by C. S. Harris
“When was the last time you saw Rhys, Annie?”
She blinked, and the tears swimming in her eyes spilled over to stream unchecked down her face. “It must have been half past nine. He. . he came home, shut himself in the bedroom for a few minutes, then left, saying he was going for a walk. I knew he had a bottle of laudanum he kept in a drawer beside the bed. After he left, I went and checked. It was a new bottle-he’d found an apothecary willing to mix it especially strong, just for him. It was gone.”
“That’s when you contacted me and asked for my help in finding him?”
She nodded silently.
“Annie, Annie. . Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“I was afraid. . and ashamed. Perhaps more ashamed than afraid.”
“And when you saw in Monday’s papers that Eisler had been killed?”
“I don’t know. . I–I hoped it was just a coincidence. I mean, everyone was saying Russell Yates was found standing over the man’s dead body. I didn’t know then about the pistol. Not until today.”
“What made you decide to look for it today?”
She scrubbed the heel of her hand across one wet cheek. “The chief magistrate from Lambeth Street Public Office came to see me.”
“Bertram Leigh-Jones?” Sebastian felt his heart begin to beat faster. “What did he want?”
“He wanted to know when I’d last seen Rhys. I lied. I told him the same thing I’ve told everyone else-that Rhys went out for a walk at half past eight and never came back. But as soon as he left, I went to the bedroom and looked in the drawer where I knew Rhys kept his pistol. When I saw it, I knew.”
She turned away, her arms wrapping across her chest to hug herself. “At the time, I couldn’t understand what had made Leigh-Jones suspect Rhys. But I suppose this girl you were talking about-this Jenny Davie-must have told him what she told you.”
Sebastian shook his head. “No. I think Leigh-Jones got the information out of Jud Foy. Right before he killed him.”
Annie shook her head, not understanding. “Who is Foy?”
“A half-mad ex-rifleman who was watching Eisler’s house the night he died.”
“But. . why would Leigh-Jones kill him?”
“For the same reason he killed an old French jewel thief named Jacques Collot: because the chief magistrate at Lambeth Street has a dangerous secret he’ll do anything to protect.”
She looked at him blankly.
Sebastian said, “I think Bertram Leigh-Jones is working for Napoleon to recover a gem Eisler had in his possession-a rare blue diamond that once formed part of the French Crown Jewels and is now missing. The assumption has always been that whoever killed Eisler stole the diamond. At first, Leigh-Jones thought he had Eisler’s killer-Yates-in prison. But something seems to have convinced Leigh-Jones that he had the wrong man. He started asking questions, and that led him to Foy. I think Foy told Leigh-Jones about Rhys, and that’s why he came to see you today.”
“You’re saying that Rhys stole some diamond? But Rhys would never do anything like that! You know Rhys.”
“I know. I think Jenny Davie has it. And unless I can stop him, she’s liable to be Leigh-Jones’s next victim.”
It took what felt like an age for Sebastian’s hackney driver to battle through the city’s Saturday night traffic to the St. Botolph-Aldgate home of Bertram Leigh-Jones. Then the housemaid who opened the door to Sebastian’s curt knock dropped an apologetic curtsy and said, “Begging your lordship’s pardon, but Mr. Leigh-Jones isn’t here.”
“This is rather important,” said Sebastian, aware of a rising sense of urgency. “Would you happen to know where he’s gone?”
“I’m afraid he didn’t say, my lord. Some Frenchman come to see him maybe half an hour ago, and they all went off in his gig.”
“‘All’? Was someone else with them?”
The housemaid nodded. “Oh, yes, my lord. The Frenchman brung a girl with him. A tiny slip of a thing, she was, and so scared.”
Jenny, thought Sebastian. Damn, damn, damn.
Aloud, he said, “You have no idea where they might have gone?”
The housemaid screwed up her face with the effort of thought. “I think they might have said something about Southwark, but I couldn’t tell you more than that.”
“Southwark?”
“Yes, my lord,” she said.
But Sebastian was already running to his hackney.
Chapter 58
The ancient abbey of St. Saviour in Bermondsey, on the southern bank of the Thames, had once ranked amongst the proudest religious houses in England, patronized by kings and favored by widowed queens in need of a place of refuge. Now only the lay church, a crumbling gatehouse, and a row of abandoned, half-demolished dwellings survived, their age-battered stone walls and broken slate roofs gleaming wet in the fitful, misty moonlight.
Why Leigh-Jones and his pockmarked French cohort would bring Jenny Davie here, to her old childhood home, Sebastian could only guess. But as his hackney swept around the curve of the ancient elevated causeway that once led to the priory, he caught sight of a gig drawn up beside what was now the parish church of St. Mary Magdalen. The gig was empty, the bay between the shafts grazing contentedly in the rank grass that grew along the wayside. Sebastian could see a narrow beam of light, as if from a shuttered lantern, weaving amongst the mossy gray tombs and tumbled headstones of the dark, fog-shrouded churchyard beyond.
“Pull up here,” Sebastian ordered.
The hackney driver obliged. “Ye want I should wait fer ye again, yer lordship?” he asked hopefully. He obviously considered a night of dozing on the box far preferable to one spent constantly hustling new fares.
“Just take care to keep out of sight.” Sebastian dropped quietly to the ground, then handed up his card to the jarvey. “And if anything should happen to me, take this to Sir Henry Lovejoy in Bow Street and tell him what you know of this night’s work.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Leaving the hackney in the shadows of a line of darkened, dilapidated shops, Sebastian slipped down the street. The air here was heavy and wet, and thick with the pungent odors of the nearby tan yards and glue manufactories and breweries. On the flagway beside the church’s ancient medieval tower, he paused, a cold wind billowing the mist around him.
He could see them now, three mist-shrouded figures: the magistrate’s form tall and bulky; the Frenchman small, agile; the girl dragged along with one frail arm gripped in Leigh-Jones’s meaty fist as they worked their way through the sunken, crowded graves. The moon had utterly disappeared behind the thick, bunching clouds.
The wall surrounding the churchyard was built of stone and low and crumbling; Sebastian climbed it easily. Hunkering down, he was slipping cautiously from one tomb to the next when the girl’s voice, sounding surprisingly strong, stopped him.
“This is it,” she said.
“You’re certain this time?” snapped Leigh-Jones, raising his lantern to peer at the tomb before them.
“I think so.”
The Frenchman gave a scornful laugh. “That’s what she said before she wasted ten minutes digging around the foundations of the last tomb where she insisted she’d hid it.”
“It ain’t easy to see in the dark! Maybe if we could come back tomorrow when it’s light, I could-”
Leigh-Jones said, “Just shut up and dig.”
The Frenchman pulled a pistol from his waistband and pressed the muzzle against the girl’s temple. “Only, make certain you have the right tomb this time, ma petite. No more games, hmm?”
Jenny Davie froze, the moist wind curling the honey-colored hair around her fine-boned face and flattening the skirts of her ragged dress against her legs. Unlike the two men, who were muffled in greatcoats and hats, she was bareheaded, her arms covered only by the thin stuff of her dress and wrapped across her chest for warmth. She stared back at the Frenchman, as if evaluating the seriousness of his threat. She must have decided he meant it, because
she jerked her head toward a tomb that lay closer to the long wall of the church’s nave. “I think maybe I made a mistake and it’s over there.”
The Frenchman grunted.
She led them to a tomb so old the weathered, moss-covered stones were cracked and crumbling, the top tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Crouching down near one end, she began to dig at the base, the rush of the disturbed, falling rubble sounding unnaturally loud in the fog-shrouded night.
At some point, she’d obviously brought the diamond here, to the place where she’d played as a child, and hidden it. As Sebastian watched, she hesitated in her digging. Then her left hand swooped into the rubble to close over something just as her right seized a chunk of stone the size of her fist. He could see the tension in every line of her body, see her gathering herself like a sprinter ready to run.
Leigh-Jones had set the lantern atop the tomb and now stood slightly off to one side, while the Frenchman had positioned himself nearby, his pistol held in a slackened grip. As Sebastian watched, Jenny drew back her hand and chucked the jagged rock at the Frenchman’s head.
“Mon Dieu,” he swore. He tried to duck, lost his footing, and went down with a grunt.
Darting up, Jenny took off running across the darkened church-yard, toward the ancient ruined gatehouse shrouded by mist in the distance.
“Don’t just stand there, you fool,” shouted the Frenchman, scrambling to his feet. “After her! She’s got the diamond!”
Leigh-Jones started off down the slope in a lumbering trot. “For God’s sake, just shoot her!”
Taking careful aim on the girl’s running figure, the Frenchman was tightening his finger on the trigger when Sebastian barreled into him.
The impact knocked the Frenchman flat on his back, the pistol exploding harmlessly into the air as it flew from his hand and spun out of sight into the high grass.
Rolling nimbly away from Sebastian’s grasp, he reared up into a crouch, a knife gleaming in his fist. “You again,” he spat.
Leaping to his feet, Sebastian snatched the horn lantern from the tomb’s cracked surface just as the Frenchman lunged, blade flashing.
Pivoting, Sebastian smashed the lantern down on the Frenchman’s hand, plunging them into darkness and sending the knife clattering against the side of the tomb. As the Frenchman staggered back, Sebastian swung the lantern again, this time at the man’s head.
The Frenchman ducked, then came up with an explosive kick that drove the heel of his boot into Sebastian’s right knee.
Sebastian’s leg collapsed beneath him in a fireball of pain. As he fell, the Frenchman kicked at him again, aiming this time for Sebastian’s head.
Hands flashing up, Sebastian grabbed the French agent’s boot with both hands and twisted.
Caught off balance, the Frenchman fell back, his head making an ugly thwunking sound as it struck the edge of the tomb. He slithered down the side of the moss-covered monument in a disjointed sprawl, then lay still, an ugly sheen of dark wetness staining the weathered stone behind him.
Staggering to his feet, Sebastian gritted his teeth and set off in an ungainly lope toward the ancient abbey gatehouse at the base of the churchyard. Every step sent an excruciating jolt of agony radiating up from his injured knee, so that by the time he reached the rubbish-strewn cobbled court before the ruined gatehouse, a cold sweat filmed his body and his breath was coming ragged and fast.
Built of coursed rough stone, the gatehouse rose a story and a half above its central vaulted archway. Once, the recessed arch had been richly ornamented with carvings, the mullioned windows above embellished with a vinelike tracery. But the passing centuries had battered and crumbled the stone, while the smoke and grime of generations had blurred and obliterated the details of what remained.
To the west of the gatehouse ranged a long, two-story stone building that might once have been an attached guesthouse or almonry but had long since degenerated into mean lodgings. Now the buildings stood vacant, windows and doorways gaping, roof tiles broken and missing, their supporting timbers collapsing. All other traces of the abbey had vanished long ago; beyond these few ruined fragments stretched only market gardens and open fields, empty beneath the wind-bunched clouds scuttling and thickening across the black sky.
Jenny Davie and Bertram Leigh-Jones had disappeared.
Pausing in the shadows of the gatehouse’s arched passageway, Sebastian stood still, listening. He heard the scuff of a heavy tread overhead, a girl’s frightened gasp. Then came Leigh-Jones’s voice, pitched to a coaxing croon that did little to disguise the gruff anger roiling beneath. “I’m not going to hurt you, girl. All I want is the diamond. Just give me the diamond and I’ll let you go.”
“Ye take me fer a flat?” yelled Jenny, her voice high-pitched with fear and defiance. “Don’t ye come near me!”
Moving quietly, Sebastian crept up the tightly wound medieval staircase that opened to one side of the vaulted passage. The old stone treads were worn into such deeply sunken grooves in the center that the awkwardness of each step twisted his injured knee and stole his breath. By the time he reached the single chamber above, it was empty.
At one time, this had been a grand space, with oak-paneled walls and a sandstone fireplace built into the opposite wall. But much of the paneling had been torn down and burned for firewood, while part of the chimney had collapsed into a cascade of rubble strewn across the room’s scarred wooden floor. At the far end of the chamber, a crude ladder led to the loft above. Sebastian had one foot on the first rung when Jenny screamed again.
“Get back,” she cried. “I’m telling ye!”
“What are you doing, you fool girl?” growled Leigh-Jones. “Don’t go out there! Are you mad? You’ll slip and fall to your death.”
“I told ye! Stay away from me!”
“You stupid strumpet! Get back in here. I get my hands on you, I swear to God, I’m going to kill you!”
Sebastian scrambled up the ladder to find himself in a low-pitched garret musty with age and damp and rot. Patches of black sky showed through a jagged hole in the roof; most of the row of casement windows built into the gabled end were gone, their casings gaping vacant to the wet, windy night.
Crossing swiftly to the opening, Sebastian found himself star-
ing out over the roof of the adjoining structure. Straddling the ridge beam the way a man would ride a horse, the magistrate had stripped off his cumbersome greatcoat and was carefully scooting his way forward on his rump. Jenny Davie was already some ten to fifteen feet ahead of him. She was small and light enough to scramble over the tiles on her feet, although she was bent over nearly double, using her hands to help steady her balance on the wet, mossy slates.
“Come back here, you bloody doxy,” Leigh-Jones roared.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed, her step faltering as she reached the gable end.
There was another, smaller building that abutted this one, but its roof was some three or four feet below where she stood and of a steeper pitch. Sebastian saw her creep closer to the edge, then waver.
“Jenny, don’t jump!” Sebastian shouted. “Stay where you are!”
Leigh-Jones jerked around to stare at him, his jaw thrusting out in annoyed fury, while Jenny screamed, “Go away and leave me alone! All of you!”
If she had turned onto her stomach and eased herself carefully over the gabled point, she might have made it. Instead, she rose and jumped.
Sebastian heard the clatter of breaking, falling tiles as she landed, lost her footing, and went down, vanishing from his sight. She let out a sharp scream, and Sebastian’s breath caught in his throat. But she must somehow have managed to grab a handhold and stop her descent, because he heard her gasp, then fall utterly silent.
“Jenny!” Sebastian shouted, swinging his legs over the broken sill to the slates below. “Hang on!”
“You bloody interfering bastard,” growled the magistrate. Grasp-
ing the roof’s peak, he managed with s
urprising agility to swing his legs up and around, reversing his position so that he now faced Sebastian. “I should have had you killed when I had the chance.”
“Give it up, Leigh-Jones,” said Sebastian, hunkering down to lower his center of gravity. “You’ve had a good run, but the game’s up now.”
Leigh-Jones picked up a broken slate and chucked it at Sebastian’s head. “I’ll see you in hell.”
Sebastian managed to duck the first two broken tiles; the edge of the third sliced open a long cut across his forehead. “God damn it,” he swore. He took another step forward.
And felt his right foot punch through the rotten roof.
Chapter 59
The collapsing roof pitched Sebastian sideways. He grabbed the ridge of slate at the peak with his left hand, stopping his fall. But he was now pinned by his injured right leg, with his other leg splayed out awkwardly to the side and only one hand free.
“Looks like you’re in trouble, don’t it?” said the magistrate. Breaking off a long, jagged piece from the tile at his side, Leigh-Jones inched himself forward, the pointed slate clutched in his right fist like a knife.
The wind gusted up, carrying a splattering of raindrops that pattered on the mossy slate and stung Sebastian’s face. Smiling, Leigh-Jones slashed downward with his blade, aiming straight for Sebastian’s heart.
Sebastian clamped his free hand around the magistrate’s wrist, stopping the slate’s descent.
Still grinning, Leigh-Jones wrapped his other fist around his right wrist and leaned his considerable weight into his hands. The improvised blade inched lower.
Sebastian could feel the blood pounding in his head, hear his breath coming in ragged gasps. A warm wetness coursed from his cut forehead to sting his eyes. He scraped his left bootheel over the slates, desperate to find some purchase. Then the roofing under his left boot gave way, plunging his leg down into the emptiness beneath.
For a moment, he thought the entire roof was collapsing beneath their combined weights. Then he realized the ridge beam still held and that he was now effectively straddling it.
