Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  Rather than respond, Sidmouth kept his features composed into a politician’s practiced mask.

  “If I were you, I’d be very careful,” said Sebastian, glancing significantly to where Sidmouth’s daughter was now skipping down the line of dancers on her partner’s arm.

  He started to turn away, but Sidmouth’s hand flashed out, stopping him. “Surely you’re not suggesting that Oliph—that someone might threaten my daughter?”

  Sebastian studied the Home Secretary’s twitchy, sweat-slicked face. “Look into what happened to the nuns and orphans of Santa Iria, then make up your own mind,” he said, and left Sidmouth standing at the entrance to the alcove, his long, normally self-satisfied face now pale and haggard.

  Hero was sipping a glass of lemonade, her gaze on Devlin’s stunningly beautiful young niece, Miss Stephanie Wilcox, when a deep male voice behind her said, “Lady Devlin? It is Lady Devlin, is it not?”

  She turned to find herself being addressed by a tall, fit-looking man in his forties with handsome, chiseled features, clear blue eyes, and a wide, even smile.

  “I hope you’ll forgive my boldness in approaching you without an introduction, but I knew your husband in the Peninsula.” He swept an elegant bow. “I am Oliphant. Sinclair, Colonel Lord Oliphant.”

  Hero felt a hot, tingling sensation in her hands as a surge of primitive rage swept through her. For one blindingly intense moment, all she could think was that if this smiling, urbane man had had his way, Devlin would long ago have been consigned to a lonely, forgotten grave in the mountains of Portugal.

  “Lord Oliphant,” she said, her voice as coldly polite as her smile. “I have heard Devlin . . . speak of you.”

  A gleam of amusement showed in the colonel’s eyes. But all he said was, “You’re here without your husband?”

  “Oh, no; Devlin is here.” She studied Oliphant’s even, patrician features, searching for some trace of the brutal, single-minded determination that could deliberately send a subordinate officer into the hands of the enemy and cause the deaths of dozens of innocent women and children. But his mask of good humor and gentle benevolence was firmly in place.

  He said, “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that Devlin has finally settled down and married. The responsibilities of family tend to exert such a—shall we say—steadying influence on our wilder youths.”

  “Some more than others,” Hero said dryly. She took a slow sip of her lemonade. “I understand you’ve only recently returned from Jamaica.”

  “I have, yes. It’s a lovely place. Have you ever been?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I’ve never visited any of the islands.”

  “Pity. You must try to make it out there sometime. I’ve no doubt you’ll be charmed.” He bowed again. “Do give my regards to your husband.” And he walked away, leaving her wondering why he had approached her in the first place.

  She was still staring after him when she became aware of Devlin coming up beside her. She could feel the aura of lethal animosity radiating from him, see the cold, deadly purposefulness in his face.

  “What did he say?” he asked, his gaze, like hers, on the retreating figure.

  Hero shook her head. “Polite nothings. I don’t understand why he bothered.”

  “To assess what you know. And to decide how easy you are to intimidate.”

  “Unfortunately, one can’t shoot a man in the middle of a ball,” said Hero. “Particularly not at one of Countess Lieven’s balls. It’s bad form.”

  Devlin smiled then, a smile that seemed to banish the tortured memories and dark urges provoked by Oliphant’s presence. But she knew they weren’t really gone, only tucked away out of sight.

  Out of her sight.

  She was suddenly, unnaturally aware of the roar of well-bred voices and genteel laughter around them, of the crush of bodies clothed in satin and silk, and the gleam of endless tiers of candles reflected in soaring, gilded mirrors. Theirs was a rarified world of manners and careful calculations ruled by the dictates of taste and fashion, a world where extremes of emotion were outré, where all was controlled and measured. An artificial hothouse where everyone pretended that civilization was more than just a thin, brittle veneer all too easily and frequently shattered.

  She wanted to say, We need to talk about this, Devlin. We can’t keep shying away from acknowledging—and confronting—the darkest urges of our souls. She wanted to tell him of her fears and share with him the tumult of feelings she could barely admit even to herself.

  But as the music ended and new sets began to form for an old-fashioned court dance, what she said was, “When was the last time we danced?”

  She saw the flicker of surprise in those strange yellow eyes as he turned toward her. He knew she loved to dance, but he also knew she’d been reluctant to come tonight, worried about how Simon would fare without her and anxious not to stay away too long.

  “Before Christmas, at least,” he said.

  She smiled. “Long before Christmas.”

  He tipped his head to one side. “And Simon?”

  “I think Claire can handle him a little longer—with the assistance, of course, of the parlor maid, the cook, Calhoun, and probably even Morey.”

  “Not Morey, I’m afraid. Simon’s screams completely unman the poor fellow.” His smiling gaze locked with hers; he swept a low, formal bow. “May I have the pleasure of this dance, my lady?”

  She sank into a deep curtsy and rested her fingertips on his proffered arm. “I would be honored, my lord.”

  They moved into place as the music began. Together, they wove through the stately patterns of the dance, pas simples alternating with pas doubles, feet gliding, hands touching and releasing, bodies dipping and swaying in an age-old allegory of advance and retreat. She surrendered herself to the music and the all-too-fleeting pressure of his palm against hers.

  And then the music ended and, with it, the moment.

  They arrived back at Brook Street sometime later to find a sealed billet addressed by an unfamiliar hand. While Hero hurried upstairs to Simon, Sebastian tore open the seal and glanced through the brief note.

  There is something I must tell you. I shall be at home this evening, awaiting your visit.

  Sterling

  “When did this come?” he asked Morey.

  “Only moments after you left, my lord. I asked the lad who brought it if it was urgent, but he assured me it was not.”

  Sebastian glanced at the clock and said, “Damn.”

  Chapter 26

  Thursday, 25 March

  T he next morning, Sebastian was preparing to leave for Chatham Place when an angry peal sounded at the front door.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, settling a length of starched cravat around his neck.

  His valet—a slim, fair-haired, dapper man in his thirties named Jules Calhoun—glanced out the window. “Judging by the crest on the carriage door, I’d say it’s your lordship’s sister, Lady Wilcox.”

  Sebastian kept his attention on the delicate task of tying his cravat.

  Calhoun said, “Shall I tell Morey to deny you?”

  A woman’s determined tread sounded on the stairs.

  “I don’t think Lady Wilcox intends to allow herself to be denied.” Sebastian reached for his coat. “There’s a hussar captain named Hugh Wyeth staying at the Shepherd’s Rest in Knightsbridge. He was wounded in Spain last November and is still recuperating, although he could be exaggerating the lingering effects of his injuries for my benefit. He presents himself as genial, uncalculating, and even tempered; I’d be interested to know if he truly is.”

  The valet smoothed the set of the coat across Sebastian’s shoulders. Calhoun was a genius at repairing the ravages that the pursuit of murderers could sometimes wreak on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But he also possessed other, considerably more unusual ta
lents that made him especially valuable to a gentleman with Sebastian’s interests.

  Amanda’s footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “If he’s not,” said Calhoun, “the staff at the inn should know it. I’ll see what they have to say.”

  “I’d also be interested in learning more about his movements last Sunday. But be careful,” Sebastian warned as Calhoun moved to open the door. “If Wyeth is our killer, the man is dangerous.”

  A roguish gleam showed in the valet’s eyes. “He’ll never know I’ve been asking about him; never you fear.” He opened the door and bowed as Amanda swept past him. “Lady Wilcox.”

  Amanda ignored him.

  “Dear Amanda,” said Sebastian, reaching for his driving gloves as Calhoun quietly withdrew. “What a distinctly unfashionable hour for a social visit.”

  Amanda’s nose quivered with the intensity of her dislike. “This isn’t a social visit.”

  The eldest of four children born to the Countess of Hendon, Amanda was twelve years Sebastian’s senior. She’d been blessed with their mother’s slim, elegant figure and glorious golden hair. But she had inherited the Earl’s rather blunt features instead of the Countess’s famous beauty, and a lifetime of angry resentment had by now etched a permanently sour expression on her face.

  “You’re at it again, I hear,” she snapped. “Dabbling in a murder investigation like some common Bow Street Runner.”

  “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘dabbling,’ exactly.”

  “You know this is the beginning of Stephanie’s second season, yet you accost the Home Secretary in the middle of Countess Lieven’s ball? Countess Lieven, of all people? One might almost suspect you of deliberately attempting to ruin my daughter’s chances of securing an advantageous alliance.”

  Sebastian studied his half sister’s haughty, angry face. She had never made a secret of her dislike of him, even when they were children. But it was only recently that he’d come to understand why.

  Had she been born male, the title of Viscount Devlin, heir to all the Earl of Hendon’s vast estates, would have been hers. But because she was a girl, that coveted position had gone instead to Hendon’s firstborn son, Richard. After Richard’s death, Hendon’s second son, Cecil, had become Viscount Devlin. And with Cecil’s death, the mantle had passed to Sebastian—the boy child who was not even Hendon’s own son, but a by-blow produced by an illicit liaison between the Earl’s lovely Countess and some nameless, unknown lover.

  “As it happens, I like Stephanie,” said Sebastian, drawing on his gloves.

  “Then one can only assume you are doing this in some vicious attempt to harm me.”

  The extent of his sister’s capacity for self-absorption still had the power to stun him, even after all these years. “Actually, Amanda, I am ‘doing this’ because somewhere out there, walking the same streets as you and I, is a very brutal, dangerous killer.”

  “You are Viscount Devlin,” she said through gritted teeth. “However unfit you may be to occupy such an exalted station, it is nonetheless yours, and one might hope you would at least attempt to exert yourself to behave accordingly.”

  He flexed his hands in the tight leather gloves, then reached for his high-crowned hat. “You could try consoling yourself with the thought that I am not being paid for my efforts, so at least our exalted name remains unsullied by the stench of trade.”

  A flare of raw hatred glittered in the depths of her eyes—those blue St. Cyr eyes that were so unlike Sebastian’s own yellow ones. “I should have known better than to try to talk to you,” she said.

  “Yes, you really should have.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “And now you must excuse me, Amanda. I’ve someone to meet.”

  “You still intend to continue this nonsense? Despite everything I’ve said?”

  “Yes.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Yes,” he said again, and watched her sweep from the room.

  Dr. Douglas Sterling’s rooms lay on the second floor of a late-eighteenth-century brick building near the northwestern corner of Chatham Place. The address was not fashionable, but it was respectable, the street door shiny with a fresh coat of green paint, the banister of the grand staircase fragrant with beeswax, the carpet underfoot worn but not threadbare. Sebastian could hear a woman singing sweetly in the rooms overhead. But when he reached the upper corridor and rapped on Sterling’s door, the knock went unanswered.

  He had already checked the physician’s favorite coffeehouse across the place, only to be told that the old man had yet to put in an appearance.

  “Ain’t like him not to be here,” the coffeehouse owner had said in response to Sebastian’s inquiries. “In fact, I was about to send one of my lads over to check and see if he’s all right. He’s always here five minutes after I open, every morning. You could set your watch by him, you could.”

  Sebastian knocked again at the old doctor’s door, aware of a rising sense of disquiet.

  “Dr. Sterling?” he called.

  An eerie, oppressive stillness hung in the air. Even the singing woman upstairs had quieted.

  Sebastian tried the knob and felt it turn in his hand. Hesitating, he reached for the dagger he kept in his boot, then slowly pushed open the door.

  The panel creaked inward on its hinges, revealing a room still in heavy shadow and crowded with furniture, as if the resident had moved here from more expansive quarters yet been loath to part with any of his belongings.

  “Dr. Sterling?” he called again, even though the silence in the rooms was absolute, the drapes at the front windows overlooking the square still drawn tight.

  He could feel his breath quickening and his pulse pounding as his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. He threaded his way through the crowded furniture toward the inner room. “Dr. Sterling?”

  The old physician lay sprawled just inside the doorway to the bedroom, his back a ripped, bloody mess, his hands curled up as if he’d been reaching for something as he fell. His old-fashioned powdered wig lay near one shoulder. But his neck ended in a raw, pulpy mess of flesh and bone and sinew.

  “Jesus Christ,” whispered Sebastian, the gorge rising in his throat as his gaze followed a trail of blood to the bed.

  Nestled amidst the pillows, Douglas Sterling’s bald head stared back at him with wide, sightless eyes.

  “Damn,” said Sebastian, wiping the back of one hand across his mouth.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Lovejoy, staring down at the aged physician’s bloody body.

  “No,” agreed Sebastian.

  Lovejoy rubbed his eyes with one thumb and forefinger and sighed. “When you spoke with him yesterday, he gave no hint of the purpose of his meeting with Stanley Preston last Sunday?”

  “None. But something must have happened to frighten him—or at least make him reconsider his silence—because he sent a message last night asking to see me. Unfortunately, it was nearly midnight by the time I received it.”

  Lovejoy blew out a long, troubled breath. “I wonder what he knew.”

  Sebastian shook his head. He could see no obvious connection between Sterling and the various individuals he’d come to suspect of involvement in Preston’s murder.

  “Have you ever heard of a man named Diggory Flynn?” asked Sebastian.

  The magistrate looked over at him. “No. Who is he?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. He was following me in Houndsditch yesterday. And he may well be the same man Lady Devlin noticed watching her earlier.”

  Lovejoy frowned. “Lady Devlin? Good heavens. I’ll set some of the lads to looking into him. Diggory Flynn, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think he’s involved in all this?”

  “He might well be.”

  Lovejoy watched the men from th
e deadhouse shift Sterling’s headless corpse onto the shell they would use to carry the murdered man to Paul Gibson’s surgery. “I wonder how long the poor fellow’s been dead.”

  “Some hours, I’d say. Probably since last night.”

  Lovejoy turned to survey the overcrowded rooms. “No sign of a struggle or forced entry that I can see.”

  “No. Which suggests he knew his killer. Let him in, then realized his mistake too late and turned to run.”

  “And was stabbed in the back?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Multiple times.”

  They watched as one of the men from the deadhouse carefully lifted the doctor’s head from the pillows and rested it atop his torso.

  “Let’s hope he was dead before that was done to him,” said Lovejoy, pressing his folded handkerchief to his lips. “What I don’t understand is . . . why. Why cut off their heads?”

  “I suspect if we can figure that out, it will tell us who the killer is.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lovejoy, although he didn’t sound convinced.

  Chapter 27

  “Dr. Sterling? Dead?” Anne Preston stared at Sebastian with parted lips, her nostrils pinched, her eyes wide with horror. If it was an act, it was a good one.

  He had come upon her walking in the weak, fitful sunshine in her garden, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and her head bowed as if she were lost in thought.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sebastian. “Would you like to sit?”

  “No,” she said, although he noticed the hand holding her shawl clenched into a tight fist, and her chest rose and fell jerkily with her agitated breathing. “He didn’t die naturally of old age, did he? Tell me truthfully,” she added when Sebastian hesitated.

  “No.”

  She swallowed, hard. “Did the killer cut off his head too?”

  When Sebastian remained silent, she let out a soft moan and whispered, “Oh, dear God; he did, didn’t he?”

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to sit?” said Sebastian.