Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  Knox stepped back to allow Sebastian to enter the room. “What do you want?” he asked without preamble.

  “How do you know I’m not simply thirsty?”

  Knox grunted. “Last I heard, there was no shortage of taverns in the East End.”

  Sebastian went to stand at the small window overlooking the rear court. The tavern backed up against the wall of St. Helen’s churchyard, so that from here he could see the tops of the weathered gray tombs and the winter-bared branches of the elms standing stark against the sky. He said, “It’s a melancholy view. I can see it bothering some—such a constant reminder of death.”

  “Pippa doesn’t care for it, that’s for sure.”

  Sebastian turned to look at him. “And you?”

  Knox shrugged. “I’ve seen enough death in my life; I don’t need to look out the window to be reminded that life is short and uncertain.”

  “Shorter for some than others.”

  “True.”

  Sebastian leaned back against the windowsill. “There’s a secondhand dealer in Houndsditch named Priss Mulligan. Deals in rare historical objects. I understand you know her.”

  Knox reached for a clay pipe and began to fill the bowl with tobacco. “Let’s just say that I know of her. Why?”

  “I’m told a fair portion of her merchandise is smuggled in from the Continent.”

  “There’s heaps of smugglers working the Channel these days,” said Knox without looking up from his task.

  “I hear she received a new shipment last week. Is that true?”

  Knox thrust a taper into the fire on the hearth and watched the end flare. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But the shipment did arrive?”

  “So I hear.” He held the taper to his pipe and sucked on it for a moment before looking up. “I don’t do business with the woman myself.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “The same reason I make it a practice to avoid rabid dogs and vipers’ nests.”

  “She’s dangerous?”

  Knox blew out a long stream of tobacco smoke. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘deadly.’”

  The two men’s gazes met and held, then broke toward the door as Pippa came in carrying foaming pints of ale. Without even looking at Sebastian, she slammed the tankards down on the simple gateleg table near the window, then left after throwing Knox a long, pregnant glare.

  Knox said, “I hear you’ve had a son. A future Earl of Hendon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And yet you’re still chasing after murderers?”

  “How do you know I’m investigating a murder?”

  A gleam of amusement showed in the eyes that were so much like Sebastian’s own. “It’s the only time you ever come here.”

  “Huh. Must be something about the people you know.”

  Knox sucked on his pipe, his lean cheeks hollowing, his expression enigmatic.

  Sebastian said, “Ever hear of a man named Diggory Flynn?”

  “Can’t say I have. Who is he?”

  “He doesn’t work for Priss Mulligan?”

  “Not to my knowledge. But then, I did mention I try to stay away from the woman.”

  “Yet she knows you.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “She told me I look like you.”

  “Ah.” Knox reached for his ale and took a long, slow sip. He was silent for a moment, as if thoughtful. Then he said, “I hear someone tried to kill you the other night.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  The tavern owner wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of one hand and smiled. Then the smile faded. “Does Priss Mulligan know you’re looking into her?”

  “She does. Why?”

  “There was a smuggler named Pete Carpenter tried to cheat Priss a few years back. He had a wife and two sons. The little boys weren’t more than four or five. He came home one day to find them chopped into pieces, with the bits deliberately positioned about the house—a head sitting up on the mantel, a leg on the kitchen table, a hand under the bed—that sort of thing. He never did find his wife.”

  Sebastian felt the tavern keeper’s words wash over him, raising the hairs at the back of his neck and sucking the moisture from his mouth as the horror of the tale—and its implications—hit his gut. He focused his attention on taking a long drink of his ale and swallowed, hard, before saying, “I take it you’ve heard about Preston and Sterling?”

  “I have.” Knox drained his own tankard and set it aside with a soft thump. “Some people are just flat-out evil. Priss Mulligan is one of them. If I were you, I’d be careful. Of yourself, and of your family.”

  Sebastian sat beside his library fire, a glass cradled in one palm, his gaze on the golden-red glow of the coals on the hearth. The house lay dark and quiet around him.

  He took a sip of the brandy, felt it burn in his throat. He was drinking too much lately and he knew it—a slow, dangerous slide back into the self-destructive hell that had nearly consumed him in the months after he’d first returned to London.

  The clock on the hearth chimed two and then fell silent. In its wake, the stillness of the night felt like a heavy presence, oppressive and soul sucking, and he was aware of the long, grueling hours of darkness stretching out ahead of him. He’d gone to bed with his wife; made slow, desperate love to her, then held her in his arms as she eased peacefully into sleep. He loved her with a tenderness and a passion that humbled, awed, and frightened him; he was closer to her than he had ever been to anyone. Yet in some vital, inexplicable way he found himself feeling more alone and disconnected than ever. And so he’d slipped from her side to draw on his breeches and dressing gown and come here.

  He took another sip of the brandy, his unnaturally acute hearing picking up the sound of her door opening far above, her light footsteps on the stairs. He held himself very still. He did not want her to find him like this. Didn’t want her to see his weakness and his fear and his uncertainty.

  She came up behind him and leaned over the chair to slip her arms around his neck and rest her linked hands against his chest. “You’re thinking about them, again, aren’t you?” she said. “The women and children of Santa Iria.”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to stop blaming yourself. You’ve dedicated years to making amends for a wrong that others did. But the past is past, and nothing you can do will ever change that. You can’t keep torturing yourself like this.”

  He tipped back his head to look up at her. Her face was golden in the firelight, the strength of her features accentuated by the shadows and framed by the heavy fall of her dark hair.

  He said, “I didn’t tell you everything.”

  She brought up a hand to run the backs of her fingers down his cheek. “I know.”

  In the silence that followed, he heard the fall of ash on the hearth and the endless tick of the clock. Then she came around to sit on the rug beside him and rest the side of her head against his leg.

  He touched her hair, felt it slide soft and silky smooth through his fingers, and expelled his breath in a long, painful rush. “I watched the French kill them.”

  “You don’t need to tell me.”

  He shook his head, kept his gaze on the fire. “I knew the French captain and his men had left their camp a good half an hour before I managed to escape. But I rode to the convent anyway. It was as if I couldn’t believe that I was too late to warn them. To save them.”

  He felt an ache pull across his chest. “Some of the children had been playing in an orange grove at the end of the valley when the soldiers came up. The French must have galloped at them with sabers drawn, because the earth around them was trampled by the hooves of the
horses. And the children . . .”

  She touched his hand. “Sebastian . . .”

  He swallowed, remembering how he’d stopped and knelt beside each slashed, bloodied little body. “Two of the littlest ones—a boy and a girl—couldn’t have been more than five or six; big brown eyes, baby-soft light brown hair. They looked enough alike that they were probably brother and sister—maybe even twins. They were still holding hands. They must have held on to each other when the soldiers rode down on them.”

  “They were dead?”

  “All of them.”

  “And the French?”

  “I could hear horses neighing, men shouting, children screaming, women praying to God to save them. So I rode on. The convent was ancient, surrounded by a high sandstone wall. But the French had left the gates open. I could have ridden inside. I almost did. But at the last moment, I turned into a copse of trees at the edge of the road. I stayed there and watched them kill everything and everyone inside that convent. Babies in their cradles. Cattle. Chickens. Dogs. Everything.”

  “And if you had ridden in? What do you think you could have done? You’d have been killed in an instant.”

  “Yes. But it seemed right that I should die with them. I wanted to die with them.”

  “Oh, God, Sebastian; no.”

  He shook his head. “The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that if I stayed alive, I could avenge them. I planned to start with Sinclair Oliphant, but by the time I made it back to headquarters, he was gone—recalled to England on the death of his brother. So I set out after the French soldiers instead. I went back to the convent and tracked the troop that had done it until they were in a vulnerable position. And then I betrayed them to the Spanish partisans. The Spaniards knew what those men had done at Santa Iria. The soldiers’ deaths were not easy or quick.”

  “And the captain?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “I’d meant to let the partisans have him too. But when I saw him again, I couldn’t stop myself. I . . . beat him to death.” He realized he’d clenched his fist and forced himself to open his hand. “I tell myself he deserved to die. But what I did was little short of murder. And when it was over, I found I had no pleasure in his killing. The truth is, I live with his death and the deaths of his men as surely as I live with the deaths of the innocents of Santa Iria.”

  “It was war.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was revenge. Those women and children deserve justice. But there is no real justice in murder.”

  He saw her sad smile, the almost imperceptible shake of her head. She drew the line between right and wrong in a different place than he. It was one of the ways in which they differed, one of the ways in which she was very much her father’s daughter.

  He touched her face, ran his fingertips along the curve of her cheek. “I believe those who die violently at the hands of others deserve justice. We owe them that. The problem is, by going after ruthless men—and women—I run the risk of putting you in danger. You and Simon too.”

  He told her then what he’d learned from Knox, about the threat Priss Mulligan might pose to them all. He said, “Promise me you’ll be careful?”

  She took his hand in hers, pressed a kiss to his palm. “I knew what you did when I married you, Devlin. It’s a part of who you are—a part of what I love about you. I won’t try to pretend that I don’t worry something might happen to you, because I do—the same way I worry about Simon catching a fever or coming down with the flux. But I refuse to be ruled by my fears.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “As for Simon and me . . . we’re both constantly surrounded by a small army of servants. I don’t think we’re exactly vulnerable.”

  He wanted to say, Everyone is vulnerable.

  But some fears were best left unspoken.

  Chapter 30

  Friday, 26 March

  T he next morning, Sebastian drove toward the Tower of London, to Paul Gibson’s surgery.

  He left Tom to water the horses at the fountain near the ancient fortress’s walls and slipped through the shadowy, narrow passage that led to the unkempt yard at the rear of the Irishman’s old stone house. Only, this time, in place of Gibson’s throaty tenor warbling some Irish drinking song, he could hear a Frenchwoman’s soft, clear voice singing, “Madame à sa tour monte, mironton, mironton, mirontaine . . .”

  He reached the open doorway to find Alexi Sauvage bent over the naked, eviscerated body of Douglas Sterling laid out on the stone slab before her. She had a leather apron tied over her simple gown and a bloody scalpel in one hand and was singing softly to herself, “Madame à sa tour monte si haut qu’elle peut—”

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. He knew she had trained as a doctor in Italy, knew she must have done this sort of thing before. But finding her here was still disconcerting.

  A lock of flame red hair fell across her eyes as she looked up at him. She pushed it back with one bent wrist. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Where’s Gibson?”

  She set aside the scalpel with a clatter. She was an attractive woman, with pale, delicate skin and a high-bridged nose and brown eyes, dark now with an old hatred. Sebastian might have had a good reason for killing the man she’d once loved, but he knew she had never forgiven him for it.

  “Gibson is”—she hesitated, then finished by saying—“not well today.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, your friend is an opium eater. How he managed to meet his responsibilities with even a semblance of normalcy before I arrived is beyond me. But I don’t think he could have kept it up much longer.”

  Sebastian studied her set, angry face. “You said you could help him. Yet you have not done so.”

  She reached for a rag and wiped her hands. “As long as he suffers the phantom pains from his missing leg, he will never be able to free himself of the opium.”

  “You said you can help him with that too.”

  “Only if he allows it.”

  “Why would he not?”

  “Perhaps you should try asking him that yourself.” She picked up her scalpel again. “Although you’re not likely to get a coherent response from him at the moment.”

  Sebastian nodded to the decapitated body between them. “What have you discovered?”

  “Not much. For an old man, Douglas Sterling was as healthy as an ox. He’d likely have lived another ten or more years, if someone hadn’t stabbed him in the back and cut off his head.”

  “In that order?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Are you suggesting I’m incompetent?”

  I’m suggesting you’re probably not as good at this as Gibson, he thought. But all he said was, “Is there anything that might tell us who did this?”

  She gave him a tight, unpleasant smile. “I was under the impression that was your job.”

  Sebastian shifted his gaze to where Sterling’s bloodless head rested in a basin on the shelf, and for a moment, all he could think about was the tale Knox had told him, of the smuggler who’d come home to find his wife missing and his little boys hideously dismembered.

  He said, “Where’s Gibson?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t want to see him.”

  “No. But I think I should.”

  Her gaze met his, but her eyes were hooded and he could not begin to guess at her thoughts.

  Then she said, “He’s in the parlor.”

  He found Gibson sprawled in one of the old cracked leather chairs beside the cold hearth, his coat rumpled, his cravat gone, the collar of his shirt stained with sweat. Sebastian thought his friend lost in an opium-induced stupor. Then the Irishman looked up, his eyes hazy, his smile dreamy.

  “Devlin.”

  Sebastian walked over to pour himself a brandy, then gulped it down in one long pull
.

  “You’re here about this latest headless fellow, I suppose.” Gibson waved one hand vaguely in the direction of the yard. “Haven’t started yet, I’m afraid.”

  Sebastian poured himself another drink. “Alexi Sauvage has almost finished the postmortem.”

  Something flickered across Gibson’s features, then faded into bland contentment. “Has she, now? She’s very clever. Wish she’d marry me. But she won’t.”

  “She says your leg has been troubling you.”

  “My leg?” Gibson’s fuzzy smile never slipped. “I think about it sometimes, still over there, doubtless a bare, weathered bone by now. While I’m here. Not yet a pile of bare bones.”

  When Sebastian said nothing, the surgeon drew in a slow, even breath that eased out like a sigh. “It’s a bit like a woman, you know. Opium, I mean. Soft. Caressing . . . Deceptive. A delightful exaltation of the spirit mingled with cloudless serenity. Truly a gift from the gods.”

  “That can kill,” said Sebastian.

  Gibson’s smile grew lopsided. “The gifts of the gods are often double-edged, are they not?”

  “Did you look at Sterling yourself at all?”

  “Who?” said Gibson, his head lolling against the back of the chair. “Sometimes I wish I were a poet—or maybe a composer—so I could share this joy and beauty. Everything’s so much clearer. Brighter. More intense. Delicious . . .”

  His voice faded and his gaze grew unfocused again, his face slack.

  A soft step in the passage drew Sebastian’s gaze to the doorway.

  “He wouldn’t have wanted you to see him like this,” said Alexi Sauvage, her hands cupping her bent elbows close to her body, her voice low.

  Sebastian turned toward her, aware of a powerful rush of fear and guilt all twisted up into a helpless rage that somehow ended up being directed at her. “God damn you. Why don’t you help him?”

  “I told you: He won’t let me.”

  “Why not?”

  She shifted her gaze to the man now lost in a cloud of opium-hued bliss. “Fear. Embarrassment. A man’s peculiar notion of pride. I don’t know. You tell me; you’re a man—his friend. All I know is, he can’t keep going on like this. It’s destroying his mind and body. Killing him.”