What Remains of Heaven (23 page)

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Authors: C. S. Harris

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: What Remains of Heaven
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Hendon’s jaw hardened. “We sailed in early February.”
Sebastian set aside his empty glass with a click
.
“If you are not my father, then Kat is not my sister.”
Something shifted in the depths of the Earl’s intense blue eyes. “So that’s what this is about, is it? My God. Do you love her so much that you would wish yourself not my son?
Simply so that you could have her?
”
“Yes.”
Another long silence fell between them. This time when Hendon spoke, his voice was hushed, almost gentle. “I’m sorry, Sebastian. But you are my child. And so is Kat.”
“You’ve lied to me before. Why should I believe you now?” Sebastian turned toward the door.
“I’m not lying about this.”
Sebastian kept walking.
“You hear me, Sebastian?” Hendon called after him. “I’m not lying about this.”
 
 
 
Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find a message from Paul Gibson awaiting him.
I’ve finished with your Reverend
, wrote the surgeon.
I’ll be attending at St. Bartholomew’s this afternoon, but I should be at the surgery after four.
Somehow, amidst all the revelations of that day, Gibson’s planned postmortem on the Reverend of St. Margaret’s had been forgotten. Sebastian glanced at the clock.
It was nearly eight.
 
 
He arrived at Gibson’s ancient house near the Tower to find the Irishman eating ham and cooked cabbage in solitary state at one end of his dining room table. A brass candlestick heavily splashed with old dried wax sat at his elbow; the other end of the table lay buried beneath piles of books and gruesome-looking specimen jars.
“I didn’t know you kept such a fashionably late dinner hour,” said Sebastian, drawing out one of the empty chairs beside his friend.
“There was an accident in one of the breweries near the hospital,” said Gibson, spearing a large slice of ham with his fork. Neither death nor its leavings ever seemed to dull the surgeon’s appetite. He nodded to the half-carved joint resting on a nearby platter. “Like a plate?”
Sebastian suppressed a shudder. “No, thank you. You say you’ve finished with Earnshaw?”
“This morning.” Gibson took one last mouthful of ham and pushed up from the table. “Come. I’ll show you.”
Lighting a horn lantern in the kitchen, the surgeon led the way across the tangled, rain-soaked garden to push open the door to his small stone outbuilding. The Reverend lay upon the central slab, his flesh pallid, his body neatly eviscerated. The small stab wound in his chest stood out like a puckered purple tear against the dead white skin
“What kind of knife?” asked Sebastian, studying the wound.
“A dagger. About ten inches long, I’d say. Aimed well by someone who either knew what he was doing, or got very, very lucky.” Gibson limped over to lift one of Earnshaw’s plump, soft hands. By now, the rigor mortis had largely faded from the Reverend’s limbs, leaving them limp. “You’ll notice there are no signs of any defensive wounds.”
“So he may have known his attacker.”
“Either that, or he was taken by surprise and was simply too frightened to react.”
Sebastian drew in a deep breath that filled his head with the stench of dank stone, decay, and death. “Anything else?”
“I’m afraid not.”
He went to stand looking out over the dark, rain-soaked garden. The wind had come up again, thrashing the half-dead trees and scuttling the heavy clouds overhead. He kept trying to bring his mind back to the murder of the man lying on that slab behind him, but all he could think about was the gleam of pride he’d glimpsed in Hendon’s eyes the day an eight-year-old Sebastian first brought his hunter smoothly over one of the worst ditches in Cornwall, or . . .
Or the way Kat’s eyes glowed with love when Sebastian brushed his lips against her cheek.
Gibson came up beside him. “You look like hell,” he said, his gaze on Sebastian’s face.
Sebastian gave a sharp, humorless laugh and stepped out into the wind.
Gibson secured the door to the building behind him. “Come on, then. I’ll buy you a drink.”
 
The wind blew sharp bursts of rain against the leaded windows of the old Tudor inn at the base of Tower Hill as the two friends settled into a dark booth in the corner. Fortified with ale, Sebastian ran through his conversations from that morning, with the ostler Jeb Cooper and with the old nurse Bessie Dunlop. He told Gibson of the quarrel that was said to have taken place between Sir Nigel and Lady Prescott on the night of Sir Nigel’s disappearance, and the child that arrived barely seven months after his father’s return from the Colonies.
He did not tell Gibson about the controversy surrounding the departure dates of the mission to the Colonies, nor what a December sail date would imply about Sebastian’s own legitimacy.
“Very few infants born at seven months survive,” said Gibson.
“Yet it is possible?”
“Yes, it’s possible. But I’d say it’s far more likely Sir Nigel’s lady was unfaithful.”
Sebastian was remembering what his aunt Henrietta had told him about Lady Rosamond’s unsuitable suitor and the desperate bolt to Gretna Green thwarted by her enraged father.
Gibson leaned forward. “It makes sense, does it not? Sir Nigel returns from America to find his wife pregnant by another man. Husband and wife quarrel. Sir Nigel slams out of the house, calling for his horse. He rides off into the night, determined to confront the man who cuckolded him, and—”
“And ends up dead in the crypt of the local church,” finished Sebastian wryly.
Gibson sat back. “Ah. I was forgetting that part. You’ve no notion of the identity of this suitor?”
“No. There’re also the Alcibiades letters to be taken into account. Sir Nigel may have ridden away from the Grange that night in a passion over his wife’s infidelity, but I think those letters are the key to his death.”
Sebastian found himself gazing at the young barmaid laughing with the innkeeper as she scooped up fistfuls of tankards. She looked no more than sixteen, with a heavy fall of auburn hair and a wide, infectious smile, and she reminded him so much of Kat at that age that his chest ached with yearning for all that had been lost, and all that might have been.
“What is it, Sebastian?” asked Gibson softly. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What?” Sebastian brought his gaze back to his friend’s face and shook his head. Rather than answer the surgeon’s question, he said, “You do realize, of course, that none of this even begins to answer the question we actually started with.”
“What question?”
“Who killed the bloody Bishop.”
“And the Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw,” Gibson reminded him.
“And the Reverend Earnshaw,” said Sebastian.
 
 
It was when they were leaving the tavern that Sebastian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small folded square of paper.
Dr. and Mrs. Daniel McCain, Number 11 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.
“What’s that?” said Gibson, watching him.
Sebastian frowned down at the scrawled direction and resurrected with difficulty the memory of the Bishop’s chaplain accosting him in Whitehall that afternoon with some babble about a hiatus in the Bishop’s appointments.
“It’s an address,” said Sebastian. “The name and address of a family in Chelsea the Bishop visited the Monday before he died.” He could be wrong, but he had a disquieting suspicion that McCain was the name of the doctor he’d seen escorting Miss Hero Jarvis around the Royal Hospital.
“Chelsea?” said Gibson. “What the bloody hell was Prescott doing in Chelsea?”
“I don’t know. But first thing tomorrow morning, I intend to find out.”
Chapter 31
 
MONDAY, 13 JULY 1812
 
 
 
 
The next morning dawned cool and gray, with a heavy mist that blanketed the wet city and hung in dirty wisps about the chimney pots. Sir Henry Lovejoy was in his chambers at Bow Street’s public office, a scarf wrapped around his neck and the
Hue and Cry
spread open on the desk before him, when Sebastian strolled into his office.
“My lord,” said the little magistrate, leaping to his feet. “Please have a seat.”
“No, thank you,” said Sebastian, shaking his head. “I won’t be but a moment.” He drew a folded slip of paper from his pocket and laid it on the open pages of the weekly police gazette. “I have here the name and sailing date of a vessel that was said to have left Portsmouth in February of 1782. But it is also possible the ship sailed from London sometime in mid-December of 1781, headed for the American Colonies. I’d like you to verify when and where it sailed.”
“ ‘The
Albatross
,’ ” read Lovejoy, fingering the paper. “The Board of Trade should have the information you require. I can go there this afternoon.” He glanced up. “I take it this is related in some way to the deaths of Bishop Francis Prescott, the Reverend Earnshaw, and Sir Nigel?”
Sebastian felt a rare suggestion of heat touch his cheeks. “Yes. But I’d appreciate it if you could keep whatever information you discover confidential.”
Sir Henry gave one of his jerky little bows. “You may, of course, rely upon my utmost discretion.”
“I know,” said Sebastian, turning toward the door. “Thank you.”
“I’m not entirely certain I understand this continuing fascination of yours with America,” said Sir Henry, stopping him.
Sebastian turned. “You don’t find it curious, the way the events surrounding both Prescott men’s deaths keep circling back to the Colonies?”
The magistrate shrugged. “Most men of affairs in London have ties to America. I would imagine your own father has had dealings with the Colonies.”
Sebastian blinked, and kept his peace.
“Personally,” continued Lovejoy, “I find the Bishop’s recent encounter with Jack Slade far more telling.”
“Jack Slade was locked up in a watch house here in London the night Sir Nigel disappeared.”
“True. But he could easily have had an accomplice who committed the actual murder for him.”
Sebastian shook his head. “If I were going to kill the man I held responsible for the death of my entire family, I’d want to watch him die. And I’d want to make certain he knew exactly
why
he was dying.”
The magistrate looked oddly pinched, as if the flesh had suddenly stretched taut across the features of his face. He cleared his throat and glanced away. “Yes . . . well . . . perhaps. But you must admit that the reappearance of Slade in the Bishop’s life at just such a time is curious.”
“I won’t deny that,” said Sebastian.
 
 
Half an hour later, Sebastian was rubbing gray ashes into his hair in his dressing room at Brook Street when Tom appeared in the doorway.
“I ’ear yer lordship is goin’ to Chelsea this mornin’,” said the tiger, his arm resting rakishly in a sling, his voice strained by the effort to appear nonchalant. “Ye want I should bring the curricle ’round?”
Sebastian glanced over at him and frowned. “What are you doing up?”
“Dr. Gibson said I could.”
“Getting out of bed and going back to work are two different things.”
“But I’m gonna be fit fer nothin’ but Bedlam, sittin’ around ’ere with nothin’ to do!
Please
, gov’nor.”
Sebastian wrapped a cheap black cravat around his neck. “I fear your sanity must be sacrificed to a higher cause—in this case, your health.”
Tom’s scowl deepened. “Never say you’re taking
Giles
?” Tom had a long-standing rivalry with Sebastian’s middle-aged groom.
“No, I’m not taking Giles. I have no intention of arriving in Chelsea in a gentleman’s curricle. I’m taking a hackney.”
“A hackney? Gov’nor, no!”

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