When Gods Die sscm-2

by C. S. Harris

  Jarvis paused a prudent distance before him. “I rarely make mistakes.”

  The younger man gazed down at the toes of his boots, a strange smile playing about his lips before his head came up again, his eyes narrowing against the rain. “The trinket Prinny sent to the Marchioness of Anglessey. What was it?”

  At Jarvis’s continuing silence, the Viscount pushed away from the fence to take a significant step forward. “What was it, damn it? And don’t even think of pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “A brooch of rubies,” said Jarvis in a calm, unhurried tone, “pierced by a diamond arrow.”

  The Viscount’s reaction was difficult to decipher, even for a man skilled in reading the thoughts and emotions of others. “An expensive trifle, surely,” said the Viscount, “for a woman His Highness claims he barely knew?”

  It had begun to rain harder. Jarvis opened his umbrella and held it aloft. “There are times when His Highness has difficulty with the truth. Particularly when the repercussions from the truth might prove…unpleasant.”

  “So what’s your excuse?”

  Jarvis maintained a studied silence.

  “That’s why you had the note destroyed, isn’t it? Because whoever wrote it referred to her previous rejections of his advances. Suggested in some way that she’d changed her mind.”

  Again, Jarvis kept his own counsel.

  With a violent oath, the Viscount took a hasty step away, only to swing back again. “He was making advances on her. Rude, unwelcome advances. And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

  “Are you so certain they were unwelcome?”

  Devlin brought up a warning hand to slash the air between them. “Don’t. That woman was poisoned, stabbed, and robbed of her life and the life of her unborn child. Don’t you even think of trying to take away her honor with your lies.”

  “Poisoned? Really? How interesting.”

  Devlin stared across the street to where the soot-darkened redbrick gatehouse of St. James’s Palace thrust up against the cloud-laden skies. And it came to Jarvis, watching him, that for Devlin, this investigation into the circumstances of Guinevere Anglessey’s death was more than an intellectual puzzle, more than just an escape from boredom. The Viscount actually cared about what had happened to that young woman. It was an unexpected element of emotion that made him both easier to manipulate and yet, at the same time, unpredictable and dangerous.

  “Where was Prinny early Wednesday afternoon?” the Viscount asked suddenly.

  “In Brighton, of course.” Jarvis let out a low, deliberate laugh. “Good God. You surely aren’t entertaining the notion that His Highness actually had something to do with this death, are you?”

  “It seems less improbable now than it did.”

  “Why? Because the woman repulsed his advances? Don’t be ridiculous. England is full of women panting for the opportunity to copulate with a future king. He need only look at one and smile.”

  “Yet what would happen, I wonder, should such a vain, sensitive prince encounter a woman with the courage to rebuff his advances?”

  “No woman has ever accused His Highness of forcing himself upon her.” The words were crisp, carefully enunciated, just bordering on anger. “Ever.”

  “Perhaps. Yet his father—a model of domestic fidelity if ever there was one—dropped his breeches and attacked his own daughter-in-law just last year.”

  Jarvis’s hand tightened around the handle of his umbrella, although he managed to keep his voice calm, his face serene. “The Prince Regent is not going mad.”

  Devlin’s lean face remained impassive. Unreadable. “Tell me about the dagger. The one you took from Guinevere Anglessey’s body.”

  Jarvis gave the Viscount a warm, reassuring smile. “Now, why would I do that?”

  Devlin’s smile was just as calculated and decidedly chilling. “I keep asking myself that same question. You might not like it when I come up with the answer.”

  SEBASTIAN ARRIVED BACK AT HIS HOUSE on Brook Street to discover Sir Henry Lovejoy there before him.

  “Sir Henry,” said Sebastian, opening the door to the library, where the chief magistrate of Queen Square was reading the Morning Gazette in one of the caned chairs beside the front bow window. “I trust you’ve not been waiting long?”

  Lovejoy folded the Gazette into a neat rectangle and stood up. “Not long, no.” He was a tiny man, barely five feet tall, with a high-pitched voice, thick eyeglasses, and a serious demeanor. He was also, Sebastian knew, passionately devoted to what he did.

  Tossing aside his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, Sebastian crossed to the brandy decanter on the table beside the empty hearth. “A glass of wine with me?”

  “Thank you, but no.” The little magistrate clasped his hands behind his back, cleared his throat, and said, “I heard the strangest story this morning, about some fellow impersonating a Bow Street Officer. A handsome young man with what were described as almost animalistic eyes.”

  “How odd.” His face deliberately bland, Sebastian flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his rough-cut coat. “Is that why you’ve come? Did you think this fellow might be a relative of mine?”

  The faintest hint of a smile lifted the little magistrate’s thin mouth. “No, actually. I’ve come because we’ve discovered your Yorkshire jarvey.”

  Chapter 25

  “He remembered the fare quite clearly,” said Lovejoy. “It’s not often a lady takes a hackney to the East End.”

  Sebastian lowered his glass in surprise. “The East End?”

  “That’s right. Giltspur Street, in Smithfield.”

  “Where exactly on Giltspur?”

  “The jarvey couldn’t say. It seems Lady Anglessey had the fellow let her off at the top of the lane. The last he saw of her, she was walking toward the market.” Lovejoy cleared his throat again. “I sent one of the lads over there. Had him ask around. No one remembers having seen her.”

  That was hardly likely, Sebastian decided, going to pour himself another drink. The sight of a young lady as beautiful as the Marchioness of Anglessey in a walking dress of Pompeian red was not something to be forgotten so quickly. Yet even the most respectable citizens of London were often reluctant to be overly cooperative with the constables. An unassuming man asking more subtle questions might well learn something of interest.

  BY THE TIME SEBASTIAN PAID OFF HIS HACKNEY at the bottom of Giltspur Street, the rain had stopped again, although the clouds still hung low and oppressive over the open, death-haunted grounds of Smithfield Market.

  It was a meat market now. But once, two hundred years before, in the days of the Tudors, they had burned people here at Smithfield. The Catholics had burned the Protestants to save their souls from the everlasting fires of hell, while the Protestants had burned the Catholics because that’s what one did with people whose vision of God didn’t exactly match one’s own. It’d always struck Sebastian as a strange thing to do in the name of a Christ who’d taught his followers to turn the other cheek and love their neighbors as themselves. But then, Christ’s followers had frequently been slack in their application of that part of His teachings, massacring in His name everyone from the olive-skinned inhabitants of Jerusalem to the Irish of Dublin.

  Clad in the unfashionably cut greatcoat and serviceable leather breeches of a country gentleman of modest means, Sebastian pushed his way through the throngs of people crowding the streets, many of them drovers in town for Market Monday. They came from as far away as the north of England and Scotland, driving the great herds of cattle and oxen needed to feed the million or so inhabitants of the city. But there were local people here, too, journeymen and apprentices, servants and shopkeepers, for Sunday was the only day most people had off work.

  The atmosphere was relaxed, jovial, the street filled with glad voices and laughter, the rich aromas of broiling meat and fermenting ale mingling with the ever-present smells of mud and unwashed bodies and urine. At the first cross street, Sebast
ian paused, his gaze scanning the signs of the various shops fronting the lane: tanners and chandlers mixed in with coal merchants and distillers, button sellers, and woolen drapers. All were humble establishments, not the kind of businesses typically frequented by a marchioness. What was Guinevere Anglessey doing here?

  He walked on, past the shuttered windows of a tea dealer and the haberdasher beyond. All were closed now for the Sabbath. On Monday, he would send Tom to go into each shop in turn. But something told him Lady Anglessey had not come here in search of tea or buttons.

  Halfway up the street he came upon an ancient, half-timbered inn called the Norfolk Arms. Tall and well kept, it had somehow survived the Great Fire of 1666. From the looks of it, it had been here since the days of Edward and Mary Tudor and the martyrs’ pyres of Smithfield.

  Sebastian started toward the inn. A couple of half-grown boys ran past, careening into him before darting off again with a shouted apology. A one-legged soldier, his face hideously deformed by a saber slash across his cheek, leaned on a rag-wrapped stick and rattled his cup with softly murmured pleadings.

  Sebastian dropped a coin into the outstretched receptacle. “Where’d you serve?”

  Drawing in a deep breath, the beggar squared his shoulders proudly and said, “Antwerp, sir,” in a heavy Scots brogue. Beneath his unkempt beard and matted hair and sallow, scarred skin, he was actually quite young, Sebastian realized, probably no more than five-and-twenty.

  “You here every day, are you?”

  A grin stretched the Scotsman’s scarred cheek and deepened the lines prematurely fanning out from his pain-filled gray eyes. “Aye. This be me spot.”

  “There was a young woman came past here, last Wednesday afternoon. Dark haired. Pretty. A lady, actually. Wearing a red gown and pelisse. Did you see her?”

  The man gave a breathy laugh. “There be nothing wrong with me eyes. Very fetching she was, too, to be sure. She gave me five shillings, she did.”

  “Did you happen to see where she went?”

  The soldier jerked his head toward the ancient inn behind him. “Aye. She went in the Norfolk Arms here.”

  Sebastian knew a rush of triumph and expectation quickly dampened down. “How long was she in there? Do you know?”

  The man thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t rightly say. I don’t recollect I saw her come out.”

  Chapter 26

  Sebastian stayed talking to the ex-soldier for some time. He bought some beef roasted on a spit and some ale, and they ate it together and discussed in soldierlike detail the Portuguese campaign and the hardships of the last winter and Colonel Trant’s daring exploits in Coimbra. It was another ten minutes or more before Sebastian slowly brought the conversation around, again, to the dark-haired beauty in the red pelisse.

  The soldier was convinced the lady had been alone. But he still could not remember seeing her leave; nor could he remember any of the other visitors to the inn that day.

  Sebastian slipped another coin in the man’s cup and turned toward the inn door. Ducking his head to avoid the low lintel, Sebastian pushed into a common room thick with the smell of ale and warm, closely packed bodies. A roar of boisterous male voices mingled with the clatter of platters and the clink of pewter tankards. Then one man’s voice, louder than the others, carried clearly. “If you ask me, they ought to let the poor old King out and lock up his son. That’s what they ought to do.”

  There was a moment’s hush, as though everyone in the room had paused at once to draw breath. Then another man, this one from the shadowy recesses of the darkly paneled room, grumbled, “Lock up the lot of them, you mean. They’re all as daft as me Granny Grim-letts. Every blasted one of them.”

  A chorus of laughter and Hear, hear’s, swelled around the room as Sebastian worked his way toward the bar.

  As unassuming as a shy young man just up from the country, he ordered a pint. Then he stood with one elbow resting on the bar, his gaze drifting slowly around the crowded room to the wide upward sweep of carpeted stairs just visible through the open doorway. Guinevere would never have come in here to the common room. But the inn had rooms upstairs and doubtless a private parlor, as well. The place might be far from fashionable, but it was nonetheless respectable, at least from the looks of things.

  As for what a lady such as the Marchioness of Anglessey was doing here, in Smithfield, it seemed to Sebastian that the number of possible explanations was rapidly narrowing. There was only one reason he could think of for a lady to avoid the smart, fashionable hotels such as Steven’s or Limmer’s and seek out an inn so hopelessly outré that there could be no danger of her encountering any of her acquaintances here. But it was a reason Sebastian found himself oddly reluctant to credit.

  Still sipping his ale, he shifted his attention to the innkeeper. He was a big man, tall and muscle-bound, with a shiny bald head and the broad nose and full lips of an African. But his skin was the palest café au lait, hinting at a heritage that was at least half-white, if not more.

  The man was aware of Sebastian in that way all good innkeepers are aware of a stranger. When Sebastian ordered another pint, the big black man brought it over himself. “New to town, are you?” said the innkeeper, slapping the pint on the ancient, scarred boards between them.

  The man’s accent was a slow drawl that whispered of magnolias and sun-baked fields and the crack of an overseer’s whip. Sebastian took a sip of his ale and gave the man a friendly smile. “I’m secretary to Squire Lawrence, up in Leicestershire. But my father spent some time in Georgia as a young man. Is that where you’re from?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “South Carolina.”

  “You’re a long ways from home. Do you miss it?”

  The black man peeled back his lips in a hard smile that showed his strong ivory teeth. “What do you think? I was born a slave in the summer of 1775, exactly one year before them Yankees come up with what they call their Declaration of Independence. You ever heard o’ it?”

  “I don’t believe so, no.”

  “Oh, it’s a grand-sounding piece o’ writin’, no gettin’ away from that. All about equality and natural rights and liberty. Only, them fine words, they was only meant for white folks, not for black slaves like me.”

  Sebastian studied the thickness of the man’s strong neck, the way the veins stood out on his forehead. It was a long way for one man to have come, from being a slave on a South Carolina plantation to owning an inn on Giltspur Street in Smithfield. “I understand they’re a sanctimonious lot, the Americans.”

  The black man laughed, a deep rumbling laugh that shook his chest. “Sanctimonious? Yeah, that’s a good one. They like to think they’re a glorious, godly nation, sure enough, like some shining beacon on a hill that’s gonna lead all mankind out o’ the darkness o’ tyranny and into the light. Only, look at what they done. They done killed all the red men and stole their land, and then they brung us black folks from Africa so’s we could do all the hard work and them white folks, they don’t need to get their lily-white hands dirty. Uh-uh.”

  “Squire Lawrence always says the Americans really fought their revolution because the King refused to allow them to disavow their treaties with the red men.”

  “Your Squire Lawrence sounds like a smart man.”

  Sebastian leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “To be honest with you, the Squire asked me to come here to London to make a few inquiries for him. A few discreet inquiries,” Sebastian added with emphasis, clearing his throat and glancing hurriedly around, as if to make certain no one could overhear. “It’s his sister, you see. She left the protection of her home last week. We believe some folks from the village gave her a ride to Smithfield, and I’m hoping she might have come here. For a room.”

  The big man’s broad African features remained impassive. “We don’t get a lot of ladies around here. You might try the Stanford, over on Snow Hill.”

  “I checked there already. The thing is, you see, I’ve discov
ered that a lady was seen entering the Norfolk Arms, just last Wednesday. A young lady with dark hair and a red pelisse. Now, as far as I know, Miss Eleanor’s pelisse is green, but she certainly has dark hair, and she could always have bought herself a new pelisse, couldn’t she?” Sebastian paused, as if reluctant to divulge the truth. “I hesitate to say it, but we fear a man may be involved.”

  The innkeeper wiped a cloth over the ring-marked surface of the bar. “Last Wednesday, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Sebastian, all effusive eagerness. “Have you seen her?”

  “Nah. I don’t know who told you such a daft thing, but we’ve had no ladies here. Must have been some farmer’s wife he seen, up for last week’s market.”

  The innkeeper wandered away while Sebastian went back to sipping his ale and regarding his surroundings. The Norfolk Arms might be in Smithfield, but its clientele was not, for the most part, drawn from the likes of drovers and market people. The two Israelites conversing in low voices over near the window could probably buy and sell the King of England several times over, while at a table near the door, a small huddle of men was sharing a bottle of brandy.

  Good French brandy, Sebastian noticed, his eyes narrowing. One of the men bore ink-stained fingers that suggested a clerk, while the rest had the look of barristers and solicitors from the nearby Inns of Court. As Sebastian watched, one older gentleman with a shock of graying hair and a powerfully jutting jaw raised his brandy and proposed a toast. “To the King!”

  The words were quietly said, so quietly that someone with hearing less acute than Sebastian’s would never have heard them. The others at the table likewise raised their brandy, their voices murmuring, “Hear, hear, to the King,” as they deliberately waved their glasses above a nearby water pitcher before taking a sip.

  Sebastian paused with his own ale halfway to his lips. To the King over the water. It was an old toast, dating back a hundred years or more, a ruse by which men could seemingly drink to the health of the reigning Hanoverian monarch while in reality maintaining their allegiance to that other king, the dethroned Stuart King James II and his descendants, condemned forever to live in exile.