Why Kill the Innocent

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian thought about the other dangerous men who had moved through Jane’s life in those final weeks: Rothschild, Wallace, van der Pals. All commanded the resources that could have enabled them to learn of the long-standing connection between Jane and her brother’s childhood friend. And Sebastian wouldn’t put it past any of them to have killed Ambrose in a calculated maneuver to deflect suspicion away from themselves and onto the hot-tempered, radical young journalist.

  Or rather, have Ambrose killed, Sebastian reminded himself. The handsome Dutch courtier might conceivably do his own killing—and enjoy it. But with the exception of van der Pals, such men rarely did their own dirty work.

  He became aware of Maxwell watching him thoughtfully. The journalist said, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Not really. All I have at this point is conjecture. I’m still missing something—something that’s obviously vitally important. I wish I knew where the hell Jane went after she left the palace that last day, and why. You’re certain you have no idea where she might have gone?”

  Maxwell sucked in a deep breath that shuddered his chest, and the look of soul-scouring anguish on his face was so profound that Sebastian almost—almost—believed it genuine. “I—” Maxwell’s voice cracked, and he had to begin again. “I lie awake at night, trying to remember every little thing she said to me, something I might have overlooked—something that might explain what happened to her. But I can’t think of anything. I just can’t.”

  “Then it must have been something that came up unexpectedly.”

  “What?”

  But that was one more question to which Sebastian had no answer.

  Chapter 49

  “I spent some time out at Clerkenwell yesterday,” Alexi Sauvage told Hero as the two women walked the snowy paths of Berkeley Square. A large private garden the size of several city blocks, the square was maintained by the area’s residents and had a high fence of iron palings to keep out the riffraff.

  “How is Jenny Sanborn?” asked Hero, looking over at her friend.

  “As well as one might expect, I suppose. Although she wasn’t the only reason I went there. I was hoping the residents around Shepherds’ Lane might be more willing to open up to me than to Bow Street or his lordship.”

  “And?”

  Alexi shook her head, her flame-colored hair curling wildly in the moist air. “I couldn’t find anyone willing to admit they either knew Jane Ambrose or had seen her in the streets that day.”

  Hero stared off across the square’s ice-covered clusters of shrubs and soaring plane trees. With the rising temperatures, the snow was beginning to melt, filling the air with a chorus of drips and plops. It was warm enough that Hero withdrew one hand from the new black fur muff she’d taken to carrying and reached up to open the top clasp of her pelisse. “I have the most wretched, demoralizing feeling that we’re never going to figure out who killed her. That whoever took her life and left her in that lane for us to find will simply be free to go on living his life as if she’d never existed.”

  “I know,” said Alexi, her voice more troubled than Hero could remember hearing it. “We like to believe the world arcs toward justice—I suppose because it reassures us and makes us think there’s some sort of order to our existence. But what if we’re wrong? What if it’s all meaningless chaos and chance?”

  “Even if it is, that doesn’t mean justice isn’t worth striving for. Less inevitable, perhaps, but not impossible.” Hero paused, then added, “Hopefully.”

  Alexi gave a soft laugh. “Hopefully.”

  The sound of approaching footfalls drew Hero’s attention to a dense clump of shrubs that hid the path ahead, and for some reason she couldn’t have named she felt again that vague, uneasy sense of being watched that had troubled her before.

  “I think we should go,” she said, slipping her right hand back into her muff just as a fashionable man in a caped greatcoat and glossy high-topped boots came around the bend in the path. He drew up a moment as if in surprise, then sauntered toward them.

  “Ladies,” said Peter van der Pals, touching his tall beaver hat in a casual salute. “This is unexpected.”

  “Mr. van der Pals,” said Hero, inclining her head. “I didn’t know you lived in Berkeley Square.”

  He shifted his grip on the silver-headed walking stick he carried, bringing it up in a way that caught her attention. “I don’t.”

  “Ah. Unfortunately, this is a private garden.”

  He gave a slow, lazy smile that brought dimples to his cheeks and showed his even white teeth. “I know. And at this time of day all the neighborhood nursemaids have obligingly shooed their little charges home for tea, leaving it quite conveniently deserted.” With a flick of the wrist, he released his walking stick’s hidden stiletto and drew away the sheath. He was no longer smiling.

  “Mon Dieu,” whispered Alexi, taking a step back.

  The Dutch courtier kept his gaze on Hero. “I’m told his lordship is inordinately fond of his ridiculously tall bluestocking wife.”

  “So this is—what?” said Hero. “Revenge for some insult or imagined slight? Or merely a taunt?” She could hear the ragged sound of her own breathing as she let her left hand fall from her elegant fur muff and shifted its angle. She spoke loudly, hoping the combination of her voice and the hand warmer’s thick fur would deaden the telltale click as she carefully eased back the hammer of the small muff pistol she held hidden within it. “You have two intended victims but only one knife.”

  Van der Pals gave a ringing laugh that sounded genuinely amused. “Do you seriously think two women are capable of fighting off a man my s—”

  Hero squeezed the trigger.

  The loud report of the pistol shot echoed around the square, sending up a flurry of frightened pigeons that took flight against the darkening sky. A crimson stain bloomed around the neat hole in the chest of the courtier’s exquisitely tailored greatcoat. Hero saw his eyes widen, saw the features of his face go slack. For a moment he swayed, his hand clenching around the handle of his dagger. Then he pitched forward to land facedown in the snow, his arms flung out above his head, the knife falling beside him.

  Hero leapt to kick it beyond his grasp. “Is he dead?”

  Alexi knelt in the snow beside the still body. “Not yet. But he will be soon.”

  Hero sucked in a deep breath tainted with the stench of fresh blood and burning fur. “Good.”

  Alexi looked up at her. “Your muff is on fire.”

  “Drat,” said Hero, dropping the flaming fur into the melting snow. “I just purchased it.”

  * * *

  Sebastian arrived back at Brook Street to find Hero seated at his desk, once again cleaning her small muff gun.

  “I’ve shot Peter van der Pals,” she said calmly.

  “Dead?”

  She looked up, her eyes cold and hard, her hands admirably steady at their task. “Quite.”

  * * *

  Rather than contact the local public office, Hero had gone straight to her father, which was undoubtedly the wisest choice under the circumstances. By the time Sebastian arrived at Berkeley Square, night had long since fallen and Sir Henry Lovejoy was in attendance. But there were no constables, no staff from the nearest deadhouse. Sebastian recognized the men gathered around the courtier’s body as belonging to that shadowy network loyal to Jarvis and Jarvis alone.

  “His lordship has informed us there will be no inquest,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, his voice pitched low as Jarvis’s men lifted the dead body onto the shell they would use to carry the courtier to the Dutch ambassador’s residence.

  “Precisely how does his lordship plan to explain the Dutchman’s rather inconvenient death?”

  “He doesn’t intend to even try. It will be given out that van der Pals has been called home, and no one will know he left London in a box rather th
an by post chaise. The Dutch are most anxious to hush this up.”

  “I should think so,” said Sebastian. “Bit awkward, having your Prince’s boon companion try to kill a distant cousin of your betrothed.”

  “Thank heavens her ladyship had a pistol,” said Lovejoy, although there was something about the way he said it that made Sebastian suspect he found the idea of a viscountess carrying a muff gun and using it to shoot an assailant highly disturbing—even if it was fortuitous.

  Sebastian said, “She began carrying it several days ago, when she thought someone was following her.”

  “You think that was van der Pals?”

  “It must have been, surely?”

  Lovejoy’s eyes narrowed as one of Jarvis’s men kicked at the bloodstained snow, obscuring it. Soon there would be no trace of what had occurred here. “So van der Pals killed them all? First Jane Ambrose, then the Italian harpist, and finally Edward Ambrose? The man must have been mad.”

  “He was obviously a killer,” Sebastian said slowly. “But I’m not convinced he was responsible for all three deaths.”

  Lovejoy turned to look at him in surprise. “No? Why not?”

  It was a question Sebastian had been asking himself. By attacking Hero, Peter van der Pals had shown himself to be capable of plotting to coldly and deliberately take another person’s life. And he had a motive to kill each of the three victims: Jane because of her refusal to keep quiet about the rape; Valentino Vescovi for betraying Orange’s sexual tastes; and Edward Ambrose as an attempt to shift suspicion toward Liam Maxwell.

  And yet, somehow, it didn’t feel right.

  “I suspect van der Pals did kill Vescovi,” said Sebastian, choosing his words carefully. “But I’m not convinced he’s behind the deaths of either Jane Ambrose or her husband.”

  “No?” The magistrate was silent for a moment, his gaze on the mist drifting across the nearest streetlamp. Sebastian knew Lovejoy’s continuing but unavoidable ignorance of the palace intrigues swirling around Jane Ambrose’s death frustrated him. But when he spoke, all he said was “Did you hear that a section of the ice has given way on the Thames? Down near London Bridge. The three men who were on it when it broke free had to be rescued with some difficulty.”

  “That should be the end of the Frost Fair,” said Sebastian, remembering Liam Maxwell’s dire prediction from that afternoon.

  “One would think so. But I understand most are convinced the rest of the ice is still sound.”

  “It won’t be for long.”

  “No, it won’t be,” said Lovejoy, turning away. “But I suspect it’ll take someone getting killed before they’re willing to admit it.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Sebastian lay awake in bed and held his wife as she slept. She felt warm and vitally alive in his arms, her breath easing quietly in and out, her hair silky soft against his bare shoulder. And yet he had come so close to losing her—would have lost her if not for her foresight and quick thinking and unflinching courage.

  Death could come so quickly and unexpectedly. It was a knowledge that filled him with both terror and fury. Some of that fury was directed outward, toward Nathan Rothschild and Jarvis and the bloody royal houses of Hanover and Orange. But he was also angry with himself for his failure to unravel the dangerous, deadly tangle into which Hero had inadvertently stumbled that snowy night in Shepherds’ Lane. He wished he could believe the easy explanation, that Peter van der Pals had killed all three victims. But the niggling doubts remained.

  A subtle shift in Hero’s breathing told him she was no longer asleep. Glancing down, he saw her eyes wide and luminous in the night.

  She said, “You might be able to figure it all out better if you got some sleep.”

  He tightened his arm around her, hugging her closer. “Possibly.”

  “Why are you so convinced Peter van der Pals wasn’t Jane’s killer?”

  Sebastian ran his hand up and down her arm. “Part of it is because Vescovi’s murder looks like the work of a man who has killed before and knew precisely what he was doing—which is why I think the courtier was responsible. But Jane’s and Edward Ambrose’s deaths were”—he paused, searching for the right word, and finally settled on—“messy. And van der Pals was so bloody arrogant, so cocksure of the mantle of his Prince’s protection, that I find it difficult to believe he ever considered himself in serious danger of being charged with Jane’s murder. Which means he would have had no reason to kill Edward Ambrose in an effort to divert suspicion away from himself.”

  “So Ambrose killed his wife, the way you originally thought. And then Maxwell killed him in revenge.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Consider this: We suspected Maxwell was in love with Jane, but the only reason we know for certain it’s true is because her brother told me. Why would he do that? What kind of man deliberately casts suspicion on his best friend?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t realize what he was doing.”

  “Oh, he knew. We’re talking about someone who uses words for a living.”

  “So perhaps he suspects Maxwell himself, but felt it was inappropriate to say so.”

  “Now, that’s possible.”

  “But?” said Hero, watching him.

  “This afternoon when I spoke to Lord Wallace at Brooks’s, he mentioned Somerset’s name as someone who would publish the Princess’s letters to Hesse if he had them.”

  “Except Christian Somerset no longer has a newspaper,” said Hero.

  “No. But he does write for various journals. And I find it interesting that out of the hundreds of journalists and politicians in this city, Wallace named only two: Somerset and Brougham. He even said he and Somerset had discussed various ways of scuttling the Orange alliance.”

  “So maybe Wallace was trying to cast suspicion onto Somerset and away from himself.”

  “Maybe,” Sebastian acknowledged. “It’s also possible that I’m simply chasing after unnecessary tangents. It’s even conceivable that Maxwell accidently killed Jane in a lover’s quarrel and then murdered Ambrose when the man accused him of it.”

  She pushed herself up on her elbow so she could see his face better. “But you don’t think so?”

  He thrust the fingers of one hand through the heavy fall of her dark hair, drawing it back from her face. “Jane went to see her brother ten days before she died, on a Monday. He says she was there to bring him some ballads for a collection he’s publishing.”

  “Ten days?” She gave a faint smile. “Where is your calendar when we need it?”

  “I stared at it enough to know exactly which Monday that was—it’s the same day Princess Charlotte told Jane that the Hesse letters had been stolen from Portsmouth. The next day, Tuesday, Jane went out to ask the Princess of Wales about the letters. And the day after that, Wednesday, she paid a visit to Lord Wallace.”

  “You think the real reason she went to see her brother that Monday was to ask if he had the letters?”

  “The timing is suggestive, isn’t it? According to Liam Maxwell, Jane was worried that her brother had once overheard her talking about the Hesse letters. Somerset claimed he hadn’t. But she must have had a reason to suspect him, if she went to see him that day.”

  “The timing could be a coincidence.”

  “It could be,” he agreed.

  “It also wouldn’t explain why Christian Somerset would kill her. His own sister? Over a packet of letters?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t murder. Maybe it was simply manslaughter. An accident.”

  “But why would she suddenly decide on that particular Thursday to walk across London—in a snowstorm—and visit her brother again?”

  “That I don’t have an answer to at all.”

  Hero said, “I suppose something could have happened as Jane was leaving War
wick House that we don’t know about—either then or shortly afterward.”

  It occurred to Sebastian there was another possibility: that Jane Ambrose had never actually left Warwick House alive that day. That after Miss Kinsworth saw her crossing the courtyard, Jane could have turned around and gone back into the house for some unknown reason. But he wasn’t quite ready to voice that suspicion aloud.

  Hero folded her arms on his chest and smiled down at him. “You know, sleep might help.”

  He hauled her up so that her slim, naked body lay long against his and took her mouth with a whispered “I have a better idea.”

  Chapter 50

  Saturday, 5 February

  The next morning Sebastian went in search of John Fisher, the officious little Bishop who served as Preceptor to Princess Charlotte. As far as they knew, Fisher was the last person—apart from her killer—to have spoken to Jane Ambrose before she died. He claimed they had merely exchanged “pleasantries.” But it struck Sebastian as conceivable that their conversation might have been more important than he’d realized.

  It was snowing by the time Sebastian reached Warwick House, big, wet, windblown flakes that melted quickly when they hit his face. As he passed through the old house’s weathered gate, he found himself thinking about the day Jarvis had sent his carriage to collect Jane Ambrose and convey her to his chambers at Carlton House, a distance of—what? Five or six hundred feet? But Sebastian understood only too well the significance of Jarvis’s gesture. By doing so, he had made certain that Jane would never again walk through this gate without remembering the ominous sight of the powerful man’s carriage awaiting her. She could never again have come to Warwick House without being inescapably aware of the palace’s looming presence and the very real threat Jarvis posed to her. And that suggested to Sebastian that when Jane left Warwick House for the last time on the day of her death, she had not lingered in Stone Cutters’ Alley.