Why Kill the Innocent

by C. S. Harris

  “Theoretically.”

  “I did not kill my wife,” said Ambrose, his lips pulling away from his teeth as he enunciated each word carefully. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? You think my debts somehow implicate me in her death. Well, believe me, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “Why the bloody hell should I believe you?”

  “Why?” Ambrose gave a ragged laugh. “Because only a fool would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “You don’t understand, do you? Oh, I had a couple of plays produced before Jane and I married, but their reception was only lukewarm. It wasn’t until I turned my hand to opera that I had real success. Lancelot and Guinevere opened a week after our first wedding anniversary.”

  “You’re saying—what? That Jane was your muse?”

  Ambrose gave a ringing laugh. “My muse? God, that’s rich. For all intents and purposes, Jane was Edward Ambrose. Oh, I wrote some of the libretto. But the music—that glorious music was all Jane’s. Not mine. Jane’s.”

  Sebastian watched the playwright bring the bottle to his lips and drink deeply, a rivulet of alcohol escaping to run down the side of his chin. “Did no one ever suspect?”

  Ambrose set down the bottle with studied care. “Her twin, James, knew the truth. She couldn’t hide it from him; he knew the instant he heard that first opera that the music was hers. She never told Christian, but I think he pretty much figured it out, too.” He brought up trembling hands to rake the disheveled hair from his face with splayed fingers. “So you see, I’m the last person who’d ever want Jane dead.”

  “Unless she threatened to leave you.”

  Ambrose froze with his elbows still spread wide, his gaze on Sebastian’s face.

  Sebastian said, “I can see a certain kind of man who owed his success—his very livelihood—to a woman becoming enraged if she threatened to leave him.”

  “Jane would never have left me.”

  “She would never leave you when walking out on her marriage meant losing her sons. But now? If she found out you were drowning in debt and spending the money she’d actually earned on a mistress? I can imagine her at least threatening to leave you. And I can see you flying into a rage and hitting her, the way you’d hit her so many times in the past. Only this time she struck her head on something when she fell and she didn’t get up again. And when you saw what you’d done, you wrapped her body in—what? A carpet? A blanket? An old greatcoat?—and carried her out into the snowy night to leave her in Shepherds’ Lane.”

  Ambrose stared at him, jaw slack, nostrils flaring with alarm. “No.”

  “The only thing I don’t understand is, why Shepherds’ Lane? Did you mistakenly think her lessons with Mary Godwin were on Thursdays rather than Fridays?”

  “I didn’t kill her, damn you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Ambrose might be drunk, but he wasn’t too drunk to know that men had swung on flimsy conjectures such as this. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “You . . . you were asking me the other day about the Rothschild girl Jane was teaching.”

  “Yes.” Sebastian frowned. “Why?”

  Ambrose leaned forward. “Jane had an aunt who was married to Sheridan—Richard Sheridan. Sheridan and I never exactly got along, but he came to see me last night. Spun some crazy tale about Rothschild and gold shipments to France, and wanted to know if Jane had ever talked to me about it.”

  “Had she?”

  “No. I’d never heard any of it before. But Sheridan was damnably upset about it all. I can tell you that. Went away muttering under his breath. I couldn’t catch most of it, but he was saying something like ‘I blame myself.’”

  “‘I blame myself’?”

  Ambrose nodded. “I did tell you I thought her strangely frightened by her last meeting with Rothschild. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “You did.”

  “So you’ll look into it?”

  “I will.” Sebastian pushed up from the table. “Why would Jane tell her late aunt’s husband what was frightening her but not her own husband?”

  Ambrose’s head fell back as he stared up at Sebastian. “What do I know of the government’s gold policy? Sheridan spent decades in Parliament.”

  “That he did,” said Sebastian, reaching for his hat.

  But Edward Ambrose only tipped his head and frowned, as if the larger implications of his statement eluded him.

  * * *

  Richard Sheridan was feeding scraps to a colony of stray cats in the noisome alley behind his house when Sebastian came to stand with one shoulder propped against a nearby corner.

  “How’d you find me?” asked the old man without looking up. He was wearing a tattered greatcoat, scuffed boots, and the same nightcap Sebastian had seen on him before. Gray stubble shadowed his unshaven face.

  “Your housemaid.”

  “Ah, Lizzy. She’s a treasure. Poor girl hasn’t been paid in months, but she won’t give up on us. Don’t know what we’d do without her.”

  Sebastian said, “Why didn’t you tell me your niece tangled with Rothschild over a shipment of smuggled gold?”

  “Been talking to Ambrose, have you?”

  “Yes.”

  Sheridan reached down to pet a gray tabby rubbing against his legs. “It all happened so many weeks ago, I frankly wasn’t even thinking about it when you were here before. I was focused on the last time I’d seen her. It wasn’t until after you’d gone I started wondering if Rothschild might have had a hand in what happened to the poor girl.”

  “I take it she overheard something in his house she wasn’t meant to hear?”

  The old man nodded. “It’s frightening, isn’t it? The simple, seemingly inconsequential decisions we make that can shift the entire course of our lives. She went to use the water closet after her lesson with the child and was coming down the stairs when she heard Rothschild consulting with one of his men. I suppose he thought she had gone. There was little in Jane’s world beyond music—and her boys, of course, when they were alive—so she didn’t know the background of what she was hearing. I suspect if Rothschild had simply smiled at her and let her go on her way, she probably wouldn’t have given it another thought.”

  “What did he do instead?”

  “He came the ugly—threatened her with all sorts of dire repercussions if she told anyone and then ordered her never to come near his house again.” Sheridan shook his head. “The man might be a wonder when it comes to manipulating markets and turning this nasty war to his advantage, but he’s a poor judge of people. He thought he was frightening her—and he did frighten her. But he also put up her back. She went home, thought about it all for a while, then came to ask me to explain it to her.”

  “So Rothschild knew about the gold guineas hidden aboard the Viking?”

  The old man gave a rude snort. “Of course he knew. He’s been smuggling gold out of England for years. Last December alone he shipped something like four hundred thousand guineas’ worth.”

  “Good God,” said Sebastian.

  The exportation of gold from Britain had been illegal for almost twenty years, ever since a disastrous run on gold stocks that took place shortly before the turn of the century. At the same time Parliament outlawed gold exports, they’d also made it illegal for the Bank of England to issue gold coins, forcing them to use only nonconvertible paper notes.

  “The problem is,” Sheridan was saying, “thanks to this blasted war, the value of the pound has been going down at the same time the price of gold has skyrocketed. It’s a situation ripe for gold speculators, and the most successful speculator of them all is Nathan Rothschild. He buys gold in London with devalued British banknotes and then sells it on the Continent at a profit of twenty percent or more.”

  “How . . . patriotic.”

  Sheridan huffed a sco
rnful laugh. “Oh, he’s that all right. And he’s not the only one, not by a long shot. Look at the Hopes’ bank! They helped arrange the bloody loans that enabled the United States to buy Louisiana from France, thus injecting millions of pounds into Napoléon’s war effort against us. How is that not treason? How? If there were any justice in this world, the lot of them would be tried and hanged. Instead, their descendants will be wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, while the poor women and children of this land starve in the streets and their menfolk are used for cannon fodder.”

  “Speculators always manage to profit from war.”

  “Yes, but this goes beyond mere speculation. What’s most disturbing about that gold shipment on the Viking is where it was headed. Rothschild used to send most of his gold to Amsterdam, Vienna, and Frankfurt. Now it’s all going to France, and the shipment on the Viking was only one of many he’s sent there this month. He has agents stationed at Gravelines to collect it and quickly send it directly to his brother in Paris.”

  “You told this to Jane?”

  The old man let out his breath in a pained sigh. “Some of it. I didn’t know it all at the time. I had to look into it a bit.”

  “Do you think Jane might have told someone else about what she heard?”

  “I did warn her not to.”

  “So why do you blame yourself for what happened to her?”

  Sheridan squinted over at him. “How do you know I do?”

  “Ambrose said he heard you mumbling to yourself as you walked away.”

  “Ah.” The old man rasped one hand across his beard-roughened chin. “I warned her not to tell anyone about what she’d heard, but it occurs to me that in the process of looking into it I may have accidently betrayed her. I mean, Rothschild knows I’m her uncle. What if someone told him I was poking around, asking questions? The man could easily have put two and two together.”

  “And had her killed?”

  Sheridan shook his head, although it was in uncertainty and confusion rather than in denial. “I don’t know. Would he do that, you think?”

  “You said he threatened her. Threatened her with what?”

  “He said if she breathed a word about what she’d heard, he’d break every bone in her body.”

  “That sounds pretty specific to me.”

  Sheridan looked up at him with troubled bloodshot eyes. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter 33

  The brightness of the sun bouncing off the snow-covered pavement hurt Sebastian’s eyes as he drove toward the City, guiding his horses through treacherously icy streets, past silent shops draped with glistening icicles and half-buried behind piles of shoveled snow. The sun might be out, but there was no warmth in it, and the few people he saw were bundled up and walking briskly. The air was cold and still, the smoke from the city’s chimneys rising straight up to smudge the blue sky. He could hear the squeaking crunch of the chestnuts’ hooves in the snow and the bark of a dog somewhere in the distance, the sound carrying with unnatural clarity. But all the normal racket and bustle were eerily absent, as if London were as frozen and unmoving as its river.

  He was only vaguely aware of the silent, snow-plastered facades sliding past, the classical pilasters, bow windows, and pediments of Mayfair giving way to the soot-grimed red brick of an earlier age as he neared the financial district. There was a heaviness in his heart, an ache that was part sorrow but also part anger. He felt an absurd, useless wish to reach back in time to that fateful Thursday afternoon and stop Jane Ambrose as she crossed the ancient bricked courtyard of Warwick House with the snow falling around her. If only he could call her name or somehow turn her away from whatever she was walking into.

  Where had she been headed that day? he wondered for what felt like the thousandth time. To see Rothschild? Why then, in such dreadful weather? How had she then ended up in Clerkenwell?

  Where, why, how?

  He understood Jane better now. But he knew he still wasn’t seeing her clearly. For she was more than a grieving mother mourning her lost children. More than a deeply unhappy wife married to a profligate, abusive man who claimed her glorious music as his own. She was also the kind of person willing to stand as a loyal friend to a troubled young princess.

  And through no fault of her own she had found herself in possession of dangerous information about powerful, ruthless men.

  * * *

  Nathan Rothschild was striding up the narrow medieval lane of St. Swithen, the hem of his worn greatcoat flaring in the bitter wind, when Sebastian fell into step beside him. The financier cast him one swift glance, then stared straight ahead. His pace never slackened despite the treacherous icy footing.

  Sebastian said, “I’ve discovered a few things since our last conversation.”

  “Oh? And do you expect me to applaud your cleverness?”

  “Not yet.”

  Rothschild grunted.

  Sebastian said, “According to my sources, you’ve been smuggling hundreds of thousands of guineas a month to the Continent for years, with most of it going to Napoléon’s old allies. But the gold that was found aboard the Viking on the third of January was bound for France itself. For bloody Paris.”

  “I take it this shocks you?”

  “On the fourth of January, you were discussing the Viking’s interception with one of your agents when you realized your daughter’s piano instructor was still in the house and had overheard everything you said. That is why you dismissed her. It’s also why she was afraid—because you threatened to break every bone in her body.”

  Rothschild drew up abruptly and swung to face him, pale eyes glittering with animosity. “You are dabbling in affairs about vhich you know nothing. Nothing!”

  “True. But I am slowly discovering more and more.”

  “Yet you still obviously have much to learn. Vhy do you think the Viking’s captain and crew were let go?”

  “For the same reason your crews are always released. You bribed someone.”

  The financier cast a quick look around the snowy street before leaning in close and lowering his voice. “The shipment aboard the Viking vas indeed headed for Gravelines, from vhence it would have been sent on to Paris. But vhat you do not seem to understand is that its ultimate destination vas Vellington’s army in the Pyrenees.”

  “Wellington?” Sebastian stared at him for one incredulous moment, then threw back his head and laughed.

  Rothschild’s jaw tightened. “You laugh, but it is true. That shipment vas simply the first part of six hundred thousand pounds bound for Vellington so that he may meet his payroll and pay the Spanish and French merchants for his army’s needs.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Rothschild gave a dismissive shrug. “Ask your own father. He is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after all. He vas there vhen the agreements vere signed.”

  “Then why all the lies?”

  “Vhy do you think? Transactions of this nature are complicated and require great secrecy. Do you seriously imagine that Napoléon vould allow the transfers to continue if he knew their ultimate destination?”

  Sebastian studied the financier’s homely, undecipherable face. “Did you kill Jane Ambrose?”

  “I did not.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “And you think that should concern me?”

  Rothschild started to turn away, but Sebastian put out a hand, stopping him. “What about Jarvis? Did you tell him that Jane Ambrose knew about the shipments to Paris?”

  “I did.”

  “So it’s possible he killed her.”

  Rothschild glanced toward the Exchange as the bells in the clock tower began to chime, ringing out “See, the Conquering Hero Comes.” “Many things are possible. All I know is, you are delaying me. Good day to you, sir.”

  And with that he strode off, a stout
, homely man in threadbare clothing with the morals of a cutpurse and wealth that could beggar kings.

  Chapter 34

  “It pains me to have to admit it,” said Hendon as he and Sebastian walked beneath the rows of snow-shrouded plane trees in St. James’s Park. “But Rothschild is telling the truth.”

  Sebastian looked over at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I wish I weren’t. You’ll never convince me there wasn’t another way to get that money to Wellington—a way that wouldn’t have included Rothschild pocketing nearly four times as much as Wellington is receiving.”

  “How much?”

  “You heard me. Rothschild is earning two million pounds out of the transaction.”

  “That’s obscene.”

  “Oh, yes. Without a doubt.” Hendon paused, his jaw tightening as he stared out over the snowy, undulating park. “The people of England are freezing and starving to death by the tens of thousands, and this man is being paid a premium to do what he’s been doing against our laws in secret for years. The entire damn family has grown enormously rich by financing both sides of this interminable war, and now Jarvis has given their London representative the opportunity to pretend he’s a patriot.” Hendon huffed a mirthless laugh. “If he were a patriot, he’d be transferring the money for nothing rather than making a fortune out of it.”

  “And Napoléon suspects nothing?”

  Hendon shook his head. “Napoléon may be a brilliant military strategist, but he has a soldier’s understanding of finance. He doesn’t believe in either paper money or government debt, and he’s convinced that a country’s economy is only strong when it has strong gold reserves. That’s why he’s been willing to allow his bankers to cooperate with London’s gold speculators. He’s convinced that Rothschild and those like him are weakening England.”

  “But they are, aren’t they?”