by C. S. Harris
The panel slid to one side.
“I suspect that’s cheating, but it’s still impressive,” said Hero.
“Thank you.”
Thrusting his dagger back into its sheath, he pushed the panel open wider.
The space beyond was perhaps six by eight feet, dusty and empty except for two ironbound wooden trunks, a basket of small glass containers stoppered with cork, and a faint damp stain still visible on the paving stones just inside the opening. In the stale air of the ancient enclosed space, the odor of urine was pungent.
Hero wrinkled her nose. “Do you think someone was shut up in here so long they couldn’t hold it?”
A crumpled cloth lying to one side of the entrance caught Sebastian’s attention. Reaching down, he found himself holding a cheap configuration of yellowed muslin reinforced by whalebone, its tapes badly frayed with wear.
“Good heavens,” said Hero. “It’s a woman’s stays.”
Sebastian passed it to her.
“They’re so tiny.” She looked up to meet his gaze. “You think these stays belonged to the owner of the blue satin slippers?”
Sebastian swung around to look back at the long, old-fashioned parlor. Anyone shut up in the priest’s hole would have had an excellent view of whatever transpired in the room. . if there was a peephole.
It took him only a moment to find it, cleverly worked into the pattern of the wainscoting.
He said, “I suspect Eisler shoved his bit o’ muslin-and most of her clothes-in here when they were interrupted by someone coming to the front door. She was probably watching through the keyhole when the visitor shot Eisler and was so frightened she wet herself. Yates said he burst into the house as soon as he heard the shot fired, followed almost immediately by Perlman.”
“So where was the killer?”
“He could have bolted immediately for the rear entrance. Or he might have hidden behind a curtain until both Yates and Perlman were gone, and then run.”
“Followed by your Blue Satin Cinderella, who dropped her stays and didn’t dare stop long enough to retrieve her slippers. She must have been very frightened.”
“Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?”
Hero nodded. She folded the small, tattered garment as carefully as if it were something fine and precious. “So she knows who the murderer is.”
“She may not know who he is, but she could probably identify him.”
Hero looked up, her face solemn. “The question is, Does he know about her?”
“I hope not.”
Chapter 54
The largest of the two trunks opened to reveal stacks of worn leather-bound ledgers.
“The missing account books?” asked Hero, peering over Sebastian’s shoulder as he leafed through the top volume.
He nodded. “Telling, isn’t it? He leaves everything from priceless fifteenth-century Italian canvases to exquisite Greek marbles lying about the house gathering dust, yet he hides these away.”
He moved on to the next, smaller chest. This one contained a curious assortment of objects, each carefully wrapped in squares of white or black silk and bound up with cord. He unwrapped a snuffbox, a vinaigrette, a gold chain with a locket such as a man might present to his bride as a wedding gift. Only, in this instance, the enameled pattern on the face of the locket was worked into the golden crown and three white feathers of the Prince of Wales.
He held it up. “Look at this.”
“Prinny?” said Hero reaching to open the locket. Inside lay a curled lock of golden-red hair.
“I think we now know what Eisler wanted from Princess Caroline.”
“A locket with the Prince Regent’s hair? But. . why? It can’t be worth much.”
“It is to someone interested in magic ‘operations’ aimed at increasing their wealth and attracting the favor of princes.”
Hero peered into the chest. “Is that what all these items are? The personal possessions of powerful people he wished to influence by casting spells over them?”
“Influence or destroy.”
Hero went to hunker down beside the basket.
“What are they?” he asked, watching her lift one of the small glass containers.
“They look like vials filled with. .” She eased open the cork and sniffed. “Dirt.” She turned it toward the light. “How very curious. Each is labeled with a name. This one says, ‘Alfred Dauncey.’”
“I knew Dauncey. He blew out his brains last year. They say he was deeply in debt-all rolled up.”
She picked up another vial. “This says, ‘Stanley Benson.’ Isn’t he the baronet’s son who slit his own throat last winter?”
Sebastian nodded. “Rumor has it he was also in the clutches of some moneylender.”
She stared down at the mound of glass vials. “Good heavens. Do you think all these people killed themselves because of Eisler?”
“I suspect so.”
She reached for another vial. “This one says. .”
“What?” he prompted when her voice trailed off.
Her gaze met his. “This one says, ‘Rebecca Ridgeway.’”
Sebastian studied her strained, suddenly pale face. “That’s significant; why?”
“Rebecca Ridgeway was Abigail McBean’s sister. The one who died last spring.”
Miss Abigail McBean sat on the comfortably worn sofa in her cozy little drawing room, her head bowed, the small, dirt-filled vial in her hand. On the cushion beside her lay one of Daniel Eisler’s leather-bound account books opened to a page where the third name from the bottom read, Marcus Ridgeway, 2000 pounds. Beside that, Eisler had scrawled, Paid in full, 2 April 1812.
Hero sat in an armchair near the fire; Sebastian stood on the far side of the room.
After a moment, Abigail cleared her throat painfully and said, “Rebecca was my younger sister. She was. . quite different from me. Pretty. Delightfully vivacious. Always far more interested in parties than books. She married Marcus when she was just nineteen. Unfortunately, my late brother-in-law was a handsome and charming but sadly flawed man: weak, irresponsible, and capable of breathtaking selfishness. He was constantly in debt, but somehow he always found a way to right himself again.”
“What happened last spring?” asked Hero gently.
“Rebecca came to me in tears, just before Easter. She said Marcus had fallen deep into the clutches of some St. Botolph-Aldgate moneylender and was on the verge of ruin. I’d helped Marcus in the past, but he never paid me back, and I. . I live on a very limited income.”
“You told her you couldn’t help her?”
Abigail nodded without looking up. “Yes. A week later, they were both dead.”
“How?”
She traced her sister’s name on the vial’s label with trembling fingertips. “Marcus was found floating in the Thames near the Wapping Stairs.”
“Do you think he killed himself?”
“Marcus?” She shook her head. “In my experience, suicide generally requires a measure of either guilt or despair. But Marcus had a gift for convincing himself that nothing was ever his fault. And no matter how desperate his situation, he was always certain he’d somehow come about.”
Hero nodded to the open ledger. “He obviously did. Somehow.”
Abigail’s brows drew together in a crinkling frown.
“And your sister?” Sebastian asked quietly.
“They pulled Rebecca’s body out of the river the next day.”
A heavy silence settled on the room, broken only by the distant sound of a child’s voice, chanting, “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s. . ”
Hero said, “What do you think happened to them?”
“In truth?” Abigail looked up, her face mottled and puffy with unshed tears. “I think Rebecca killed him. And then she killed herself. Although I could be wrong. It could have been an accident. The coroner’s court returned a verdict of death by misadventure.”
“Why did Eisler have a glass vial of dirt wit
h your sister’s name on it?”
“I don’t believe he knew Rebecca was my sister,” she said quietly.
“‘When will you pay me?’ say the bells of Old Bailey,” chanted the child in the garden below.
Sebastian said, “How long before he died had Eisler been coming to you for consultation on his work with the grimoires?”
“Several years.”
“So when your sister told you about her husband’s St. Botolph-Aldgate moneylender, you must have suspected who she was talking about?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian was aware of Hero’s hard gray eyes upon him. But all he said was, “Eisler had a collection of these vials. I recognized several of the names of young men who recently committed suicide.”
Abigail’s hand closed around the vial. “Some people believe that those who take their own lives will haunt anyone they blame for driving them to it. There are numerous operations in the various grimoires for binding the souls of suicides. Most are best performed with earth from the graves of the dead.”
“Chip-chop, chip-chop, the last man’s dead!”
An outburst of children’s laughter drew Sebastian’s attention again to the window overlooking the garden, where a fair-haired little girl had collapsed with her brother in a fit of giggles. He was remembering what John Francillon had told him, that Eisler feared dead men. He now understood what the lapidary had meant.
Abigail said, “Did you find a vial for Marcus?”
Sebastian shook his head. They had written down all the names on the vials and brought away with them Eisler’s account books. The rest they left as they had found it, carefully closing the section of paneling behind them. “No.”
Abigail pushed out her breath in a strange sound. “Eisler obviously realized Marcus wasn’t the type to do away with himself.” Her gaze returned to her brother-in-law’s name in the account book beside her, her brows twitching together in a troubled frown. “I wonder how Marcus managed to repay his debt.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged silent glances.
But if Abigail McBean did not know the truth, Sebastian had no intention of telling her.
“Admit it,” Hero said to him later, as they drove away from Abigail McBean’s modest Camden Place house. “You think Abigail killed him.”
Sebastian looked over at her. “Don’t you?”
He expected her to leap to her friend’s defense and insist Abigail McBean was incapable of murder. Instead, she said, “Do you think Abigail knows that Marcus Ridgeway forced his wife to prostitute herself to Eisler in order to pay off his debt?”
“I suspect she does-if she killed Eisler. Otherwise. . I hope not. She doesn’t need to live with that knowledge on top of everything else.”
Hero said, “I keep thinking about all those glass vials. So many men and women, driven to death by that loathsome man.”
“And by their own weaknesses.”
When Hero remained silent, Sebastian said, “Think about this: Abigail McBean has known for the last five months that Eisler was implicated in the death of her sister and brother-in-law. Yet she continued to assist him with his interpretation of the ancient grimoires and their magic operations. Why?”
Hero shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you understand just how frightened of the souls of dead men Eisler was.”
“You think Abigail was deliberately feeding that fear? To torment him?”
“Yes.”
“So why kill him? Why not simply continue to torment him, if she’d chosen that as her means of revenge?”
Sebastian stared out the window at the rolling, misty undulations of Green Park, deserted now in the cold and damp. “Perhaps she learned of another victim, someone she knew and also cared about. Someone who made her decide Eisler needed to be stopped-permanently.”
“What other victim?”
But Sebastian only shook his head, his gaze on a fog-shrouded copse of oaks.
While Devlin settled down in his library with Eisler’s account books, Hero changed into a warmer carriage gown of soft pink wool and went in search of the crossing sweep named Drummer.
She found the boy working to clear a pile of fresh manure from his corner. He was reluctant to pause in his labors, but the promise of a silver coin lured him to the steps of St. Giles, where he sat with his bare hands tucked up beneath his armpits as he rocked back and forth for warmth. Hero noticed he had acquired a sturdy pair of leather boots, only gently worn by their previous owner.
“Ye want to know more about the crossin’ sweeps?” he asked, looking up at her.
“Not today. I was thinking about how you told me that you and your friends often go to the Haymarket in the evening.”
“Y-yes,” he said slowly, obviously confused by this new line of inquiry.
“Have you ever found girls for a gentleman who takes them to an old man living in a ramshackle house just off the Minories in St. Botolph-Aldgate?”
Drummer froze, his skinny little body tense, as if he were about to bolt.
“Don’t worry,” said Hero gently. “You won’t get into trouble for it. I’m trying to find a girl who was taken there last Sunday night. Do you know who she is?”
Drummer cast a quick glance around, as if to reassure himself that no one had overheard her question.
Then he nodded solemnly, his eyes wide and afraid.
Chapter 55
Sebastian found the name he was looking for entered under the heading for June 1812.
Major Rhys Wilkinson’s debt was for five hundred pounds and had been partially repaid.
He set aside the ledger and rose to go stand with his palms resting on the windowsill, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the misty street before him. He tried to tell himself that the death of both men on the same night could be a coincidence. That Rhys was not the kind of man to commit cold-blooded murder over a debt of five hundred pounds. But he was haunted by the memory of a young girl with a dusting of cinnamon-colored freckles across her sunburned nose, who’d once shot a Spanish guerrilla point-blank in the face.
He was still standing at the window some minutes later when Hero’s stylish yellow-bodied town carriage drew up before the house. He watched her descend the carriage steps, a ragged, incredibly dirty, gape-mouthed child clasped firmly by one hand.
“We’ll have sandwiches, cakes, and hot chocolate in the library, as soon as possible,” he heard her tell Morey, her footsteps brisk as she crossed the black-and-white-marbled entry hall. The room filled with the scent of coal smoke and fresh manure and grimy boy.
“This is Drummer,” she said, releasing the child’s hand so that she could loosen the ribbons of her bonnet and yank off her gloves. “He’s a crossing sweep at St. Giles, but he also works in the Haymarket in the evenings, helping gentlemen too shy to descend from their carriages to find girls.” She gave the boy a nudge forward. “Make your bow and tell his lordship about Jenny.”
The boy stumbled forward, a grubby wideawake cap clutched in both hands, his skinny chest jerking with his agitated breathing.
“Jenny?” prompted Sebastian when the lad remained mute.
“Jenny Davie,” supplied Hero. “She’s seventeen, and last Sunday evening she was hired by a gentleman in a hackney who was known to procure girls for a nasty old goat living in St. Botolph-Aldgate.”
Sebastian led the boy closer to the fire, where the black cat looked up in slit-eyed annoyance at their intrusion. “What did this gentleman look like?”
Drummer raised a shoulder in the offhand shrug of a lad to whom one member of the nobility was pretty much like the next. “I reckon ’e looks like a nob.”
“My age? Younger? Or older?”
Drummer frowned with the effort of thought. “Younger, I’d say-by a fair bit.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged glances. So Jenny Davie’s procurer had not been Samuel Perlman.
“Fair?” asked Sebastian. “Or dark haired?”
“’E’s got a mess o’ curls as gold as a guinea. The girls always go with ’im real quick, because ’e’s so good-lookin’. But ’e ain’t never ’ad nothin’ to do with any of ’em. Jist takes ’em to that old codger.”
Blair Beresford, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Tell me about Jenny Davie.”
Again that twitch of the shoulder. Circumstances had obviously taught Drummer long ago to take life-and people-as he met them, with little time for analysis or criticism. “Wot’s there t’ tell? She’s a doxy.”
“Where does she live?”
The boy’s gaze slid away. “She used t’ keep a room at a lodgin’ ’ouse in Rose Court.”
“But she’s not there anymore?”
Drummer shook his head. “There’s been a mess o’ people lookin’ for ’er.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“Well, the curly-’eaded cove what ’ired ’er, fer one.”
Interesting, thought Sebastian. “Who else?”
The boy’s shoulder twitched. “Some Frenchman. “’E’s been lookin’ fer ’er real ’ard. He’s even offered blunt to any o’ the lads what could tell ’im where she’s gone.”
Sebastian saw Hero’s eyes narrow and knew that the boy had not yet told her this part of his tale. “What does he look like?”
“’E looks like a Frenchman.”
“Tall? Short? Old? Young? Dark? Fair?”
Drummer frowned. “Older than you, and shorter-but not real old or real short. I reckon ’e ’as a real bad pockmarked face, but I didn’t pay him a whole lot o’ mind. I mean, I ain’t about to bubble on Jenny, so why would I? She said if anyone was to come lookin’ fer ’er, we was t’ keep mum.”
“So you do know where she is.”
The boy sucked in a quick breath as he realized his mistake. He edged toward the door but was stopped by the entrance of Morey, who came in bearing a heavy tray loaded down with sandwiches, small cakes, and a pitcher of steaming hot chocolate.
Hero said, “Here, let me fix you a plate of sandwiches. Do you prefer ham or roast beef?”
The boy swallowed hard. “Can I ’ave some o’ both?” he asked in a small, hopeful voice.
