Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  “You son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, scrambling to his feet again.

  Flynn abandoned the workman’s cart and took off running.

  Sebastian tore after him.

  The former observing officer was both shorter and older, and Sebastian gained on him rapidly. Reaching out with his left hand, he grabbed Flynn’s right shoulder and spun him around to drive his fist into the middle of the man’s face, feeling bone and teeth give way in a blood-slicked crunch.

  “You bastard,” swore Sebastian. “You could have killed my wife and son.”

  “You moved!”

  Without losing his hold on the man’s shoulder, Sebastian buried his fist in Flynn’s gut, then caught him under the chin with a punishing right hook.

  Flynn’s head snapped back, the force of the blow wrenching his coat from Sebastian’s grasp. The man stumbled, tripped on the kerbstone, and went down hard on his rump.

  Sebastian slipped his knife from his boot and advanced on him. “The same way you killed my brother.”

  “Brother?” Flynn scrambled backward on his hands and buttocks, his face smeared with blood. “What brother?” His shoulder bumped against the area railing of the house behind him and he reached to haul himself up.

  “Jamie Knox,” said Sebastian, grabbing a fistful of the man’s coat front and swinging him around to slam his back against the house wall.

  “But I—”

  Sebastian pressed the knife blade against his throat.

  Flynn’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard, blood dripping off his chin from his broken nose and mouth. “Don’t kill me.”

  Sebastian shook his head, his lips curling away from his teeth. “Name one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

  Flynn’s chest jerked on a ragged, quickly indrawn breath. “I can give you Oliphant.”

  The French overture to Haydn’s last piano sonata thundered with an energetic and passionate verve as Sebastian threaded his way through Lady Farningham’s crowded reception rooms. It was her second musical evening of the Season, and it seemed that all of fashionable London had come to hear her latest Italian virtuoso. The more intent listeners were seated in the rows of gilded chairs drawn up before the pianoforte. But most of the guests circulated freely, drinking and eating and chatting in small clusters.

  Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, was standing beside one of the ornate pilasters in the drawing room, his gaze fixed on the pianist, when Sebastian walked up behind his former colonel and said quietly, “I have Diggory Flynn. He’s willing to testify that you paid him to kill Jamie Knox.”

  Oliphant kept his eyes on the musician, not even bothering to turn his head as he said, “I never did any such thing.”

  Lady Oliphant was too far away to hear their words, but she looked over at Sebastian and frowned pointedly.

  Sebastian kept his voice low. “True; you paid him to kill me. But Knox died.”

  “Diggory Flynn is scum. No one will believe him. Do you honestly think a jury would take the word of a smuggler against that of a peer of the realm?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Like Oliphant, Sebastian kept his attention seemingly focused on the performer. “The thing is, you see, your man shot at me tonight with my wife and son standing beside me. Jarvis’s daughter and grandson. The only reason I haven’t already killed you is because they weren’t hurt. But don’t expect Jarvis to be swayed by such technicalities. You’ll be lucky if you live long enough to stand trial.” He watched as that perpetual, confident smile slid slowly from Oliphant’s face. “I suppose you could try to run. But I don’t think you’ll get far.”

  He bowed his head toward Oliphant’s scowling wife. “My lady,” he said, and turned to walk out of the room and out of the house.

  As he descended the front steps, he noticed one of the tall, dark-haired former hussar officers employed by Jarvis waiting across the rain-drenched street. For a moment, their gazes met. Then he heard Tom’s shout.

  “Gov’nor! Oy, gov’nor.”

  He could see the tiger threading his way through the crowd of gawkers that always formed around such events.

  “Gov’nor,” said the boy, struggling to catch his breath as he skidded to a halt at the base of the steps. He held out a somewhat grubby calling card. “A lad just brung this from Bucket Lane!”

  It was one of Sebastian’s own cards. He flipped it over to see that someone had written on the back in a childish hand.

  Plees help. Juba

  “I think it’s a trap,” said Tom.

  They were in a hackney headed toward Fish Street Hill. The rain had eased up for the moment, but water still dripped from the eaves of the mean houses and shops they passed, and a cold wind buffeted the old carriage.

  “Of course it’s a trap,” said Sebastian, his gaze on the soaring tower of the church of St. Magnus that loomed over the bridgehead and Billingsgate Market. He’d expected Knightly to try to silence him. And he had worried about the safety of Juba and Banjo. What he hadn’t foreseen was that the killer would use the woman and child to bait a trap for Sebastian.

  He wondered if life really spun in circles, or if it was simply some trick of the human mind that made people see patterns where none truly existed. The last time women and children had been put at risk because of him, he had failed to save them. He’d spent the last three years seeking some sort of redemption for that failure and had found a measure of solace in his efforts on behalf of other victims of human evil.

  But now it was happening all over again.

  Tom shook his head. “So why ye goin’ there?”

  “Because if I don’t, Juba and her son will die.”

  Lit only by the occasional glimmer of a tallow candle showing through a grimy window, Bucket Lane lay dark and wet and deserted beneath the stormy sky.

  “What we gonna do?” whispered Tom as they slipped down the lane to draw up in a shadowy doorway.

  Centuries old, Juba’s house had only two stories and was built so that the upper floor jutted out over the lower. It contained just two rooms per floor, with a different family living in each room. The front room of the upper story was dark. But the flickering, smoky light of a tallow candle showed through the thin, ragged curtain of the ground-floor room.

  “I want you to go inside, slowly count to ten, and then knock on the first door to your left. Just be certain to flatten yourself against the wall before you reach over to knock, and jerk your hand back quickly. I wouldn’t put it past Knightly to shoot through the door rather than open it.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I want you to run into the street and keep running, no matter what happens.”

  “But . . . gov’nor!”

  “You heard me.”

  The boy hung his head. “Aye, gov’nor.”

  Sebastian watched the tiger let himself in the house’s battered street door, and began to count.

  One, two . . .

  A single large shadow seated at the trestle table near the door showed through the worn cloth of the curtain. Knightly? Probably. But if so, then where were Juba and Banjo?

  Three, four . . .

  He told himself the woman and boy couldn’t already be dead. Surely Knightly would leave them alive until he had Sebastian?

  Five, six . . .

  Leaping up, Sebastian caught hold of one of the beams supporting the cantilevered upper story where it jutted out above the window.

  Seven, eight . . .

  Kicking his legs, he began to swing back and forth, gathering momentum.

  Nine, ten.

  He heard the tiger’s knock, heard the sound of a bench being pushed back, saw the shadow rise to its feet. Then he kicked back hard with his legs and let go of the beam as he swung forward again toward the house.

  He crashed through the window feetfirst in a shower of broken glass and s
hattered framing. Coming down hard on his feet, he lost his balance and fell to his knees. He saw Juba crouched on the pallet near the hearth, her son clutched in her arms. Saw Knightly spin toward him, the barrel of a flintlock pistol wavering as he brought up his other hand to steady it.

  Sebastian threw himself sideways, jerked his own pistol free as he fell, and fired.

  In the confined space of the small room, the pistol’s report was deafening, an explosion of smoke and flame and blood. Juba screamed. Knightly staggered back, slammed into the table, and crumpled slowly to the floor.

  The door from the hall burst open and Tom catapulted into the room.

  “Bloody hell; I told you to run,” swore Sebastian.

  Tom drew up short, his eyes wide, his breath coming hard and fast. Swiping one sleeve across his nose, he edged closer to Knightly’s now still body. “Gor. Ye plugged ’im right through the eye, ye did. Is ’e dead?”

  Sebastian pushed to his feet, brushing broken glass from his clothes as he walked over to stare down at the Baronet’s slack face. “Yes.”

  He bent to pick up the dead man’s pistol, then went to hunker down beside Juba and Banjo, still pressed up against the corner by the hearth. “You both all right?”

  She nodded, her face slack, her pupils wide with terror. “I didn’t want to send you that note. But he said he’d kill Banjo if I didn’t.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who inadvertently put you at risk.”

  She gazed beyond him, to where Sir Galen Knightly lay sprawled with one carefully manicured hand flung out so that it lay curled against the worn paving stones of her house.

  She said, “Is he really my half brother?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

  Chapter 56

  Wednesday, 31 March

  “None of this can be allowed to get out, naturally,” said Jarvis, his hands clasped behind his back as he stood before the drawing room’s bowed front window. Jarvis seldom came to Brook Street, but he had arrived that morning shortly after dawn.

  “Of course not,” said Sebastian. “Wouldn’t do to have the lower orders start thinking us their equals in depravity and violence.”

  Jarvis glanced over at him. “I take it you are being facetious.” He reached for his snuffbox. “The morning papers will carry the shocking news that Sir Galen Knightly has fallen victim to footpads whilst venturing unwisely into one of the more insalubrious areas of the city. A Bethnal Green navvy who killed and dismembered his wife several days ago has confessed to also murdering Stanley Preston and Dr. Douglas Sterling. Unfortunately, he has since succumbed to some sort of fatal seizure, so there will be no trial.”

  “Unfortunate for him, certainly. But no great loss to society, from the sounds of things.”

  “More levity,” said Jarvis, lifting a pinch of snuff to one nostril.

  Sebastian smiled. “Any luck yet finding King Charles’s head?”

  Jarvis inhaled so sharply he sneezed.

  “Bless you,” said Sebastian as his father-in-law sneezed again and reached for his handkerchief. “When is the Regent’s formal opening of the vault to be?”

  Jarvis glared at him over the folds of his handkerchief. “Tomorrow.”

  “Not much time left.”

  “I take it you’ve no idea what’s happened to it?”

  “Sorry.”

  Jarvis tucked away his handkerchief. “I assume my daughter and grandson are in the nursery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hero tells me you encourage her in this barbaric nonsense of refusing to hire a wet nurse.”

  “I support her, yes. But the decision is hers and hers alone.”

  “What drivel.” Jarvis turned toward the door. Then he paused to look back and say, “Oh, by the way; Lord Oliphant has inexplicably disappeared. Speculation of an accident or foul play will likely appear in tomorrow’s papers, but I’m told the body shouldn’t surface for another four or five days, depending upon the weather. At that point it will be concluded he must have slipped and fallen into the river during Tuesday night’s storm. And if he had succeeded in harming either my daughter or my grandson, you would be dead by now as well.”

  The two men’s gazes met and held.

  Then Jarvis nodded and walked out of the room.

  After the previous night’s storm, the day had dawned clear and sunny, with the streets washed clean by the rain.

  Driving himself in his curricle, Sebastian curved along the southern edge of Hyde Park toward Knightsbridge and Hans Town. His first stop was Sloane Street, where he found Miss Jane Austen walking in the gardens of Cadogan Square. She wore an old-fashioned round bonnet and her sensible brown pelisse, and her cheeks were ruddy with the cool, fresh air.

  “Lord Devlin,” she said when she saw him coming toward her. “You’ve read the news in this morning’s papers?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes narrowed as her intense gaze searched his face. “And none of it’s true, is it?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. But that can only mean . . . The killer was Knightly? Why?”

  “Because he feared Preston and Sterling were in possession of information he was desperate to keep from becoming known.”

  “And so he killed them? And cut off their heads in his rage? Who could have believed him capable of such viciousness?”

  “A wise woman once noted that it is difficult to know the true sentiments of a clever man.”

  Her small, dark eyes shone with amused delight. Then she shook her head. “Not so wise, given that I thought him another Colonel Brandon—staid, steadfast, and boring.”

  “And how did Miss Preston receive this morning’s news?” asked Sebastian as they turned to walk along the garden path. “Do you know?”

  “I don’t think she believes the reports in the newspapers either. But she is understandably relieved. She and Captain Wyeth plan to be wed as soon as possible, rather than wait for the passage of the customary twelve months of mourning.”

  “Sensible. They’ve waited enough years already.”

  Miss Austen glanced over at him. “I hear Lord Oliphant has disappeared.”

  “So he has.”

  “And you’re not going to explain any of it to me, are you?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’m confident in your ability to use your imagination.”

  Continuing down Sloane Street toward Chelsea, Sebastian turned his curricle to run along the square, then drove into the lane that led toward Bloody Bridge.

  “What we doin’ ’ere again?” said Tom.

  The chestnuts snorted and tried to shy as Sebastian guided them across the bridge and into the fields that stretched away on either side of the rutted road. “I have an idea.”

  He drove through market gardens fresh and green after the previous night’s rain, toward the tower of the small country chapel that rose above the elms and hawthorns of its churchyard. The way he figured it, Rowan Toop must have come upon Preston’s body not long after the killing and, in his terror, accidentally dropped whatever satchel contained the King’s head and coffin strap. The virger had obviously managed to retrieve the severed head. But he must have still been flailing about trying to find the coffin strap when he heard the approach of the young couple from the Rose and Crown. At that point, he had abandoned his search and—with the King’s head tucked under one arm—run in the only direction possible: across the bridge into Five Fields. Rattled by what he’d seen and terrified of being caught in possession of relics plundered from the royal chapel, Toop’s first instinct, surely, would have been to hide the item he’d hoped to sell to Stanley Preston.

  And where better to hide a dead man’s head than in a churchyard?

  A small, neoclassical structure, Five Fields
Chapel was not old, having been built in the previous century. But its churchyard was already overflowing, for there never seemed to be enough room to bury London’s endless supply of dead.

  After reining in beside the lych-gate, Sebastian handed Tom the reins and dropped lightly to the ground. “I won’t be long.”

  Wandering paths overgrown with weeds and rampant ivy, past rusting iron fences and weathered headstones crusted with lichen, he found what he was looking for not far from the road: a neglected, crumbling tomb so old it was collapsing badly at one end.

  Crouching down beside it, Sebastian peered into the tomb’s dank, musty interior. He could see decaying wood and the dull gleam of weathered bone, and a canvas sack thrust hurriedly out of sight by a frightened man who hadn’t lived long enough to retrieve it.

  He lifted the sack from its hiding place to find the cloth wet from the previous night’s storm and stained a nasty greenish red. Working carefully, he untied the thong fastening. Then he hesitated a moment before peeling back the canvas to reveal an ancient severed head, the skin of the eerily familiar, oval face dark and discolored, the pointed beard still showing reddish brown.

  But the hair at the back of the neck was stained black by old, dried blood and cut short in anticipation of the executioner’s blade.

  Thursday, 1 April

  “This is so exciting,” said the Prince Regent, shivering with a combination of delicious anticipation and bone-numbing cold. He stood with Dean Legge, his brother the Duke of Cumberland, and two boon companions in the newly constructed passage that led down to the royal vault beneath St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. “But . . . are you quite certain I won’t fit inside the vault itself?”

  Charles, Lord Jarvis, stood near the crude entrance to Henry VIII’s small burial chamber. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. The tomb is less than five feet in height and only seven by nine and a half feet wide. And with three burials—one of them extraordinarily large—there is barely enough room for Halford and the workman cutting an opening in the coffin’s lid.”