by C. S. Harris
Sebastian ran his hand up and down her bare arm. “I suppose it’s possible ‘the nob’ killed Hayes himself and simply paid Poole to make the ex-Runner go away and shut up. But I doubt it.”
“So of the four men who had reason to worry that Hayes came back to London to kill them, one tried to have him murdered and another actually did kill him. Nicholas Hayes had a collection of ugly enemies.”
“That he did. It’s also rather ironic that whoever hired Poole is the one person we can be fairly certain didn’t actually kill Hayes. He only thinks he’s responsible.”
“Is it possible that Seaforth hired Poole, and then Poole killed him?”
“It’s possible, although I can’t imagine why Poole would have killed him.”
“Perhaps because Seaforth only paid half of what he’d promised,” suggested Hero.
“According to Mrs. Poole, Titus was laughing about how he’d suckered ‘the stupid nob’ into paying him. So while Poole only received half of what he’d been promised, he knew he hadn’t actually done anything to earn it.” Sebastian paused as the wind gusted up, throwing the rain against the house in hard sheets. “Although that’s not to say that Poole didn’t kill Seaforth—only that I don’t think the money was the reason.”
She propped herself up on one elbow so she could see him better. “Now that you know Titus Poole didn’t kill Hayes, the alibis of your suspects become more important, don’t they? Didn’t Seaforth say he spent the afternoon at his club before going to the Regent’s reception for the Allied Sovereigns?”
“He did. And Lovejoy confirmed it. Which means that unless the Earl somehow managed to leave and come back without anyone at White’s noticing, it’s unlikely that he was responsible for the sickle in Nicholas Hayes’s back. As for LaRivière, he wasn’t only at the reception. He even dined with the Regent—as did Sir Lindsey, according to his wife. But given the timing of the murder, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that either man could have worked in a quick trip to the tea gardens before going to Carlton House.”
“Gibson did say it’s unlikely the killer had much blood on him.”
“He did.”
“What about Brownbeck?”
“Brownbeck refused to give any account of his movements that day, and it’s hard to ask Lovejoy to look into the man without giving away Lady Forbes’s secrets.”
“So he could have done it.”
“He could have.”
“Lady Forbes had her abigail with her in Hatchards when she spoke to Hayes. It’s possible the woman overheard them making the assignation and told Forbes. But she also could have told her mistress’s father. I wouldn’t be surprised if Katherine Forbes has had the same abigail since she was Miss Kate Brownbeck.”
“Now that’s something I hadn’t considered,” said Sebastian, thrusting his splayed fingers through the heavy fall of Hero’s dark hair to draw it away from her face. “I think I might take another trip up to Somer’s Town tomorrow.”
Her gray eyes shimmered in a sudden pulse of lightning. “Why?”
“I want to talk to that gardener whose sickle somehow or other ended up in Nicholas Hayes’s back.”
“Surely you don’t think he’s responsible?”
“No. But I’ve been thinking about that testimony he gave at the inquest—how he said he’d been cutting grass in the clearing and didn’t realize he’d left his sickle until he found it missing the next morning.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Not exactly. I suspect that by the time Nicholas’s body was discovered near the west boundary wall, that gardener knew damn well he’d forgotten his sickle. Only for some reason he didn’t want to admit it. And I want to know why.”
* * *
Friday, 17 June
The next morning dawned overcast and chilly, with a flat white light that made the day feel dreary and vaguely depressing.
“I know it ain’t really cold,” said Tom as they drove through gloomy, rain-drenched streets. “But it feels cold.”
“It’s cold,” said Sebastian as a fine, miserable mist hit them in the face.
* * *
Bernie Aikens was up on a ladder, tying in the arching new-growth canes of the roses on an arbor near the tea gardens’ central ornamental pond. The rows of climbing roses were covered with fresh green leaves and thick with swelling buds only just beginning here and there to burst into blooms of soft pink and a white so pearlescent as to almost glow in the gloom of the cloudy day. The smell of wet vegetation and damp earth and the sweet perfume of the roses hung heavy in the air, and Aikens was whistling as he worked, the tune a vaguely familiar sea ditty Sebastian couldn’t quite place.
The gardener cast a quick glance toward Sebastian as he paused beside the nearest arch, then ignored him. But when Sebastian continued to quietly watch him, the gardener grew visibly self-conscious and finally said, “Can I help ye there, yer honor?”
“You’re Bernie Aikens, aren’t you?”
A wary look settled over the man’s weathered features. He had a long, bony face so lean that the structure of his prominent cheekbones and jaw was clearly visible beneath his sun-darkened skin. “Aye.”
“I’m Devlin.”
The man’s hands stilled at his work. He might not have remembered Sebastian’s face from the inquest, but the name had obviously stuck with him. He stood motionless on the ladder, his hands now gripping its sides, his gaze fixed on nothing in particular in the distance.
“I mean you no harm,” said Sebastian quietly, watching him.
Aikens sniffed. “Yer here ’cause of that dead man, are ye?”
“Yes.”
“I said everything I got t’ say at that inquest. Don’t know nothin’ else.”
Sebastian tipped his hat back on his head. “I’ve been wondering if your ability to recall that day might have been hampered by the stress of testifying at an inquest. It’s a shocking thing, murder. It can make it difficult for a man to remember the exact sequence of events.” Sebastian paused. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Aye,” said the gardener, the big bones of his jaw flexing beneath the skin.
“I’m told you’re a good, reliable gardener, a responsible man.” It wasn’t true, of course; Sebastian knew nothing about Aikens beyond his own observations. “That kind of man tends to check his tools and make certain they’re clean and in good order before he puts them away for the day. So I’m wondering if perhaps you actually realized you’d left your sickle in that clearing earlier than you thought when you were trying to remember things at the inquest. Now, some men might simply shrug and put off retrieving a tool until the next morning. But a responsible man like yourself wouldn’t do that, would he, Mr. Aikens? That kind of man would go back right away.”
Aikens stared out across the rose garden to where a couple of crows were pecking at a section of recently turned earth. When the silence stretched out, Sebastian said, “About what time was it when you reached the clearing?”
For a moment, Sebastian thought his gambit had failed. But Bernie Aikens was obviously a man with a conscience, and the lie he’d told at the inquest must have been weighing heavily upon his soul. He leaned his body into the ladder and brought up both hands to swipe them down over his face and cover his mouth. “I don’t know what time it was, exactly,” he said, his voice half-muffled by his hands. “We start picking up and puttin’ stuff away an hour before closing time, so it was about then.”
“And Nicholas Hayes was already dead by the time you arrived at the clearing?”
Aikens nodded and swallowed hard.
“What did you do?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could somehow block out the bloody vision that he must be seeing over and over again in his mind. “I didn’t know what to do. At first, all I could think about was just grabbing me sickle and gettin’ out of t
here. But I realized quick enough that’d be a mistake. I mean, what if somebody’d seen me with that bloody sickle and thought I was the one who’d killed the fellow?”
You’d have been hanged, thought Sebastian. But all he said was “So what did you do?”
Aikens swallowed. “Nothin’. I jist turned around and walked away. I was shakin’ so bad, I was afraid me legs was gonna give out beneath me.”
“Did you see anyone else in that part of the gardens?”
“No. No one. I was walkin’ fast, trying to get as far away as I could, and it was late enough that the gardens was already startin’ to empty—folks know we close early on Thursdays. The only person I seen in that part of the shrubbery at all was Mrs. Bowers.”
“Who’s she?”
“A milliner. Comes here often, she does, which is how I happen to know her.”
Sebastian took a breath, and for a moment he was seeing not dripping trees and a heavy gray sky but an aging widow with a bruised neck lying dead on a stone slab. “A milliner?”
“Aye. Heard she was found murdered herself just the other day. I’m tellin’ ye, the streets has gotten right dangerous, they have. I mean, who’d want to kill some old widow woman who never done anybody any harm?” Bernie Aikens turned his head to look directly at Sebastian as if earnestly seeking an answer to his question. “Who’d do that?”
Chapter 54
M rs. Bowers?” said Paul Gibson, staring at Sebastian. The surgeon was in his favorite pub, sitting on one of the high-backed benches and eating a plate of roast beef when Sebastian tracked him down. “Why do you want to know about her?”
Sebastian slid onto the bench opposite him. The day was so dark and cloudy that the pub had its oil lamps lit against the gloom. “Because I think the same man who killed Nicholas Hayes also murdered her.”
Gibson’s jaw sagged and he stopped chewing, his eyes widening. Then he swallowed, hard. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“But . . . why would he?”
“For the same reason he killed Irvine Pennington: because she saw him that evening.”
“But . . . how would he even know who she was? Dozens of people must have seen him at the gardens that night. What’s he going to do? Kill them all?”
Sebastian turned to order a pint, then laid his forearms on the scarred old tabletop and leaned into them. “According to the gardener whose sickle ended up in Hayes’s back, Mrs. Bowers was wandering around the western shrubbery that evening. Seems she was one of the gardens’ regulars, which is how the gardener happened to know who she was.”
Gibson frowned with the effort of memory. “At the inquest, the gardener said he left that area around midday.”
“That’s what he said. But the truth is, he realized just before closing time that he must have left his sickle in the clearing and went back for it. That’s when he saw Mrs. Bowers.”
“And the killer? Did the gardener see him?”
Sebastian shook his head. “He says the only person he saw was Mrs. Bowers—and Hayes, of course, with the sickle in his back.”
“If he lied at the inquest, he could be lying to you.”
“He could be, but I doubt it.” Sebastian leaned back to let the young barmaid set his ale on the table before him. “Mrs. Bowers was killed on Saturday?”
“Friday night.”
“Our killer moved fast, didn’t he? He took care of Pennington in the morning and then Mrs. Bowers that night. I’m glad no one else saw him.”
“No one that you know about,” said Gibson. “It’s not like there was anything obvious linking Mrs. Bowers to Hayes.”
“True.” Sebastian paused to take a long, deep drink. “If I remember correctly, she was strangled with a strap, wasn’t she?”
“She was. From behind. She was a small woman and arthritic, so it wouldn’t have been too difficult a thing for someone to manage.” He paused. “The inquest concluded she was murdered by footpads. Her earrings and wedding ring were missing, remember?”
“A thief could have come along and robbed her body. Or the killer could have taken them himself to make it look like a robbery.”
Gibson took another bite of his roast beef, chewed, and swallowed. “If that’s true, then your murderer used three different weapons in his little killing spree: a sickle, a knife, and a strap. A knife was used twice—once on Pennington and then again on Seaforth—although I’m not convinced it was the same knife. And while Pennington was stabbed multiple times, your killer got the Earl on the first try.”
“Are you suggesting we could be looking for two different murderers?”
“It’s possible, although it’s also possible your killer simply aimed better the second time he used a knife. One assumes it’s easier to be more exact with that sort of thing when you do your killing on a deserted street at night.”
“You’ve finished Seaforth’s autopsy?”
“I have. The cool, damp weather has calmed everyone’s tempers enough that I’ve finally been able to get a few things done. Not that there was much to see with him. He was stabbed in the back with a dagger and then presumably dragged into the mews.” Gibson cut another slice of beef. “So what does all this tell you?”
“It tells me that Nicholas Hayes’s killing was, in all likelihood, impulsive. The killer either flew into a rage and grabbed the sickle because it just happened to be lying there, or he’d been wanting to kill Hayes, saw an opportunity, and decided to take it. Hayes might have been sick, but he was a tall man and still in the prime of his life. A man like that wouldn’t be easy to strangle, and the killer probably didn’t have a dagger on him. It’s not something most people carry. “
“Unless they’re carrying a sword stick.”
“True.”
Gibson was silent for a moment, his roast beef forgotten. “Your killer must have gone home that night, thought about anyone and everyone who could possibly link him to Hayes’s murder, and then set about deliberately eliminating them—this time making certain he had a more appropriate implement with him. What a charming fellow.”
“He was desperate. His killing of Hayes was messy, dangerous, and probably unpleasant. But this killer isn’t a stupid man. He recognized that what he’d done was a rash act that left him vulnerable. So he decided to fix it by killing the two people he knew could tie him to the tea gardens that night. And then he killed Seaforth too, perhaps because he was afraid the Earl could also somehow identify him.” Sebastian paused. “Except that he was wrong when he thought his little killing spree would fix his vulnerability, because by killing Mrs. Bowers he’s given us a way—maybe—to find him. What do you know about her?”
“Not a great deal. Adele is her name—Mrs. Adele Bowers. I’m told she was a milliner up until maybe ten years ago, when her eyesight started to go and the arthritis in her hands got so bad, she couldn’t keep making hats. She was living with her daughter at the time she was killed. That’s who we released the body to—the daughter. Or, rather, to the daughter’s neighbor.”
“Do you recall the daughter’s name?”
“Aye, thanks to the fact that she was named after her mother and has never married: Miss Adele Bowers, of Charles Street.”
* * *
Like her mother, the younger Adele Bowers was also a milliner, and kept a small shop just off Oxford Street. It was a respectable area, and the hats in her shop were well made and fashionable even if they weren’t particularly inspired—the work of a milliner who was able to follow a pattern but lacked the creativity to give her work an innovative flair.
A woman somewhere in her thirties or forties, the younger Adele Bowers was built short like her mother but plump, with a round face and small dark eyes and unremarkable features. Her hair was a lifeless shade somewhere between dark blond and brown, and she wore it tucked up under a neatly starched cap. The cap, like her gown, was of u
nrelieved black as befitted a woman in deep mourning.
Sebastian’s presence in her shop obviously flustered the milliner greatly. She kept dropping curtsies and calling him “your lordship” or “my lord.” At no point did it seem to occur to her that she didn’t have to answer his questions; nor did she appear to give any thought to why he was there expressing interest in the death of a retired milliner. Her mother’s recent murder was currently consuming Adele’s life, so it didn’t strike her as odd that someone else should find it interesting.
“Sorry about the smell, your lordship,” she said, her hands fisting in the skirt of her black mourning gown. “The thing is, you see, we—or, rather, I suppose I should say ‘I’ since it’s just me now—live upstairs. And we—that is, my brother, Henry, and I—haven’t been able to bury Mama yet. So she’s still up there in our—or my—rooms. We’re hoping to have the funeral tomorrow night, God willing. But they’re ever so expensive these days, aren’t they? Funerals, I mean. And my brother, Henry, he says we can’t bury Mama without having two mutes at her funeral—two mutes, six bearers, and all those expensive ostrich plumes on the horses’ heads! So it’s taking more time than we expected to get everything together. Thank goodness for this cold snap we’re finally having.”
Delays of seven to ten days between a death and a funeral were not uncommon, mainly because of the need to organize—and pay for—an increasingly elaborate funeral. Many people also delayed funerals out of fear of burying an unconscious loved one alive, but in this case, that obviously wasn’t an issue.
Sebastian said, “Your mother was killed last Friday?”
Miss Bowers nodded vigorously and dropped another curtsy. “Last Friday night it was, my lord. She’d gone out the way she did every evening at about that time to take a short constitutional around Soho Square. Only, she never came back. After a while, I got to worrying. She was ever so regular in her habits, you see, and she was never gone long. So I sent Robert—that’s the neighbor’s boy, Robert Owens. He’s a good lad, Robert. Runs errands for us all the time, he does, and is ever so reliable.”
