When Maidens Mourn Page 8

  Then she looked up and saw him.

  He said, “So you did come home.”

  She leaned back in her chair, her pen resting idle in her hand. “I did. And did you find Mr. d’Eyncourt?”

  “At White’s.” He went to rest his palms on the surface of the table and lean into them, his gaze on her face. “I need to know the route of London’s old Roman walls. Can you trace me a map, with references to existing streets and landmarks?”

  “Roughly, yes.”

  He handed her a fresh sheet of paper. “Roughly will do.”

  She dipped her pen in the ink. “What is this about?”

  As she began to sketch, he told her of his interview with Gabrielle’s cousin. “Do you have any idea what d’Eyncourt may have been talking about?”

  “I do, actually. Several months ago, Gabrielle undertook to trace the remnants of the old city walls for a volume on the history of London being compiled by Dr. Littleton.”

  Sebastian frowned. “Isn’t that the same volume you’ve been working on?”

  “It is. Although I have been looking into the surviving vestiges of London’s monastic houses.” She finished her diagram and slid it across to him. “How exactly do you intend to go about finding this tavern owner?”

  He stood for a moment, studying her sketch. She’d actually drawn two wall circuits, one older and smaller than the other. The northern stretch of the oldest wall had run roughly along the course of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, then down along Mark Lane before turning east to Thames Street and Walbrook. The later, larger circuit ran from the Tower to Aldgate and Bishopsgate, before turning westward to St. Giles churchyard and then veering south to Falcon Square. He traced the line to Aldersgate and Giltspur Street, angling over to Ludgate and the Thames, then eastward back toward the Tower again.

  “That’s a lot of wall,” he said, folding the map. “I’ll give it to Tom and see what he can find.”

  “You do realize that Gabrielle could have told her cousin a lie to put him off. I don’t think they were exactly close.”

  “She may have. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the part about the tavern and the Roman wall, at least, was true.” He nodded to the books scattered across the table’s surface. “What is all this?”

  “I’ve been brushing up on my knowledge of King Arthur and Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table.”

  He reached for the nearest book, a slim, aged volume covered in faded blue leather, and read the title embossed in gold on the spine. “La donna di Scalotta.” He looked up. “What is it?”

  “An Italian novella about the Lady of Shalott.”

  He shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

  “I wasn’t familiar with it, either. But I remembered Gabrielle telling me she was working on a translation.”

  He leafed through the volume’s aged pages and frowned. “I certainly wouldn’t want to try to translate it.” Sebastian’s Italian had come largely from the soldiers, partisans, and bandits he’d encountered during the war and had little in common with the volume’s archaic, stylized language. “When was it originally written?”

  “The thirteenth century, I believe.”

  “Do you think it might somehow be related to the excavations at Camlet Moat?”

  “I don’t believe so, no. Gabrielle was interested in all aspects of the Arthurian legend; this is a relatively unknown part of it.” She turned her head as the sound of the front doorbell echoed through the house. “Are you expecting someone?” she asked, just as Sebastian’s majordomo, Morey, appeared in the doorway.

  “A Mr. Hildeyard Tennyson to see you, my lord. He says he is the brother of Miss Gabrielle Tennyson. I have taken the liberty of showing him to the drawing room.”

  Chapter 14

  Hildeyard Tennyson wore the haggard, stunned expression of a man whose world has suddenly collapsed upon him, leaving him shattered and numb.

  Dressed in riding breeches and dusty boots that told of a long, hard ride back to town, he stood beside the front windows overlooking the street, his hat in his hands, his back held painfully straight. Of above-average height, with his sister’s thick chestnut hair and chiseled features, he looked to be in his early thirties. He turned as Sebastian and Hero entered the room, displaying a pale and grief-ravaged face. “My apologies for coming to you in all my dirt,” he said, bowing. “I’ve just ridden in from Kent.”

  “Please, sit down, Mr. Tennyson,” said Hero gently. “I can’t tell you how sorry we are for your loss.”

  He nodded and swallowed hard, as if temporarily bereft of speech. “Thank you. I can’t stay. I’m on my way up to Enfield to hire some men to help extend the search for the children into the woods and surrounding countryside. But I heard from one of the magistrates at Bow Street that you’ve offered to do what you can to help with the investigation, so I’ve come to thank you…and, I must confess, in the hopes that you might have found something—anything at all—that might make sense of what has happened.” He fixed Sebastian with a look of desperation that was painful to see.

  Sebastian went to pour brandy into two glasses. “Sit down,” he said in the voice that had once commanded soldiers into battle. “It will be getting dark soon. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll go home, rest, and give some thought as to where and how your energies can be most efficiently exerted in the morning.”

  Tennyson sank into a chair beside the empty hearth and swiped a shaky hand over his face. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just—” He paused to blow out a harsh breath. “It feels so damnably wrong—begging your pardon, Lady Devlin—not to be doing something. I blame myself. I should have insisted Gabrielle and the boys come with me to Kent.”

  “From what I know of Gabrielle,” said Hero, taking the chair opposite him, “I’m not convinced you would have succeeded even if you had tried to insist.”

  Gabrielle’s brother gave a ghost of a smile. “You may be right. Not even our father could compel Gabrielle to do something she didn’t wish to do. She was always far more headstrong than I, despite being four years my junior.”

  “There were only the two of you?” asked Sebastian.

  Tennyson nodded. “We had several younger brothers who died when we were children. Gabrielle was quite close to them and took their deaths hard. I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t one of the reasons she was so eager to have George and Alfred come stay with her this summer.”

  Sebastian handed him the brandy. “Would you say you and your sister were close?”

  “I would have said so, yes.”

  “You don’t sound so certain.”

  Tennyson stared down at the glass in his hand. “Gabrielle was always a very private person. Lately I’ve had the sense that our lives were diverging. But I suppose that’s inevitable.”

  Sebastian went to stand beside the cold hearth, one arm resting along the mantel. “Do you know if she had any romantic connections?”

  “Gabrielle?” Tennyson shook his head. “No. She’s never had any interest in marriage. I remember once when I was up at Cambridge and very full of myself, I warned her that if she didn’t get her nose out of books no man would ever want to marry her. She laughed and said that suited her just fine—that a husband would only get in the way of her studies.”

  “So you wouldn’t happen to know the name of a French lieutenant she had befriended?”

  “A Frenchman? You mean an émigré?”

  “No. I mean a paroled French officer. She never mentioned such a man?”

  Tennyson stared at him blankly. “Good heavens. No. Are you suggesting she was somehow involved with this person?”

  Sebastian took a slow sip of his own brandy. “I don’t know.”

  “There must be some mistake.”

  “That’s very possible.”

  Tennyson scrubbed a hand over his eyes and down his face. When he looked up, his features were contorted with agony. “Who could do something like this? To kill a woman and two children…”

 
; “Your young cousins may still be alive,” said Sebastian. “We don’t know yet.”

  Tennyson nodded, his entire upper body rocking back and forth with the motion. “Yes, yes; I keep trying to cling to that, but…” He raised his glass to drink, his hand shaking badly, and Sebastian thought that the man looked stretched to the breaking point.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have wished either your sister or the children harm?”

  “No. Why would anyone want to hurt a woman like Gabrielle—or two little boys?”

  “Some enemy of the boys’ father, perhaps?”

  Tennyson considered this, then shook his head. “My cousin is a simple clergyman in Lincolnshire. I’d be surprised if he knows anyone in London.”

  Hero said, “Would you mind if I were to have a look at Gabrielle’s research materials, on the off chance there might be some connection between her death and her work at Camlet Moat? I could come to the Adelphi myself in the morning.”

  He frowned, as if the possible relevance of his sister’s scholarship to her death escaped him. “Of course; if you wish. I’ll be leaving for Enfield at first light, but I’ll direct the servants to provide you with any assistance you may require. You can box it all up and simply take it, if that would help.”

  “It would, yes. Thank you.”

  Tennyson set aside his glass and rose to his feet with a bow. “You have both been most kind. Please don’t bother ringing; I can see myself out.”

  “I’ll walk down with you,” said Sebastian, aware of Hero’s narrowed gaze following them as they left the room.

  “It occurs to me there may be something else you felt reluctant to mention in front of Lady Devlin,” Sebastian said as they descended the stairs.

  Tennyson looked vaguely confused. “No, nothing.”

  “Any possibility someone could be seeking to hurt you by striking at those you love?”

  “I can’t think of anyone,” he said slowly as they reached the ground hall. “Although in my profession one never—” He broke off, his eyes widening. “Merciful heavens. Emily.”

  “Emily?” said Sebastian.

  A faint suggestion of color touched the barrister’s pale cheeks. “Miss Emily Goodwin—the daughter of one of my colleagues. She has recently done me the honor of agreeing to become my wife, although the death of her paternal grandmother has perforce delayed the formal announcement of our betrothal.”

  “You may count on my discretion.”

  “Yes, but do you think she could be in danger?”

  “I see no reason to alarm her unnecessarily, especially given that the particulars of your betrothal are not known.” Sebastian nodded to Morey, who opened the front door. “But it might be a good idea to suggest that she take care.”

  “I will, yes; thank you.”

  Sebastian stood in the open doorway and watched the man hurry away into the hot night. Then he went back upstairs to his wife.

  “And what precisely was that about?” she asked, one eyebrow raised, as he walked into the room.

  Sebastian found himself smiling. “I thought there might be something he was reluctant to discuss in front of such a delicate lady as yourself.”

  “Really. And was there?”

  “No. Only that it seems he’s formed an attachment to some Miss Goodwin, the daughter of one of his colleagues, and now he’s hysterical with the fear that his sister’s killer might strike against her next. I suspect it’s a fear shared by virtually every father, husband, and brother out there.”

  “You think it’s possible Gabrielle’s death could have something to do with her brother’s legal affairs?”

  “At this point, almost anything seems possible.”

  Tom squinted down at Hero’s map, his lips pursing as he traced the dotted line of London’s old Roman walls, which she had superimposed on her sketch of the city’s modern streets.

  “Can you follow it?” asked Sebastian, watching him. He knew that someone at some point had taught Tom to read, before the death of the boy’s father had driven the family into desperation.

  “Aye. I think maybe I even know the place yer lookin’ for. There’s a tavern called the Black Devil about ’ere—” He tapped one slightly grubby finger just off Bishopsgate. “It’s owned by a fellow named Jamie Knox.”

  Sebastian looked at his tiger in surprise. “You know him?”

  Tom shook his head. “Never seen the fellow meself. But I’ve ’eard tales o’ him. ’E’s a weery rum customer. A weery rum customer indeed. They say ’e dresses all in black, like the devil.”

  “A somewhat dramatic affectation.” It wasn’t unusual for gentlemen in formal evening dress to wear a black coat and black knee breeches. But the severity of the attire was always leavened by a white waistcoat, white silk stockings, and of course a white cravat.

  “Not sure what that means,” said Tom, “but I do know folks say ’e musta sold ’is soul to the devil, for ’e’s got the devil’s own luck. They say ’e ’as the reflexes of a cat. And the eyes and ears of—”

  “What?” prodded Sebastian when the boy broke off.

  Tom swallowed. “They say ’e ’as the eyes and ears of a cat, too. Yellow eyes.”

  Chapter 15

  The Black Devil lay in a narrow cobbled lane just off Bishopsgate.

  Sebastian walked down gloomy streets lit haphazardly by an occasional sputtering oil lamp or flaring torch thrust into a sconce high on an ancient wall. The houses here dated back to the time of the Tudors and the Stuarts, for this was a part of London that had escaped the ravages of the Great Fire. Once home to courtiers attached to the court of James I, the area had been in a long downward slide for the past century. The elaborately carved fronts overhanging the paving were sagging and worn; the great twisting chimneys leaned precariously as they poked up into the murky night sky.

  By day, this was a district of small tradesmen: leather workers and chandlers, clock makers and tailors. But now the shops were all shuttered for the night, the streets given over to the patrons of the grog shops and taverns that spilled golden rectangles of light and boisterous laughter into the night.

  He paused across the street from the Black Devil, in the shadows cast by the deep doorway of a calico printer’s shop. He let his gaze rove over the public house’s gable-ended facade and old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows. Suspended from a beam over the door hung a cracked wooden sign painted with the image of a horned black devil, his yellow-eyed head and barbed tail silhouetted against a roaring orange and red fire. As Sebastian watched, the sign creaked softly on its chains, touched by an unexpected gust of hot wind.

  Crossing the narrow lane, he pushed through the door into a noisy, low-ceilinged public room with a sunken stone-flagged floor and oak-paneled walls turned black by centuries of smoke. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and unwashed, hardworking male bodies. The men crowded up to the bar and clustered around the tables glanced over at him, then went back to their pints and their bonesticks and their draughts.

  “Help ye, there?” called a young woman from behind the bar, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing with shrewd appraisal. She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties, dark haired and winsome, with a wide red mouth and soft white breasts that swelled voluptuously above the low-cut bodice of her crimson satin gown.

  Sebastian pushed his way through the crowd to stand half turned so that he still faced the room. In this gathering of tradesmen and laborers, costermongers and petty thieves, his doeskin breeches, clean white cravat, and exquisitely tailored coat of Bath superfine all marked him as a creature from another world. The other men at the bar shifted subtly, clearing a space around him.

  “A go of Cork,” he said, then waited until she set the measure of gin on the boards in front of him to add, “I’m looking for Jamie Knox; is he here?”

  The woman behind the bar wiped her hands on the apron tied high around her waist, but her gaze never left his face. “And who might ye be, then?”

  �
��Devlin. Viscount Devlin.”

  She stood for a moment with her hands still wrapped in the cloth of her apron. Then she jerked her head toward the rear. “He’s out the back, unloading a delivery. There’s an alley runs along the side of the tavern. The court opens off that.”

  Sebastian laid a coin on the scarred surface of the bar. “Thank you.”

  The alley was dark and ripe with the stench of rotting offal and fish heads and urine. The ancient walls looming high above him on either side bulged out ominously, so that someone had put in stout timber braces to keep the masonry from collapsing. As he drew nearer, he realized the tavern backed onto the churchyard of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, a relic of a now-vanished priory of Benedictine nuns. He could see the church’s ancient wooden tower rising over a swelling burial ground where great elms moaned softly with the growing wind.

  He paused just outside the entrance to the tavern yard. The courtyard looked to be even older than the tavern itself, its cobbles undulating and sunken, with one unexpectedly high wall of coursed flint blocks bonded with rows of red tile. Sebastian could understand why a woman with Gabrielle Tennyson’s interests would find the site fascinating.

  Someone had set a horn lantern atop an old flat stone beside a mule-drawn cart filled with hogsheads. The mules stood with their heads down, feet splayed. At the rear of the tavern the wooden flaps of the cellar had been thrown open to reveal a worn flight of stone steps that disappeared downward. As Sebastian watched, the grizzled head and husky shoulders of a man appeared, his footfalls echoing in the wind-tossed night.

  Sebastian leaned against the stone jamb of the gateway. He had one hand in his pocket, where a small double-barreled pistol, primed and loaded, partially spoiled the line of his fashionable coat. A sheath in his boot concealed the dagger he was rarely without. He waited until the man had crossed to the cart, then said, “Mr. Jamie Knox?”

  The man froze with his hands grasping a cask, his head turning toward the sound of Sebastian’s voice. He appeared wary but not surprised, and it occurred to Sebastian that the comely young woman behind the bar must have run to warn her master to expect a visitor. “Aye. And who might ye be?”