoiding the cascade of rolling peas. “I’ve come to discuss boot polish with Calhoun. If you’ll excuse us?”

  Madame LeClerc threw a soulful glance at the small, lithe man stirring the contents of a heavy pot on the stove, and withdrew.

  The air in the kitchen was redolent with the scent of hot beeswax and resin. In deference to the stove’s heat, Jules Calhoun had removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, yet he still managed to convey a sense of punctilious neatness. Nothing about either his demeanor or his impressive skills as a gentleman’s gentleman betrayed the fact that he had grown up in the most notorious flash house in London.

  “As keen as your lordship is about the shine on his boots,” said Calhoun, not looking around, “I can’t see it luring you down into the kitchens.”

  Sebastian went to sprawl in one of the straight-backed chairs beside the scrubbed kitchen table. “I want to know what you can tell me about the residential brothels near Portman Square.”

  Calhoun glanced around, a lock of his straight flaxen hair falling across his high forehead. “Were you looking for anything in particular, my lord?”

  “I’m looking for a house where one could hire an attractive, gently bred woman of some eighteen to twenty years of age. Dark hair. Slim. Educated.”

  Calhoun returned his concentration to the bubbling concoction on the stove. “Such a barque of frailty has caught your fancy, my lord?”

  “Not exactly. Her name is Rose—or maybe Rachel—Jones and she was killed last night when someone attacked the Friends’ Magdalene House in Covent Garden. I have reason to believe she fled a house near Portman Square.”

  “Ah. I see. Well, there are only three stay-in brothels in the Portman Square area.” Calhoun poured a black mixture from a vial into his pot. Sebastian watched with interest. Like most valets, Calhoun kept his boot polish recipe a dark secret. “If your girl was slim and well-bred,” said the valet, “then I doubt she’d have been at the Golden Calf. They go for the buxom milkmaid type. There’s a house in Chalon Lane that sometimes has more refined girls, but they cater to those who like them young.” A quiver of distaste passed over his features. “Very young. They’re not all girls, either.”

  “And the third house?”

  “I’d say it’s probably your best bet. They call it the Orchard Street Academy. Most of the girls there are simply pretending to be ladies, but a few are the real thing. The abbess is a skinny, grasping harridan who was on the stage in her prime. Calls herself Miss Lil.”

  “She owns the place?”

  “No. The actual owner is Ian Kane.” Calhoun reached for a small bottle. “Now there’s a crafty fellow.”

  Sebastian leaned forward. “Tell me about him.”

  Calhoun added a small measure of what looked like neat’s-foot oil. “I’ve heard his father was a miner from Lincolnshire. Our Ian came up to London when he was but seventeen and married a widow who owned a grog shop on Newgate. Now he owns at least a dozen different establishments—everything from grog shops to pubs to places like the Orchard Street Academy. He’s smart, and he’s ruthless.”

  “Ruthless enough to kill a woman who fled his house?”

  Calhoun raised his spoon to test the consistency of his mixture. “His wife died a year after the marriage. Fell down the stairs and broke her neck. There are those who claim Kane pushed her. But then, it could just be rumor.”