Why Mermaids Sing: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Read online

  Though she were true, when you met her,

  And last, till you write your letter,

  Yet she

  Will be

  False, ere I come, to two, or three.’”

  “Well,” said Kat, “Mr. Donne didn’t like women much, did he?”

  Devlin smiled. “He was a clergyman. It’s something of an occupational hazard.”

  Kat ran her fingers through the dark curls at the nape of his neck, felt the tension coiled within him. “The young man who was killed down in Kent last April…” She left the rest of the question unsaid.

  “Was found with a papier-mâché star in his mouth.”

  “Dear God.” She came around to curl up on the rug at his feet, her hands folded together on his knee, her head tilted back so she could see his face. “What does it all mean?”

  He closed the book and set it aside. “I wish I knew.”

  She rested her cheek against his leg. “Tell me about today.”

  He told her in soft, measured tones. When he finished, she lifted her head and said. “‘Get with child a mandrake root.’ It’s the second line of the poem. Why would the killer skip one line of a poem he’s obviously following so deliberately?”

  “Lovejoy thinks there must have been a similar killing someplace in England between April and June, a killing he simply hasn’t heard about yet.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  She sat back, her hands trailing down his leg in a gentle caress. Turning her head, she stared into the fire. For a moment she thought of the clergyman’s son in Avery, the lines of Donne’s poem running over and over in her head. But it wasn’t long before her thoughts slid away to her own problems, to Jarvis’s threat and her meeting with O’Connell tomorrow.

  Devlin touched her hair, his hand cupping her chin to turn her face to him again. “What is it?” he asked.

  She gave a startled laugh and shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Something’s troubling you. Something you’re trying to hide from me.”

  She laid her hand over his and shifted to plant a kiss against his palm. She kept her voice light, her smile in place. “Are you suggesting I’m a poor actress?”

  “I’m suggesting I know you.”

  “Do you?” She took his hand and placed it on the swell of her breast. “What does this tell you?”

  His hand tightened over her breast, caressing her through the thin muslin of her gown. She saw the leap of desire in his eyes and let her own eyes slide shut, her head tipping back as she sucked in a quick, delighted breath.

  He slipped from the chair, his knees denting the carpet beside hers, his lips warm against the bare flesh of her throat. His hands found the tapes of her high-waisted gown, loosened them. He eased the gown from her shoulders, taking with it the light chemise she wore beneath it.

  Her lips closed over his, hungry now. Pressing her naked body against his clothed one, she drove all thoughts but this from her mind—this man, this love, this moment—and surrendered herself to it utterly.

  Later, as she lay naked and spent in his arms, he traced the features of her face with one softly sliding finger and said, “Marry me, Kat.”

  A pain swelled in her chest, a pain of want and longing that could never be eased. But she was an actress, and so she was able to summon up a smile, even though her voice shook slightly. “You know why I can’t.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow, his fierce eyes glowing in the dying light of the fire. “My aunt Henrietta has found another suitable bride for me. A Lady Julia Something-or-other.” He entwined his hand with hers and kept his tone light, although she knew he was intensely serious. “If you truly loved me, you would rescue me from the matrimonial machinations of my family by marrying me yourself.”

  “You need a Lady Something-or-other as a wife.”

  “No. I need you.”

  “I would destroy you.” Her voice was a torn whisper.

  He slid his hands beneath her, drawing her up close so that he could bury his face in her hair. “No,” he said, all hint of lightness gone from his own voice. “Not having you in my life would destroy me.”

  Chapter 25

  WEDNESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 1811

  Early the next morning, Sir Henry Lovejoy was just leaving his bed when one of his constables banged at his door.

  “What is it, Bernard?” Henry asked when the constable came stomping in, bringing with him the cold damp of the morning.

  “You know that case you was telling us about yesterday? The one you think might be linked to some poem about mermaids and mandrake roots?”

  Henry felt a twist of anxiety deep within his being. “Yes.”

  Bernard ran a hand across his beard-roughened face. “I think there’s somethin’ down near the docks you need to see.”

  In the dim light of dawn, the forest of masts out on the river were mere ghostly things without form or function. Sir Henry Lovejoy thrust his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and suppressed a shiver. The mist coming off the water swirled around him, cold and damp and smelling strongly of hemp and tar and dead fish.

  “Oye. You there.” The bulky form of a constable appeared out of the gloom. “T’ain’t nobody allowed any farther ’ere. Orders of Bow Street.”

  “Sir Henry Lovejoy, Queen Square,” snapped Henry. He brushed past the constable, his footsteps echoing on the wooden planking of the docks.

  He could see a knot of men clustered near an old warehouse up ahead. Henry paused, aware of a hollowness yawning deep inside and trying to swallow the thickness that had come to his throat. The sight of violent death was never easy for Henry. He had to steel himself for the sight of yet another human being butchered like a side of beef.

  At Henry’s approach, one of the men near the warehouse straightened and came toward him. A fleshy man with protruding watery gray eyes and loose wet lips, Sir James Read was one of Bow Street’s three serving magistrates, a small-minded man Henry knew to be both ambitious and fiercely jealous of his dignity.

  “Sir Henry,” said the magistrate with a show of bluff good humor, “no need for you to have braved the cold on such a foul morning. This one had the courtesy to get himself offed well away from Queen Square.”

  The Thames-side docks in the city fell under the authority of Bow Street, and Sir James’s words were carefully chosen to let Henry know his presence here was both unnecessary and unwelcome. Henry looked beyond the magistrate, to the shadows of the warehouse. “I heard the victim has a mandrake root stuffed in his mouth.”

  Sir James’s show of bluff good humor slipped away. “Well, yes. But what has that to say to anything?”

  “I believe this gentleman’s death may be linked to the recent murders of Mr. Barclay Carmichael and young Dominic Stanton.”

  “You mean the Butcher of the West End?” Sir James gave a harsh laugh. “Hardly. No one’s been carving up this gentleman.”

  Henry knew a moment’s confusion. “The body wasn’t mutilated?”

  “No. Just a neat knife wound through the side…and that bloody mandrake root in his mouth, of course.”

  Henry let his gaze drift around the docks. In the growing light, he could now make out the dark hulls of the ships lying at anchor out on the river. He had to force himself to bring his gaze back to the sprawled figure beside the warehouse.

  The man lay on his back, one leg buckled awkwardly to the side, as if he’d simply been left where he had collapsed. No butchering of the body. No careful display of the remains. The cause of death was different, as well: a knife wound to the side rather than a quick slitting of the throat from behind. Yet the presence of the mandrake root in the man’s mouth surely tied this man’s death to the murders of Thornton, Carmichael, and Stanton. So why the differences?

  Henry’s footsteps echoed dully as he approached the body. No one had covered the man up. He lay with his eyes staring vacantly, the features of his face relaxed in
death.

  He was young, as Henry had known he would be—probably somewhere in his early twenties. A handsome young man, with light brown hair and even features and the sun-darkened skin of a man who lives his life on the sea. He wore the uniform of a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, the brass of his buttons and buckles neatly polished.

  “He’s a naval lieutenant?” said Henry.

  “That’s right. Lieutenant Adrian Bellamy, from the HMS Cornwall. A far cry from the likes of your banker’s son and future peer.”

  It was said with a faint sneer that Henry ignored. “How long has the Cornwall been in port?”

  “Put in Monday night, I believe. They were meant to sail again at the end of the week.”

  Lovejoy frowned. It had been less than a week since Mr. Stanton’s murder, which meant that after leaving a lapse of two or more months between his other killings, their murderer had struck again within days. Why?

  “You’ve spoken to the captain of the Cornwall?” Henry asked.

  “Of course. According to the captain, the lad came ashore last night after receiving a message.”

  “From whom?”

  “From his family, it would seem. At least, he told the captain he was going to visit them in Greenwich.” Sir James stared down at the body at their feet. For a moment the cloak of bluff insensitivity slipped, and a muscle ticked along the man’s fleshy jawline. “He didn’t make it far, did he?”

  “No,” said Henry. “No, he didn’t.”

  Chapter 26

  Sebastian found Sir Henry seated behind his desk in Queen Square. The magistrate had his head bowed, his forehead furrowed by a frown as he scribbled furiously on a notepad.

  “I heard about Lieutenant Bellamy,” said Sebastian as soon as the clerk Collins had bowed himself out.

  Sir Henry removed the small set of spectacles he wore perched on the end of his nose and rubbed the bridge. “It’s puzzling. Most puzzling. There was no mutilation of the body, and the young man was killed by a knife wound to the side. Yet the presence of that mandrake root surely links his murder to the other three.”

  “I would have said so.”

  Sir Henry picked up a volume from his desktop and rose from his chair. “When I saw him on the docks, Sir James was dismissive of my conclusions. I then spoke to his colleagues Aaron Graham and Sir William and presented them with my notes on the case. Both agreed the evidence suggests the death of Mr. Nicholas Thornton may well be linked to the murders of Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Stanton. However, they remain skeptical of the relevance of the poem by John Donne. They therefore agree with Sir James that the docks killing is unrelated to the other three.”

  Sebastian watched the magistrate lock the volume away in a glass-fronted case beside the door. “And they’ve taken over the investigation.”

  “Yes. It was inevitable, given the breadth of the case.”

  Sebastian nodded. Bow Street was the first public office formed in London, back in 1750. The original Bow Street magistrate had been Henry Fielding, followed by his brother John. Together the brothers had been so successful at stemming the rampant spread of crime in the growing metropolitan area that another half dozen public offices were established in 1792, including the one at Queen Square. But of them all, only the magistrates of Bow Street exercised authority over the entire metropolitan area and beyond. Bow Street’s famous Runners operated the length of England.

  “My jurisdiction is limited,” Sir Henry was saying. “Technically I should have contacted Bow Street after our discoveries in Kent.”

  Sebastian watched Sir Henry resume his seat behind the desk. “So what can you tell me about Adrian Bellamy?”

  “Little you won’t be able to read in the papers, I’m afraid. The young man was from Greenwich. His father is one Captain Edward Bellamy.”

  “Also a Navy man?”

  “No. Retired merchant captain.” Sir Henry hesitated, then said, “The differences in the murders are considerable. Not simply in the manner of killing and the lack of mutilation, but in other ways, as well. Bellamy was left where he fell, in the shadow of one of the warehouses beside the docks. There was no public display of the remains, no flaunting of what had been done.”

  “Perhaps the killer was pressed for time,” Sebastian suggested.

  Lovejoy carefully fitted his spectacles back on his face. “You may be right. You were certainly correct about the mandrake root. It’s as if the killer deliberately skipped that line of the poem, fully intending to return to it later. But why?”

  “Because Bellamy’s ship was out of port. The designated victim was beyond his reach.”

  Sir Henry looked at Sebastian over the top of the spectacles. “You think he’s putting his victims in some sort of order?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing,’” whispered Sir Henry.

  “What?”

  “It’s the next line of the poem. ‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing.’ If he’s putting his victims in order, he must already have the next one selected.”

  Sebastian blew out his breath in a harsh sigh. “And Bow Street doesn’t believe any of it.”

  Chapter 27

  Sebastian studied his reflection in the mirror, then leaned forward to add a touch more ash to his hair, blending it in until he gave all the appearance of a man just beginning to go gray.

  He wore a decidedly unfashionable coat and sturdy breeches of a cut that would give his aunt Henrietta an apoplexy if she were to see them, for they’d come not from the exclusive shops of Bond Street but from a secondhand clothing dealer in Rosemary Lane. There were times when Sebastian’s aristocratic bearing and the trappings of wealth gave him a decided advantage. But there were other times when it served his purpose better to pretend to be someone else.

  He was just slipping a slim but deadly knife into a sheath in his right boot when Tom came hurtling into the dressing room, bringing with him the scent of the rain that had been threatening all morning.

  “There’s somethin’ you might want to know about that captain in the ’Orse Guards, that Captain Quail you asked me to trail. I think he mighta run into debt. Seems ’is wife threatened to leave ’im if ’e didn’t spend more time with ’er. And seein’ as ’er da is the one with all the blunt, that’s why ’e’s been sticking pretty close to ’ome.”

  Sebastian kept his attention on the task of tying his dark cravat. “Keep looking into it when you have the chance. There’s no doubt the man’s hiding something. I’m just not certain it’s related.”

  Tom eyed Sebastian’s unfashionable rig. “What’s this fer, then?”

  Sebastian adjusted his modest shirt points. “Greenwich.” He turned away from the mirror. “How would you like to take a ride on a hoy?”

  “Gore,” said Tom on a breath of pure ecstasy as the hoy slid past the Tower of London and the docks beyond, past merchantmen lying heavy in the water with their cargoes of sugar and tobacco, indigo and coffee, their masts thick against the cloud-filled sky.

  Sebastian stood at the rail, the moist wind cool against his face as he watched the tiger dart from one side of the boat to the other, dodging coiled lines and scattered crates and some half a dozen fellow passengers. Sebastian smiled to himself. “Ever been to Greenwich?”

  Tom shook his head, his eyes wide as the hoy slipped past the massive bulk of India House and, beyond that, the docks and warehouses of the West India Trading Company on the Isle of Dogs.

  “We should have time to take a look at the Queen’s House and the Naval Academy, if you’re interested.”

  “And the Observatory?”

  Sebastian laughed. “And the Observatory.”

  Tom squinted up at the rusty red-brown canvas flapping in the wind. The hoy was spritsail rigged, with a topsail over a huge mainsail and a large foresail. Its flat-bottomed design made it perfect for the shallow waters and narrow rivers of the Thames estuary it plied. “This cove ye want me to nose out about—this Captain Edwa
rd Bellamy—what you expectin’ to find?”

  “I’m hoping for something that might link either the captain or his son to Carmichael, Stanton, and Thornton.”

  Tom screwed up his face. “It don’t seem likely. A clergyman, a ship’s captain, a banker, and a lord?”

  “You’d be surprised at the threads that can bind one man to the next, across all levels of society. Or one woman to the next.”

  “You want I should listen to the jabber about Mrs. Bellamy while I’m at it? If there is one?”

  A line from Donne’s poem kept running through Sebastian’s head. And swear, no where, lives a woman true and fair…. It had occurred to him that he’d given little thought to the mothers of these murdered young men: the Reverend’s recently dead wife, Mary Thornton; Lady Stanton, who’d insisted her son return early for her dinner party and was now said to be so hysterical her doctors were keeping her sedated; and Barclay Carmichael’s mother, the marquis’s daughter, the woman who tended to the needs of the working poor and had lobbied her husband to limit the hours labored by children in his factories and mines. He’d been focused on finding a tie among the young men’s fathers. Yet couldn’t the link as easily lie with the victims’ mothers?

  Sebastian settled back against the rail. “I think that might be a good idea.”

  Chapter 28

  Captain Edward Bellamy lived in a sprawling white-framed house trimmed with dark green shutters and set in expansive gardens overlooking the river.

  Slipping into the demeanor of Mr. Simon Taylor of Bow Street, Sebastian climbed the short flight of steps to the front door and worked the knocker. His peal was answered by a slip of a towheaded housemaid who looked to be no more than fourteen or fifteen. She started to deny both her master and mistress, but hesitated when Sebastian removed his hat and said loftily, “Mr. Simon Taylor, from Bow Street. Please announce me.”