Who Speaks for the Damned Page 6

  Ji knew Hayes had lived a good life filled with good deeds. He had accumulated good karma that could enable him to transition to an auspicious new life rather than be reborn as a hungry ghost or a hell creature. But Ji knew too that Hayes had done things in his past—dark things. In the transition from one life to the next, the final moment of consciousness was the most important of all, and Hayes’s last moments must have been hideous. He would need assistance on his path, yet in this vast, unfriendly alien city, who was there to help? Ji didn’t even know where Hayes was now. Was his body being treated gently and with respect? Was someone setting up an altar with offerings of incense, flowers, and fruit? Where?

  As his breathing slowed, Ji washed at a public pump, then bought bread and gave half of it to the birds while chanting sutras to generate merit that could be transferred to Hayes. But it wasn’t enough. Hayes was now in the intermediate state—what Ji’s Tibetan nurse, Pema, called the Bardo. Some taught that in the First Bardo—the four days right after death—the dead often didn’t even know they were no longer alive.

  Do you know? thought the child, choking back tears. Do you know you’re dead?

  There were special chants that could reach the dead in such a state, to help them. But Ji had never learned them. If they were in Canton, the Hong merchant would hire monks—one hundred and eight of them—to burn incense and open the road to the next world. Hayes would be carefully bathed and dressed in proper burial clothes, and a priest would divine the most propitious minute to place the body in its coffin. The temple would be hung with odes and eulogy scrolls, and everything would be done as it should be. Except here, in this strange city, Ji didn’t even know where to sleep.

  “Oh, Hayes,” whispered the child, “I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

  What do I do?

  Chapter 14

  S ebastian arrived at the Dover Street residence of Gilbert-Christophe de LaRivière to find a team of sweaty, foam-flecked grays and a dusty chaise drawn up before the French nobleman’s house. The Count himself was just descending from the carriage.

  “Walk ’em,” Sebastian told Tom, handing his chestnuts’ reins to the tiger. “I doubt I’ll be long.”

  Hopping down to the pavement, Sebastian caught up with the Frenchman as he was about to mount his front steps. “Good afternoon, my lord. If I might have a word with you?”

  The Count turned, one hand fumbling for the quizzing glass that hung around his neck from a black riband. Eighteen years before, at the time of his lovely wife’s death, LaRivière would have been a man of thirty or perhaps thirty-five. Now he was a widower in his late forties or early fifties, his black hair still only lightly streaked with gray, his eyes dark and deeply set, his nose long and narrow. Unlike many nobleman of his age who’d grown soft and fleshy, LaRivière was still trim, his movements quick and sure. He was known as a fine dresser and a connoisseur of the arts who personally designed his own fobs and collected ancient artifacts. He also had a reputation as something of an artist himself and could frequently be found sketching London’s old churches and picturesque Renaissance houses.

  Now he stared at Sebastian through his glass long enough to convey both annoyance and the faintest hint of derision. Then he let it drop and said in English only faintly accented by his native French, “You’re Devlin, I believe?”

  “I am.” Sebastian paused at the base of the steps and said again, “If I might have a word with you, my lord?”

  “I’ve just come from Ascot and am due to dine with the Queen this evening.”

  “It shouldn’t take up too much of your time.”

  The Count’s eyes narrowed in a way that told Sebastian the Frenchman knew exactly why Sebastian was here. “Very well. Do come in.”

  Sebastian followed LaRivière to a richly appointed library filled with hundreds of leather-bound volumes artistically interspersed with fragments of Greek and Roman statues. For a man who had fled France a penniless refugee twenty years before, Compans somehow contrived to live quite comfortably. And Sebastian found himself wondering how.

  “Brandy?” offered his host.

  “Please.”

  The Count went to a small inlaid table bearing a crystal carafe and glasses. “You’re here because of Hayes, I take it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Seaforth was also at Ascot.”

  “Of course.”

  He eased the stopper from the carafe. “So it’s true, what they’re saying in the papers? That the dead man found up in Somer’s Town really is Hayes?”

  “I believe so.”

  “How very odd.”

  “When was the last time you saw Nicholas Hayes?”

  “Me?” LaRivière poured brandy into two glasses. “Eighteen years ago I watched him sentenced to death for murdering my wife. And then, much to my disgust, I saw that sentence commuted to transportation for life.”

  “Did you know he had returned to England?”

  The Frenchman handed Sebastian one of the glasses. “I thought he was dead.”

  “Any idea why he might have come back?”

  LaRivière sipped his drink, then ran his tongue across his upper lip. “Some men are simply irrational. There is no coherent, linear thought behind their actions. Their behavior is as unpredictable as a dog deciding which of a thousand flea bites to scratch, or the direction of a playbill fluttering in a whirlwind.”

  “You’re suggesting Hayes risked his life by returning to England for no reason?”

  “Presumably the flea-bitten dog has a reason for his selection. But I doubt the ability of anyone to divine it.”

  Sebastian took a slow swallow of his own brandy. “How well did you know Hayes?”

  “Not well. I was better acquainted with his brother Crispin.” LaRivière brought up one hand to rub his forehead, and it was a moment before he could go on. “I beg your pardon. I find thinking about those days trying. It may have been eighteen years ago, yet in so many ways it seems like only yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sebastian. “I understand this is painful. You say you didn’t know Nicholas Hayes. But I take it he knew your late wife?”

  LaRivière let his hand drop, his lips tightening. “She knew who he was, of course. But they were hardly friends, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Chantal was a very beautiful woman. Men sometimes became obsessively infatuated with her. It could be awkward.”

  “You’re saying Nicholas Hayes became infatuated with her?”

  “Embarrassingly so, to the point he made her uncomfortable.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “The usual—staring at her, following her around. That sort of thing. She avoided him when she could, but he was alarmingly persistent.”

  “Where was she killed?”

  “Here in this house. Upstairs in the drawing room.” LaRivière went to stand at the window overlooking the street, his gaze on a passing donkey and cart, one hand playing with the gold fob on his watch chain. It was a moment before he continued, his voice cracking with the strain of emotion. “I blame myself. I sought to save her, but in the end she was killed.”

  The words, like the pose, were tragic: the aging widower still struggling to come to terms with a crushing burden of guilt for what he considered his own failing. And yet . . . And yet somehow it all didn’t quite ring true, even if Sebastian couldn’t put his finger on precisely why.

  He said, “I’m told Hayes claimed there was an argument between him and you. He said that argument led to a struggle, during which the gun went off.”

  LaRivière’s face hardened. “That’s what he claimed, yes. Although he couldn’t even manage to come up with a believable explanation for this mythical argument.” He drained his glass in one long pull. “The man was a rogue. Months before he killed my wife, he abducted some heiress.”

  “Do you know
her name?”

  “No. The point is, he didn’t belong in polite company. I don’t understand how he managed to escape from Botany Bay, but it’s where he belonged, and I’m glad he’s now dead. He should have been hanged eighteen years ago.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to see him dead?”

  “Besides me, you mean?” A faint hint of a smile touched one corner of the Frenchman’s thin lips. “I take it that is why you are here?”

  “Do you know of anyone?”

  LaRivière shook his head. “As I told you, my acquaintance with the man was limited.”

  Sebastian set his brandy aside. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I understand those days must be difficult to revisit.”

  The Count met his gaze and held it. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian turned to go, then paused to draw Hayes’s strange bronze disk from his pocket and say, “Do you know what this is?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It was found in Hayes’s pocket.”

  “Sorry. And now you really must excuse me.”

  “Of course. Thank you for your assistance.”

  “Have I been of assistance?” said LaRivière, walking with him toward the entrance hall. “I’ve heard you frequently interest yourself in such matters, although I fail to understand why—particularly in the case of this murder. What could Hayes possibly mean to you? You didn’t know him, did you?”

  Sebastian found himself hesitating. What could he say? That no, he hadn’t known Hayes, but somehow that didn’t stop him from feeling personally invested in the man’s death in a way that had nothing to do with ties of friendship or kinship? That he’d looked at the dead man lying on Gibson’s slab and felt a jolt of powerful emotion that went beyond empathy, far beyond it, to something he couldn’t identify but suspected was at least partially colored by a cold breath of fear? For Sebastian was an Earl’s son who’d once been accused of murder. He understood all too well how easily a man’s life could be shattered. He himself had once come uncomfortably close to being forced to endure the horror, pain, and humiliation that Hayes had suffered. Those shackle and flogging scars could easily have been his.

  Except of course he could say none of those things.

  “No,” said Sebastian as a footman reached to open the Count’s door. “I didn’t know him.”

  It was the truth. And yet the denial had the flavor of a lie and left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Chapter 15

  T he palace is unhappy,” said Lovejoy as he and Sebastian walked down Bow Street toward the magistrate’s favorite coffeehouse on the Strand. The chaos that tended to characterize the district around Covent Garden Market in the morning was beginning to subside, the crush of carts and barrows in the streets easing. “They don’t like the newspaper headlines reminding people that a peer’s son once committed such a shocking murder. I’m afraid they may move to shut down our investigation.”

  “And blame—whom?” said Sebastian. “Footpads?”

  Lovejoy rarely smiled. But a brief, faint suggestion of amusement lightened his normally somber gray eyes. “What would we do without footpads to blame?” The amusement faded. “The Earl of Seaforth came to see me first thing this morning.”

  “He did? Why?”

  “Ostensibly to inquire as to the location of Nicholas Hayes’s body. But I suspect in reality to attempt to convince me to quietly end Bow Street’s investigation into his cousin’s murder.”

  “Interesting.”

  “He also informed me—quite without my asking—that he dined at his club yesterday evening before going directly from there to Carlton House.”

  “An enviable alibi, if true.” Sebastian watched a costermonger turn his empty barrow into Vinegar Yard. “LaRivière was also at Carlton House last night—although that might not mean anything, given that we don’t know how long before the discovery of his body Nicholas Hayes was murdered.”

  “We have a better idea than we did. A couple of my lads spent the morning up in Somer’s Town interviewing the tea gardens’ staff as well as searching the area. One of Pennington’s daughters was working the entrance yesterday, and she says she remembers Hayes arriving fairly late in the afternoon.”

  “She’s certain?”

  Lovejoy nodded. “She saw the body as the men from the deadhouse were removing it. Pennington’s house is next to the front gate, and the man made no effort to keep his family from turning out to watch the spectacle. She says Hayes had a young boy with him, and she particularly noticed the child because he was so striking—perhaps wholly or at least partly Chinese. Does that sound like the lad who came to Brook Street?”

  “It does, yes.” Sebastian chose his words carefully. “It appears likely that Hayes came here from China and brought the boy with him, although I’m not certain as to the exact nature of their relationship.”

  “China? Good heavens, is that where he’s been? Well, if the boy is Chinese, it will certainly make him easier to find.” There were probably no more than two or three hundred Chinese in all of London, most of them men. And they tended to stick close to the docks of the East End. “I’ll set one of the lads to see if he can find the ship Hayes came in on. The officers and crew might be able to tell us much that we do not know.”

  “That would help,” said Sebastian. “Did Pennington’s daughter work the entrance all day?”

  “Most of it. If we can come up with the culprit, she might be able to identify the fellow.” They were passing St. Mary’s burial ground, and Lovejoy had his frowning gaze on the cemetery’s crumbling entrance. It was a moment before he spoke. “I’ve been reading the transcripts of Hayes’s trial at the Old Bailey, hoping to understand why he came back to London.”

  “And?”

  Lovejoy shook his head. “Nothing leaps out at me. From what was said at the trial, Hayes sounds like a thoroughly disreputable fellow. It’s beyond shocking in one of his rank and lineage.”

  “Did no one defend him?”

  “There was a young Army ensign named Noland—James Noland—who spoke on Hayes’s behalf. No one else.”

  “I wonder where this Ensign Noland is now.”

  “I looked into him. He enjoyed a distinguished career and rose to the rank of colonel before being killed at Vitoria.”

  “Unfortunate. Was he Irish, by chance?”

  “As it happens, he was. His father’s a vicar in County Carlow. How did you know?”

  “Someone said Hayes’s friends and family abandoned him after his father disowned him, all except for an Irish fellow and one of his brothers.”

  Lovejoy shook his head. “There was no mention of a brother in the transcripts.”

  “As I understand it, Crispin Hayes died shortly before Chantal de LaRivière was killed.”

  “Ah. That explains it, then. Hayes expressed no remorse for what he’d done, by the way—continued to insist to the end that he was innocent.”

  “Perhaps he was.”

  “Oh, surely not.”

  “Think about this,” said Sebastian. “If Hayes was innocent—if LaRivière did accidently kill his own wife and managed to get Hayes transported for it—then I can see a man who’d suffered the hideous brutality that Hayes endured in Botany Bay vowing to come back to England and kill the man he held responsible for it all.”

  Lovejoy drew his chin in against his chest. “There’s no denying it would explain Hayes’s puzzling return. But . . . what a shocking miscarriage of justice, if he was innocent and yet was convicted anyway.”

  “It happens,” said Sebastian. It could have happened to me.

  Lovejoy looked unconvinced. “LaRivière has a reputation as an accomplished swordsman, does he not?”

  “I believe he does, yes.”

  “If Hayes had been killed by a sword thrust, one could with re
ason cast suspicion on the Count. But a common sickle? In the back? It seems unlikely, wouldn’t you say?” Lovejoy looked thoughtful. “It might be worth having the lads look into Pennington’s groundskeepers. One of the gardeners may have an unknown past association with Hayes.”

  I hope not, thought Sebastian as they reached the Strand. Otherwise the poor fellow is liable to end up quickly charged with murder.

  Whether guilty or not.

  * * *

  “Why we going back up t’ Somer’s Town?” asked Tom as Sebastian guided the chestnuts north along St. Martin’s Lane.

  Sebastian cast an amused glance at his tiger. “You still planning to become a Bow Street Runner someday?”

  “I am,” said the boy solemnly.

  “Then think about this: If you were going to murder someone, would you do it in a place where you knew your arrival and departure were certain to be observed by the person taking admission at the gate?”

  “Don’t seem real smart.”

  “That’s why I want to take another look at Pennington’s Tea Gardens.”

  * * *

  He found Irvine Pennington’s daughter once again manning the tea gardens’ entrance. A winsome, freckle-faced girl named Sarah, she had a sunburned nose and a wide, toothy smile. But her smile faltered when Sebastian walked up, introduced himself, and asked for her father.

  “Begging your lordship’s pardon,” she said, dropping a quick curtsy, “but he ain’t around. We don’t know where he’s taken himself off to.”

  “Perhaps you can help me,” said Sebastian. “You were working the entrance yesterday, weren’t you?”

  She dropped another curtsy. “I was, your lordship. M’father spelled me a few times, but I was here most of the day.”