Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  But she didn’t.

  Sebastian was sitting beside the library fire, the mechanical nightingale in his hands, his gaze on the coals glowing on the hearth, when Hero came to stand in the room’s entrance.

  “Did you kill him?” she asked, pausing with one hand on the doorframe beside her.

  He looked up at her. “If you mean Diggory Flynn, the answer is no; I haven’t been able to find him. And if you mean Oliphant, I’m afraid the answer is still no. I’ll admit I came damned close, but you were right; I can’t be completely certain that Oliphant is the one controlling Flynn.”

  “Still?”

  “I know Flynn was an exploring officer under Oliphant and that both men were in Jamaica together, but . . .” He held up the gilded bird. “I’m puzzled by this.”

  “What is it?”

  He wound the key and set the nightingale on the table beside him, the clear, heartbreakingly beautiful notes filling the air as the bird’s mechanical wings rose and fell. “It appears that Knox learned of Flynn’s identity from Priss Mulligan. According to Oliphant, Flynn has been using his talents in a variety of nefarious pursuits, from slave running to smuggling.”

  “Smuggling? Well, you did first see him in Houndsditch.”

  “I did.”

  “So he could work for Priss Mulligan.”

  “He could indeed.” He watched the mechanical toy slowly wind down and stop. “It seems as if just when I think I’m beginning to understand what happened to Preston and Sterling and Toop, everything shifts and I realize I don’t understand anything at all.”

  Hero walked over to pick up the mechanical nightingale and wind the key. Then she set it on the table and together they watched the gilded wings beat slowly up and down in the glow of the firelight.

  Chapter 48

  Tuesday, 30 March

  T he next morning dawned cold and misty, with a bitter wind blowing down out of the north. Priss Mulligan was wrapped in a heavy shawl and poking around the jumble of old glass and metal items displayed on a Houndsditch street stall when Sebastian walked up to her.

  “I understand you know Diggory Flynn,” he said.

  She looked over at him, her lower lip distended by a plug of tobacco, her beady black eyes widening ever so slightly. “Oh? And how ye know that?”

  “Deduction.”

  “Ain’t ne’er heard of nobody named Dee Duckshun,” she said with a sniff and returned her attention to the secondhand stall.

  Sebastian watched her pick up a tarnished old candlestick and squint at it. He said, “You heard Knox is dead?”

  “Aye.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “’Tis a pity. He was a good-lookin’ lad, that one.”

  “I think Diggory Flynn killed him.”

  “Now, what would he want to go and do that for?”

  “Because he mistook Knox for me.”

  Priss Mulligan stared thoughtfully at Sebastian, then turned her head to shoot a stream of tobacco juice into the gutter. “Aye; ’tis possible, I s’pose. There’s no denying the two of you is as alike as a couple o’ pups out the same litter.”

  Sebastian said, “I think Flynn is working for you.” Or Sinclair Oliphant. Or Anne Preston, he thought, watching her carefully.

  She used her tongue to shift the wad of tobacco to her cheek. “Sure then, but Flynn ain’t ne’er worked for me. With me, meybe, from time to time. But ne’er for me.”

  “And why should I believe you?”

  She shrugged. “Ask anybody knows him.”

  “I could ask him myself if I knew where to find him.”

  Her lips pulled into a wide grin that showed her small, tobacco-stained teeth. “Ho; you think I’m gonna tell you, do you? Not likely.” She winked. “Fact is, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. He contacts me; not t’other way around.”

  He watched her set aside the candlestick and reach for a small glass figurine. He said, “You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

  The question obviously took her by surprise, because she hesitated and looked up at him again. “What’s that got t’ do with anythin’?”

  “Have you ever heard of a Dullahan?”

  “Course I have. Why?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She dropped her voice low and waved one small, childlike hand through the air like a storyteller conjuring an image. “Keeps his own head tucked up under one arm, he does. Oh, he’s a fright to look at: little black eyes always dartin’ this way and that, with a grinnin’ mouth as wide as his skull and skin like moldy cheese. Carries a whip made from a dead man’s backbone, and when he calls your name, it’s your turn to die. Ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop him. You can try barring your gate and lockin’ your door, but they’ll just open for him, like magic.”

  “He rides a horse?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes he drives a carriage.” She sniffed. “Why you wanna know about the Dullahan? He don’t like bein’ watched, you know. You try watchin’ him, and he’ll pluck out your eyes with his whip. That, or throw a bucket o’ blood on you, markin’ you as the next to die.”

  “I hear there’s one thing that will scare him away.”

  She gave a breathy laugh, her small eyes practically disappearing in the fat of her face as she fished beneath her shawl and came up with a bored gold coin tied around her neck by a leather thong. “Sure then, ’tis gold. Why you think the rich don’t die as often as the poor?”

  “Lots of food. A warm fire. A solid roof over their heads.”

  “Meybe,” she said with a sniff. “Though I still don’t see what the Dullahan’s got to do with nothin’.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t,” said Sebastian, and walked away, leaving her staring after him, the glass figurine held forgotten in one fist and her eyes narrowed with malevolent suspicion.

  Chapter 49

  T he little girl clutched the rusty tray of nuts against her thin chest. She was a tiny thing, with spindly arms and legs, a pale, wind-chapped face, and lifeless hair the same dull brown as her eyes. She told Hero her name was Sarah Devon. She was nine years old, and she’d already been selling nuts for three years.

  “I didn’t start on the streets till after Papa died,” she told Hero. “He was a whitesmith, you know—sold tin and pewter. For a while, Mama tried to keep us on what she makes selling oranges, but it weren’t enough. So she took to sending me out with six ha’pennies’ worth of nuts. I’m supposed to bring back sixpence.”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  The little girl’s gaze slid away. “She don’t usually beat me. Only when she’s been drinking. And she don’t drink more’n once a week. Usually.”

  Hero’s sympathy for the struggling widow instantly vanished. “You always sell your nuts here, in Piccadilly?”

  “Mostly, m’lady. Although sometimes I goes into the public houses. I like the taprooms; it’s warm in there.”

  Hero looked up from scribbling her notes. “You sell your nuts in taverns?” She tried to keep the shock off her face, but she must not have entirely succeeded because Sarah took a hesitant step back.

  “I usually only goes into the Pied Duck,” said Sarah, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “The barman used to be a friend of Papa’s, and if he’s there, he doesn’t let the men be rude to me.”

  “Are the men rude?”

  The little girl hung her head. “Sometimes.”

  Hero’s fist clenched around her pencil so hard she heard it crack.

  “Here,” she said, pressing two shillings into the little girl’s hand. “Only, don’t give it all to your mother at once or she’s liable to drink it up.”

  Sarah’s fingers closed around the coins, her eyes going wide. “I thought you said you’d give me a shilling if I talked to you. So why’re you giving me two?”

  Because you’re so thin and frail it b
reaks my heart, thought Hero. Because I don’t want you to have to worry about being beaten when you go home. Because little girls shouldn’t need to sell nuts in taverns to survive.

  But all she said was, “Because you’ve been so very helpful.”

  Sarah tipped her head to one side. “You really gonna write about us costers in the newspapers?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I don’t mind going out in the street to sell, you know. It’s better’n staying inside without a fire and with nothing to do.”

  Which was, Hero decided as she walked back to her carriage with the two footmen Devlin had insisted she bring with her, a consolation of sorts.

  But only if she didn’t think too much about it.

  Chapter 50

  “I don’t understand why we keep comin’ ’ere,” said Tom, standing beside the chestnuts’ heads at the edge of the lane while Sebastian walked over to study the narrow, moss-covered arch of Bloody Bridge.

  “Because I know I’m missing something.”

  “What makes ye think it’s ’ere?”

  “It may not be,” said Sebastian, which only served to make Tom look more puzzled.

  Sebastian stared off across the rolling green expanse of market gardens still half-hidden by lingering wisps of the morning’s fog. “Think about this: The Friday before he is killed, Stanley Preston has an unpleasant encounter with the former governor of Jamaica. We don’t know exactly where this meeting takes place or what is said, but knowing Oliphant, I suspect it involves some nasty and rather explicit threats against Anne Preston. Whatever it is, it frightens Preston enough that the next day he tells his cousin the Home Secretary that he has given up his determination to see Oliphant ruined.”

  “So that means the gov’nor didn’t have no reason to kill him no more. Right?”

  “Perhaps,” said Sebastian. “Unless for some reason Preston changed his mind. At any rate, later that same day—Saturday—he charges into Priss Mulligan’s shop in Houndsditch and threatens to turn her over to the authorities, at which point she threatens to have him gutted, strangled, and gelded.”

  “Does that scare him?”

  “From all I know of Priss Mulligan, it should have. But even if it does, he’s obviously still feeling cantankerous because—”

  “Can—what?”

  “Cantankerous. It means foul tempered. Testy. Bloody-minded.”

  “Oh.”

  “Because he then goes storming into the Shepherd’s Rest and threatens to horsewhip the impecunious Captain Wyeth, at which point Wyeth, in turn, threatens to kill him.”

  “’E was a right ornery fellow, this Preston. What’d ye call it?”

  “Cantankerous,” said Sebastian, his gaze following the course of the narrow rivulet that ran under the bridge. “Now, the next morning—Sunday, the day of the murder—Preston receives a visit from Dr. Douglas Sterling. The doctor claims the visit is for medical reasons, although no one close to Preston seems to know he’s ill in any way. And after the physician leaves, Preston calls for a hackney and drives off to Bucket Lane for reasons that seem to escape everyone. He returns home several hours later and putters about with his collections until shortly before nine, when he looks out his window to see Basil Thistlewood staring at his house. Preston charges out to indulge himself in a decidedly uncouth shouting match in the street. Then, sometime after that, he leaves the house again and walks to the Monster, where he berates Henry Austen for what he sees as the Austen women’s tendency to encourage Anne’s romantic notions.”

  “And then ’e comes ’ere?” said Tom.

  “He does. Presumably to meet Rowan Toop, who is selling the purloined head and coffin strap of King Charles I. Preston is standing here”—Sebastian stepped onto the grassy verge beside the lane—“with his watch in his hand, undoubtedly gazing back toward Sloane Square in anticipation of Toop’s arrival, when—” Sebastian turned so that he was facing the square, and frowned.

  “What?” said Tom as Sebastian swung around again to study the overgrown thicket of shrubbery that choked both banks of the stream to the north of the bridge.

  “Preston was stabbed in the back. That means that he either deliberately turned his back on his killer—which is unlikely if that person had recently threatened to kill him—or the killer crept up behind him. I’ve been thinking the killer probably followed Preston from the Monster. Except that, if he had, Preston would surely have seen him as he stared back toward the square, watching for Toop. Which means that whoever killed Preston must have known he was planning to meet Rowan Toop at Bloody Bridge that night and was already here waiting for him, probably in the shadows of that shrubbery.”

  The tiger’s face lit up with quick comprehension. “So who knew Preston was gonna be ’ere?”

  “It’s possible Thistlewood learned of the meeting from Toop, but I doubt it. I also find it unlikely that Henry Austen was privy to Preston’s clandestine activities. Preston’s daughter, Anne, claims she had no idea what he was doing at Bloody Bridge that night but could easily be lying.”

  “So she could’ve told Cap’n Wyeth?”

  “She could have. Although I think it more likely she hired Diggory Flynn and sent him to kill Preston.”

  Tom’s jaw sagged. “Ye think she done fer ’er own da? Gor.”

  “She’s definitely been moved into the suspects’ column,” said Sebastian. “But men like Diggory Flynn are trained to learn other people’s secrets. So it’s conceivable that Flynn could have found out about the assignation even if he was working for Priss Mulligan or Lord Oliphant.”

  Sebastian’s gaze returned to the square, where a gentlewoman had emerged from Sloane Street to turn along the side of the square and enter the lane leading to the bridge. She wore a plain brown pelisse and a sensible hat, and her gait was the strong, easy stride of someone accustomed to walking miles along country lanes and across fields. She had her head bowed and appeared lost in thought. But when she looked up and saw him, she smiled.

  “Lord Devlin,” said Jane Austen. “I wasn’t expecting to meet you again.”

  He moved toward her. “Miss Austen. What brings you this way?”

  “I try to take a walk every morning, either to the river or through Five Fields. There’s a small country chapel, just there, with a lovely churchyard.” She nodded toward the bell tower barely visible above the distant clump of trees. Then her gaze fell on the bridge, and a shadow crossed her small, even features. “It was one of Anne’s favorite walks as well. But I doubt she’ll ever want to come this way again.”

  “And how is Miss Preston?” he asked.

  The question was not as idle as it seemed.

  “To be frank, she’s making herself ill with the fear you mean to see Captain Wyeth hang for her father’s murder.”

  “I don’t believe Captain Wyeth killed Stanley Preston,” he said, studying the novelist’s round, small-featured face. He wished he could say the same thing about Anne, but he kept that thought to himself.

  “May I tell her that?” said Miss Austen.

  “Of course. Although I obviously don’t speak for Bow Street.”

  “I think Anne is more afraid of you than she is of the authorities.”

  “Oh?”

  “That surprises you? My cousin Eliza likewise fears that you may still suspect Henry.”

  “I don’t think your brother has anything to worry about either,” he said. “How is Mrs. Austen today?”

  A pinched, bleak light came into Miss Austen’s face. “I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She blinked rapidly and nodded, her throat working as she swallowed.

  He said, “You wouldn’t by chance know a man named Diggory Flynn—a somewhat disheveled character with an oddly crooked face?”

  “I don’t believe
so, no. Why? You think he could be involved in what happened here?”

  “He may be.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “May I ask why you’ve changed your mind about Captain Wyeth?”

  “Largely because I’ve come to believe he is precisely the honorable, conscientious man he appears.”

  “That is good to hear,” she said with a soft smile. “Anne deserves to be happy.”

  “Let’s hope she will be,” he said, just as the bells of the distant country chapel began to toll.

  Chapter 51

  S ebastian’s next stop was the Rose and Crown, where he discovered that Cian O’Neal had never returned to work in the stables.

  He finally found the former stableboy hoeing rows of newly sprouting vegetables in the kitchen gardens of Chelsea Hospital. At the sight of Sebastian, he froze, his fists tightening around the handle of his hoe and his chest jerking on a quickly indrawn breath.

  “What ye want wit’ me?”

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” said Sebastian, pausing some feet away when the boy looked as if he might bolt.

  “I already told that other feller, I didn’t see nothin’. Nothin’!”

  Sebastian studied the lad’s tight, strained face. “What other fellow?”

  “The feller from Bow Street.”

  “The one who spoke to you before?”

  “No. A different one.”

  “Did he ask about the Dullahan?”

  Cian stared at him, eyes wide and afraid.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” said Sebastian.

  “Nobody sees the Dullahan and lives.”

  “So perhaps what you saw wasn’t the Dullahan. Perhaps it was simply a man.”

  “But he was carryin’ a h—” Cian broke off and dropped his gaze to the ground, his cheeks flaming with his shame.

  “A head? Is that what you saw? Not the severed head at the end of the bridge, but another head?”

  The boy wiped one ragged cuff across the end of his nose and nodded. “Won’t nobody believe me, but ’tis true.”