Who Buries the Dead (30 page)

T
he bell towers of the city were striking four when Sebastian watched Sir Galen Knightly tuck a silver-headed walking stick up under one arm and pause to purchase a paper from one of the newsboys on St. James’s Street. A dark, angry storm was sweeping in on the city, the air heavy with the scent of coming rain.

“Walk with me a ways, if you will, Sir Galen?” said Sebastian, stepping forward as the Baronet turned toward the entrance to White’s.

The laugh lines beside the Baronet’s eyes creased as he seemed almost to wince at the suggestion he depart from his comfortable daily routine. “Well . . . I was just on my way to the reading room,” he said, his gaze drifting longingly toward his club’s stately facade.

“I know; I’m sorry. But I’d like your opinion on a tale I’ve just been told, and to be frank, I’d rather not repeat it where we might be overheard.”

Knightly hesitated, then shrugged. “As you wish.”

They walked down the hill toward the high, soot-stained brick walls of St. James’s Palace and the Mall beyond it. Lightning flickered across the roiling underbelly of the clouds, and the air filled with dark, swirling flocks of birds coming in to roost
.

Sebastian said, “I had an interesting conversation this afternoon with the owner of a coffee shop frequented by Dr. Douglas Sterling. He tells me Sterling spent all of last year in Jamaica and returned only a few weeks ago.”

“Oh?” said Knightly. “I had no notion it was so recently.”

Sebastian studied the older man’s hard-boned profile. “I think I know why both he and Stanley Preston were killed.”

Knightly glanced sideways at him. “Do you? Why is that?”

“It all goes back to a deception carried out some forty years ago.”

“Forty years?” Knightly gave a brittle, forced laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am. You see, forty-odd years ago, a certain Hertfordshire baronet shipped his young, excessively profligate heir off to a maternal uncle in Jamaica. The idea was to remove the heir from the influences of his boon companions, who by all accounts were a rather unsavory lot. Only, things didn’t go quite according to plan.”

“They rarely do,” observed Knightly, swinging his walking stick back and forth.

“True,” said Sebastian. “It seems that shortly after his arrival in Jamaica, our young heir impregnated and was forced to marry the daughter of a prominent local landowner. Unfortunately, the young man barely lived long enough to see his son take his first steps before succumbing with his bride to a yellow fever epidemic.”

“Yes, I’m afraid yellow jack has long been a terrible scourge in the warmer American colonies. But . . . is there a point to this tale?”

“There is. You see, the father’s death meant the orphaned babe was now the Baronet’s new heir. The grandfather wanted the child raised in England, and the uncle finally agreed to bring him.”

Knightly kept his gaze on the wind-tossed trees in the park beyond the palace, his jaw set hard, and said nothing.

“The child had lost his wet nurse along with his parents,” said Sebastian, weaving together what he’d learned from Juba with what he’d been told by the Duchess of Claiborne, “and was being nursed by one of the uncle’s own slaves—a pale-skinned quadroon named Cally whose babe had died in the same epidemic. Cally was by all accounts a beautiful woman, so beautiful the uncle was rumored to have made her his mistress. When the uncle and the child set sail for England, Cally came with them.”

Knightly pursed his lips in a way that sucked in his cheeks, his gaze fixed relentlessly straight ahead.

“Now, here’s where it gets interesting,” said Sebastian. “Before he died, Douglas Sterling told Stanley Preston that he believed the real heir to the baronetcy had actually died in the epidemic along with his mother and father. That the child brought to England was in fact the child of the slave woman, Cally, and the uncle—”

“It’s a lie!”
Nostrils flaring with the agitation of his breathing and both fists tightening on the handle of his walking stick, Knightly drew up abruptly and swung to face Sebastian. “You hear me? It’s all a lie.”

Thunder rumbled long and ominously close as Sebastian studied the older man’s rigid, angry face. “It may well be. But Dr. Douglas Sterling was a physician, which meant he was in a position to know if something irregular had occurred. I can’t explain why he kept silent all these years—perhaps he only suspected a switch had been made and was unable to prove it. But when he arrived back in London after a lengthy visit to his daughter to find Stanley Preston anxious to marry his daughter to that very child—long since grown to manhood and now in possession of a baronetcy to which he might actually have no real claim—I think Sterling decided to share his suspicions with Preston. Preston, of course, reacted to the tale with all the horror to be expected of a man obsessed with wealth and birth—not to mention a biblically inspired conviction in the superiority of the European race. It was you, after all, who told me of Preston’s aversion to miscegenation. Remember?”

Knightly fingered the catch on his walking stick—a walking stick that in all likelihood concealed a long, thin sword.

Watching him carefully, Sebastian said, “That morning, shortly after the doctor left, Preston called a hackney and went to Fish Street Hill. That’s where the old woman who’d once served as the child’s nurse now lives, you see; in Bucket Lane. When the child’s uncle returned to Jamaica, he left Cally behind to care for the boy. Only, when the lad was just three years old, Sir Maxwell dismissed her.” Sebastian paused. “If the child truly was hers, the separation must have caused her unimaginable agony. Although perhaps she consoled herself with the thought her son was growing up the heir to a baronet.”

“It’s not true,” said Knightly, his features dark and twisted with rage. “You hear me? None of it is true.”

“I hope not,” said Sebastian. “Because if it is true, then when you killed the old woman, Cally, you killed your own mother.”

The twin rows of Pall Mall’s lampposts lent a golden cast to the strengthening rain. Knightly stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched tight.

Sebastian said, “She denied it, you know. When Preston came to see her that day, Cally swore you were Beau Knightly’s son. That it was her own child who’d died in the yellow fever epidemic. And after Preston left, when the daughter she’d had by a London costermonger questioned her, she still denied it. So perhaps it is nothing more than an old doctor’s muddled suspicions. But three people are still dead because of it—four if you count the virger, Toop, who simply had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The rain was falling harder now, large drops that pinged on the iron handrail beside them and ran down the Baronet’s hard, sun-darkened cheeks. “You’re mad. Do you hear me? Utterly mad.”

Sebastian shook his head. “When he left Bucket Lane, Stanley Preston went to confront you, didn’t he? I’ve no doubt you denied it all to him, just as you’re denying it to me now. Why didn’t you kill him then, I wonder? Did the conversation take place somewhere too public? Is that why you decided to wait and kill him later that night when he went to meet Rowan Toop at Bloody Bridge? You did know of that meeting, didn’t you?”

Knightly gave a harsh, ringing laugh. “Try telling this tale to the magistrates and see how far you get without any proof. You have none. You hear me? You have nothing.” The laugh ended abruptly, his face twisting into something ugly as he brought up one hand to point a warning finger at Sebastian over the silver head of his swordstick. “But you breathe one word of this nonsense in the clubs—
one word
—and I swear to God, I’ll call you out for it.”

Sebastian studied the other man’s angry, pinched face, looking for some trace of the elegant bone structure that the old slave woman, Cally, had bequeathed to her daughter and grandson. But he could see only the slablike Anglo-Saxon features of a typical Englishman. “You’re right; I don’t have any proof yet. But I will.”

And then he walked away, leaving the Baronet staring after him, the silver-headed walking stick gripped tightly in his hands.

“What precisely are you trying to do?” asked Hero, later, staring at him. “Provoke Knightly into killing you?”

Sebastian walked over to where a carafe of brandy stood warming beside the library fire. “I’m hoping he’ll try. Because he’s right; I can’t prove he killed Preston. I can’t prove he killed any of them. The only thing I can do is rattle him enough that he does something stupid.”

“And if he should by some strange, inexplicable chance succeed in killing you?”

He looked over at her with a crooked smile. “Then you’ll know I was right.”

She made an inelegant noise deep in her throat and rose from the library table where she’d been working on her article. “If you are right about Knightly—which at this point is still an
if
—then how do you explain Diggory Flynn?”

Sebastian poured a measure of brandy into a glass and set aside the decanter. “I think Oliphant decided he needed to kill me as soon as he returned to London, and he hired Diggory Flynn to do the job.”

“Because he thought you intended to kill him?”

“Yes.” He went to stand at the library window, his brandy cradled in one hand as he stared out at the storm. “And if I had killed the bastard, Jamie Knox would still be alive today.”

A jagged sizzle of lightning lit up the nearly deserted wet street and silhouetted the dark rooftops of the opposite houses against the roiling underbelly of the storm clouds overhead. He could see a workman struggling to lash down the tools in his handcart, the lightning limning a pale, rain-washed face cut by the strap of an eye patch as the old man squinted up at the sky. Then the flash subsided, leaving the scene in near total darkness, and Sebastian realized the gusting wind must have blown out most of the oil lamps on the street.

Hero said, “Oliphant should have known that’s not your way.”

“I think you give me too much credit.”

“No.”

Light footsteps sounded in the hall, and Hero turned toward the door as Claire came in carrying Simon. “Awake, little one?” she said with a smile. “And not screaming yet?”

Sebastian watched her move to take the child into her arms, saw the toothless grin that spread across his son’s face as she lifted him up. And he knew a jolting frisson of alarm as the significance of the workman’s eye patch suddenly hit him.

“Hero,” he said, starting toward her. . . .

Just as the windowpane beside him shattered and a roll of thunder mingled with the crack of a rifle.

T
he globe of the oil lamp on the table near the door exploded in a shower of glass.

“Get down!” shouted Sebastian, lunging toward Hero and Simon as he saw her fall.

“Hero . . .”
Crouching low, he caught her up in his arms, ran his hands over her and felt the warm stickiness of blood. “Mother of God, you’re hit. Where? Simon—”

“We’re all right,” said Hero, her eyes dark and wide, the now screaming child cradled close. “It’s just cuts from the flying glass.”

He looked over at the Frenchwoman huddled behind a nearby chair. “Claire?”

Claire’s terrified gaze met his, and she nodded.

He pushed up. “Stay here.”

“Devlin!” he heard Hero shout as he tore across the entry hall and wrenched open the front door.

A cold, wind-driven rain stung his face and whipped at the tails of his coat as he pelted down the wet front steps. He could see the aged workman pushing his cart toward Bond Street, head down against the storm, the wheels of the cart bouncing over the paving stones. Then he must have heard Sebastian’s running footsteps, because he threw a quick glance over his shoulder. His hair had been liberally smeared with gray ashes, and the oddly lopsided grimace he’d once affected was gone, leaving him almost unrecognizable.

“Flynn!” shouted Sebastian.

The one-eyed man reached beneath his coat.

Sebastian dove sideways behind the front steps of the house beside him as Diggory Flynn ripped off his eye patch and brought up a long-barreled pistol to fire. The shot ricocheted off the iron railing beside Sebastian’s head, sparks showering the night.

“You son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, scrambling to his feet again.

Flynn abandoned the workman’s cart and took off running.

Sebastian tore after him.

The former observing officer was both shorter and older, and Sebastian gained on him rapidly. Reaching out with his left hand, he grabbed Flynn’s right shoulder and spun him around to drive his fist into the middle of the man’s face, feeling bone and teeth give way in a blood-slicked crunch.

“You bastard,” swore Sebastian.
“You could have killed my wife and son.”

“You moved!”

Without losing his hold on the man’s shoulder, Sebastian buried his fist in Flynn’s gut, then caught him under the chin with a punishing right hook.

Flynn’s head snapped back, the force of the blow wrenching his coat from Sebastian’s grasp. The man stumbled, tripped on the kerbstone, and went down hard on his rump.

Sebastian slipped his knife from his boot and advanced on him. “The same way you killed my brother.”

“Brother?” Flynn scrambled backward on his hands and buttocks, his face smeared with blood. “What brother?” His shoulder bumped against the area railing of the house behind him and he reached to haul himself up.

“Jamie Knox,”
said Sebastian, grabbing a fistful of the man’s coat front and swinging him around to slam his back against the house wall.

“But I—”

Sebastian pressed the knife blade against his throat.

Flynn’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard, blood dripping off his chin from his broken nose and mouth. “Don’t kill me.”

Sebastian shook his head, his lips curling away from his teeth. “Name one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

Flynn’s chest jerked on a ragged, quickly indrawn breath. “I can give you Oliphant.”

The French overture to Haydn’s last piano sonata thundered with an energetic and passionate verve as Sebastian threaded his way through Lady Farningham’s crowded reception rooms. It was her second musical evening of the Season, and it seemed that all of fashionable London had come to hear her latest Italian virtuoso. The more intent listeners were seated in the rows of gilded chairs drawn up before the pianoforte. But most of the guests circulated freely, drinking and eating and chatting in small clusters.

Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, was standing beside one of the ornate pilasters in the drawing room, his gaze fixed on the pianist, when Sebastian walked up behind his former colonel and said quietly, “I have Diggory Flynn. He’s willing to testify that you paid him to kill Jamie Knox.”

Oliphant kept his eyes on the musician, not even bothering to turn his head as he said, “I never did any such thing.”

Lady Oliphant was too far away to hear their words, but she looked over at Sebastian and frowned pointedly.

Sebastian kept his voice low. “True; you paid him to kill me. But Knox died.”

“Diggory Flynn is scum. No one will believe him. Do you honestly think a jury would take the word of a smuggler against that of a peer of the realm?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Like Oliphant, Sebastian kept his attention seemingly focused on the performer. “The thing is, you see, your man shot at me tonight with my wife and son standing beside me.
Jarvis’s daughter and grandson.
The only reason I haven’t already killed you is because they weren’t hurt. But don’t expect Jarvis to be swayed by such technicalities. You’ll be lucky if you live long enough to stand trial.” He watched as that perpetual, confident smile slid slowly from Oliphant’s face. “I suppose you could try to run. But I don’t think you’ll get far.”

He bowed his head toward Oliphant’s scowling wife. “My lady,” he said, and turned to walk out of the room and out of the house.

As he descended the front steps, he noticed one of the tall, dark-haired former hussar officers employed by Jarvis waiting across the rain-drenched street. For a moment, their gazes met. Then he heard Tom’s shout.

“Gov’nor! Oy, gov’nor.”

He could see the tiger threading his way through the crowd of gawkers that always formed around such events.

“Gov’nor,” said the boy, struggling to catch his breath as he skidded to a halt at the base of the steps. He held out a somewhat grubby calling card. “A lad just brung this from Bucket Lane!”

It was one of Sebastian’s own cards. He flipped it over to see that someone had written on the back in a childish hand.

Plees help. Juba

“I think it’s a trap,” said Tom.

They were in a hackney headed toward Fish Street Hill. The rain had eased up for the moment, but water still dripped from the eaves of the mean houses and shops they passed, and a cold wind buffeted the old carriage.

“Of course it’s a trap,” said Sebastian, his gaze on the soaring tower of the church of St. Magnus that loomed over the bridgehead and Billingsgate Market. He’d expected Knightly to try to silence him. And he had worried about the safety of Juba and Banjo. What he hadn’t foreseen was that the killer would use the woman and child to bait a trap for Sebastian.

He wondered if life really spun in circles, or if it was simply some trick of the human mind that made people see patterns where none truly existed. The last time women and children had been put at risk because of him, he had failed to save them. He’d spent the last three years seeking some sort of redemption for that failure and had found a measure of solace in his efforts on behalf of other victims of human evil.

But now it was happening all over again.

Tom shook his head. “So why ye goin’ there?”

“Because if I don’t, Juba and her son will die.”

Lit only by the occasional glimmer of a tallow candle showing through a grimy window, Bucket Lane lay dark and wet and deserted beneath the stormy sky.

“What we gonna do?” whispered Tom as they slipped down the lane to draw up in a shadowy doorway.

Centuries old, Juba’s house had only two stories and was built so that the upper floor jutted out over the lower. It contained just two rooms per floor, with a different family living in each room. The front room of the upper story was dark. But the flickering, smoky light of a tallow candle showed through the thin, ragged curtain of the ground-floor room.

“I want you to go inside, slowly count to ten, and then knock on the first door to your left. Just be certain to flatten yourself against the wall before you reach over to knock, and jerk your hand back quickly. I wouldn’t put it past Knightly to shoot through the door rather than open it.”

“And then what?”

“And then I want you to run into the street and keep running, no matter what happens.”

“But . . . gov’nor!”

“You heard me.”

The boy hung his head. “Aye, gov’nor.”

Sebastian watched the tiger let himself in the house’s battered street door, and began to count.

One, two . . .

A single large shadow seated at the trestle table near the door showed through the worn cloth of the curtain. Knightly? Probably. But if so, then where were Juba and Banjo?

Three, four . . .

He told himself the woman and boy couldn’t already be dead. Surely Knightly would leave them alive until he had Sebastian?

Five, six . . .

Leaping up, Sebastian caught hold of one of the beams supporting the cantilevered upper story where it jutted out above the window.

Seven, eight . . .

Kicking his legs, he began to swing back and forth, gathering momentum.

Nine, ten.

He heard the tiger’s knock, heard the sound of a bench being pushed back, saw the shadow rise to its feet. Then he kicked back hard with his legs and let go of the beam as he swung forward again toward the house.

He crashed through the window feetfirst in a shower of broken glass and shattered framing. Coming down hard on his feet, he lost his balance and fell to his knees. He saw Juba crouched on the pallet near the hearth, her son clutched in her arms. Saw Knightly spin toward him, the barrel of a flintlock pistol wavering as he brought up his other hand to steady it.

Sebastian threw himself sideways, jerked his own pistol free as he fell, and fired.

In the confined space of the small room, the pistol’s report was deafening, an explosion of smoke and flame and blood. Juba screamed. Knightly staggered back, slammed into the table, and crumpled slowly to the floor.

The door from the hall burst open and Tom catapulted into the room.

“Bloody hell; I told you to run,” swore Sebastian.

Tom drew up short, his eyes wide, his breath coming hard and fast. Swiping one sleeve across his nose, he edged closer to Knightly’s now still body. “Gor. Ye plugged ’im right through the eye, ye did. Is ’e dead?”

Sebastian pushed to his feet, brushing broken glass from his clothes as he walked over to stare down at the Baronet’s slack face. “Yes.”

He bent to pick up the dead man’s pistol, then went to hunker down beside Juba and Banjo, still pressed up against the corner by the hearth. “You both all right?”

She nodded, her face slack, her pupils wide with terror. “I didn’t want to send you that note. But he said he’d kill Banjo if I didn’t.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who inadvertently put you at risk.”

She gazed beyond him, to where Sir Galen Knightly lay sprawled with one carefully manicured hand flung out so that it lay curled against the worn paving stones of her house.

She said, “Is he really my half brother?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”