Why Kings Confess Read online

“Bow Street has received strict instructions from Carlton House that the residents of the Gifford Arms are under no circumstances to be approached,” said Sir Henry as the two men walked along the terrace of Somerset Place, overlooking the Thames. A frigid wind was kicking up whitecaps on the turgid gray water and dashing the incoming tide against the embankment’s walls. “Sir James is adamant that the wishes of the Palace be respected. There will be no investigation of Damion Pelletan’s death—either officially or unofficially.”

  Sebastian looked over at the magistrate. “Ever hear of a murder victim in London having his heart cut out?”

  Lovejoy pressed his lips into a tight, straight line and shook his head. “No. It’s the most troublesome aspect of this killing, is it not? At least that ghastly detail has been kept out of the papers. It could cause a dangerous panic in the streets, were it to become known.”

  “Then let us hope it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Merciful heavens.” Sir Henry pressed the folds of his handkerchief to his mouth. “You think it might?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Sebastian stared off across the river, to where the jagged construction of the new bridge stood out stark against the heavy gray clouds. “How much do you know about the other residents of the Gifford Arms—specifically Colonel Foucher and the clerk, Bondurant?”

  “Nothing, frankly. But I could ask one of my constables to look into them. I don’t believe the Palace said anything in reference to making discreet inquiries about the residents of the inn.”

  Sebastian ducked his head to hide his smile.

  The magistrate said, “And the woman I’m told Paul Gibson found at the murder scene? Is she still alive?”

  “Last I heard. I’m on my way to Tower Hill now.”

  Sir Henry thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the bitter wind. “Perhaps when—if—she regains consciousness, much of the mystery surrounding what happened will be solved.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sebastian, although he doubted it. He suspected that if the unknown woman in Gibson’s surgery could identify Pelletan’s killer, she’d be dead.

  • • •

  Returning to Tower Hill, Sebastian found Paul Gibson seated at his kitchen table and eating a plate of cold sliced mutton with boiled cabbage.

  Like the surgery beside it, Gibson’s house faced onto the old cobbled lane that curled around the rear of the Tower. The stone walls were thick, the ceilings heavily beamed and low, the floors uneven. Gibson employed a housekeeper named Mrs. Federico, although as far as Sebastian could tell, she did little beyond cook Gibson’s meals and clean his kitchen. She refused to enter any room in which he kept his “specimens.” Since the surgeon had alcohol-filled jars containing any number of body parts and assorted oddities scattered around the house, her prejudice effectively restricted her to the passageway and the kitchen.

  But at the moment, the housekeeper was nowhere in sight.

  “Bad luck, I’m afraid,” said Gibson as Sebastian poured himself some ale from the pitcher on the table and settled on the opposite bench. “A couple of constables from Bow Street came and took Pelletan’s body away with them.”

  “I heard. Did you get a chance to examine it at all?”

  Gibson shook his head and paused to swallow a mouthful of cabbage. “Not really. Although I did discover how he died.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was stabbed in the back with a dagger by someone who either knew what he was doing or got very lucky. The wound would have pierced the heart.”

  “So he was dead before the killer hacked open his chest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God for that, at least.” Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of his ale. “Could you tell what the killer used to take out the heart?”

  “Probably a big kitchen knife. Or a butcher knife.”

  “Interesting,” said Sebastian.

  Gibson looked up from cutting himself a slice of mutton. “Why’s that?”

  “A dagger and a kitchen knife. Think about it: Who brings two knives to a murder?”

  Gibson chewed thoughtfully. “Someone who knows how to kill with a dagger but realizes he needs a bigger knife to steal his victim’s heart?”

  “Exactly.”

  “In other words, our killer planned to take Pelletan’s heart.”

  Sebastian nodded.

  “Bloody hell,” Gibson said softly. “But . . . why?”

  “That I can’t even begin to guess.”

  Gibson reached for the pitcher and poured them both more ale. “Did you go to Cat’s Hole?”

  “I did.” He told Gibson, briefly, what he had found there.

  “You didn’t by chance find Pelletan’s heart while you were having a look about, did you?”

  “No. But there was a pig rooting in the passage when I arrived.”

  Gibson grimaced. “Bad luck, that.” Pigs were notorious for eating anything and everything, human body parts included.

  “You didn’t see the heart last night?”

  “No. But then, I don’t have your ability to see in the dark. And I was a wee bit preoccupied with other things.”

  “How is your patient doing?”

  “She awoke this morning long enough to tell me that her name is Alexandrie Sauvage and she has rooms in Golden Square. I’ve sent a message to her servant, telling the woman her mistress is alive but injured.”

  “Would it be possible for me to speak to her?”

  Gibson shook his head. “She was restless and in pain, so I gave her a few drops of laudanum to help her sleep again. The possibility of bleeding in the brain still exists, so she needs to be kept as quiet as possible.”

  “Do you think she’ll survive?”

  Gibson looked troubled. “I don’t know. It’s still too early to say.”

  Sebastian shifted his position to stretch out his legs and cross his boots at the ankles. “I had an interesting conversation with one Mitt Peebles at the Gifford Arms in York Street. It seems Damion Pelletan was with a small group of Frenchmen who hired the entire hotel three weeks ago. They then turned off most of the hotel’s staff and replaced them with their own servants—their own French servants.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Presumably because they’re worried about spies. I could be wrong, but I suspect Pelletan was here as part of an official delegation sent by Napoléon to explore the possibility of peace with England.”

  Gibson stared at him blankly. “What?”

  “I recognized Monsieur Harmond Vaundreuil, the man you say came to identify Pelletan’s body. I didn’t know his name, but I’ve seen him before. With Jarvis.”

  “But . . . peace? Is it possible?”

  “Six months ago, I would have said no. But Napoléon just lost half a million men in Russia and barely escaped with his own life. The Prussians and the Austrians are turning against him, and there’ve been rumors of plots in Paris. I’m not surprised to hear he’s sent a small delegation to London with instructions to quietly put out peace feelers.”

  “And Alexandrie Sauvage?”

  “I have no idea how she fits into any of this. But last night, a Frenchwoman and her male companion came to the hotel, asking to see Pelletan. He left shortly after talking to them.”

  “You think Alexandrie Sauvage was that woman?”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “So who was her companion?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  Gibson nudged away his plate. “When she was awake, she told me why they were in St. Katharine’s.”

  “Oh?”

  “She says Pelletan had agreed to go with her to see a sick child who lives in Hangman’s Court. She and Pelletan were on their way back from visiting the little girl when they were attacked.” Gibson pushed up from the table. “I promised to go there this afternoon and take a look at the child. The mother’s a poor widow.” He looked over at Sebastian. “Care to come along?”


  Chapter 8

  “What’s wrong with the child?” Sebastian asked as they wound through St. Katharine’s tangle of mean streets and dark, tortuous lanes. The sun was a distant golden ball in a frigid blue sky, but there was no warmth in its brittle light. Ice crusted the mud and manure beneath their feet, and the lips of the grimy, ragged children playing in the gutters were blue with cold.

  “It’s a little girl of three. I’m told she was healthy enough until recently. She had the sniffles and a slight rash a couple of weeks ago but seemed to get over it. Then suddenly she couldn’t move her legs. She’s been getting progressively weaker and weaker, with the weakness slowly moving up her body, first to her back, then to her arms. Last night, she was having difficulty breathing. It sounds as if something is affecting the muscles in her body, and now it’s hit the walls of her chest.”

  “Sounds . . . frightening,” said Sebastian.

  Gibson threw him a quick glance. “For a parent, it would be terrifying, yes.”

  They walked on in silence. This was one of the poorest sections of London, its streets crowded with low, squalid tenements built of decaying wood and mean shops that catered to the nearby docks. The wretched space known as Hangman’s Court lay not far from the spires of the old medieval church. A question addressed to an aged woman selling roasted potatoes from a rusty barrow brought them to a warped door at the end of a dark, fetid corridor. From the other side of the panels came the sound of a woman weeping.

  Gibson knocked quietly, almost apologetically.

  The sobs ceased abruptly.

  “Madame Bisette?” he called. “Alexandrie Sauvage asked me to call. I’m a surgeon.”

  They heard a soft, hesitant tread, then the sound of a bolt being drawn back.

  The door swung inward to reveal a woman. She looked to be perhaps thirty-five or forty, although it was impossible to say with any certainty. Her face was blotched with tears, her eyes red and swollen, her lips trembling. Rail thin, she wore a rusty black, old-fashioned gown, relatively clean but hopelessly threadbare. The small room beyond her was icy cold and empty except for a rough pallet in the corner, on which lay a tiny form, ominously still.

  “Madame Bisette?” asked Gibson, his hat in his hands.

  “Oui.”

  His gaze went to the child on the pallet. “How is she?”

  The woman began to weep again.

  Sebastian walked over to the pallet, gazed down at the dead child, and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” said Gibson.

  “My Cécile,” wailed the woman, her arms wrapping around her waist, her body curling forward with the agony of her grief. “She was all I had left. What am I to do now? What?”

  “Our apologies for disturbing you at such a time,” said Sebastian, going to press several coins into her palm and close her fingers around them.

  The woman stared dully at the coins in her hand, then lifted her gaze to his face. Her English was only lightly accented, her voice cultured and educated. She might be living in extreme poverty now, but she was obviously not born to it. She said, “Why are you here? Where is Alexi?”

  Her use of a pet form of Alexandrie Sauvage’s given name surprised him, hinting at an intimacy between the two women he hadn’t expected. Sebastian said, “Madame Sauvage and Dr. Pelletan were attacked in Cat’s Hole after they left here last night. Dr. Pelletan was killed.”

  Madame Bisette sucked in a quick breath. “And Alexi?”

  “She was badly injured,” said Gibson, “but I’ve hopes she’ll recover.” He hesitated, then added, “Do you know of any reason why someone might have wanted to kill Dr. Pelletan?”

  The woman shook her head. “I never knew Damion Pelletan. The doctoresse asked him to look at Cécile.”

  Sebastian and Gibson exchanged glances. Sebastian said, “Alexandrie Sauvage is a physician?”

  “She is, yes. She studied at Bologna.” Medical schools were closed to women in both France and in England. But Italy had a tradition of female physicians that dated back to the Middle Ages.

  “How long has she been in London?” asked Sebastian.

  “A year, perhaps more. As a woman, of course, she cannot be licensed to practice medicine here and is only allowed to act as a midwife. But she is a good woman. She does what she can to help those in the French community.”

  Again, Sebastian’s gaze met Gibson’s. “I wonder how she came to know Pelletan,” he said quietly.

  The dead child’s mother began to weep again, clutching her ragged shawl about her and rocking back and forth.

  Sebastian reached out, awkwardly, to touch her thin shoulder. “Again, madam, our heartfelt condolences for your loss, and our apologies for disturbing you at such a time.”

  She sniffed, her spine stiffening with an echo of a pride long worn down and effaced. “Merci, monsieur,” she said, holding out the coins he had given her. “But I cannot accept your charity.”

  He made no move to take the money. “It’s not mine. The doctoresse asked me to give it to you.”

  He could tell by the narrowing of her eyes that she knew it for a lie. But it was a lie she was obviously desperate enough to accept, because she swallowed hard and nodded, her gaze sliding away as she said, “Merci.”

  They were retracing their steps back down the dank, noisome corridor when they heard the door jerk open behind them again.

  “Messieurs,” she called out, stopping them. “You asked about Damion Pelletan?”

  They turned toward her again. “Yes. Why?”

  She scrubbed the heel of one thin hand over her wet cheeks. “When he and the doctoresse were here last night, for Cécile . . . I heard them talking. I did not pay attention to most of what was said, but one name they mentioned several times leapt out at me.”

  “What name is that?”

  “Marie-Thérèse, the Duchesse d’Angoulême.”

  Gibson stared at her. “You mean the daughter of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France?”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian said, “What about Marie-Thérèse?”

  The woman shook her head. “I did not hear most of what was said—my attention was all for Cécile. But I believe they were discussing a meeting between Damion Pelletan and the Princess. A meeting that worried Alexandrie Sauvage.”

  Chapter 9

  “How much do you know about Marie-Thérèse?” Sebastian asked Gibson as they walked up St. Katharine’s Lane toward the looming bulk of the parish’s decrepit medieval church.

  Gibson frowned. “Not much. I know she was thrown into the Temple Prison with her parents during the Revolution and kept there even after the King and Marie Antoinette were sent to the guillotine. But that’s about it. Her brother died there, didn’t he?”

  “So they say. But for some reason I’ve never entirely understood, the revolutionaries allowed Marie-Thérèse to live. When she was seventeen, they released her to the Austrians in exchange for some French prisoner of war.”

  “And now she’s here in England?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Most of the French royal family is here—or at any rate, what’s left of it. Louis XVI’s youngest brother, Artois, has a house on South Audley Street. But the rest live on a small estate out in Buckinghamshire.”

  “What’s the older brother’s name—the one who’s so heavy he can hardly walk?”

  “That’s Provence.”

  Although princes of the blood, the two surviving brothers of Louis XVI were both generally known by the titles given them at birth, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois. Both had fled France early in the Revolution, but whether one saw their flights as cowardly or wise tended to reflect one’s politics.

  As a female, Marie-Thérèse was barred by French law from inheriting her father’s crown. But after her release from prison, she had married her first cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême, third in line to the French throne behind his childless uncle and his own father. Thus, as Angoulême’s wife, Marie-Thérèse would s
omeday become Queen of France—if there was a restoration.

  Earnest and plodding, Angoulême was said to be not nearly as bright as his wife. The last Sebastian had heard, the young French prince was off with Wellington in Spain, while Artois was with his latest mistress up in Edinburgh. But there were more than enough Bourbons and their hangers-on around London to cause mischief.

  “So what’s she like, this princess?” Gibson asked.

  “Very devout, like her father, Louis XVI. Arrogant and proud, like her mother, Marie Antoinette. And slightly mad, thanks to her experiences during the Revolution. She has devoted her life to the restoration of the Bourbons and the punishment of those she holds responsible for the deaths of her family. I’ve heard it said she’s convinced it is God’s will that the Bourbons will someday be restored to France.”

  “And the Revolution and Napoléon are—what? Just an unpleasant interlude?”

  “Something like that.”

  They paused before the church of St. Katharine’s, Sebastian tipping back his head to let his gaze drift over the west end’s soaring buttresses and delicately hued stained glass windows. Time and shifting politics had not been kind to the graceful old structure. The roof beams sagged; tufts of moss and grass grew from the crumbling stone facade, and black holes showed where visages of saints had in better days smiled down upon the common people. Once, this had been the chapel of a religious community founded and patronized by the queens of England. Then had come Reformation, civil war, revolution, and neglect.

  “What?” asked Gibson, watching him.

  “I was thinking about revolutions and queens.”

  Gibson shook his head, not understanding.

  “If England were to make peace with France now, then Napoléon would remain Emperor. I can’t see that going down well with Louis XVI’s daughter. She wants revenge on the men who murdered her mother and father, and she has ambitions of someday becoming Queen of France herself.”

  “So what the bloody hell was she doing meeting with a man who formed part of a French peace delegation?”

  “It is curious, is it not?” Sebastian turned away from the ancient, soot-stained church. “I think I’d like to have a chat with Madame Sauvage’s servant. Where did you say she lives? Golden Square?”