Who Slays the Wicked

by C. S. Harris

  A pained expression of disgust flitted across the old man’s face and then was gone. “The putain who calls herself a princess was with him earlier that night. I take it she left something she feared might incriminate her?”

  “She was here?” Sebastian repeated, his head throbbing as his understanding of that night’s events spun about and attempted to realign itself.

  “She had been, although she’d left by the time I arrived. I expected to find him entertaining some vile streetwalker. Instead, he was sprawled in his bed, lost in an opium-induced haze after playing his nasty games with that highborn whore.”

  Sebastian could see the colonel’s gun now, lying almost hidden by the folds of the dead woman’s black silk skirts. “And so you killed him?” he said, surreptitiously working his wrists back and forth, back and forth. “Your own son?”

  Lindley’s lips pursed. “The Lord teaches us that if a man has a son who will not obey his father, then the father must lay hold of him and say, ‘Our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice, but is a glutton and a drunkard.’”

  “‘And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he shall die,’” said Sebastian softly, continuing the quote from Deuteronomy. “‘So shalt thou put evil away from among you.’ Except that you didn’t deliver Ashworth to the ‘elders of the city.’ You killed him yourself.”

  “It was better that way.”

  Sebastian studied the Marquis’s clear gray eyes. His words might be chilling, but Sebastian had no doubt the man was utterly sane—or at least as sane as his arrogant, self-absorbed son had been. “And the others? Digby? The girl? Paige? How do you justify their deaths?”

  “Digby betrayed the man he served.”

  “Not to mention that he would have been in a position to blackmail you,” said Sebastian. “But Sissy Jordan? She didn’t know anything. Why kill her?”

  “The girl was a whore. Plus, I couldn’t be certain how much she knew, or what Digby might have let slip around her. I don’t like loose ends.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t kill Ivanna.”

  “I’m still considering it. But her situation in the Grand Duchess’s household does make things difficult.” The old man shifted his weight. “Unfortunately, that wretched little street sweeper ran away before I could deal with him.”

  “And Paige?”

  “I didn’t kill Paige.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s your justification for killing me?”

  Lindley’s mouth pursed again. “You have interfered in what is none of your affair.”

  “Oh? And is there a convenient biblical quotation for that as well?”

  The Marquis pushed away from the bed and took several angry steps toward him, the gun held out in a shaky two-handed grip. “You mock the Lord?”

  Sebastian knew he was playing a dangerous game. But he needed the man to come a little closer. “Not the Lord. I was thinking along the lines of—I believe it’s in Mark, is it not? ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’”

  “You shut up,” hissed Lindley, his hands tightening on the flintlock just as Sebastian shifted to hook one foot around the old man’s ankle and yank it forward, hard.

  Lindley staggered, arms flinging wide as he fought to keep his balance. Kicking out, Sebastian smashed his heel into the Marquis’s shin, then rolled to where the colonel’s elegant dueling pistol lay beside the dead woman.

  Grabbing the gun awkwardly with his lashed hands, Sebastian thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger just as Lindley fired.

  The Marquis’s shot hit the wall with an explosion of plaster dust and lath splinters. But Sebastian’s bullet slammed into the old man’s chest.

  He stumbled back, a vague look of surprise on his age-lined face. Then he crumpled beside his son’s bloodstained bed and lay still.

  * * *

  “You’re lucky,” said Gibson, wrapping a roll of bandages around Sebastian’s bare torso. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but nothing vital was hit, and the wound looks clean. If you don’t do anything stupid, you should live.”

  Sebastian grunted. They were in his dressing room before a roaring fire, but he still felt bone-cold. He brought up a hand to gingerly explore his face. “My nose feels like it’s broken.”

  The surgeon tied off the bandage and squinted up at him. “Could be, but I doubt it. You’ve the makings of a couple of grand black eyes, though, and you may have a wee bit of a concussion. From the sounds of the carnage I’m hearing you left in Curzon Street, I’d say you got off lucky. I still can’t believe it took four gunshots before Ashworth’s old butler bestirred himself to investigate.”

  Sebastian reached for a clean shirt and pulled it over his head. “Given what typically went on in that house, I’m amazed he came at all.”

  * * *

  Later, Sebastian had a long, tense conversation with Sir Henry Lovejoy and Lord Jarvis. Jarvis announced that the papers were being told Digby had killed his master, only to then fall victim himself to footpads. Footpads would also be blamed for Paige’s death. There would be much official tut-tutting over the sudden alarming rise in violent crime; a few habitual offenders would be apprehended and hanged; and soon all would be forgotten.

  Sissy’s death was considered too commonplace and inconsequential to even require explanation.

  After his lordship’s departure, Lovejoy said, “It goes against the grain with me, this insistence that the sins of the ‘better born’ be covered up and hidden from public knowledge. It simply perpetuates the idea that rank and wealth are the result not of some accident of birth and luck but the mark of an innate superiority and divine favor.”

  “You mean to say you don’t believe that they are?” said Sebastian with a smile.

  Lovejoy rarely smiled himself. But Sebastian saw a twinkle of amusement in the magistrate’s eyes before he lowered his chin and gave a faint shake of his head.

  * * *

  “You sort of had it right,” said Hero as they sat together before the library fire, Sebastian with a glass of brandy cradled in one hand.

  He looked over at her. “Only ‘sort of.’”

  She smiled. “Why did Ivanna go to Curzon Street that night, do you think? She and Ashworth had just had that awful row at the Pulteney, and she knew he was furious with her for letting one of her goons threaten him.”

  Sebastian tipped his head back against the chair. “I suspect she went to coax him out of the sulks and make certain he intended to keep quiet about the Russians’ little scheme. One assumes she succeeded; otherwise she probably would have killed him before Lindley had the chance.”

  “She and Ashworth deserved each other.”

  “They did, indeed. We know from Sissy Jordan that he was annoyed when Digby came to tell him she was there. But he was obviously intrigued enough to go see what she wanted.”

  “I’m surprised Digby let her in, given that he knew the Marquis was coming.”

  “No lowly valet is going to turn away a princess. Besides, he probably figured one woman would serve Lindley’s purposes as well as the next.” Sebastian raised his brandy to his lips and took a sip. “I thought it was all a stage set—the scattered clothes, the whip, the silk stocking kicked under the bed. But it was real. Lindley simply took advantage of what he found.”

  “It makes you wonder if he’d killed before, doesn’t it? I mean, someone besides that cottager down in Devon that Corky Baldoon was telling you about.”

  “As Lovejoy said, rank and wealth can cover a multitude of sins.”

  She was silent for a moment, her gaze on the fire. But he knew the drift of her thoughts and wasn’t surprised when she said, “Do you believe Lindley was telling the truth when he said he didn’t murder Sir Felix Paige?”

  He met her
gaze. “Given that he thought he was about to kill me, I can’t think of a reason why he would lie.”

  “So who did kill Sir Felix? Demidov?”

  Sebastian saw the worry in her eyes and said, “Probably. Paige knew Ashworth was involved with Ivanna. Demidov was probably worried about what else he knew.”

  He said it to reassure her. But he wasn’t entirely convinced.

  * * *

  Ivanna Gagarin was eating an ice at Gunter’s in Berkeley Square when Sebastian came to stand beside her, his left arm in a sling. The sun was shining warm and bright, and the afternoon was glorious.

  “Beautiful day, is it not?” she said, looking up at him with one of her brilliant, utterly false smiles.

  “It is.” Reaching into his coat, he brought out a gold bangle studded with sapphires and diamonds and handed it to her. “I believe this is yours?”

  She hesitated a moment, then took it from him to slip onto her wrist. “Thank you. I read of the Marquis’s death in the papers. They’re saying he suffered a heart attack while visiting the site of his son’s murder. How terribly tragic.”

  “Tragic, indeed. And what will the relatives of Colonel Demidov and his female companion be told?”

  She flashed another of her dazzling, artificial smiles. “That London is a frightfully dangerous city, of course. Their murders will be seen as a warning to all visitors from Russia to avoid the more dangerous sections of the metropolis. I’ve heard the Regent is so concerned that he has ordered a sweep of the most undesirable elements.”

  “I take it the Prince hasn’t yet heard of the Grand Duchess’s plans for his daughter?”

  Rather than answer, she tipped her head to one side and said softly, “I told you I didn’t kill Ashworth.”

  “Yes. Although I suspect you would have if you hadn’t been satisfied with whatever he said to you that evening. And you did try to kill me.”

  “That was Colonel Demidov.”

  “Was it? And did the good colonel also kill Sir Felix Paige?”

  Her brows puckered together in a pretty frown. “Of course not.”

  When Sebastian remained silent, she said, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No.”

  She gave a light laugh and held up her wrist so that the diamonds in the bracelet sparkled in the sun. He was turning to leave when she said, “Where was it?”

  He paused to look back at her. “Behind the cushions in the library.”

  * * *

  Later, Sebastian and Stephanie sat on a sunny bench in Hyde Park not far from Lindley House.

  “Does your wound hurt terribly?” she asked.

  “Not as much as my face.”

  She laughed. “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her smile faded as she gazed out over the sun-dazzled, undulating grass of the park. “I knew Lindley could be a hard man. But I had no idea he was capable of . . . that.”

  “He was far better at hiding his true nature than his son.” They sat in a companionable silence for a time; then Sebastian said, “I’ve discovered Lady Cowper’s ball was in April last year, Steph. April. Not June.”

  She looked over at him, her pulse beating visibly at the base of her throat. “I might have lied about the date of the ball,” she said, her voice hoarse, “but not about what happened there.”

  “I never doubted that.”

  He watched her swallow. “I was lucky; there were no repercussions from what Ashworth did to me that night. But later, that summer, when I realized I was, as they say, in a ‘delicate situation,’ I was desperate.”

  “Did you tell Firth?”

  “That I was carrying his child? No. Why would I? He couldn’t marry me. His wife was still alive then, remember?”

  “So you—what? Seduced Ashworth and then told him a few weeks later that the child you were carrying was his?”

  She lifted her chin. “You think it horrible of me? Well, what he did to me was horrible. I think it served him right. I planned to tell him the baby came early. Except it was twins, and they really did come early. It made things . . . awkward.”

  “So he knew the boys weren’t his?”

  “Not for certain. But he suspected.”

  “He might have killed you, Steph.”

  “I know that now. I didn’t then.”

  “I wish you’d come to me. I will always help you in any way I can. Please believe me.”

  She gave him a shaky smile, then turned her head toward the river as a series of booms filled the air in a rolling barrage of artillery fire. They could hear cannons up and down the Thames firing one after another, over and over again. Boom, boom, boom. “What is it?”

  A cheer went up in a cascading wave that was like a sustained roar as all of London cried out at once in delirious excitement. Sebastian called to a lad running past. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Boney!” shouted the boy. “He’s surrendered! The war is over. It’s over!”

  “Dear God,” said Stephanie. “Is it possible?”

  “Listen to that. It must be.”

  The church bells began to ring, first one, then the next, until every church in the city joined the celebration in a glorious peal of thanksgiving. Stephanie laughed out loud, and Sebastian felt his heart swell with joy and relief. . . .

  Joy and relief, but something else too. Something he realized was a niggling sense of foreboding that Stephanie must have shared, because her face tightened and she grew serious.

  “I hope that boy is wrong,” she said. “I hope Napoléon hasn’t simply surrendered but is dead. How can we believe this endless, wretched war is truly over as long as he’s still out there? How can we know he won’t come back again?”

  Anyone else would have told her that her fears were groundless, that of course Napoléon could never come back to threaten them again. But Sebastian reached out to take her hand in his, and he held it as the clanging church bells and shouts of joy went on and on.

  “We can’t.”

  Author’s Note

  Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg, younger sister of Tsar Alexander I of Russia, did come to London in the spring of 1814, months ahead of the rest of the Allied Sovereigns invited by the Prince Regent for a grand victory celebration. She did rent the entire Pulteney Hotel for her enormous retinue. Letters from the time make it obvious that her goal was indeed to snare the Regent as her new husband, thus breaking up what Russia saw as a dangerously cozy Anglo-Dutch alliance. The two spoiled royals did indeed take an instant dislike to each other for the reasons Cousin Victoria explained. There is also little doubt that she and the Tsar schemed to break up the betrothal of Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange by throwing several handsome European princes into Charlotte’s path; Prince Leopold was brought to London for that express purpose. (Spoiler alert: It worked.) Once the Princess’s betrothal was broken, the Tsar then married his own younger sister to the Prince of Orange.

  The Grand Duchess’s looks and personality were much as described here. She did claim to hate music and made the Regent order his musicians to stop playing at the banquet held in her honor (the Prince boasted that he had personally selected the pieces to be played with each course, so she may have done it simply to annoy him). She did popularize the “Oldenburg bonnet,” which was named after her. Incidentally, the title of grand duchess ranked in order of precedence below emperor and king but above sovereign prince and duke.

  Ivanna Gagarin is a fictional character, although the Grand Duchess did bring a very-much-alive Prince Gagarin in her retinue. (He was not a nice person, and interestingly had once gone through a bigamous marriage ceremony with an impoverished English widow who was a longtime and much-loved member of Princess Charlotte’s household. It was a small world.)

  Cartomancy, crystallomancy, palmistry, necromancy, and astrology all
became popular in the nineteenth century. There really was a colony of astrologers in Seven Dials, attracted by the symbolism of the streets’ layout. Madame Blanchette is fictional but loosely inspired by the real-life French fortune-teller Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772–1843), who did indeed advise everyone from Josephine and Napoléon to Marat and Robespierre. Madame Lenormand used a thirty-six-card deck of her own design, said to have been lost. After her death, her name was attached to a popular nineteenth-century style of cards, still known today, which was actually created by someone else.

  For most of the twentieth century, Westminster Abbey’s funeral effigies were displayed in a museum in the undercroft (they have now been moved to a specially prepared museum in the attic). Before that, they could be found in glass cases in a gallery in the Islip Chapel. But in Sebastian’s time, they still stood scattered about the Abbey itself. With the rise of tourism in the eighteenth century, they became curiosities and were used by the Abbey as a source of income, although little was done to preserve them. Production of wax figures was seen as “second-rate art,” and so the effigies were typically made by women who were dubbed “modelers” rather than “artists.” Nicknamed “the Ragged Regiment,” many of the effigies were destroyed or damaged in World War II, so that only eighteen now survive. Particularly because they were dressed in the dead’s own clothing, they have proved to be a valuable source of information. The earliest surviving example dates from the fourteenth century.

  The construction of what would become Regent Street was only just beginning in 1814, after several years of planning. At the time, it was simply known as “the new street.” Russell Firth is a fictional character, but he is modeled on the young architect James Burton and others.

  The problems associated with the introduction of flush toilets described to Hero by the night-soil man were real; the cesspits used at the time simply could not handle the volume of water produced by the toilets, with the result that they were constantly overflowing into the basements of neighboring houses. Eventually, in 1815, the laws prohibiting flushing waste into London’s famous storm sewers were repealed. The resulting flood of human waste, combined with the new gasworks, killed the river. In Sebastian’s youth, half the salmon consumed in London came from the Thames. By the 1830s, the salmon were gone, and the river became famous for its horrific smell. It wasn’t until Victorian times—after the summer of the famous Great Stink of 1858, when the smell grew so horrific that Parliament couldn’t meet—that something was done about the problem.