by C. S. Harris
“Don’t be absurd, Marie,” said Hero firmly. “There is nothing the least—” She broke off, her gaze fixed on the single, worn brown shoe poking out at an odd angle from beneath the curtain of a nearby archway.
“Stay here,” she ordered the maid and thrust aside the curtain.
The defrocked priest lay sprawled on his back, arms flung wide, his swollen tongue protruding from a discolored, puffy face, his bloodshot eyes wide and staring. A wire had been wrapped so tightly around his neck that it cut into the flesh.
She heard a soft sigh behind her and turned in time to see her abigail’s eyes roll back in her head as the woman collapsed in an insensate heap.
Ignoring her, Hero went to crouch beside the Frenchman’s body. Reaching out, she pressed her fingertips to one out-flung wrist. He was still faintly warm.
She heard the creak of a hinge and a light tread on the old floorboards at the front of the shop. Spinning around, she saw Devlin draw up in the curtained archway. His gaze traveled from her to de La Rocque and back again.
“Good God,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She spread an expressive hand toward the corpse. “I came to speak to Monsieur de La Rocque. Unfortunately, as you can see, he is dead.”
Devlin’s gaze shifted to the crumpled maid. “And your abigail?”
“Tiresome woman. She’s gone off in a faint.”
“Imagine that,” he said dryly, hunkering down beside the maid. “Have you a vinaigrette in your reticule?”
“No. I never faint.”
“Of course not,” he said, gently tapping the woman’s pale cheeks.
“If you wake her up, she’s liable to start screaming,” Hero warned.
“True. But it must be done.”
The abigail stirred, her eyelids fluttering open. She drew in a shaky gasp and looked confused, her gaze focusing on Devlin’s face. Then she turned her head, saw de La Rocque’s awful purple countenance, and started screaming.
“Now, now; enough of that,” said Hero briskly, going to help Devlin coax the woman to her feet.
The screaming continued. Over the woman’s head, Devlin’s gaze met Hero’s. “There’s an inn several doors down. Perhaps you can entrust her to the care of the landlord’s wife?”
Hero nodded. “Come, Marie,” she said, grasping the maid’s arm in a firm grip and suppressing the impulse to box the silly creature’s ears as she steered her toward the door. “Hush, now; there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Devlin, scrounging around in a nearby desk for paper, a quill, and ink. He dashed off a quick note, folded it and affixed a wafer, then wrote, Sir Henry Lovejoy across the front. “Have the landlord send one of his lads with this to Bow Street.”
Leaving Devlin hunkered down beside the dead body, Hero hectored and bullied the now hysterical abigail to the nearby inn, where she consigned her to the gentle ministrations of the clucking landlady. On her return, she found Devlin systematically going through drawers and cupboards in a rear office. “Discover anything?” she asked.
He moved on to one of the towering bookcases. “Not yet.”
“Like some help?”
He looked over at her in surprise. “Please.”
She started on the lower shelf. “What precisely are we looking for?”
“You’ll know when you find it.”
But at the end of another twenty minutes, she was hot, dusty, and empty-handed.
“It would take days to go through all these books,” she said, shoving a tooled copy of Plutarch’s Lives back onto a shelf.
“At least,” agreed Devlin, moving on to the next case.
Pushing the hair off her forehead with the back of one gloved hand, Hero went to crouch again beside the dead Frenchman. “Fascinating,” she said, studying the purple spots on his face, the deep scratches on his neck—left, she now realized, by his own fingernails as he clawed frantically at the constricting ligature. “I’ve never seen someone who was strangled.”
Devlin glanced over at her. “Have you no sensibility, Miss Jarvis?”
She looked up. “None at all, I’m afraid. Why? Does that disturb you?”
“Actually, it relieves me.”
She bent to have a closer look at the wire wrapped around de La Rocque’s neck.
“What is it?” asked Devlin, watching her.
“This wire. It’s not ordinary wire. It’s silver wrapped around silk.”
“What the hell?” He left the shelves to come hunker down beside her.
She looked up at him. “I believe it’s a harp wire.”
“A harp wire?”
“Mmm. Which suggests your murderer may be the husband of a woman who plays the harp—or the woman herself.”
Devlin looked doubtful. “Could a woman strangle a man?”
“If she were tall enough and strong enough, I don’t see why not.” Hero nodded to the bloated-faced corpse beside them. “De La Rocque was not an excessively large man.”
“True.”
She said, “Harp players typically develop calluses on their fingertips. Did you happen to notice the hands of any of the females implicated in your investigation?”
“Actually, there aren’t that many women involved in this.”
“But there are some.”
“There’s your cousin, Miss Sabrina Cox. Does she play the harp?”
“Sabrina? You can’t be serious. She’s a tiny woman. And full of sensibility.”
“Her brother is not.” He regarded her steadily. When she remained silent, he said, “Well? Does Miss Cox play the harp?”
Hero stared back at him. It had been only days since she visited her young cousin and held Sabrina’s hands in hers. Yet to her chagrin, she could not recall noticing either if the girl’s fingertips were calloused or even if there had been a harp in the room. She said, “To be honest, I don’t know; but I can find out. What about some of the other females involved?”
“I’ve met the Turkish Ambassador’s wife, but I confess I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to her fingertips.”
Hero decided to keep her own recent visit to the Ambassador’s residence to herself. She said, “Would a Turkish woman be likely to play the harp?”
“Why not? Do you think they don’t have harps in the seraglios of the East?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Hero, “not having ever been in a seraglio.” She studied him thoughtfully. “Have you?”
“I have not.”
“Besides,” she added, “Yasmina plays the ude. And she is also very tiny.”
“Ramadani is not. And I have it on the best authority—his own—that he’s partial to the garrote.”
“He told you that?”
“He did. He also—” He broke off as the sounds of a carriage and men’s voices carried from the front of the building.
“Ah,” said Hero, pushing to her feet. “Bow Street has arrived.”
She was aware of him studying her with an inscrutable expression on his face. He said, “Your father isn’t going to like this—your involving yourself in another murder, I mean.”
She gave her skirts a businesslike twitch that released a small cloud of dust. “Considering that we are soon to be wed, he’s going to have to get used to it, isn’t he?”
At that, Devlin gave a surprised huff of laughter. “You do have a point.”
His smile faded, their gazes meeting as awareness of all that their coming marriage would mean settled on them both.
Then Sir Henry Lovejoy drew up in the doorway, his gaze riveted on the corpse’s swollen purple countenance as he said with a gasp, “Merciful heavens!”
Chapter 39
“What can you tell me?” asked Sebastian, watching Paul Gibson study the body laid out on his slab.
The Irishman wiped his hands on a stained rag. “Right now? I can tell you Antoine de La Rocque was strangled. If you want more, you’re going to have to wait.”
Sebastian blew out a
harsh breath, his gaze on the dead Frenchman’s waxy profile. “For some reason, I feel as if we’re running out of time.”
Gibson grunted. “From what you’ve told me about Monsieur de La Rocque, his murder may not be related to the death of Alexander Ross at all. Those mixed up in the trade between France and England do tend to be a pretty rough lot.”
“The deaths are related,” said Sebastian, his gaze drifting to the shelf that ran along the far wall, where another silent form hidden by a sheet lay awaiting collection by the authorities. “Did you discover anything when you looked at Carl Lindquist?”
“Nothing of note. The cudgel found beside the body was definitely the murder weapon. He was hit from behind. In all likelihood he was dead within a few minutes; I doubt he even knew what happened.” Gibson reached for a scalpel and held it aloft. “Now, are you certain you want to stay for this?”
Sebastian beat a hasty retreat to the unkempt yard.
He stood for a moment, the afternoon sun beating down hot and golden on his shoulders. He was aware of the buzzing of flies, the distant cry of some street hawker, the faint but inescapable scent of death that haunted this place. A new idea was beginning to take shape in his mind, hazy still, but tantalizing in its promise.
The time had come, he decided, for him to pay a visit to the charming young Lady Foley.
Hero was in the library of the house on Berkeley Square, an ancient tome on the dissolution of the monasteries lying open on the table before her, when she heard the distant peal of the front bell. A moment later, Grisham appeared in the doorway.
“Excuse me, Miss Jarvis, but the Earl of Hendon is here to see you. I have taken the liberty of showing him to the drawing room.”
“Yes, thank you, Grisham,” she said, curiosity mingling with wariness as she rose to her feet and hurried up the stairs. She paused just outside the drawing room door to smooth her skirts, then entered with her hand outstretched. “Lord Hendon. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. May I offer you some tea? Or would you prefer a glass of wine?”
He arose from his seat near the fireplace, a big, barrel-chested man with a shock of white hair and the famous blue eyes so noticeably lacking in his heir. For years she had known him as one of Jarvis’s fiercest and most determined rivals; it struck her suddenly that she would need to begin to think of him as the father of the man who would be her husband.
“No, nothing, thank you,” he said gruffly. “I won’t keep you long.” He clasped her hand, and she was aware of his gaze hard on her face, as if he were searching there for something that might make sense of the incomprehensible. Then he released her and cleared his throat. “It’s no secret that your father and I have had our differences in the past, and I’ve no doubt we will continue to do so in the future. But, well, I’m here to assure you this coming marriage has my blessing, for all that.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, unexpectedly touched.
“I won’t deny it comes as something of a surprise,” he continued. “In fact—well, never mind that. The truth is, it’s long been my wish to see my son and heir settled in life before I die, and I am grateful that it has come to pass.”
Hero found herself smiling. “Even if you can’t help but wish he might have chosen to ally himself with a different house.”
An answering gleam shone in the Earl’s blue St. Cyr eyes. “I won’t deny that, no! But it doesn’t alter the fact that I wish you well, and I just wanted you to know that.”
Even if I don’t understand what the bloody hell it’s all about. The unsaid words hovered in the air between them.
She said, “Won’t you please reconsider and have a glass of wine?”
“No, no; I’ve a meeting with Castlereagh at the Foreign Office.” He reached into an inner pocket and drew forth a small trinket box. “I also wanted to give you this. It’s not much, but it belonged to my great-grandmother.”
Hero found herself holding an exquisite relic from a previous century, its enameled top worked in a style she’d never seen before. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I shall treasure it.”
“Yes, well . . .” He tightened his grip on his hat. “Until Thursday, then.”
After he had gone, she went to lean against the window frame, her gaze on the square below. She was still standing there, her thoughts far away, when she saw her father alight from his carriage and enter the house.
She was fully expecting him to seek her out and express his displeasure at her involvement in one of Devlin’s murder investigations. But when he entered the parlor a few moments later, his attention was obviously elsewhere.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, a sheaf of papers in one hand. “I’ve just come from a meeting with our man of business. I think you’ll be pleased with the provisions of the settlement. Not only has Devlin agreed to an annual jointure set at fifteen percent of your portion rather than the usual ten percent, but he has also insisted on including a number of provisions that are highly irregular, to say the least.”
“Such as?”
“Listen to this.” He flipped open the document. “‘It is hereby agreed between the parties that all the property of the said Miss Hero Jarvis shall be always and entirely at her own sole disposal and command the same as if she were still unmarried, and that she may, as often as she pleases, sell or dispose of the same or reinvest the money in any manner she pleases without any consent or concurrence being necessary or required from her husband.’ ”
Jarvis tossed the document on the table between them. “You have obviously treated him to one of your diatribes on the inequities of our marriage laws.”
“I have,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “May I see that?”
“Be my guest.” He watched as she read through the terms. It was not the usual thing, for a young woman to be encouraged to interest herself in her own marriage settlement. But then, he knew well that Hero was not like most women.
By the time she reached the end, she found herself prey to a variety of conflicting emotions. Devlin had told her, of course, that he intended to honor her wishes. But she had never expected him to be either so thorough or so generous. In that, she realized, she had underestimated him. It occurred to her that it was a habit she had with him, and she was honest enough to wonder why.
“Well,” she said, handing the papers back to her father with a composure she was far from feeling. “That is reassuring.”
“Reassuring? It’s madness. It’s only my confidence in your intelligence and strength of character that inspires me to agree to this.” He turned toward the door. “Although when I hear of your presence at a certain murder scene on Great Russell Street, I almost—almost, mind you—begin to doubt my wisdom.”
But Hero only laughed.
While not excessively large, the Undersecretary’s house on Half Moon Street was tastefully appointed, with gently aging Turkish carpets, gleaming rosewood furniture, and endless yards of lush silks, satins, and brocades. As expected, Sebastian found the Undersecretary not at home. He then asked for and was received by Lady Foley.
“Lord Devlin,” she said, greeting him with a charming smile. “Sir Hyde will be sorry he missed you. How may I help you?”
His gaze was so riveted by the harp positioned between the drawing room’s two front windows that it was a moment before he answered. “I was wondering if you’re familiar with a gentleman named Antoine de La Rocque,” said Sebastian, taking the delicate satin-covered chair she indicated.
“De La Rocque?” Lady Foley’s forehead crinkled with thought as she settled back on the sofa. “No, I don’t believe so. Is he an associate of Sir Hyde’s?”
“He may have been.”
“May have been?” Her smile faltered. “Dear me; has something happened to him?”
“I’m afraid so. You never heard Sir Hyde mention him?”
A wary look crept across her features. She might be relatively new to the diplomatic world, but she had evidently learned enough to know that all was
frequently not as it seemed and that she had need to tread carefully. “Not that I recall,” she said, the calloused fingers of one hand repeatedly smoothing the cloth of her muslin gown where it lay across the damask upholstery of her chair.
“But you did know Alexander Ross.”
“Oh, yes.” She gave a sad sigh. “Such a charming man. And so young to die. We often had him to dinner, you know. He was quite a favorite of Sir Hyde’s.”
“I’m curious: Would you happen to know Mr. Ross’s opinion of the proposed alliance between Russia and Great Britain?”
Foley might not confide his affairs to his young wife, but she obviously paid attention to dinner table conversation. “Why, yes,” she said. “He was most anxious to see us enter into an active alliance with the Czar. I gather the time he’d spent in St. Petersburg had left him with a sincere fondness for the country and its people. I remember that he was quite concerned that without such an alliance to stop him, Napoléon might even reach Moscow.”
“I believe Sir Foley too is an advocate of such an alliance.”
“But of course!” exclaimed Sir Foley’s wife. “It is very important.”
“Do you know if Ross had any dealings with Ambassador Ramadani?”
The sudden shift in topic seemed to confuse her. She looked at him blankly. “You mean, the representative from the Sublime Porte? I shouldn’t think so, no. I was under the impression Ross dealt mainly with the Baltic states and Russia.”
“And France, of course.”
“Yes.” Her head turned toward the door as a woman’s voice sounded from the hall.
“Just look at this charming cap!” said Lady Foley’s younger sister, appearing in the doorway with a pattern book in her hands. “I am determined to make it for my new nephew. And it’s no use saying he won’t be a nephew, because I just know—Oh.” She broke off, coloring fiercely at the sight of Sebastian. “I do beg your pardon! I’d no notion you had a visitor.”
Sebastian stretched to his feet. “Please, don’t mind me. I was just on the point of taking my leave.”
