Where the Dead Lie Page 5

  Lovejoy reached for his handkerchief and pressed the clean white folds to his lips. “What you’re suggesting is unbelievably monstrous.”

  “Yes, but unfortunately not without precedent. Have you ever heard of Gilles de Rais?”

  The magistrate shook his head.

  “He was a lord of Brittany and Anjou famous as a companion of Joan of Arc during the Hundred Years’ War. He even rose to become a marshal of France. But in his spare time, he murdered young boys and girls—perhaps as many as several hundred.”

  “Surely we’re not dealing with something of that nature here. In London?”

  A man in one of the nearby rows of stalls dropped a shutter, the loud bang startling the pigeons on the ridge of the ancient church’s Tuscan pediment. Sebastian watched as they rose against the clear September sky in a quick, gray-white whirling of wings. “I hope not. But . . . how would we know?”

  Lovejoy tucked his handkerchief away, his lips pressing into a tight line. “I’ll send inquiries to the various public offices—ask if they’ve had any similar deaths or inexplicable disappearances amongst their street children.”

  “That would help. Thank you.”

  Lovejoy nodded, but his expression remained troubled. “The problem is, what if it’s been happening and no one has noticed?”

  Chapter 10

  By the time Sebastian returned to Tower Hill, the light was turning golden and the shadows lengthening with the approach of evening. He was hoping to find Gibson finishing the autopsy of Benji Thatcher’s remains. But the stone outbuilding at the base of the yard was already shut up for the night, forcing Sebastian to knock at the house.

  The door was opened by a slight young woman with fiery red hair and dark brown eyes that glittered with hostility. Alexi Sauvage was not Gibson’s wife, although she had lived with him for months now as if she were. But Sebastian had first met the enigmatic French doctor years before, in the mountains of Portugal, when he had killed her lover and she had sworn to avenge him.

  Sebastian was not entirely convinced that she had abandoned that intention.

  She stared at him now, her nostrils flaring with the agitation of her breathing before she reluctantly stepped back to open the door wider. “My lord.”

  “Gibson’s here?”

  She closed the door behind him. “In a sense.”

  “Meaning?”

  She turned away. “See for yourself.”

  He followed her down a flagged passageway to the room Gibson used as a parlor. Once it had been an untidy space with tattered drapes and a moth-eaten carpet and dusty piles of books and newspapers that spilled from the cracked leather sofa and chairs. Gibson’s alcohol-filled jars of strange specimens were still lined up along the mantel, but in the last six or seven months Alexi had transformed the space with ruthless determination—and lots of soap and water.

  Her campaign to save Gibson from his self-destructive downward spiral had been less successful. The Irishman sat sprawled in a chair near the hearth, his cravat loose, his eyes unfocused, his face slack. The opium he’d obviously consumed had reduced his pupils to pinpricks.

  “How long has he been like this?” asked Sebastian.

  “An hour or so.”

  “Bloody hell.” He swung away to stand at the entrance to the kitchen, his hands braced against the doorframe. “You said you could help him stop doing this.”

  Alexi Sauvage watched him, her arms crossed at her chest. “It’s unreasonable to expect him to give up the opium as long as he’s in so much pain from his amputated leg.”

  “You said you could help him with that too.”

  “Only if he’ll let me.”

  “I don’t understand. Why the hell won’t he?”

  “Probably because he knows that once the pain is gone, he’ll no longer have an excuse to keep taking the opium.”

  “It’s going to kill him!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she said, her jaw tightening.

  She’d been trained as a doctor, this woman, in Italy. But because women could not be licensed as physicians in England, she was allowed to practice here only as a midwife. Gibson considered her brilliant, and Sebastian suspected he was right.

  He pushed away from the doorframe and went to stare out the window overlooking the yard. Alexi’s hand was visible here too, with the once weedy path neatly lined with stones and the old pink rosebush brought under control. “Did he finish the autopsy on Benji Thatcher?”

  “He did, yes. I suspect it’s part of what drove him to the opium. Normally he approaches an autopsy like a puzzle—a fascinating exploration of a body in death. But this . . . this troubled him more than he’ll ever admit.”

  Sebastian glanced over at her. “Did he find something else?”

  She nodded, the cords of her throat working as she swallowed, her face strained as her gaze shifted to the distant building where Benji Thatcher lay.

  “The boy was raped, wasn’t he?” said Sebastian, his voice hoarse and grating.

  “He was, yes. Repeatedly and brutally.”

  Sebastian felt his breath ease out in a long, painful sigh. “My God.”

  Alexi said, “You knew he was strangled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gibson thinks he probably died not long before the body was found.”

  “And there was nothing to suggest where he was killed?”

  “He had straw in his hair and stuck to the dried blood of the wounds on his back.”

  “That could be from the bed of the cart he was moved in.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but, yes; it makes sense.” She hesitated. “Have you discovered anything? Anything at all?”

  “Only that Benji might not be the first child to have disappeared off the streets of Clerkenwell. The truth is, I hardly know where to begin with this. There used to be a brothel in Chalon Lane that was willing to accommodate some pretty ugly practices. But it was torn down a year or so ago by a mob that beat to death the man and woman who used to run it.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Have you ever heard of Number Three, Pickering Place?”

  He shook his head.

  She said, “I’ve delivered babies to some of the girls who work there. Most are little more than children. And while Number Three isn’t as bad as the Chalon Lane house, they do accommodate those with an interest in le vice anglais.”

  Le vice anglais: the English vice. It was a nice, sanitized expression for the practice of gaining sexual pleasure by whipping others—or being whipped. Sebastian had always wondered if it was actually more common amongst the English, or if the French simply preferred to attribute it to them.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said. “Thank you.” He turned to start back down the passage but paused again at the entrance to the parlor, his gaze on his friend. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her gaze met his, and for one unexpected moment he saw her self-control slip, giving him a glimpse of all the frustration and anger, fear, and intense, fierce love for the Irishman that she normally kept so well hidden. And he knew then that while he and this woman might be old enemies, they were united in this.

  This desperate fight for the life and sanity of the man who was so dear to them both.

  • • •

  Some time later, Sebastian walked into his house on Brook Street to find a familiar silver-tipped walking stick and high-crowned beaver hat resting on a chair in the entry hall.

  “The Earl of Hendon is here to see you, my lord,” said Sebastian’s majordomo, Morey, his face wooden. “His lordship is waiting in the drawing room.”

  Sebastian jerked off his gloves. “Is Lady Devlin at home?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Sebastian handed his gloves, hat, and driving coat to Morey. Then he hesitated a m
oment before climbing the stairs toward the man he’d once called Father.

  Chapter 11

  Sebastian was the third son and fourth child born to the marriage of Alistair St. Cyr, Fifth Earl of Hendon, and his beautiful, vibrant Countess, Sophia. The Earl’s first two sons, Richard and Cecil, had been much like him in looks, temperament, interests, and talents. But the third son, Sebastian, was the one who was always different: a strange child with a passion for poetry and music and a tendency to lose himself in the works of radical French and German philosophers. A child with inexplicably yellow-hued eyes in place of the famous St. Cyr blue.

  Yet somehow, despite it all, despite even his father’s cold, distant detachment, Sebastian had never imagined that he was not Hendon’s son but the result of one of the Countess’s many scandalous affairs. Unwilling to publicly declare himself a cuckold and secure in the possession of two older sons, Hendon had acknowledged Sebastian as his own. Then Richard drowned in a riptide off the coast of Cornwall and Cecil died of fever four years later, leaving Sebastian as Hendon’s heir. And still Hendon claimed Sebastian as his son. Sebastian had discovered the truth only by chance some fourteen months ago.

  It wasn’t easy, but he was slowly coming to accept that he was not exactly who he’d always believed himself to be. But he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to forgive Hendon for using the lie of his birth to drive Sebastian away from a woman he’d once loved and planned to marry.

  Hendon was standing before the bay window overlooking the street when Sebastian entered the room. A broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man with heavy features and white hair, the Earl had once stood over six feet tall, taller even than Sebastian. He was creeping toward seventy now, and in the last few years he’d begun to shrink, his shoulders rounding in a way Sebastian found disconcerting. But there was nothing frail or pitiful about Hendon. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was one of the most powerful men in the government—and the only one willing to go head-to-head with Charles, Lord Jarvis.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Hendon, turning from the window, his voice gruff with irritation. He’d never been able to abide being kept waiting—especially by Sebastian.

  “You should have left a note,” said Sebastian, closing the door behind him.

  “And if I had, would you have returned my call?”

  Rather than answer, Sebastian walked over to pour two glasses of brandy and held one out to the Earl. The two men had barely spoken since that fateful day when Sebastian learned the truth about his parentage and understood just how damaging and self-serving Hendon’s many lies had been. And so he knew that whatever had brought Hendon here today must be important.

  Hendon took the drink and stood staring down at it, his heavy jaw set hard. Then he swallowed half the brandy in one long pull. “Stephanie is betrothed. The announcement will appear in the morning papers.”

  Sebastian knew a flare of surprise. Miss Stephanie Wilcox was one of Hendon’s two grandchildren by his only legitimate daughter, Amanda, the Dowager Lady Wilcox. The girl was beautiful, vivacious, and well dowered. But she had recently finished her second season without accepting any of the dozens of offers that had come her way. Sebastian had long suspected that his high-spirited niece was enjoying herself far too much to settle down, for in temperament as well as looks Stephanie Wilcox greatly resembled her infamous grandmother.

  Sebastian said, “Amanda must be relieved.”

  Hendon tossed back the rest of his brandy. “Amanda is more than relieved; she’s ecstatic. The man in question is the only son and heir of the Marquis of Lindley.”

  Sebastian froze with his own glass raised halfway to his lips. “Ashworth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bloody hell.” Sebastian walked over to stand beside the room’s cold hearth. Anthony Ledger, Viscount Ashworth, was thirty-two years old, handsome, wellborn, and extraordinarily wealthy. He was also so debauched and dissolute that the patronesses of Almack’s—normally more than ready to overlook the faults of any marriageable young man of wealth and breeding—had barred him from that august establishment. The thought of Stephanie marrying a man of Ashworth’s ilk brought a sour taste to Sebastian’s mouth. For however strained his relationship with his sister, Amanda, might be, Sebastian had always had a fondness for his vibrant, spirited young niece.

  “Amanda agreed to this?” he said after a moment.

  Hendon snorted. “Of course she agreed to it. Do you think she’d pass up the opportunity to see her daughter a marchioness?”

  Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy and felt it burn all the way down. “Assuming, of course, that Ashworth lives long enough to succeed his father.”

  Hendon said, “If half the stories told of the man are true—”

  “They are. I was at Eton with him, remember? He bullied one young, sensitive lad named Nathan Broadway so mercilessly the poor boy committed suicide. Forced him to drink a pint of Ashworth’s piss.”

  Hendon frowned down at his empty glass.

  “More brandy?” offered Sebastian.

  Hendon shook his head.

  “Does Amanda know what Ashworth is like?” asked Sebastian.

  “Oh, she knows. I tried to reason with her, but she simply laughed in my face and called me old-fashioned.”

  “Perhaps in the end it will come to nothing. When is the wedding?”

  “A week from this Thursday.”

  “Why so soon?”

  “Presumably because she doesn’t want to risk letting the future Marquis slip from her grasp.”

  Sebastian took another sip of his brandy. “I must confess, I never had Ashworth pegged as the marrying kind.”

  Hendon pursed his lips, his jaw working back and forth in that way he had.

  “What?” asked Sebastian, watching him.

  Hendon blew out a harsh breath. “I’ve heard the old Marquis is behind it. That Lindley’s cut off Ashworth’s allowance until he marries and begets an heir. Ashworth held out for a while, but now he’s caved.”

  “That I can believe. And Stephanie? How does she feel about all this?”

  “Amanda swears the chit is head over heels in love. There’s no denying Ashworth is a handsome devil. And he can be damnably charming when he wants to be.”

  “Yes. But how long will he want to be—particularly if he’s only marrying to maintain his allowance?”

  Hendon swiped one thick hand over his face. “You know Ashworth better than I do. I was thinking that if you were to speak to Amanda—tell her—”

  He broke off as Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. “You can’t be serious. You do know my dear sister’s opinion of me, don’t you? It hasn’t been three years since she tried her best to see me hanged.”

  “That doesn’t mean she won’t listen to you.”

  Yes, it does, thought Sebastian, although he didn’t say it. Amanda had hated him since the day he was born and probably before. When they were children, she’d hated him as a constant reminder of their mother’s infidelity. And she hated him even more now that he stood to inherit all the titles and positions that would have been hers, had she been born male.

  “What about Bayard?” suggested Sebastian. “Have you spoken to him?” Bayard Wilcox was Amanda’s only surviving son and the current Lord Wilcox.

  “Bayard?” Hendon gave a rude snort. “The boy’s never been right in the head. Apart from which, Amanda despises him.”

  “Not as much as she despises me.”

  Hendon slammed his brandy glass down on a nearby table. “God damn it. Will you not at least try?”

  Sebastian met his father’s blazing eyes. No, Sebastian reminded himself; not his father’s. Yet he could not deny the unwelcome tangle of disturbing emotions that surged through him. He knew what it must have cost Hendon to come here and ask this of him, despite the estrangement between them, despite everything.
And the truth was, the thought of pretty, laughing young Stephanie married to a man like Ashworth was an abomination.

  Sebastian set aside his own brandy. “I’ll try.”

  Hendon nodded and tugged at the hem of his waistcoat, as if embarrassed by the emotional intensity of his outburst. “Amanda is engaged for dinner this evening with Countess Lieven, after which they plan to attend Lady Holbrook’s soiree. But I believe she’s at home tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’ll try then.”

  Hendon nodded again and turned toward the door, pausing only long enough to look back and say, “I suppose it’s possible we’re wrong about the man. I mean, surely he can’t be as bad as they say?”

  “On the contrary,” said Sebastian, his gaze meeting the Earl’s. “He’s worse.”

  • • •

  Sebastian was standing at the drawing room’s bay window and watching Hendon’s familiar form descend the front steps, when Hero’s yellow-bodied town carriage swept around the corner to draw up before the house.

  Hendon paused on the footpath, the stern lines of his broad face softening as Hero descended from the carriage to grasp his hands and kiss his cheek.

  Lately Hero had been making it a practice to take their infant son, Simon, to visit Hendon at least once or twice a week. The seven-month-old child was, in truth, no more than a distant cousin to the Earl. But Hendon publically acknowledged the babe as his grandson, and someday Simon would in his turn be Viscount Devlin, before becoming the Earl of Hendon.

  Sebastian turned away from the window.

  • • •

  Hero came in a few moments later trailing a very fetching straw bonnet by its dusky pink velvet ribbons. She wore a deeply flounced muslin walking dress with a dusky pink velvet spencer fastened by a row of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons up the front. She was not smiling.