by C. S. Harris
“What do you want?” demanded the banker, throwing Sebastian an angry sideways glance.
“The problem with lying in response to questions about a murder,” said Sebastian pleasantly, “is that it tends to make you look guilty.”
Brownbeck kept walking. “Am I supposed to somehow divine what you’re talking about?”
“Sir Lindsey Forbes, the Count de Compans, and the Earl of Seaforth. It turns out that all three men knew by the beginning of last week that Hayes was in England, and they knew because you’d told them.”
Brownbeck’s face was a transparent study in his shifting thought processes as he first registered surprise at the discovery of his lie, then hovered over the possibility of denying everything before finally deciding to bluster forward in an attack. “I did not kill Nicholas Hayes, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“I don’t believe you did. Men like you don’t usually do their own dirty work; they get others to do it for them. So you told Nicholas Hayes’s enemies that he was back in the country, presumably in the hopes that one of them would quietly kill him.”
Brownbeck made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. “Who thinks like that? I told them about Hayes because they needed to know.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the man was a dangerous murderer, in case you’ve forgotten!”
“So why not inform the authorities and have him arrested?”
Brownbeck cast him a scornful glance. “And have the past dredged up again for everyone to titter about? Risk having my daughter’s name dragged through the mud? It’s been bad enough with him being found dead. Can you imagine the papers if he’d been taken alive?”
“True. But surely that possibility pales to insignificance if you genuinely believed Hayes had come back here to kill someone. Someone such as, say, you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would the man want to kill me?”
“Because you let his baby die.”
Brownbeck drew up abruptly and cast a swift look about before saying in a low, icy voice, “I didn’t ‘let’ the child die. How was I to know that woman was in the habit of dosing the infants in her care with opium?”
Jesus, thought Sebastian. He’d heard of venal foster mothers giving their helpless young charges opium to keep them quiet and dull their hunger. Most of them simply quit eating and died. No wonder Nicholas hated the East India Company’s enthusiastic investment in the production of opium. Aloud, he said, “You’d have known if you’d bothered to check into the woman before handing the infant over to her. You obviously didn’t care.”
“Of course I didn’t care! It was bad enough I had to pay to have someone take the thing. If you think I shed any tears over its demise, you’re mistaken. The brat is better off dead.”
For a moment, Sebastian could only stare at him. “That ‘brat’ was your daughter’s only child. Your grandchild.”
Brownbeck set his jaw. “I make no claims to it. Begotten in sin, fathered by a vicious murderer, born into infamy! What would I want with such a disgraceful legacy?”
The hot wind gusted up, whistling down the narrow street and buffeting them with the reek of horse droppings and urine and dust. Sebastian said, “How did you know Hayes had returned to England?”
“I saw them—him and that child he presumably brought back from China with him.”
“Where?”
“Near Russell Square. They were walking down the street as I was exiting a friend’s house. Hayes didn’t see me.”
“But you recognized him? After nearly twenty years?”
“I have an excellent memory for faces. He was older, obviously, but his appearance hadn’t altered that much. And the ways in which he had changed simply meant he’d grown to look more like his father. I followed them a ways—discreetly, of course—just to make certain. But as soon as I heard his voice, there was no doubt in my mind.”
“What was he doing when you saw him?”
“I told you, simply walking down the street with the boy.”
“And then you told Forbes, Seaforth, and LaRivière?”
“Not right away. I thought about it a day, and then I told them. As I said, I thought they deserved to know so that they could be on their guard.”
“Who else did you tell?”
Brownbeck looked puzzled. “Who else would I tell?”
“You weren’t tempted to hire someone to take care of the problem for you?”
“No, I was not. And even if I were, do you seriously think I’d know how to go about finding someone like that?”
“Well, you do write extensively about London’s criminal underworld.”
“I write about the criminal class. I don’t know any of its members.”
“So you’re saying you don’t actually know what you’re writing about?”
“One does not need to be intimately acquainted with vermin to know they must be exterminated.” Brownbeck’s voice grew aggrieved as he launched into one of his favorite themes. “What this country needs is a proper police force to patrol the streets, bring criminals to justice, and safeguard public morality. We need a police force, and we need a series of severe prisons along the lines of the Panopticon system advocated by my friend Jeremy Bentham.”
“I suspect we’ll eventually get both, God help us all.” Sebastian watched a dog sniff at something in the gutter, then brought his gaze back to the plump, sweaty face of the man beside him. “So, which of the three men do you think killed Hayes? Forbes, Seaforth, or LaRivière?”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s more than obvious that Hayes was killed by some underworld acquaintance of his.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?”
“Because anyone else would have had more sense than to leave the body on public display in the tea gardens, of course.”
“Perhaps they hired someone who wasn’t very good at his job,” suggested Sebastian.
Brownbeck made a derisive sound with his tongue against his teeth. “The problem with you, Lord Devlin, is that you refuse to accept the obvious. The man was known to consort with thieves and low, lewd women. No doubt he quarreled with one of them and finally paid the ultimate price for his infamy.”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Not simply possible, but probable.”
Sebastian glanced up as the wind banged a loose shutter somewhere overhead. “Did you know Forbes had seen Hayes in China?”
Brownbeck hesitated a moment before answering, as if considering his response. “As it happens, I did, yes. Perhaps that’s why I recognized Hayes so easily when I chanced to see him by Russell Square—I already knew he was alive. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
Brownbeck’s lips tightened. “That’s the trouble with young men today. They’re bored, aimless, and restless, with nothing to do besides indulge in idle curiosity.”
“Oh, it’s not idle,” said Sebastian with a smile that seemed only to irritate the banker even more. “Believe me, it’s not idle at all.” He politely tipped his hat. “You’ve been a great deal of help. Thank you.”
And then he walked away, leaving Brownbeck scowling after him, the papers beneath his arm snapping in the hot, dry wind.
* * *
Sir Lindsey Forbes was down at the East India Company’s docks, talking to a weathered, white-whiskered sea captain, when he became aware of Sebastian watching him. The growing wind whipped at the gray water and seagulls screeched overhead as the East India Company man continued his conversation. But he kept glancing in Sebastian’s direction. After a moment, he nodded to the captain and turned to walk up to where Sebastian stood with one shoulder propped against the corner of a saltpeter shed, his arms crossed at his chest.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Forbes demanded.
Sebastian pushed away from the wall. “You
lied to me.”
Forbes stiffened. It was considered a grave insult to accuse a gentleman of lying. “I beg your pardon?”
“When you said you didn’t know Nicholas Hayes had returned to England. Turns out, you learned of it from both Lord Seaforth and Theo Brownbeck.”
Forbes heaved a heavy sigh, like a weary soul disappointed in the foibles of his fellow men. “Setting aside for a moment the extraordinary rudeness of one man prying into another’s life, I fail to understand what makes you think I owe you an honest recital of the minute details of my existence.”
“Not all of it—only those parts directly related to the murder of Nicholas Hayes.”
“Has it occurred to you that your obsession with that wretch’s demise verges on the unhealthy? Eighteen years ago, a wayward young man committed an atrocious murder and was sentenced to death for it. Unfortunately, the authorities in a paroxysm of unwarranted mercy commuted his sentence to transportation for the term of his natural life. He was then dispatched to the antipodes, where by rights he should have perished. Except that by some oversight on the part of providence, he managed to escape and eventually worked his way back to England, where he presumably was set to recommence his life of crime when his miserable existence was finally brought to an abrupt end.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
A loud clatter jerked Forbes’s attention to where some men were loading a lighter. “There is no other way. The appeal of such a tawdry tale to the more unscrupulous elements of the press is obvious, but even they have finally moved on. Why you continue to involve yourself in matters that are really none of your affair is beyond me.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the East India Company man’s smooth, lying face. “Did you tell anyone else that Nicholas Hayes had returned?”
“I did not. Whom would I tell?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Forbes’s deceptively soft blue eyes narrowed as if with thought. But Sebastian was beginning to understand just how much of everything this man said and did was for show. “I’ll admit I did consider warning McHenry,” said Forbes. “But in the end I realized it was unnecessary.”
Whatever Sebastian had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You mean Hamish McHenry?” It came out more sharply than he’d intended.
“Yes. Why? Do you know him?”
“How do you know him?”
“As it happens, I met him in India, although I understand he’s in England at the moment.”
“What made you think he might need to be warned of Nicholas Hayes’s reappearance?”
Forbes gave a negligent shrug. “I suppose because he was involved with Chantal de LaRivière himself at one time. That, and because he worked in the Foreign Office with Crispin Hayes.”
“He did? Both of them?”
Forbes’s lips curled into their habitual, smug little smile. “They did indeed. I understand it was shortly after Crispin’s death that McHenry decided to buy a pair of colors. I always thought there was more to that tale than met the eye, but unlike you, I am not given to tilting at other people’s windmills.”
“So why didn’t you warn McHenry?”
“I probably would have done so, except I haven’t seen the man recently. And then Hayes was dead, so there was no point.”
“And in the midst of all this ruminating, it never occurred to you to notify Bow Street?”
“It did, obviously. However, I decided against it. And to forestall your inevitable next question, I decided against it because I happen to value my family’s privacy and had no desire to see the unpleasantness of the past paraded in public again for the amusement of the hoi polloi.”
“Hayes tried to kill you on the waterfront in Macau. You weren’t concerned that he might try again?”
“As it happens, he caught me unawares that day in Macau. After all, I thought the man dead and had no anticipation of encountering him in China, of all places. But forewarned is forearmed, as they say.” The smug little smile was back. “I have every confidence in my ability to defend myself.”
Sir Lindsey Forbes was a much smoother liar than Brownbeck. He’d obviously had years and years of practice at it. Sebastian said, “Did you tell your wife Nicholas Hayes was still alive?”
The smile faded from the man’s features, leaving him looking considerably less pleasant. “You leave my wife out of this.”
Sebastian gazed beyond him, to where a man with a barrel was selling ale to the dockworkers. “Odd, don’t you think, that four men—you, Brownbeck, Seaforth, and the Count de Compans—all knew that Nicholas Hayes was in England, and yet not one of you ostentatiously upright, law-abiding pillars of society felt moved to inform the appropriate authorities?”
“As I said, I am not the type to constantly be busying myself about other people’s affairs.”
“You might not be. But Brownbeck has made it his life’s work—that and amassing a fortune, of course.”
“Then I suggest you direct your questions toward that worthy,” said Forbes with the faintest of bows. “And now you must excuse me.”
Sebastian watched the East India Company man turn back toward the water, the breeze off the river lifting the tails of his finely tailored coat as he walked past the sweating, ragged dockworkers and seamen. The vague outlines of a possibility were beginning to occur to Sebastian, an idea so outlandish that he wanted to immediately discard it.
And yet he couldn’t.
Chapter 46
S ebastian had left Tom with the curricle beside the jumble of sheds, shops, hovels, and low taverns that trailed away from the docks toward East India Company Road. The docklands were busy this time of year, for June was the month for the return of the great East Indiamen with their deep draughts and precious cargoes of tea and spices, silks and saltpeter. The wind gusting off the big artificial basins was cool and damp, the air heavy with the scent of wine and cinnamon, and so absorbed was Sebastian in his contemplation of the various possibilities suggested by that day’s revelations that he almost missed the men who fell into step behind him as he neared his curricle.
They did not strike him as being either seamen or lumpers.
His hand going to the double-barreled pistol he’d slipped into his pocket that morning, Sebastian met Tom’s eye and then swung around. “Have something you wish to say to me, do you, gentlemen?”
There were four of them, their weathered faces sun-darkened and unshaven, their clothing the tattered remnants of the uniforms of men who’d fought for years against Napoléon. The clothes could have been stolen or bought secondhand, but Sebastian didn’t think so. He knew ex-soldiers when he saw them—which meant the men now ranged against him were exponentially more dangerous than your typical dockland ruffians.
They drew up abruptly, their widening eyes and slack jaws betraying a shattered expectation of remaining undetected until they were ready to move in for the kill. But these men were not easily deterred. One of them—a tall, gangly fellow with a sergeant’s chevrons on his stained, ragged red coat—exchanged a quick, significant look with his fellows and laughed. “Wot? Us?”
Sebastian drew the pistol from his pocket and pulled back the first hammer with an audible click. “Just out for a stroll, are you?”
“Ain’t no law agin that, now, is there?” said the sergeant.
“Strolling? No.”
Sebastian was aware of Tom nudging the horses forward to bring them closer. He didn’t expect the situation to escalate. The men would have to be mad to continue an assault against a victim now armed and ready for them.
But the men were obviously desperate. They’d faced death often enough in the past for far less pay than they’d doubtless been promised by whoever had hired them to kill Sebastian. He saw the sergeant’s sideways glance and quick jerk of the chin, and said, “Bloody hell,” as they rushed him.
His first bulle
t took the sergeant high in the chest, spinning him around and sending him sprawling. Sebastian thumbed back the second hammer and shot another man in the throat. Then, dropping the flintlock, he yanked his knife from the sheath in his boot.
The two surviving assailants broke and ran.
Sebastian threw a quick glance at his tiger. “You all right?”
The boy was staring at him openmouthed. He swallowed and said, “Aye, gov’nor. Who are they?”
Sebastian went to check first one, then the next of the downed men, looking for weapons. They weren’t dead yet, but they soon would be. In the coat of the second man, he found a bloodstained letter written in a woman’s hand that began, Dearest Richard, I can’t begin to express to you the excitement with which I await your long-anticipated, safe return home. . . .
“Damn,” said Sebastian, swiping the back of one gloved hand across his sweaty forehead. Damn, damn, damn.
* * *
“Do you think Forbes set them after you?” asked Sir Henry Lovejoy as he and Sebastian walked along the terrace of Somerset House.
“Perhaps. Although the site of the attack could simply have been coincidental. The truth is, they could have been hired by any one of the four men who seem to be implicated in all of this.”
Lovejoy stared out over the wind-whipped river. “Four men. I can’t believe four men knew Hayes was in London and yet not one told the authorities.”
“LaRivière still isn’t back from Oxford, so I haven’t had a chance to confirm it with him. But I can’t see any reason for both Brownbeck and Seaforth to lie about that when they seem to be telling the truth about the rest. So yes, I’d say four: Brownbeck, Forbes, Seaforth, and LaRivière.”
Lovejoy shook his head as if still finding the information too difficult to absorb. “The involvement of Seaforth and LaRivière I understand. But Theo Brownbeck? Sir Lindsey Forbes? What have they to do with Nicholas Hayes?”
