Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Page 6

  “The Monster?”

  “As it happens, yes. You’ve heard of it?”

  “Molly Watson told me he went there regularly. It sounds like the sort of place likely to appeal to someone with Preston’s interests.”

  Sir Henry nodded. “It dates back to the days of the Dissolution. They say the name is actually a corruption of ‘the Monastery.’”

  “How long was he there?”

  “Not long. According to the barman, he fell into an argument with another gentleman in the taproom and stormed off shortly after ten. Fortunately, the gentleman in question is a regular patron of the establishment, so the barman was able to identify him as a banker by the name of Austen. Henry Austen.”

  The name was unfamiliar to Sebastian. “What do you know of him?”

  “I’ve had one of the lads looking into him. He’s the son of a Hampshire clergyman. Originally trained for the church himself, but joined the militia at the beginning of the war with France. Served a number of years, although he only saw action in Ireland. I gather he was involved in handling payroll and got caught up in the Duke of York scandal. That’s when he resigned his commission and went into banking. He’s done quite well for himself; his main bank is in Henrietta Street, here in the City, but he also has branches in various country towns such as Alton and Hythe.”

  “What’s his connection with Preston?”

  “That I don’t know. He seems a rather good-humored, even-tempered chap from all we’ve been able to discover. But I’ve kept the constables away from him so far—thought it might be better to let you have a go at him first.” The bells of the city’s churches began to toll, counting out the hour in a rolling cascade of sound as they drew up before the Bow Street Public Office. Lovejoy said, “There is one thing about Austen that may or may not be pertinent, but is nonetheless rather disturbing.”

  “Oh?”

  “His wife is the widow of a French count.”

  “Please don’t tell me he lost his head as well?”

  “I’m afraid so. He was guillotined in 1794. I gather she’s been ill for quite some time and may even be dying; Austen has his sister up from Hampshire to stay with them and help.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “The sister? I gather she’s quite unremarkable. A spinster by the name of Jane. Miss Jane Austen.”

  Sebastian went first to the Austen bank on Henrietta Street in Covent Garden, only to be told by a plump, supercilious clerk with heavily oiled, sandy hair that Mr. Austen was “currently unavailable.”

  “Is he out, or simply not receiving?” asked Sebastian.

  The clerk sniffed. “I’m afraid I really can’t say.” He started to turn away, a sheaf of papers in his hands.

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  The icy menace in Sebastian’s voice brought the clerk to an abrupt halt, his chin sagging in a way that caused his mouth to gape open, his pale blue eyes widening as his gaze met Sebastian’s.

  Sebastian said, “Consider your response very carefully.”

  “He . . . he is not in today. Truly. He was scheduled to visit one of our branches down in Hampshire this morning, and I—I can only assume he went.”

  “Where does he live?”

  The man swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple visibly up and down. “I don’t think I should answer that.”

  Sebastian gave the young man a smile that showed his teeth. “Actually, I think you should.”

  The papers the clerk had been holding slipped from his fingers to flutter to the floor. “Sloane Street. Number sixty-four Sloane Street.”

  “The keeper o’ the Hyde Park Turnpike is gonna think we’re up to somethin’ ’avey-cavey,” said Tom as Sebastian turned his horses toward Hans Town for the third time that day.

  “Very likely,” agreed Sebastian, guiding his pair around a slow collier’s wagon.

  The Austen house lay halfway down Sloane Street, not far from Sloane Square and the narrow, haunted lane that led to Bloody Bridge. One of a long line of terraces built late in the previous century, it had neat, white-framed windows and a shiny front door and was in every respect what one might expect of a prosperous, up-and-coming banker.

  The door was opened by a young and rather inexperienced housemaid who confirmed the bank clerk’s information, saying breathlessly, “I’m sorry, me lord, but the master left at the crack o’ dawn, he did.” When Sebastian then asked to see Mr. Austen’s sister instead, the girl grew so flustered she dropped the card he’d handed her.

  She retrieved the card with a stammered apology and hurried away, only to return a moment later and escort him up to an elegant octagonal drawing room. The salon was expensively furnished in the latest style, with Egyptian-inspired settees covered in peach- and lime-striped silk, ornately carved gilt mirrors, and an exquisite collection of French porcelains. The only odd note came from a small, rather plain writing desk that rested on a round, inlaid rosewood table positioned before the windows so that it overlooked the garden. At Sebastian’s entrance, the woman seated beside it thrust whatever she’d been working on beneath the desk’s slanted lid so quickly that the corners of some of the pages were left protruding.

  “Lord Devlin,” she said, rising from her chair to come forward and greet him.

  Like the plain writing desk, Miss Jane Austen looked vaguely out of place in the room, both more comfortable and less ostentatious than her surroundings. Somewhere in her mid- to late thirties, she had an attractive, pixie face framed by short dark hair that curled from beneath a spinster’s crisp white cap. Her cheeks were abnormally ruddy, her dress neat but not particularly fashionable, her dark eyes calm and assessing in a way that told him this was a woman accustomed to observing and analyzing her fellow men.

  “I’m sorry my brother isn’t here to meet with you,” she said, “but he left for Alton this morning and isn’t expected back until tomorrow evening.”

  “I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me instead,” said Sebastian, settling in the chair she indicated. “I understand your brother was acquainted with Stanley Preston.”

  She sank onto the edge of a nearby settee, her hands nestled together in her lap. “Yes. My sister-in-law was great friends with the late Mrs. Preston, you see.”

  “She died in childbirth?”

  “She did, yes. It was quite tragic. Their daughter, Anne, was only fifteen at the time. It’s a difficult age for a young girl to be without a mother, and my cousin has attempted in the years since to stand in her friend’s stead.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “I beg your pardon; I should have explained. My sister-in-law, Eliza, is also my cousin. Her mother and my father were sister and brother.”

  Sebastian studied Miss Jane Austen’s small, expressive face. It was difficult to think of this quiet, provincial vicar’s daughter as someone whose first cousin had been married to a French count guillotined in the Revolution. He said, “You’ve met Mr. Preston yourself?”

  “At various times over the years, yes.”

  “What manner of man was he?”

  “Mr. Preston?” She reached for a nearby embroidery frame, using the movement, he suspected, to give herself time to consider her response. “I would say his character was very much that of a devout and honest man. In truth, he had many admirable qualities. He was utterly devoted to his children and the memory of his dead wife. He was extraordinarily well-read on a number of subjects, particularly history. And he was responsible and moderate in most things—with one notable exception, of course.”

  “You mean, his passion for collecting?”

  Her eyes crinkled in quiet amusement. “Yes; that is what I was referring to.”

  Sebastian found himself smiling. “Now that you’ve satisfied the proprieties by listing his admirable qualities, perhaps you could tell me some of his less admirable trai
ts.”

  She took up her needle. “We all have our imperfections and idiosyncrasies, Lord Devlin. But I hope I am neither so unjust as to fault a man for falling short of perfection, nor so uncharitable as to catalogue his minor failings after his death.”

  “Yet if everyone persists in painting Stanley Preston as a saint, I am unlikely to ever discover who killed him.”

  She focused her attention on the neat stitches she was laying in her embroidery. “Well . . . I suppose you could say he had a tendency to be quarrelsome. He was also proud and socially ambitious. But in that I suspect he was not so different from most other men of his station.”

  “A lowering reflection, but sadly true, I fear.”

  He saw, again, that answering gleam of amusement in her eyes. She said, “The truth is, he was still a likeable man, for all that. There was no real malice in him.”

  Sebastian wondered if the slaves on Preston’s Jamaican plantations would agree with that assessment. But all he said was, “Have you seen his collection of heads?” He could not imagine someone as prosaic and sensible as Miss Jane Austen fainting at such a sight.

  “I have, yes. I’ve often pondered why he kept them. At first, I assumed he was driven by philosophical motives—that he derived some sort of salutary lesson from the contemplation of such tangible evidence that even the world’s most powerful men are eventually reduced to nothing but shriveled flesh and bone. But I finally came to realize that he actually collected them for essentially the same reason rustics will travel miles to see a two-headed calf, or pay a sixpence to gawk at a hairy woman displaying herself at a fair.”

  “And why is that?”

  “So that they may afterward boast of it to their friends—as if they are somehow rendered special by having seen something interesting. In Stanley Preston’s case, it was as if he felt his stature was enhanced by the possession of relics of important figures from the past.”

  “He was impressed by wealth and power?”

  “I would say there are few in our society who are not. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I suspect you are right.” He let his gaze drift, again, around that fashionable, expensively furnished drawing room. “Tell me, does your brother’s opinion of Stanley Preston match your own?”

  “Oh, Henry is far more charitable than I when it comes to the foibles and vanities of his fellow men. He really should have been a vicar, you know, rather than a banker.”

  “So why did he quarrel with Preston at the Monster last night?”

  She jerked ever so slightly, her thread snarling beneath her hands.

  He said, “You do know, don’t you.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  She rested the embroidery frame on her lap, her hands idle, her gaze meeting his. “It’s a difficult subject to speak of, I’m afraid.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It . . . it involves Anne.”

  “Yet it will come out eventually, whatever it is.”

  Miss Austen drew a troubled breath and nodded, obviously choosing her words with care. “Some years ago, when Anne was just seventeen, she formed an attachment to a certain hussar cornet. The man himself was also quite young—only a year or so older, I believe—and utterly penniless.”

  “But very dashing in his regimentals?”

  “Devastatingly so, I’m afraid.”

  “Her father objected to the match?”

  “What father would not? She was so very young. Even my cousin Eliza agreed that to allow a girl to attach herself at such a young age to a man with nothing but himself to recommend him would be folly.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The young man’s suit was denied. Fortunately for all concerned, his regiment was sent abroad not long afterward, and that was the end of it—or so everyone supposed. It was assumed by all who knew her that Anne had forgotten him—indeed, she lately seemed to be on the verge of contracting a promising alliance. But then, a month or so ago, the young man reappeared in London—a captain now, but still virtually penniless, I’m afraid.”

  “He’s sold out?”

  “Oh, no. He was badly wounded in the Peninsula and has been sent home to recuperate further.”

  “I take it Mr. Preston was still not inclined to favor such a match?”

  She shook her head. “If anything, I’d say he was more opposed to it than ever before.”

  “And Miss Anne Preston?”

  Jane Austen began to pick at her snarled thread. “I’m afraid I can’t speak for another woman’s heart.”

  Sebastian studied her carefully bowed head. “I still don’t precisely understand how your brother came to fall into a quarrel with Preston last night.”

  Miss Austen kept her attention on her work. “Now that Eliza’s illness has confined her to her rooms, Anne comes nearly every day to sit and read to her or, when my cousin feels up to it, simply to talk. It was during one of Anne’s recent visits that Eliza confided that she’d decided she made a mistake six years ago in counseling Stanley Preston to refuse the young man’s offer, and that she regrets having played a part in denying Anne the happiness she might otherwise have found with someone she loved.”

  “I take it Anne was unwise enough to repeat her friend’s words to her father?”

  “Yes. And since he couldn’t confront poor Eliza about it, he shouted at Henry instead.”

  Sebastian thought he understood now why Jane Austen had mentioned Stanley Preston’s quarrelsome tendency as one of his less admirable traits. “What is the name of this unsuitable young man?”

  “Wyeth. Captain Hugh Wyeth.”

  “And where might I find Captain Wyeth?”

  “I believe he has taken a room in the vicinity of the Life Guards barracks. But I’m afraid I can’t give you his precise direction.”

  “Do you know his regiment?”

  “No; I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” said Sebastian, pushing to his feet. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Perhaps my brother will be able to tell you more when he returns to town,” she said, rising with him, her expression one of earnest concern.

  “Hopefully,” said Sebastian. Although when he looked into those dark, intelligent eyes, he couldn’t shake the conviction that this self-contained, quietly watchful woman actually knew considerably more than she’d been willing to divulge.

  Sebastian spent the better part of the next hour making inquiries about Captain Hugh Wyeth at the various inns and taverns in the lanes and courts around the Life Guards barracks in Knightsbridge. But when the bells of the city’s church towers began to chime six, he abandoned the search and turned his horses toward home.

  “Ye thinkin’ this hussar cap’n might be the one done for the cove at Bloody Bridge?” asked Tom as they rounded the corner onto Brook Street.

  “I’d say he’s certainly a likely suspect.” The heavy cloud cover had already robbed most of the light from the day, so that the reflected glow of the newly lit streetlamps spilled like liquid gold across the dark, wet pavement. Sebastian guided his horses around a dowager’s cabriole drawn up at the front steps of a nearby town house. And then, for reasons he could not have explained, he was suddenly, intensely aware of the solid length of the leather reins running through his hands, of the throbbing of the sparrows coming in to roost on the housetops above, and of the scattered drops of cold rain blown by a gust of wind against his face as he lifted his head to study the jagged line of roofs looming above.

  “What?” asked Tom, watching him.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” he said, reining in hard just as an unseen force knocked the top hat from his head, and a rifle shot cracked from somewhere in the gathering gloom.

  Chapter 12

  “Get down,” Sebastian shouted at Tom.

  “’Oly ’ell,” yelped the tiger, tumbling fr
om his perch as Sebastian fought to bring the squealing, plunging pair under control. Then, rather than duck for cover down the nearest area steps, the boy leapt to the frantic horses’ heads.

  “God damn it!” swore Sebastian. “Are you trying to get yourself shot? Get out of here!”

  “Easy lads, easy,” crooned the tiger.

  The whirl of a watchman’s rattle sounded over the horses’ frightened snorts and pounding hooves. “I say, I say,” blustered an aging, fleshy man in a bulky greatcoat as he trotted up, his lantern swaying wildly, one arm thrust straight above his head as he spun his wooden rattle furiously round and round. “Was that a shot? That was a shot, yes?”

  “That was a shot,” said Sebastian.

  More people were spilling into the street—slack-faced butlers and elegant gentlemen in tails and one grimly determined footman brandishing a blunderbuss.

  “Merciful heavens,” said the watchman, swallowing hard. “Whoever heard of such a thing? In Brook Street, of all places! Where did it come from?” He turned in a slow circle with his lantern held high, as if its feeble light might somehow illuminate the would-be assassin.

  Sebastian finally brought his frightened horses to a stand. “It came from the roof of that row of houses. But I suspect the shooter is long gone by now.”

  “Look at this!” said a skinny youth in silken breeches as he held up Sebastian’s beaver hat with one white-gloved finger thrust through a neat hole in the crown. “That was close!”

  “’Oly ’ell,” whispered Tom again, his hand sliding slowly down the nearest horse’s quivering hide.

  Sebastian could hear Simon’s colicky wails even before he reached number forty-one Brook Street.

  “At it again, is he?” said Sebastian, handing Morey his hat and driving coat.