Sebastien St. Cyr 08 - What Darkness Brings

by C. S. Harris

  “Russell Yates has been arrested for the murder of an Aldgate diamond merchant.”

  She kept her features carefully composed. She was very good at hiding what she was thinking. “And did he do it?”

  “He says he didn’t. I believe him.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is, if I don’t, he’ll hang.”

  She reached for her hat and turned away, her attention all for her reflection in the mirror as she settled the velvet-trimmed confection on her head. Like most of London society, Hero knew only too well that the woman who was now Yates’s wife had once been Sebastian’s mistress. She knew, too, that something had happened between them the previous autumn, something that ended in Kat Boleyn’s marriage to Yates and sent Sebastian into a brandy-soaked downward spiral from which he had with difficulty only recently emerged. But that was all she knew, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to tell her the rest.

  He said, “This is something I must do.”

  He watched while she positioned her hat just so, then pivoted slowly to face him again. “Are you concerned that I might object? Pitch a fit and take to sulking in my room in a jealous pique?”

  He gave a rueful laugh. “No. But—”

  “You told me just now that you admire my work. Do you think I don’t admire what you do? Do you imagine I’m the kind of woman who would begrudge your efforts to save a man’s life simply because you share a past with that man’s wife?”

  He shook his head. Reaching out, he cupped his hand beneath her chin, tipped his head to brush her lips with his. “You’re a wonder to me, Lady Devlin,” he said, his breath mingling with hers.

  She smiled. But he saw the shadow in her fine gray eyes, and he knew that while she could never begrudge him what he was about to do, that didn’t mean the situation didn’t worry her.

  Just as it worried him.

  Chapter 7

  T

  he boy looked to be eight or nine years old at most, his face round, with widespread eyes and a short upper lip, his sandy hair as dirty and matted as moldy hay.

  He sat on the bottom step of the Church of St. Giles, a cheap, ragged broom clutched in one fist, his head tipped back as he peered up at Hero. He wore tattered corduroy trousers and a threadbare man’s coat so big its tails hung down to his ankles and he’d had to roll up the sleeves like a washerwoman. His hands, like his feet, were bare, and every inch of visible skin so grimy as to resemble aged oak in hue. But his light brown eyes were bright and lively, his features mobile and expressive as he let his gaze take in the glory of Hero’s braid-trimmed gown and plumed, broad-brimmed velvet hat.

  “Are you really a viscountess?” he asked, lisping slightly.

  “I am, yes.” Hero nodded to the elegant equipage drawn up at the kerb beside them. “See my carriage?”

  The urchin—who said his name was Drummer—stared at the shiny, yellow-bodied carriage with its team of restless, highbred blacks, its liveried coachman and footman waiting impassively. “And ye want to talk to me?” said the boy on a rapt exhalation of breath.

  “I do, yes. I want to know how long you’ve been working as a crossing sweep.”

  The lad screwed up his features with the effort of thought. There were thousands of poor boys and girls like him across London—children who made their living by sweeping the mud and manure from the city’s street crossings. In a sense, it was a form of begging, although the children did perform a service. Since they staked out a site and worked the same location for years, the trustworthy ones soon became known in a neighborhood and could also earn extra money by running errands, holding horses, or carrying packages for the area’s inhabitants.

  “Well,” he said, “I started at it right after me da died, the winter I turned ten. I’m twelve now, so it’s been more’n two years, I guess.”

  Hero made a surreptitious adjustment to the notes she was taking in her notebook. “And is your mother still living?”

  “No, m’lady. She died o’ the flux just six months after me da. He used to be a bricklayer, ye know. But he fell off a scaffold and broke his leg so bad he died from it. At first I tried tatting hair nets, like me mum used to do. But I weren’t no good at it. Then I seen other children getting money for sweeping the crossings, so I bought meself a broom and took it up. I usually work this corner with another boy named Jack, but he ain’t been well lately.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Usually I takes a room with some other lads in a lodging house up the lane there. But it’s thruppence a night, and with winter comin’ soon, I’m saving me money so’s I can buy me a pair o’ boots.”

  “So where are you sleeping now?”

  “Here, m’lady. If I rolls up in a tight ball in the shadows by the door, the charlie don’t usually see me. And even if he does rouse me, I just come back once he’s gone.”

  Hero refused to let herself think about the fear, loneliness, and hunger that must haunt this child as he curled up for the night on the cold stone steps. Yet she found she still had to clear her throat before she could ask, “And how much do you earn, on average, with your sweeping?”

  The boy looked confused. “On average?”

  “How much do you usually make a day?”

  “Yesterday I only took in tuppence ha’penny, it was so dry. Dry days is always the worst. We likes it when it rains—particul’rly a hard wettin’ what makes lots o’ mud but then clears up, so that folks come out again. On a good day, I can make as much as tenpence. But the brooms wear out faster when it’s muddy. A broom costs tuppence ha’penny, and it’ll only last four or five days in wet weather, where’s I can get a fortnight out o’ one if things is dry.”

  Hero glanced down at the boy’s broom, which was basically a bundle of twigs lashed to a stout stick. He might lack an understanding of the concept of averaging, but he obviously had a solid grasp of the economics of his business—and the forethought to forgo lodgings on an autumn night in order to save for the boots he knew he’d be needing in the coming winter.

  “What hours do you normally work?”

  “The take is best here between nine and seven, although I know some lads what work Mayfair, and they don’t usually start till noon or even one, when the nobs come out. I wish I could get in with them,” Drummer added wistfully. “They can take as much as a shilling a day, only their spots is all full up right now. But I goes with them at night to the opera and tumbles.”

  “You tumble?”

  “Aye. We do cat’un-wheels and flips, and the gentlemen comin’ out o’ the opera’ll laugh and give us a few pence, especially if they’ve a girl on their arm. There’s one boy by the name o’ Louis who gets e’en more tin give him, on account of he can do backflips. Me, I ain’t so good even at the cat’un wheels. I get giddy after jist two or three.”

  “So you don’t go to sleep until after the opera lets out?”

  “Oh, no, m’lady. Then we goes to the Haymarket—’cept on Sundays, when we goes there earlier.”

  “What do you do there?” Hero asked. An ancient thoroughfare running from Piccadilly to Pall Mall, the Haymarket was crowded with theaters, hotels, supper houses—and prostitutes.

  “Well, sometimes a gentleman’ll drive up in a carriage and tell us to bring him a girl. We can get as much as five or sixpence for that. If the gentleman is dressed nice, we’ll fetch him a real pretty girl.”

  Hero stared at the guileless young pimp before her in horrified fascination. “And if he’s not ‘dressed nice’?”

  The boy grinned. “Well, then we’ll fetch him one o’ the girls what ain’t so young and pretty. But sometimes, we gives the best chances to girls what’ve been kind to us. Sometimes a girl’ll go by and we’ll shout out, ‘Good luck to you!’ and she’ll give us a copper.”

  “These girls whom you, um”—Hero hesitated, searching for an appropriate word—“supply,” she said finally, “do you find them walking in the street?”

  “Sometim
es. But if we don’t find any girls walking, we know what lodging houses to go to, to get ’em. And the next day, they’ll usually give us a copper or two, by way o’ thanks.”

  “So at what time do you finally quit working?”

  “We all meets at three o’clock, on the steps o’ St. Anne’s, and reckon up what we’ve taken.”

  Good heavens, thought Hero; the child worked from nine in the morning to three the next day. She said, “And then you come here to sleep?”

  “Aye. Although I gots to move when the sun comes up.” The fatigue that shadowed the boy’s eyes and sagged his jaw was obvious. “I’ll be glad when I saves up enough to buy them boots. Last night was nippy.”

  Hero pressed a coin into the sweeper’s palm and closed his fist around it. “Here’s a guinea for you, my little man. Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”

  Then she turned and walked rapidly back to her carriage, before she was tempted to empty her purse into his thin, grubby hands.

  Chapter 8

  S

  quashed between a grimy brick warehouse and a chandler’s shop, the dilapidated home of Daniel Eisler lay on a narrow, crooked street called Fountain Lane, just off the Minories. Built of dressed sandstone blocks darkened and crumbling with age, the house looked as if it might once have been surrounded by extensive gardens. Now rampant ivy covered its gabled end, while rusty iron bars disfigured the mullioned windows.

  St. Botolph-Aldgate was a long, narrow parish that stretched all the way from the Thames up to Aldgate High Street, so that it actually straddled the boundary between the City of London and Middlesex. Dominated by the vast presence of the East India Company, it was mainly given over to gunsmiths and the various maritime trades, especially slaughterhouses and breweries. And here, in the narrow lanes off the Minories, had settled a number of refugees from the Netherlands and the various German states.

  Pausing on the flagway opposite the old house, Sebastian let his gaze travel over the sagging eaves, the dusty broken glass of an attic window. He was close enough to the river that he could smell the scent of tar and brine and dead fish, hear the dull roar from the seamen and dockworkers who crowded the taverns and ale shops along Whitechapel to the east. But here, the cobbled street was quiet, with many of the old shops and houses being replaced by warehouses. At eight or nine in the evening—the time of Eisler’s death—the lane would probably have been deserted.

  A man pushing a cart piled high with scrap iron cast him a curious look but kept going. Stepping wide to avoid a gutter clogged with sodden refuse, Sebastian crossed the street to rap sharply on the house’s worn but stout front door. He had to bang the knocker twice more before the door swung inward less than a foot, then stopped.

  An old man’s pale, gaunt face appeared in the crack. Thin tufts of soft gray hair stuck out at odd angles from a narrow, bony head; his cheeks were sunken, his skin yellow and wrinkled with age, his black butler’s coat rusty and threadbare and too large for his shrunken frame. He blinked several times, as if disconcerted by the overcast day’s flat white light. “If you are looking for Mr. Eisler,” he said in a thin, quavering voice, “I regret to inform you that he is not at home. In point of fact, he is dead.”

  He made as if to shut the door.

  Sebastian deftly inserted one boot in the opening, stopping him. “Actually, you’re the one to whom I wished to speak. I take it you’re Mr. Eisler’s butler—Campbell, isn’t it?”

  The aged retainer dropped his gaze to Sebastian’s foot, then looked up again. “You’re not from Bow Street, are you? Because Mr. Leigh-Jones said we wasn’t to speak to anyone from Bow Street.”

  “Mr. Leigh-Jones?”

  “The chief magistrate at Lambeth Street. Called us all down to the public office as witnesses, he did, late last night when he committed that Yates fellow to Newgate to stand trial for murder. Mr. Leigh-Jones warned us most particularly not to go blabbing to anyone from Bow Street.”

  Bow Street had been the first of the public offices formed, and still retained an exalted position that gave it authority over crimes and criminals not just in the metropolis but in all of England. It wasn’t unusual for magistrates from the lesser public offices to resent the prominence of Bow Street and seek to forestall any possible interference in their districts.

  Sebastian said, “Do I look like a Bow Street runner?”

  Campbell studied Sebastian’s exquisitely tailored coat and flawlessly tied cravat, his doeskin breeches and polished Hessians. “You don’t, no. But you could be one of those fellows from the newspaper offices. Mr. Leigh-Jones also directed us most particularly not to be talking to any of them either.”

  Sebastian extracted a card from his case and held it out between two fingers. “I am Devlin. I trust Mr. Leigh-Jones didn’t direct you not to speak to me?”

  The butler held Sebastian’s card at arm’s length and squinted. “No. No, he did not.” Not a single muscle in the old man’s face altered, but he opened the door wide and executed a somewhat creaky bow. “How may I be of assistance to you, my lord?”

  Sebastian stepped into a soaring, medieval-style hall with darkly paneled walls, an uneven, badly cracked flagged floor, and an elaborately coffered, smoke-blackened ceiling. The space was vast, yet hopelessly cluttered with an odd assortment of dusty but exquisite furniture: sandalwood consoles with delicate inlay; a dark Renaissance chest carved with mythical beasts; gilded chairs that looked as if they might have come from Versailles. Row after row of dark paintings in heavy, mildew-flecked gilded frames filled virtually every wall surface, while on the far side of the hall, a worn, steep staircase angled toward the first floor. Through a limestone-cased archway beside it, Sebastian could see a dark passage that disappeared toward the rear of the house. A second arch, also framed in chipped, grimy stone, led to what looked like an old-fashioned parlor. The tattered brocade drapes at the window were tightly drawn, but as Sebastian’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could easily make out the stain that disfigured the parlor’s threadbare carpet.

  “Mr. Eisler was found in there,” said Campbell, nodding toward the parlor as he carefully closed and locked the front door behind him. “Took the shot square in his chest. Made ever such a mess.”

  “You were here last night, were you?”

  “I was, my lord. Only, as I told Mr. Leigh-Jones, it is the practice of Mrs. Campbell and I to retire to our rooms by eight o’clock. The first we knew anything was amiss was when the constables came pounding on our door in the attic.”

  “So you didn’t hear the shot?”

  “No, my lord. My hearing’s not what it used to be—nor Mrs. Campbell’s.”

  Sebastian let his gaze drift, again, around the old hall, assessing the distance from the front door to the staircase and the passage beyond. If Yates had been standing on the stoop as he claimed when he heard the shot, and then rushed inside to find Eisler dead, would the killer have had time to escape the parlor and run down the shadowy passage—or up the stairs—without being seen?

  Sebastian doubted it.

  He said, “Is there a door that leads from this floor to the rear yard?”

  “There is, yes. At the end of the passage there.”

  “May I see it?”

  The butler gave another of his creaky bows. “If you will follow me, my lord?”

  Moving with doddering slowness, he led the way down a narrow corridor made even narrower by more furniture lined up on either side. Sebastian counted four doors opening off the passage, plus a set of steep, narrow steps leading down to what he assumed was the basement kitchen. The entire house reeked of decay and stale cooking grease mingled with the smell of an old man’s unwashed clothes and some other, indefinable odor to which Sebastian could not put a name.

  “I’ve heard of you, you know,” said the butler, drawing back a heavy iron bolt on the door at the end of the passage. It was an old door, Sebastian noted, shrunken and warped by age, so that it did not fit its frame. “In fact, I’ve followed
your career with a certain morbid fascination. And I must say, it’s interesting you should ask about this door.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “After the constables left last night, I naturally checked to make certain that all the windows and doors were secure.”

  “And?”

  “This door was open.”

  “You mean, the bolt was drawn?”

  “More than that, my lord. The door itself was standing quite ajar. It’s possible, of course, that the constables threw it open in their search for the suspect—he ran off, you know, as soon as Mr. Perlman came and discovered him standing over the body. But I did find it peculiar. I mean, I myself heard Mr. Perlman say the blackguard ran out the front door. So why would they bother? And if it was the constables who opened the door, then why didn’t they close it? Shockingly bad form, if you ask me.” Campbell dragged open the door and bowed as a chorus of birdsong filled the air. “After you, my lord.”

  Sebastian stepped onto a terrace of uneven slates strewn with dead leaves and broken branches and crowded with row after row of birdcages. In the largest cage near the door, half a dozen black crows flapped their wings in frustration. Other cages held everything from sparrows and doves to a white owl and one very disgruntled-looking, long-haired black cat with a long bushy tail and glinting green eyes.

  “Mr. Eisler was fond of birds?” said Sebastian, going to stand before the cat’s cage. The cat blinked and stared back at him in sulky discontent.

  Campbell cleared his throat. “I don’t know as I’d say he was exactly fond of them, my lord. But he was always buying them.”

  Sebastian glanced over at the wooden-faced butler. “And doing what with them?”

  The butler stared out over the overgrown ruin of a garden, toward a crumbling brick wall and the collapsed roof of what might once have been a stable. “That I couldn’t say, my lord.”

  Sebastian studied the aged retainer’s carefully composed features, then turned back toward the house. “Do you know if Mr. Eisler was expecting any visitors last night?”