by C. S. Harris
“I suppose it’s possible. Unfortunately, His Royal Highness doesn’t recall precisely when or how the note came into his hands.”
“In his cups again, was he?”
“From the sounds of things, yes.” Sebastian went to check the locks on the long windows. All were intact. But then, if someone had access to the Pavilion, it would have been easy enough to open one of the windows from the inside. How many people had attended last night’s musical evening? he wondered. The presence of the dispossessed French royal family had attracted even those who normally avoided the Pavilion; the reception rooms had been packed.
His eyes narrowing against the sun’s bright glare, Sebastian stared off across the park. It would take an extraordinary amount of sangfroid to carry a dead body across the Pavilion’s open grounds in the midst of one of the Prince’s musical evenings. Unless…
Unless, of course, the body had been moved to the Yellow Cabinet from someplace else inside the Pavilion.
“From the pattern of lividity,” Gibson said thoughtfully, “the body was obviously left lying on its back for several hours before someone slipped that blade into her.”
“What?” Sebastian looked around in surprise. He’d noticed the lack of blood in the room and simply assumed it was because the actual murder had taken place somewhere else. It had never occurred to him that Guinevere Anglessey had already been dead when she was stabbed. “But if the dagger didn’t kill her, then what did?”
“There’s no way to tell. Not without a proper autopsy.” Gibson looked up. “Any chance of it?”
Sebastian let out his breath in an ironic huff. “You certainly won’t get the local magistrate to commission one. He’s already decreed the lady’s death a suicide.”
“Suicide? How on earth did he come up with that?”
“The Regent’s physicians have concurred.”
Gibson was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I see. Anything to avoid casting suspicion on the Prince. Do you think her husband could be persuaded to order a postmortem?”
“I suppose that depends on whether or not the Marquis of Anglessey had something to do with her murder.”
Gibson reached to draw a white sheet over the body at his feet. “He does seem a likely suspect, does he not? What do you know of him?”
“Anglessey? He’s generally considered a sober enough man—keeps his estates in good order, and divides his time between them and affairs at the House of Lords. Or at least,” Sebastian added, “he was considered sober until his latest marriage.”
Paul Gibson glanced over at him in surprise. “Was she so unsuitable?”
“By birth, no. Only by age. Anglessey is a year or two older than my father.”
“Good God.”
“It would give Anglessey a motive both to kill his wife and to attempt to implicate the Prince in her murder, if Anglessey discovered the Prince was cuckolding him.”
“Was she one of the Prince’s paramours?”
“I honestly don’t know. The Prince claims they were barely acquainted.”
“But you don’t believe him.”
“He’s lying about something. I just don’t know what.”
Gibson began collecting his scattered instruments to stow them in his black leather bag. “Did you actually see this note the Prince says he received?”
“No. It’s gone missing.”
“By accident, or by design, I wonder.” Gibson pushed up to a stand, staggering slightly as his weight shifted to his wooden leg. “More’s the pity. I should think if you could discover the origins of that note, you’d likely have your killer.”
“Perhaps. Although I suspect our killer is much too clever to be caught so easily.”
Sebastian became aware of Paul Gibson’s intense green eyes studying him. “What’s any of this to do with you, Sebastian?”
With anyone else, Sebastian might have dissembled. But the friendship between him and the Irishman ran deep. Sebastian drew his mother’s necklace from his pocket. “Lady Guinevere was wearing this when she died.”
“A curious piece.” Gibson’s brows twitched. “But again, what has it to do with you?”
Sebastian held the necklace cradled in his palm. It had always seemed to him that the stones grew faintly warm against his skin. But in his mother’s hand, he’d seen the stones pulse with so much energy as to become almost hot to the touch…. Or at least, so it had seemed to him as a child.
“The necklace belonged to my mother,” he said simply.
Paul Gibson raised his gaze to his friend’s face. “Something strange is going on here, Sebastian. Something that could be dangerous. For anyone involved.”
“If you want to have nothing further to do with it, I’ll understand.”
Gibson made a swift, impatient gesture with one hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one I’m worried about. Who brought you into this?”
“Ostensibly, the Prince. In reality? Jarvis.”
“And you trust him?”
Sebastian gazed down at the still, ravaged body of the woman hidden beneath the sheet. “Not at all. But someone killed Guinevere Anglessey. Someone slipped that dagger into the livid flesh of her bare back and brought her body here to drape it across that couch in a deliberately suggestive posture. Lord Jarvis’s sole intent in all this is to protect the Prince. But mine is different. I’m going to find out who killed this woman, and I’m going to see that he pays for it.”
“Because of the necklace?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Because if I don’t, no one else will.”
“What does it matter to you?”
One of Guinevere’s slim white hands peeked out from beneath the sheet, its fingers curled lightly in death. Seeing it, Sebastian was reminded of another woman, left to die on an altar’s steps, her throat viciously slashed, her body obscenely violated; and another, hunted down like an unwary quarry and subjected to the same hideous end.
He had few illusions about the world in which he lived. He knew the shocking inequality between its privileged and its poor; he recognized the savage injustice of a legal system that could hang an eight-year-old boy for stealing a loaf of bread and yet let a king’s son get away with murder. Once, he’d been so repulsed by the raw barbarism and senseless cruelty of the wars his people fought in the name of liberty and justice that he’d been content simply to let himself drift, aimless and alone. Now that struck him as a reaction that was both self-indulgent and faintly cowardly.
Crouching down beside what was left of the young woman named Guinevere, Sebastian tucked the sheet over that pale, vulnerable hand and said softly, “It matters.”
Chapter 9
Sebastian was crossing the yard toward the Pavilion’s glass-domed, Xanadu-inspired stables when he heard someone calling his name. “Lord Devlin.”
He turned to find the Home Secretary, Lord Portland, coming toward him across the paving. The midday sun was bright on the nobleman’s flaming red hair, but the skin of his face was pale and drawn tight as if with worry.
“Walk with me a ways, my lord,” said Portland, turning their steps down a path that angled off across the Pavilion’s wide expanse of green lawn. “I understand you’ve agreed to help sort out the truth about last night’s peculiar incident.”
Sebastian’s acquaintance with the Earl of Portland was slight, although in the year since Sebastian’s return from the Continent he’d attended several dinner parties and soirees in the man’s company. Like Jarvis and Hendon, Portland was profoundly conservative in his politics, dedicated to continuing the war against France and preserving England’s institutions in the face of a rising tide of demands for reform.
Yet whatever his opinion of the reactionary quality of the man’s beliefs, Sebastian couldn’t help but respect him. The Earl of Portland was one of the few men in the government—or out of it—who refused to play the role of one of Jarvis’s pawns. But there was something distasteful, almost sordid about referring to the death of a vital young woman as a peculiar
incident.
“If you mean Lady Anglessey’s murder,” said Sebastian, “then yes.”
“According to both the magistrate and the Prince’s doctors, the death was a suicide.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Is that what you believe?”
Portland expelled a harsh breath and shook his head. “No.”
They walked along in silence for a moment, Portland worrying his lower lip with his teeth. At last he said, “I feel somehow as if this were all my fault.”
“How is that?”
“If I hadn’t given the Prince that note—”
Sebastian swung to face him. “You gave the Prince the note from Lady Anglessey?”
“Yes. Although, of course, I’d no notion who she was. She was veiled.”
“When was this?”
“Shortly after the Prince’s chamber orchestra began playing last night. I was approached by a veiled young woman who handed me a sealed missive and asked that I pass it on to the Prince.” Portland hesitated, his fair skin coloring. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve been approached in such a way.”
Sebastian kept his thoughts to himself. Over the years, the Prince’s paramours had ranged from common opera dancers and actresses such as Mrs. Fitzherbert to some of the grandest dames of the ton—Lady Jersey and Lady Hertford among them. It wasn’t uncommon for those close to the Prince to find themselves thrust into the role of procurer.
“I actually know Guinevere Anglessey rather well,” Portland was saying. “She is—was—a childhood friend of my wife, Claire. It never occurred to me that’s who I was dealing with.”
“You weren’t.”
Sebastian watched the man’s light gray eyes widen, watched the first shock give way to some other emotion, something that looked oddly like fear. “I beg your pardon?”
“By the time the Regent’s chamber orchestra began playing last night, Lady Anglessey had already been dead perhaps as much as six to eight hours.”
Portland stopped short. “What? But…that’s impossible.”
“The human body undergoes certain predictable changes after death. Temperature and the manner of one’s dying can accelerate or retard the process, but not by that much. I’m afraid there’s no mistake.”
“But I tell you, I saw her. She gave me the note.”
“You saw a woman, veiled. Do you remember how she was dressed?”
Portland stood very still, as if drawing into himself with the effort of memory. But in the end he simply shook his head. “No. I’m not certain of anything anymore. I mean, I’d have said she wore a green satin gown like Lady Anglessey. But if what you say is true, then that’s not possible, is it?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
The Home Secretary shook his head again, his features pinched with confusion. “I don’t understand. Who could she have been?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Sebastian, his gaze lifting to the gulls wheeling above the Strand. “But whoever she was, she was obviously involved in Lady Anglessey’s murder.”
SEBASTIAN SENT A FOOTMAN RUNNING FOR HIS CURRICLE, then stood on the Pavilion’s gravel sweep and watched as his tiger, Tom, brought Sebastian’s matched pair of blood chestnuts to a stand.
It wasn’t a practice that particularly appealed to Sebastian, this current fashion among the sporting gentlemen of the ton for entrusting prime horseflesh to young boys decked out in the yellow-and-black-striped waistcoats that had earned them the nickname tigers. But Tom had taken to his new profession with an innate talent that had caught Sebastian by surprise. Plus Tom had other talents not normally encountered in a gentleman’s tiger, talents Sebastian had at times found particularly useful.
A dark-haired, sharp-faced lad of twelve, Tom looked even younger, his slight frame still wiry and small despite the new bloom of health in his cheeks. Up until four months ago he’d been one of the thousands of nameless urchins scratching out a precarious living on the streets of London, a pickpocket with a murky past and a secret passion for horses. His loyalty to Sebastian now was fierce.
Aware of Sebastian’s gaze upon him, the boy drew up with a neat flourish. “They’re feeling their oats this mornin’ for sure, gov’nor,” he said, breaking into a gap-toothed smile.
“I’ll be certain to give them their heads for a stretch on my way out to Lord Anglessey’s.” Sebastian swung up to take the reins. “I want you to hang around here. See if you can find out what they’re saying in the kitchen and stables. One of the servants must have seen or heard something last night. I’m particularly interested in anyone who might have been carrying something unusual. Something large.”
Tom hopped down, his eyes flashing. “You mean, something big enough to hide a body in?”
There was no doubt about it—the boy was quick. Sebastian smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Tom took a step back, one hand coming up to anchor his cap to his head as a salt-laden breeze gusted up from the Strand. “If’n anybody seen anythin’, gov’nor, I’ll find ’im, never you fear.”
“Oh and, Tom?” Sebastian added as the boy started to dash off. “Don’t lift anyone’s purse, you hear? Not even just for practice.”
Tom drew himself up with a show of wounded dignity and sniffed. “As if I would.”
Chapter 10
Unlike most members of the ton who hired narrow town houses on the streets of Brighton for the summer months, Oliver Godwin Ellsworth, the Fourth Marquis of Anglessey, possessed an estate of his own on the outskirts of town.
It was one of his lesser properties, and quite small compared to his main seat in Northumberland, but the house was neat and comfortable, and pleasantly situated on a hillside overlooking the clean sweep of the sea a reasonable distance from the noise and bustle of Brighton’s streets.
Leaving the chestnuts in the care of a groom, Sebastian found the Marquis in a garden of mossy brick paths and carefully tended roses that thrived in the lee of the high walls sheltering them from the worst of the salty winds blowing up from the sea. At the sound of Sebastian’s footsteps, Anglessey turned, an old man with once dark hair heavily laced now with strands of gray. Only a few years Hendon’s senior, he seemed older, his body thin, his face drawn with the lines of ill health and visibly weighed down by a heavy burden of recent grief.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me at such a time,” said Sebastian, pausing in a bright patch of June sunlight. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what has happened.”
The Marquis went back to clipping the spent blooms of a pale pink rose that twined around a stout pillar at the edge of the path. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
The directness of the question took Sebastian by surprise. “No,” he answered with equal bluntness. “Lord Jarvis has asked me to look into the circumstances surrounding your wife’s death.”
The Marquis’s fist tightened around his secateurs. “To protect the Prince, of course.” He said it as a statement, rather than a question.
“That’s their motive, yes.”
The Marquis looked around, one eyebrow arched. “But not yours?”
“No.” Sebastian met the old man’s steady, intelligent gaze. “Do you think he did it?”
“The Prince?” Anglessey shook his head and went back to pruning the rose. “Prinny might be a drunken, overindulged, self-coddling idiot, but he’s not violent. Not like his brother Cumberland.” He paused to subject his handiwork to a critical assessment, his jaw hardening in a way that belied both age and infirmity. “But make no mistake about this: if I’m wrong—if I should discover Prinny did have something to do with Guin’s death—I won’t let him get away with it. Prince Regent or not.”
Sebastian studied that angry, grief-stricken face. The Marquis might be old, but there was nothing weak or feeble about either his determination or his powers of understanding. “So who do you think killed your wife, sir?”
An odd half smile touched the old man’s lips. “Do you realize you’re the first
person who’s asked me that? I suppose it’s because everyone who doesn’t think the Prince killed Guinevere naturally assumes I did it.”
The Marquis moved on to the next rose. Sebastian waited, the sun warm on his shoulders, and after a moment the Marquis said, “They’ve refused to let me have Guinevere’s body. Did you know that? They say there’s some surgeon coming down from London. Someone they want to take a look at her.”
“Paul Gibson. He’s very good at this sort of thing. He’d like your permission to do a complete autopsy.”
Anglessey glanced around. “Why?”
Sebastian met the old man’s pained, haggard gaze. “Because Lady Anglessey wasn’t killed last night. She was killed sometime yesterday afternoon and her body moved to the Yellow Cabinet in time for the Prince to find her.”
An angry light flared in the old man’s eyes. “What is this? Some trick to throw suspicion away from the Prince?”
“No. As a matter of fact, the Prince’s physicians have given it as their opinion that Lady Guinevere committed suicide.”
“Suicide! With a dagger sticking out of her back?”
“Exactly.” Sebastian hesitated, then added, “Except that the dagger isn’t what killed her. According to Gibson, she was probably dead several hours before she was stabbed.”
“Good God. What are you suggesting?”
Sebastian shook his head. “We don’t know how she died, sir. That’s why Gibson wants your permission to do a postmortem. Without one, it’s going to be difficult to ever understand what happened to your wife.”
There was a moment of silence, filled with the click-click of the Marquis’s secateurs and the distant cry of the gulls. Then he said, “Very well. Your Dr. Gibson has my permission.” He cast Sebastian a fierce glance over one shoulder. “But I want to be informed of everything. Do you hear me? No holding back out of consideration for my age or my health or any of that nonsense.”
“No holding back.”
Anglessey pressed his lips together, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a quick, deep breath. “I know what people think of my marriage to Guinevere. An old man like me, taking to wife a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. They act like it was something disgraceful, something sordid. As if the forty-five-year difference in our ages made it somehow impossible for me to love her.”
