When Maidens Mourn: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian said, “Any possibility the children could have been the killer’s intended targets and Miss Tennyson simply got in the way?”

  “Merciful heavens. Why would anyone want to kill two innocent children?” Lovejoy was silent a moment, his gaze still on the sun-spangled water, a bead of sweat rolling down one cheek. “But you’re right; it is obviously a possibility. Dear God, what is the world coming to?” He narrowed his eyes against the glare coming off the water and said it again. “What is the world coming to?”

  The Tennysons’ housekeeper was a small, plump woman named Mrs. O’Donnell. She had full cheeks and graying hair worn tucked neatly beneath a starched white cap, and she struck Sebastian as the type of woman who in happier times sported rosy cheeks and bustled about with brisk good cheer and a ready laugh. Now she sat crumpled beside the empty hearth in the servants’ hall, a damp handkerchief clutched forlornly in one fist, her eyes red and swollen with tears, her cheeks ashen.

  “If only the master had been home,” she kept saying over and over again. “None of this would have happened.”

  “How long has Mr. Tennyson been gone?” asked Sebastian, settling onto a hard wooden bench opposite her.

  “A fortnight, come Tuesday. He wanted Miss Tennyson and the lads to go into the country with him—get away from all the heat and dirt of the city. But she wouldn’t leave that project of hers.” Mrs. O’Donnell’s nose wrinkled when she uttered the word “project,” as if she spoke of something nasty and improper. It was obvious that for all her geniality, the housekeeper did not approve of Miss Tennyson’s unorthodox interests.

  Sebastian said, “I take it you’re referring to the excavations up at Camlet Moat?”

  Mrs. O’Donnell nodded and touched her handkerchief to the corner of one eye. “I know it’s not my place to say such things, but, well…It’s not right, if you ask me. Women belong in the home. And now look what’s come of it! Her dead, and those poor lads gone missing. Such bright little fellows, they were. Quick-tempered and full of mischief, to be sure, but charming and winsome for all of that. Why, just yesterday morning before they left for church, Master George gave me a little poem he wrote all by himself.” She pushed up from her seat and went to rummage amongst the litter of recipes and invoices, letters and broadsheets, that covered a nearby table. “It’s here somewhere.…”

  “That’s the last time you saw them?” asked Sebastian. “Yesterday morning, when they were on their way to church?”

  “It was, yes,” she said, distracted by her search.

  “Which church do they normally attend?”

  “St. Martin’s, usually.”

  “You think that’s where they went yesterday?”

  “I don’t see why not, my lord.”

  “I’m told Miss Tennyson liked to take the boys on various outings several times a week, particularly on Sunday afternoons.”

  “Oh, yes. She was enjoying their visit ever so much. It was lovely to see her with them. Her face would light up and she’d laugh like she was a carefree girl again herself.” A ghost of a smile animated the housekeeper’s features, only to fade away into pinched sorrow. “Course, then there were the times I’d catch her watching them, and she’d go all still and quiet-like, and this look would come over her that was something painful to see.”

  “What sort of a look?”

  “It was like a…like a yearning, if you know what I mean?”

  “You think she regretted not having children of her own?”

  “If she did, it was her choice, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s not like she didn’t have plenty of offers. Turned them all down, she did.” The housekeeper straightened, a tattered paper clenched in one hand. “Ah, here it is!” She thrust the page toward him.

  Sebastian found himself staring at a single stanza of poetry written in a schoolboy’s best copperplate. He read aloud:

  Somewhere the sea, somewhere the sun

  Whisper of pain and love untold;

  Something that’s done and more undone,

  Are only the dead so bold?

  He looked up. “George Tennyson wrote this?”

  “He did. Oh, it’s all great nonsense, to be sure. But it’s still fine, wouldn’t you say? And he but a boy of nine!”

  “Do you mind if I keep it for a day or so? I’ll see it’s returned to you,” he added when she looked hesitant.

  “To be sure you may keep it, my lord. Only, I won’t deny I would like to have it back.”

  “I understand.” Sebastian tucked the boy’s poem into his pocket. “Do you have any idea how Miss Tennyson and the children planned to spend yesterday afternoon?”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. “No, my lord; I don’t know as I ever heard her mention it. We always lay out a cold collation for the family in the dining room, you see, before we leave for our half day. They eat when they come home from church, before they go out again. We left a lovely spread, with a side of beef and salmon in aspic and a chilled asparagus soup.”

  “And did Miss Tennyson and the children eat the meal you left for them on Sunday?”

  “Oh, yes, my lord. In fact, the plate with Mrs. Reagan’s oatmeal cookies was completely empty except for a few crumbs.” She plopped back down in her chair, her hands wringing together so hard the fingers turned white. “Oh, if only Mr. Tennyson had been here!” she cried. “Then we’d have known for certain something was amiss when they didn’t come home last night.”

  “What time did the servants return to the house?”

  “The others were back by seven, although I’m afraid I myself wasn’t in until nearly eight. I spent the day with my sister in Kent Town, you see; her husband’s ever so sick, and Miss Tennyson told me not to worry if I was a bit late. She was that way, you know—so kind and generous. And now—” Her voice cracked and she turned her face away, her throat working silently.

  Sebastian said, “Were you concerned when you arrived back and realized Miss Tennyson and the children hadn’t returned themselves?”

  “Well, of course I was! We all were. Margaret Campbell—she’s the boys’ nurse, you know—was all for going to the public office at once. She was convinced something must have happened to them. But we had no way of knowing that for certain, and who could ever have imagined that something like this had occurred? I mean, what if Miss Tennyson had simply decided to spend the night with some friends and forgot to tell us? Or she could have received bad news from the boys’ parents and set off with the children for Lincolnshire. To tell the truth, I thought she might even have reconsidered staying in London and decided to join her brother in the country after all. I can tell you, she would not have thanked us if we’d raised a ruckus for naught.”

  Sebastian watched her twist her handkerchief around her fist. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to do either Miss Tennyson or the boys harm?”

  Her puffy face crumpled. “No,” she cried. “None of this makes any sense. Why would anyone want to harm either her or those poor, poor lads? Why?”

  Sebastian rested his hand on her shoulder. It was a useless, awkward gesture of comfort, but she looked up at him with pleading eyes, her plump, matronly form shuddering with need for a measure of understanding and reassurance he could not give.

  Chapter 9

  Leaving the servants’ hall, Sebastian climbed the stairs to the nursery at the top of the Tennyson house.

  It was a cheerful place, its walls newly covered in brightly sprigged paper and flooded with light from the rows of long windows overlooking the broad, sun-dappled expanse of the river. The two little boys might have only been visiting for the summer, but it was obvious that Gabrielle Tennyson had prepared for her young cousins’ stay with loving care.

  Pausing at the entrance to the schoolroom, Sebastian let his gaze drift over the armies of tin soldiers that marched in neat formations across the scrubbed floorboards. Cockhorses and drums and wooden boats littered the room; shelves of books beckoned with promises of end
less hours spent vicariously adventuring in faraway lands. On the edge of a big, sturdy table near the door lay a cluster of small, disparate objects—a broken clay pipe bowl, a glowing brown chestnut, a blue and white ceramic bead—as if a boy had hurriedly emptied his pockets of their treasures and then never come back for them.

  A woman’s voice sounded behind him. “And who might you be, then?”

  Turning, Sebastian found himself being regarded with a suspicious scowl by a bony woman with thick, dark red hair, gaunt cheeks, and pale gray eyes. “You must be the boys’ nurse, Miss Campbell.”

  “I am.” Her gaze swept him with obvious suspicion, her voice raspy with a thick northern brogue. “And you?”

  “Lord Devlin.”

  She sniffed. “I heard them talking about you in the servants’ hall.” She pushed past him into the room and swung to face him, her thin frame rigid with hostility and what he suspected was a carefully controlled, intensely private grief. “Seems a queer thing for a lord to do, getting hisself mixed up in murder. But then, London folk is queer.”

  Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. “You came with the boys from Lincolnshire?”

  “I did, yes. Been with Master George since he was born, I have, and little Master Alfred too.”

  “I understand the boys’ father is a rector?”

  “Aye.” A wary light crept into her eyes.

  Seeing it, Sebastian said, “Tell me about him.”

  “The Reverend Tennyson?” She folded her arms across her stomach, her hands clenched tight around her bony elbows. “What is there to tell? He’s a brilliant man—for all he’s so big and hulking and clumsy.”

  “I’m told he’s not well. Nothing serious, I hope?”

  The fingers gripping her elbows reminded him of claws clinging desperately to a shifting purchase. “He hasna been well for a long time now.” She hesitated, then added, “A very long time.” Lingering ill health was all too common in their society, frequently caused by consumption, but more often by some unknown debilitating affliction.

  Sebastian wandered the room, his attention seemingly all for the scattered toys and books. “And the boys? Are they hale?”

  “Ach, you’d be hard put to find two sturdier lads. To be sure, Master George can be a bit wild and hotheaded, but there’s no malice in him.”

  It struck him as a profoundly strange thing for her to say. He paused beside a scattering of books on the window seat overlooking the river. They were the usual assortment of boys’ adventure stories. Flipping open one of the covers, he found himself staring at the name George Tennyson written in the same round copperplate as the poem given him by the housekeeper.

  Looking up, he said, “Do you know where Miss Tennyson planned to take her young cousins yesterday?”

  The nursemaid shook her head. “No. She told them it was a surprise.”

  “Could she perhaps have intended to show them the excavations at Camlet Moat?”

  “She could, I suppose. But how would that be a surprise? She’d taken them up there before.”

  “Perhaps she’d discovered something new she wanted to show them.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Sebastian studied the woman’s plain, tensely held face. “What do you think has happened to them, Miss Campbell?”

  She pressed her lips into a hard, straight line, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath, her forehead creasing with a sudden upwelling of emotion she fought to suppress. It was a moment before she could speak. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t know. I keep thinking about those poor wee bairns out there somewhere, alone and afraid, with no one to care for them. Or—or—” But here her voice broke and she could only shake her head, unwilling to put her worst fears into words.

  He said, “Did you ever hear Miss Tennyson mention the name of an antiquary with whom she had quarreled?”

  Margaret cleared her throat and touched the back of her knuckles to her nostrils, her formidable composure slamming once more into place. “A what?”

  “An antiquary. A scholar of antiquities. You never heard Miss Tennyson speak of any such person?”

  “No.”

  “How about the children? Did they ever mention anyone? Anyone at all they might have met in London?”

  She stared back at him, her face pale, her eyes wide.

  Sebastian said, “There is someone. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know his name. The lads always called him ‘the Lieutenant.’”

  “He’s a lieutenant?”

  “Aye.” Her lip curled. “Some Frenchy.”

  “Where did the children meet this French lieutenant?”

  “Miss Tennyson would oftentimes take the lads to the park of an evening. I think they’d see him there.”

  “They saw him often?”

  “Aye. Him and his dog.”

  “The Lieutenant has a dog?”

  “Aye. The lads are mad about dogs, you know.”

  “When did they first begin mentioning this lieutenant?”

  “Ach, it must have been six weeks or more ago—not long after we first arrived in London, I’d say.”

  “That’s all you can tell me about him? That he’s a Frenchman and a lieutenant—and that he has a dog?”

  “He may’ve been in the cavalry. I can’t be certain, mind you, but it’s only since we’ve come to London that Master George has suddenly been all agog to join the Army. He’s forever galloping around the schoolroom slashing a wooden sword through the air and shouting, Charge! and, At ’em, lads!”

  “Any idea where this lieutenant might have seen service?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t like to pay too much heed to young Master George when he’d start going on about it. Couldn’t see any sense in encouraging the lad. The Reverend’s already told him he’s bound for Eton next year. Besides, it didn’t seem right, somehow, him being so friendly with a Frenchy.”

  Sebastian said, “Many émigrés have fought valiantly against Napoléon.”

  “Whoever said he was an émigré?” She gave a scornful laugh. “A prisoner on his parole, he is. And only the good Lord knows how many brave Englishmen he sent to their graves before he was took prisoner.”

  Sebastian went to lean on the terrace railing overlooking the river. The tide was out, a damp, fecund odor rising from the expanse of mudflats exposed along the bank below as the sun began its downward arc toward the west. An aged Gypsy woman in a full purple skirt and yellow kerchief was telling fortunes beside a man with a painted cart selling hot sausages near the steps. Beyond them, a string of constables could be seen poking long probes into the mud, turning over logs and bits of flotsam left stranded by the receding water. At first Sebastian wondered what they were doing. Then he realized they must be searching for the children…or what was left of them.

  He twisted around to stare back at the imposing row of eighteenth-century town houses that rose above the terrace. The disappearance of the two young children added both an urgency and a troubling new dimension to the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson. Had the boys, too, fallen victim to Gabrielle’s killer? For the same reason? Or were the children simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? And if they hadn’t suffered the same fate as their cousin, then where were they now?

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the top of the steps, his eyes narrowing as he studied the thin, drab-coated man buying a sausage from the cart.

  It was the same man he’d seen earlier, at Tower Hill.

  Bloody hell.

  Pushing away from the railing, Sebastian strolled toward the sausage seller. Pocketing the drab-coated man’s coin, the sausage seller handed the man a paper-wrapped sausage. Without seeming to glance in Sebastian’s direction, the man took a bite of his sausage and began to walk away.

  He was a tallish man, with thin shoulders and a round hat he wore pulled low on his face. Sebastian quickened his step.

  He was still some ten feet away when the man tossed the s
ausage aside and broke into a run.

  Chapter 10

  The man sprinted around the edge of the terrace and dropped out of sight.

  Sebastian tore after him, down a crowded, steeply cobbled lane lined with taverns and narrow coffeehouses that emptied abruptly onto the sun-splashed waterfront below. A flock of white gulls rose, screeching, to wheel high above the broad, sparkling river.

  The genteel houses of the Adelphi Terrace had been constructed over a warren of arch-fronted subterranean vaults built to span the slope between the Strand and the wharves along the river. Sebastian could hear the man’s booted feet pounding over the weathered planking as he darted around towering pyramids of wine casks and dodged blue-smocked workmen unloading sacks of coal from a barge. Then the buff-coated man threw one quick look over his shoulder and dove under the nearest archway to disappear into the gloomy world beneath the terrace.

  Hell and the devil confound it, thought Sebastian, swerving around a mule cart.

  “Hey!” shouted a grizzled man in a cap and leather apron as the mule between the traces of his cart snorted and kicked. “What the bloody ’ell ye doin’?”

  Sebastian kept running.

  One behind the other, Sebastian and the drab-coated man raced through soaring, catacomblike arches, the bricks furred with soot and mold and perpetual dampness. They sprinted down dark tunnels of warehouses tenanted by wine sellers and coal merchants, and up dimly lit passages off which opened stables that reeked of manure and dirty straw, where cows lowed plaintively from out of the darkness.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sebastian shouted as the man veered around a rotten water butt, toward the dark opening of a narrow staircase that wound steeply upward. “Who?”

  Without faltering, the man clambered up the stairs, Sebastian at his heels. Round and round they went, only to erupt into a steeply sloping corridor paved with worn bricks and lined with milk cans.