Sebastien St. Cyr 08 - What Darkness Brings

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian handed the boy his handkerchief and steered him toward the carriage steps. “Considering your battle wounds, I’d say you earned yourself two guineas for this night’s work.”

  The boy’s eyes grew round above the voluminous folds of Sebastian’s handkerchief. “Cor.”

  Sebastian pressed the coins into the boy’s hand and turned to his coachman. “Take the lad back to Brook Street and ask Lady Devlin to see that he is attended to.”

  Drummer stuck his head back out the open door. “Ye ain’t comin’?”

  “I shall be along directly,” said Sebastian, closing the door on him.

  He nodded to the coachman, then went in search of a hackney to take him to Kensington.

  The curtains were not yet drawn at the Yeoman’s Row lodgings of Annie and Emma Wilkinson, allowing a warm, golden glow to spill from the parlor and light up the cool, misty night. Sebastian paused for a moment on the footpath outside. At the end of the street, the fenced gardens of Kensington Square lay dark and silent. But for a moment, he thought he could hear the echo of a child’s chant, “‘When will you pay me?’ say the bells of Old Bailey.”

  “Wait here for me,” Sebastian told the hackney driver and moved with an aching sadness to ring his old friend’s bell.

  “Devlin!” A delighted smile lit up Annie Wilkinson’s features as she came toward him. “What a pleasant surprise. Julie”—she turned to the housemaid who had escorted him up the stairs—“put the kettle on and bring his lordship some of that cake we—”

  Sebastian squeezed her hands, then let her go. “Thank you, but I don’t need anything.”

  She turned to the wine carafe that stood with a tray of glasses on a table near the front windows. “At least let me get you a glass of burgundy.”

  “Annie . . . We need to talk.”

  She looked up from pouring the wine. Something in his tone must have alerted her, because she set the carafe aside and said with a forced smile, “You’re sounding very serious, Devlin.”

  He went to stand with his back to the small fire burning on the hearth. “I had an interesting conversation this evening with a young girl named Jenny Davie.”

  Annie looked puzzled. “I don’t believe I recognize the name. Should I?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. She is what’s popularly dismissed by polite society as ‘Haymarket ware.’ A week ago, her services were engaged by a rather nasty old St. Botolph-Aldgate diamond merchant named Daniel Eisler.” He paused. “You do recognize that name, don’t you?”

  She held herself very still. “What are you trying to say, Devlin?”

  “Last Sunday evening at approximately half past eight, Daniel Eisler was shot to death by a tall, ill-looking man with a cavalry mustache. Now, I suppose there could be any number of men in London who fit that description. But this particular man seems to have had a fondness for old fables. He told Eisler that he’d come to bell the cat.”

  She forced a husky laugh. “It’s a common enough tale.”

  “True. But I’ve seen Eisler’s account books, Annie.”

  She went to stand beside the window, one hand raised to clutch the worn cloth as if she were about to close it, her back held painfully straight.

  Sebastian said, “You knew, didn’t you? You knew Rhys had killed him.”

  She shook her head back and forth, her throat working as she swallowed. “No.”

  “Annie, you said Rhys went out for a walk that night at half past eight and never came back. But Emma told me that her papa didn’t get home in time to tell her a story that night. What’s Emma’s bedtime, Annie? Seven? Eight? She’s in bed now, isn’t she?”

  “Seven.” Annie turned toward him, her face haggard. “I didn’t know what he’d done. I swear I didn’t. I’ll admit I suspected, but I didn’t know. Not until today.”

  “Why today?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, and strode quickly from the room.

  She was back in a moment, carrying a flintlock pistol loosely wrapped in a square of old flannel. When she held it out to him, he caught the sulfuric stench of burnt powder.

  “You know what Rhys was like,” she said. “He’d spent half his life in the army. He knew the importance of taking care of his gun. He never fired it without cleaning it before he put it away. So as soon as I saw it like this, I knew . . .”

  Sebastian carefully folded back the cloth. It was an old Elliot pattern flintlock pistol with a nine-inch barrel and the gently curving grip favored by the Light Dragoons.

  She said, “I didn’t even know Rhys had borrowed money until he was already behind on the interest. That’s when Eisler said he’d heard Rhys had a pretty wife, and that he was willing to forgive the interest on the debt if I . . . if Rhys would agree . . .”

  “I know all about the way Eisler abused the women who found themselves in his debt,” Sebastian said softly. “Did you do it, Annie?”

  She drew back as if he had slapped her. “No!”

  “But you were tempted?”

  She pressed her fist to her lips, her eyes squeezing shut as she nodded. “We were so desperate.”

  “Annie . . . You could have come to me at any time. I would have been more than happy to help. I told you that.”

  She dropped her hand to her side and sniffed, her lips pressing into a thin line. “I would never do that, and neither would Rhys.”

  Sebastian searched her tightly held face. “So what happened?”

  “Rhys was so appalled by the proposal that he started looking into Eisler. You say you know about the way he used people, but we’d had no idea. One night, when Rhys was telling me of the things he’d learned, I said, ‘Something needs to be done about that bastard. There must be some way to warn other people to steer clear of his traps.’ I didn’t mean anything by it—I was just thinking out loud. Only, Rhys said there was no way for the mice to bell the cat. That the only way to stop a man like Eisler was to kill him.”

  Her gaze dropped to the gun in Sebastian’s hands, her breath backing up in her throat. “He’d been talking a lot lately about how much better it would be for Emma and me if he were dead—that Eisler wouldn’t be able to pursue the debt, that Emma and I could go live with my grandmother, that I’d be free to remarry.” She swallowed. “I always begged him not to talk like that, but . . .”

  “When was the last time you saw Rhys, Annie?”

  She blinked, and the tears swimming in her eyes spilled over to stream unchecked down her face. “It must have been half past nine. He . . . he came home, shut himself in the bedroom for a few minutes, then left, saying he was going for a walk. I knew he had a bottle of laudanum he kept in a drawer beside the bed. After he left, I went and checked. It was a new bottle—he’d found an apothecary willing to mix it especially strong, just for him. It was gone.”

  “That’s when you contacted me and asked for my help in finding him?”

  She nodded silently.

  “Annie, Annie . . . Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “I was afraid . . . and ashamed. Perhaps more ashamed than afraid.”

  “And when you saw in Monday’s papers that Eisler had been killed?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I—I hoped it was just a coincidence. I mean, everyone was saying Russell Yates was found standing over the man’s dead body. I didn’t know then about the pistol. Not until today.”

  “What made you decide to look for it today?”

  She scrubbed the heel of her hand across one wet cheek. “The chief magistrate from Lambeth Street Public Office came to see me.”

  “Bertram Leigh-Jones?” Sebastian felt his heart begin to beat faster. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to know when I’d last seen Rhys. I lied. I told him the same thing I’ve told everyone else—that Rhys went out for a walk at half past eight and never came back. But as soon as he left, I went to the bedroom and looked in the drawer where I knew Rhys kept his pistol. When I saw it, I knew.”

  She turned
away, her arms wrapping across her chest to hug herself. “At the time, I couldn’t understand what had made Leigh-Jones suspect Rhys. But I suppose this girl you were talking about—this Jenny Davie—must have told him what she told you.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “No. I think Leigh-Jones got the information out of Jud Foy. Right before he killed him.”

  Annie shook her head, not understanding. “Who is Foy?”

  “A half-mad ex-rifleman who was watching Eisler’s house the night he died.”

  “But . . . why would Leigh-Jones kill him?”

  “For the same reason he killed an old French jewel thief named Jacques Collot: because the chief magistrate at Lambeth Street has a dangerous secret he’ll do anything to protect.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  Sebastian said, “I think Bertram Leigh-Jones is working for Napoléon to recover a gem Eisler had in his possession—a rare blue diamond that once formed part of the French Crown Jewels and is now missing. The assumption has always been that whoever killed Eisler stole the diamond. At first, Leigh-Jones thought he had Eisler’s killer—Yates—in prison. But something seems to have convinced Leigh-Jones that he had the wrong man. He started asking questions, and that led him to Foy. I think Foy told Leigh-Jones about Rhys, and that’s why he came to see you today.”

  “You’re saying that Rhys stole some diamond? But Rhys would never do anything like that! You know Rhys.”

  “I know. I think Jenny Davie has it. And unless I can stop him, she’s liable to be Leigh-Jones’s next victim.”

  It took what felt like an age for Sebastian’s hackney driver to battle through the city’s Saturday night traffic to the St. Botolph-Aldgate home of Bertram Leigh-Jones. Then the housemaid who opened the door to Sebastian’s curt knock dropped an apologetic curtsy and said, “Begging your lordship’s pardon, but Mr. Leigh-Jones isn’t here.”

  “This is rather important,” said Sebastian, aware of a rising sense of urgency. “Would you happen to know where he’s gone?”

  “I’m afraid he didn’t say, my lord. Some Frenchman come to see him maybe half an hour ago, and they all went off in his gig.”

  “‘All’? Was someone else with them?”

  The housemaid nodded. “Oh, yes, my lord. The Frenchman brung a girl with him. A tiny slip of a thing, she was, and so scared.”

  Jenny, thought Sebastian. Damn, damn, damn.

  Aloud, he said, “You have no idea where they might have gone?”

  The housemaid screwed up her face with the effort of thought. “I think they might have said something about Southwark, but I couldn’t tell you more than that.”

  “Southwark?”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said.

  But Sebastian was already running to his hackney.

  Chapter 58

  T

  he ancient abbey of St. Saviour in Bermondsey, on the southern bank of the Thames, had once ranked amongst the proudest religious houses in England, patronized by kings and favored by widowed queens in need of a place of refuge. Now only the lay church, a crumbling gatehouse, and a row of abandoned, half-demolished dwellings survived, their age-battered stone walls and broken slate roofs gleaming wet in the fitful, misty moonlight.

  Why Leigh-Jones and his pockmarked French cohort would bring Jenny Davie here, to her old childhood home, Sebastian could only guess. But as his hackney swept around the curve of the ancient elevated causeway that once led to the priory, he caught sight of a gig drawn up beside what was now the parish church of St. Mary Magdalen. The gig was empty, the bay between the shafts grazing contentedly in the rank grass that grew along the wayside. Sebastian could see a narrow beam of light, as if from a shuttered lantern, weaving amongst the mossy gray tombs and tumbled headstones of the dark, fog-shrouded churchyard beyond.

  “Pull up here,” Sebastian ordered.

  The hackney driver obliged. “Ye want I should wait fer ye again, yer lordship?” he asked hopefully. He obviously considered a night of dozing on the box far preferable to one spent constantly hustling new fares.

  “Just take care to keep out of sight.” Sebastian dropped quietly to the ground, then handed up his card to the jarvey. “And if anything should happen to me, take this to Sir Henry Lovejoy in Bow Street and tell him what you know of this night’s work.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  Leaving the hackney in the shadows of a line of darkened, dilapidated shops, Sebastian slipped down the street. The air here was heavy and wet, and thick with the pungent odors of the nearby tan yards and glue manufactories and breweries. On the flagway beside the church’s ancient medieval tower, he paused, a cold wind billowing the mist around him.

  He could see them now, three mist-shrouded figures: the magistrate’s form tall and bulky; the Frenchman small, agile; the girl dragged along with one frail arm gripped in Leigh-Jones’s meaty fist as they worked their way through the sunken, crowded graves. The moon had utterly disappeared behind the thick, bunching clouds.

  The wall surrounding the churchyard was built of stone and low and crumbling; Sebastian climbed it easily. Hunkering down, he was slipping cautiously from one tomb to the next when the girl’s voice, sounding surprisingly strong, stopped him.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “You’re certain this time?” snapped Leigh-Jones, raising his lantern to peer at the tomb before them.

  “I think so.”

  The Frenchman gave a scornful laugh. “That’s what she said before she wasted ten minutes digging around the foundations of the last tomb where she insisted she’d hid it.”

  “It ain’t easy to see in the dark! Maybe if we could come back tomorrow when it’s light, I could—”

  Leigh-Jones said, “Just shut up and dig.”

  The Frenchman pulled a pistol from his waistband and pressed the muzzle against the girl’s temple. “Only, make certain you have the right tomb this time, ma petite. No more games, hmm?”

  Jenny Davie froze, the moist wind curling the honey-colored hair around her fine-boned face and flattening the skirts of her ragged dress against her legs. Unlike the two men, who were muffled in greatcoats and hats, she was bareheaded, her arms covered only by the thin stuff of her dress and wrapped across her chest for warmth. She stared back at the Frenchman, as if evaluating the seriousness of his threat. She must have decided he meant it, because she jerked her head toward a tomb that lay closer to the long wall of the church’s nave. “I think maybe I made a mistake and it’s over there.”

  The Frenchman grunted.

  She led them to a tomb so old the weathered, moss-covered stones were cracked and crumbling, the top tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Crouching down near one end, she began to dig at the base, the rush of the disturbed, falling rubble sounding unnaturally loud in the fog-shrouded night.

  At some point, she’d obviously brought the diamond here, to the place where she’d played as a child, and hidden it. As Sebastian watched, she hesitated in her digging. Then her left hand swooped into the rubble to close over something just as her right seized a chunk of stone the size of her fist. He could see the tension in every line of her body, see her gathering herself like a sprinter ready to run.

  Leigh-Jones had set the lantern atop the tomb and now stood slightly off to one side, while the Frenchman had positioned himself nearby, his pistol held in a slackened grip. As Sebastian watched, Jenny drew back her hand and chucked the jagged rock at the Frenchman’s head.

  “Mon Dieu,” he swore. He tried to duck, lost his footing, and went down with a grunt.

  Darting up, Jenny took off running across the darkened church-

  yard, toward the ancient ruined gatehouse shrouded by mist in the distance.

  “Don’t just stand there, you fool,” shouted the Frenchman, scrambling to his feet. “After her! She’s got the diamond!”

  Leigh-Jones started off down the slope in a lumbering trot. “For God’s sake, just shoot her!”

  Taking careful aim on the girl�
�s running figure, the Frenchman was tightening his finger on the trigger when Sebastian barreled into him.

  The impact knocked the Frenchman flat on his back, the pistol exploding harmlessly into the air as it flew from his hand and spun out of sight into the high grass.

  Rolling nimbly away from Sebastian’s grasp, he reared up into a crouch, a knife gleaming in his fist. “You again,” he spat.

  Leaping to his feet, Sebastian snatched the horn lantern from the tomb’s cracked surface just as the Frenchman lunged, blade flashing.

  Pivoting, Sebastian smashed the lantern down on the Frenchman’s hand, plunging them into darkness and sending the knife clattering against the side of the tomb. As the Frenchman staggered back, Sebastian swung the lantern again, this time at the man’s head.

  The Frenchman ducked, then came up with an explosive kick that drove the heel of his boot into Sebastian’s right knee.

  Sebastian’s leg collapsed beneath him in a fireball of pain. As he fell, the Frenchman kicked at him again, aiming this time for Sebastian’s head.

  Hands flashing up, Sebastian grabbed the French agent’s boot with both hands and twisted.

  Caught off balance, the Frenchman fell back, his head making an ugly thwunking sound as it struck the edge of the tomb. He slithered down the side of the moss-covered monument in a disjointed sprawl, then lay still, an ugly sheen of dark wetness staining the weathered stone behind him.

  Staggering to his feet, Sebastian gritted his teeth and set off in an ungainly lope toward the ancient abbey gatehouse at the base of the churchyard. Every step sent an excruciating jolt of agony radiating up from his injured knee, so that by the time he reached the rubbish-strewn cobbled court before the ruined gatehouse, a cold sweat filmed his body and his breath was coming ragged and fast.

  Built of coursed rough stone, the gatehouse rose a story and a half above its central vaulted archway. Once, the recessed arch had been richly ornamented with carvings, the mullioned windows above embellished with a vinelike tracery. But the passing centuries had battered and crumbled the stone, while the smoke and grime of generations had blurred and obliterated the details of what remained.