Why Kings Confess (2 page)

A
t the base of the frost-browned, unkempt yard that stretc
hed to the rear of the surgery stood a low stone outbuilding where Gibson conducted both his official postmortems and the surreptitious, illegal dissections he performed on cadavers filched from the city’s churchyards by body snatchers. Of one room only, with high windows to discourage the curious, the building had a flagged floor and was bitterly cold. At its center stood a granite slab with strategically placed drains and a channel cut into the outer edge.

The body of a man, still fully clothed, lay upon it.

“I haven’t had a chance to begin with him yet,” said Gibson, hooking the lantern he carried onto the chain that dangled over the slab.

It sometimes seemed to Sebastian as if every suicide, every bloated body pulled from the Thames, every decaying cadaver that passed through this building, had left a stench that seeped into its walls, their muted howls of anguish and despair echoing still.

He took a deep breath and entered the room. “If St. Katharine’s authorities are convinced he was killed by common thieves, I’m surprised they agreed to an autopsy.”

“They weren’t exactly what you might call enthusiastic. To quote Constable O’Keefe”—Gibson puffed out his cheeks, narrowed his eyes, and adopted a decidedly nasal accent—“‘Wot ye want t’ be botherin’ wit’ all that fer, then? Sure but any fool can see wot killed him.’” The lantern swung back and forth on its chain, casting macabre shadows across the slab and its grisly occupant. He put up a hand to still it. “I had to promise I wouldn’t be charging the parish for my services. And I paid the lads who carried the body here myself.”

Sebastian studied the slim, slightly built man upon the surgeon’s slab. He was young yet, probably no more than twenty-six or twenty-eight, with a pleasant, even-featured face and high forehead framed by soft golden curls. His clothes were of good quality—better than the woman’s and considerably newer, fashionably cut in the Parisian style and showing little wear. But what had once been a fine silk waistcoat and linen shirt were now ripped and soaked with blood, the chest beneath hacked open to reveal a gaping cavity.

“What the hell? He looks like he was attacked with an axe.”

“It’s worse than that,” said Gibson, tucking his hands up under his armpits for warmth. “His heart has been removed.”

Sebastian raised his gaze to the Irishman’s solemn face. “Please tell me he was already dead when this was done to him.”

“I honestly don’t know yet.”

Sebastian forced himself to look, again, at that ravaged torso. “Any chance this could be the work of a student of medicine?”

“Are you serious? Even a butcher would have been more delicate. Whoever did this made a right royal mess of it.”

Sebastian shifted his gaze to the dead man’s face. His eyes were large and widely spaced, the nose prominent, the mouth full lipped and soft, almost feminine. Even in death, there was a gentleness and kindness to his features that made what had been done to him seem somehow that much more horrible.

“You say he was a physician?”

Gibson nodded. “He was staying at the Gifford Arms, in York Street. The constables brought round a gentleman from the hotel—a Monsieur Vaundreuil—to identify him.”

“Yet he couldn’t identify the woman?”

“Said he’d never seen her before. He also said he’d no notion what Pelletan might have been doing in St. Katharine’s.” Gibson rubbed the back of his neck. “I should mention that, along with his papers, the constables also found a purse containing both banknotes and silver.”

“Yet they’re convinced he fell victim to footpads?”

“The theory is that the thieves were interrupted.”

“By you?”

“I certainly didn’t see anyone. But then . . .”

“But then—what?” asked Sebastian.

Gibson colored. “I was rather lost in my own thoughts.”

Sebastian watched his friend look pointedly away but remained silent.

Gibson said, “If he were English, the circumstances might be strange enough to prod even St. Katharine’s authorities into taking action. But he’s not; he’s a Frenchman—a stranger—which makes it all too easy to simply dismiss the murder as the work of footpads and forget it.”

Sebastian lowered his gaze to the pallid corpse on the slab between them. For some reason he could not have named, he knew a faint, unsettling echo of that night’s troubled dream and all the unwanted memories it had provoked. For two years now he had dedicated himself to achieving a measure of justice for murder victims who would otherwise be forgotten. And it occurred to him, not for the first time, that those faraway events in Portugal had more to do with his preoccupation than he cared to explore.

He said, “Where exactly in Cat’s Hole were they?”

“There’s a small passage that opens up between a cooperage and a chandler’s shop, on the river side of the lane. I suspect he was attacked in the street and then dragged back into the passage before this was done to him.”

“And the woman?”

“Was lying in the lane, just before the passage.”

Sebastian nodded and turned toward the door. “I’d best have a look around the area now, before the neighborhood begins stirring.”

“Now? It’s the middle of the bloody night.”

Sebastian paused to look back at him. “You think it unwise of me to go wandering about St. Katharine’s, alone, in the dark, do you?”

Gibson grunted and reached to unhook the lantern. “Here. At least take this.”

“Thanks. But I don’t really need it.”

Gibson gave a rueful laugh, his fist tightening around the lantern’s handle. Sebastian was as famous for his ability to see in the dark as for his keen hearing and sharp eyesight. “No, I don’t suppose you do. But, Devlin . . . be careful. Whatever this is, it’s ugly. Very ugly.”

•   •   •

The ancient district known as St. Katharine’s ran along the northern bank of the Thames, just to the east of the ancient Tower of London. A warren of crooked lanes, crowded tenements, and dark courts, it was named for the hospital of St. Katherine’s that lay at its center.

Although called a “hospital,” St. Katharine’s was not so much a medical institution as a benevolent establishment dedicated to the care of the poor. As one of London’s medieval “liberties,” the area surrounding the old monastic buildings had long been a haven for foreign craftsmen seeking the protection it offered from the city’s powerful guilds. But along with the Flemish coopers, French artisans, and German brewers who flocked to the area had come thieves and whores, beggars and vagabonds. It was not an area a wise man wandered after dark, and Sebastian found himself wondering, again, what the hell Paul Gibson had been doing here, alone, on such a cold winter’s night.

Or what Damion Pelletan and his unidentified female companion had been doing here.

Sebastian walked up the dark, narrow lane with one hand on the double-barreled pistol in his pocket, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the icy silence, his senses alert for the slightest hint of movement or whisper of sound. The wind had died, and with the approach of false dawn a mist was beginning to creep up from the water’s edge, thick and stealthy. In another hour, these streets would begin to fill with costermongers, apprentices, and dustmen. But for the moment, all was still.

He found the passage readily enough, just beyond the battered, shuttered facade of a cooperage. Like virtually all the lanes in St. Katharine’s, Cat’s Hole was too narrow for footpaths; the dilapidated, closely packed tenements and tumbledown shops rose directly from the worn, ice-glazed cobbles of the roadway itself.

It took Sebastian only a moment to find the smear of blood near the corner of the passage. The woman’s blood? he wondered. Or Pelletan’s?

Squatting beside the bloodstain, he studied the surrounding jumble of muddy footprints and crushed ice. But between Gibson, the constables, and the men who’d helped carry Pelletan and his injured companion to Gibson’s surgery, any traces left by the murderer had been hopelessly trampled over and destroyed.

The sound of a soft snort brought up his head, and he found himself staring into the soft brown eyes of a half-grown pig that had been rooting through a nearby pile of garbage. “So,” said Sebastian. “Did you see anything?”

The pig snorted again and trotted away.

Sebastian rose thoughtfully to his feet, his eyes narrowing against the thickening fog as he turned to consider the deserted lane. From here he could see the massive, soot-stained walls of the Tower rising at the far western end of the lane. Which direction had Pelletan and the unknown woman been traveling? he wondered. Toward the relatively open ground surrounding the old medieval fortress? Or had they been headed east, deep into St. Katharine’s warren of dark, dangerous alleys and courtyards?

He turned his attention to the foul passageway beside him. Unlike the lane, the passage had never been paved. Beneath the soles of his Hessians, the thick, ice-crusted muck reeked of offal and manure and rotting fish heads. Yet despite the trampling of so many feet, Sebastian was able to find the impression left by the dead man’s body in the lee of a pile of broken crates and hogsheads.

He hunkered down, his gaze carefully assessing the surrounding area. He noted the blood-splattered wood of a nearby crate, the piece of torn, bloodstained linen trampled into the mud, more footprints, hopelessly muddled. Then he widened his search, looking for something—anything—that might give a hint as to who had killed Damion Pelletan. He was also looking for the dead man’s heart.

He did not find it.

Frustrated, he brought his gaze back to that blood-splattered pile of broken crates. What kind of a murderer hacks open his victim and steals his heart? Sebastian wondered. A madman? It was the obvious answer. Yet Sebastian had known British soldiers—even officers—who laughingly collected from their fallen enemies mementos ranging from severed fingers to ears. It was, after all, the British and French who had taught the American natives to collect scalps.

Was that what they were dealing with here? Some half-mad collector of war trophies? He supposed it was always possible. But a heart? Why would a murderer steal his victim’s heart? The heart was a potent symbol of so many things: of love, of courage, of life itself. Was the theft of Damion Pelletan’s heart symbolic? Or was it something else, something darker, something more . . .

Evil.

And he knew it again, that whisper of memory, elusive and troubling.

He pushed quickly to his feet.

He was turning to leave when he saw it: the clear imprint of a shoe left on a broken slat of wood half trampled into the mud. It wasn’t an entire footprint, only the heel and part of the sole. But there was no mistaking that mingling of mud and blood. The shoe’s wearer had obviously trod here after Damion Pelletan’s death.

Reaching down, Sebastian freed the piece of wood from the muck, careful not to disturb the telltale outline of mud and blood it bore.

He stared at the imprint thoughtfully. It was always possible that the shoe’s owner had come through the passage in the last several hours and had nothing to do with the murder. So Sebastian began, again, to study the confusion of footprints in the garbage-strewn muck.

It took some time, but he finally found a place where a similar shoe print had been clearly pierced by the imprint of a peg leg. Whoever left these footprints had been in the passage after Pelletan’s death, but before Gibson.

Sebastian shifted his gaze, again, to the slat of wood in his hands. The shoe print wasn’t much to go on—certainly not enough to identify the killer. But it forced Sebastian to reassess completely every assumption he’d made about that night’s events, for there was no mistaking the curve of that arch or the fashionable shape of the small, narrowed heel.

It was the print of a woman’s shoe.

W
hen Hero Devlin was twelve years old, she came to three life-altering conclusions: There were just as many stupid men as stupid women in the world—if not more; she would never, ever hide her own intelligence or knowledge in a craven attempt to conform to her society’s expectations and prejudices; and as long as England’s laws gave a husband virtually the same powers over his wife as those exercised by slave owners over slaves, Hero herself would never marry.

She had announced these convictions one evening at dinner. Her father, Charles, Lord Jarvis, simply continued eating as if she’d never spoken, while his mother snorted in derision. But Hero’s own mother, the gentle, slightly addlebrained Annabelle, Lady Jarvis, had whispered softly, “Oh,
Hero
.”

Over the next several years, Hero’s critical assessment of society had continued unabated. She read Mary Wollstonecraft and the Marquis de Condorcet. She refused to allow her revulsion at the excesses of the French Revolution to diminish her admiration for its fundamental principles. And she began to write, using her research skills and reasoning abilities to work to change the numerous injustices she observed around her daily.

Now in her mid-twenties, Hero’s radical opinions remained intact. But her determination never to marry had fallen victim to a certain dark-haired, golden-eyed viscount with a mysterious past and a powerful passion of his own.

She felt the baby kick again, hard enough this time to take her breath, and she set aside the new article she was writing on London’s working poor to go stand at the drawing room window overlooking the street below. A thin white mist drifted between the tall houses, dulling the rising sun to a glowing red ball and muffling the sounds of the waking city. It was just the kind of morning for a good gallop. Unfortunately, one did not gallop in Hyde Park—especially when one was nine months heavy with child.

She fought down an uncharacteristic upwelling of impatience and frustration. She had borne most of her pregnancy with ease, continuing her normal activities here and in the country, and sallying forth frequently to conduct interviews for her series of articles. But over the past few days the baby seemed to have settled. Even sitting was becoming difficult, sleep nearly impossible. And she found herself filled with a restlessness that was becoming increasingly difficult to stifle.

She was about to turn back to her article when she heard the front door open and Devlin’s quick tread on the stairs. He drew up in the entrance to the drawing room to swing off his greatcoat and set aside the broken slat of wood he carried.

“I was hoping you’d lie in this morning,” he said, coming to catch her to him and give her a long, lingering kiss that made her breath quicken—even now, big with his child. “You aren’t sleeping much these days.”

He smelled of wood smoke and frosty air and all the invigorating scents of early morning, and before she could stop herself, she said, “What I’d really like to do is go for a walk—a
real
walk, in the park.”

He laughed, his hands tightening on hers. “Then let’s go.”

She shook her head. “Dr. Croft warns me that I may take a brief turn around the garden, once in the morning and again in the evening, but no more.”

Richard Croft was London’s most respected accoucheur, a pompous and self-important little man utterly convinced of the efficacy of what he called his Lowering System for the Treatment of Ladies Facing Confinement. He had tut-tutted in horror when Hero and Devlin finally returned to London after spending three months at Devlin’s estate down in Hampshire, going for long walks in the bracing rural air and enjoying the countryside’s abundant fresh foods. In Croft’s professional opinion, anything more than a severely restricted diet and ladylike, restrained exercise could be disastrous for the safe outcome of a confinement.

“Is that before or after you have the bowl of thin gruel he allows you?” asked Devlin.

“Oh, definitely before. To exercise after taking sustenance can be fatal, you know—if you call walking in the garden exercise and thin bouillon sustenance.”

He laughed again, his smile fading slowly as his gaze searched her face. “How are you feeling? Truly?”

“Truly? I’m hungry, uncomfortable, and beyond cranky. But never mind that. I want to hear about Gibson.”

Another man might have sought to spare his pregnant wife the more macabre aspects of Damion Pelletan’s murder. Devlin knew better. As she listened to him describe his search of Cat’s Hole and the passageway where the body was found, she went to pick up the broken slat.

“A woman’s shoe? Are you certain?”

“Have you ever seen a man’s shoe with that kind of heel?”

She stared down at the clear imprint of mingled mud and blood. “No; you’re right. This was definitely left by a woman’s shoe.” She looked up at him. “How difficult is it to remove a heart, anyway?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’ll need to ask Gibson.”

The clang of a milkmaid’s pails drew Hero’s gaze, again, to the street. The fog was beginning to burn off, the white sky filling with seagulls wheeling above the rooftops, their haunting cries beckoning her like a siren’s call. The urge welled within her again, to feel the cold mist on her face and let the wind catch at her hair and be done with this interminable waiting.

As if aware of the drift of her thoughts, Devlin said, “How about if I order the carriage and take my wife for an illicit early-morning walk in the park? We won’t tell Dr. Croft, and between the fog and your heaviest pelisse, not even London’s nosiest busybodies will be able to tell that my bride of six months is only weeks away from delivering my daughter.”

She smiled. “Your son. I keep telling you it’s a boy.” Then she shook her head. “No. You need to visit the Gifford Arms Hotel and see what they can tell you about this Frenchman.”

He came to bracket her cheeks with his palms and kiss her on the mouth, a long, slow kiss that reminded her they hadn’t made love since the previous October, when the esteemed Dr. Richard Croft had sternly warned that she must carefully avoid any “animalistic appetites.”

He said, “The Gifford Arms will wait an hour.”

•   •   •

A small but eminently respectable hotel built of neatly squared sandstone blocks, the Gifford Arms lay on the south side of St. James’s Park, not far from the intersection of James and York streets. Dating to late in the previous century, it had tidy rows of sashed windows flanking a central door that led to a short, flagged stairwell. As was typical of inns of that period, the coffee room opened off the passage to the right, with a dining parlor to the left. Closing the door against the damp cold, Sebastian breathed in the warm, welcoming scents of roasting lamb and beeswax and hearty ale. But both the entrance passage and the rooms opening off it were deserted.

“Hello,” he called.

Silence.

Stepping into the oak-paneled coffee room, he turned a slow circle, his gaze drifting over the scattering of empty tables and chairs. “Hello?”

He heard a quick step, and a droopy-jowled, lanky man in a leather apron appeared in a far doorway. “May I help you, sir?” He had straight fair hair just beginning to turn gray and protuberant, widely set eyes that gave him somewhat the look of a startled mackerel.

“I’m here about Dr. Damion Pelletan,” said Sebastian, choosing his words carefully.

The man’s face puckered. “Oh, dear. Are you a friend of Dr. Pelletan’s, sir?”

“Not exactly.”

“Ah. Well, the thing is, you see, we’ve had the constables here. They’re saying Dr. Pelletan is dead.” The man edged closer and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “
Murdered.
In St. Katharine’s, just last night. Footpads.”

“How long had Dr. Pelletan been staying here?”

“’Bout three weeks, I’d say. Same as the rest of ’em.”

“The rest of them?” prompted Sebastian.

“Aye. They rented the entire inn, you know. They’re the only ones staying here now.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Mmm.
Frenchmen.
” He said the word as if it were enough to explain any eccentricity. “Even brought in their own cook and servants, they did. I’m the only regular left.”

“Are all their servants French as well?”

“Oh, aye. The lot of ’em.”

“Émigrés, I assume?”

The man tweaked the top of one ear and screwed up his face. “We-ell, they
say
they are.”

“But you doubt them?”

The man gave a quick look around and leaned closer still. “Seems a queer thing to do, don’t it?” he asked, his voice sinking even lower. “To take over a whole hotel like this? I mean, why not hire a house, like proper Englishmen?”

“Perhaps they don’t intend to be in London long. Or perhaps they’re looking to purchase something.”

“I ain’t seen no sign of it. If you ask me, it’s more than queer. I mean, why go to such pains to stay someplace all together? ’T’ain’t as if they
like
each other, that’s for certain.”

“Do they quarrel?”

“All the time! Leastways, it sure looks and sounds like they’re quarreling—not that I can understand what they’re saying, mind you, seein’ as how I don’t speak the French and all.”

“Families frequently do quarrel,” observed Sebastian.

“Aye. But this lot ain’t family—leastways, not most of ’em.”

“Oh? Who is here besides Dr. Pelletan?”

“Well, let’s see. . . . There’s Harmond Vaundreuil; he’s the one in charge—although I get the feeling that don’t sit too well with the colonel.”

“The colonel?”

“Aye. Colonel Foucher, he calls himself. Don’t know the rest of his moniker. Then there’s Vaundreuil’s clerk. Bondurant is his name. A skinny rabbit of a man, he is—spends all his time with his nose stuck in some book.”

“So only four, including Pelletan?”

“Five, if you count the girl.”

“The girl?”

“Vaundreuil’s daughter.”

“Ah. And they hired the entire hotel?”

“Like I said, they’re a queer bunch.” His mouth hung open, allowing his jowls to sag even farther. “And up to no good, I’d say—or my name’s not Mitt Peebles.”

A heavy thump sounded overhead. Sebastian said, “When did you last see Dr. Pelletan?”

Mitt looked thoughtful. “Hmm . . . I suppose that would’ve been last night, when them two come looking for him.”

“‘Them two?’”

“A man and a woman. Didn’t give their names.”

“What time was this?”

“’Bout nine, maybe.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“Couldn’t rightly say. She wore a veil, you see.”

“And the man?”

“’Fraid I didn’t pay him much mind. Stayed in the background, he did. Don’t recollect even hearing him speak.”

“They met with Pelletan in the dining room?”

“Oh, no, sir; the doctor went outside and talked to them—like he didn’t want none of the others to see them.”

“And how long after that did Pelletan leave?”

“Not long. He come back in and went up to his room for his greatcoat; then he left.”

“Walking?”

“I dunno. I didn’t notice.” Mitt frowned. “Why you asking all these questions, anyway?”

“I’m interested. Tell me this: Was the woman English or French?”

“Oh, she was a Frenchie—although I’ll admit her English was considerably better than most of ’em’s.”

“How was she dressed?”

Mitt shrugged. “Respectable-like, I suppose you could say. But not in the first stare of fashion, if you know what I mean?”

“How old would you say she was?”

He gave another twitch of the shoulder. “Not old, but not real young, neither. With that veil, I couldn’t tell you much else.”

The description fit the unknown woman in Gibson’s surgery. But it would also fit a thousand or more Frenchwomen in London. Sebastian said, “Tell me this: What manner of man was Dr. Pelletan? Would you describe him as pleasant? Or quick-tempered?”

“Pelletan?” Mitt paused to scratch the side of his face. “He weren’t half-bad, for a Frenchman. There’s no denying he was the nicest of the lot—him and Miss Madeline.”

“Miss Madeline?”

“Vaundreuil’s daughter.”

“And how old is she?”

“’Bout twenty-five, I’d say. Maybe a bit less.”

Sebastian, who had been picturing a child in pigtails, was forced to readjust his mental image. “Have you seen Miss Madeline this morning?”

“Oh, aye.” Mitt’s eyes narrowed with a sudden renewal of his earlier suspicion. “Why’d you say you was asking all these questions?”

“Just curious,” said Sebastian.

Mitt Peebles fixed him with a long, hard stare. “You’re a right curious fellow, ain’t you?”

“I am, yes. Can you think of any—”

He broke off at the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, and a man’s deep voice saying,
“À quelle heure?”

Sebastian could see them now: two men, one middle-aged and stout, the other taller, younger, and considerably leaner, with the swooping sandy-haired mustache and unmistakable carriage of a military man. They crossed the short entry passage and left the inn without glancing toward the coffee room.

Sebastian nodded after them. “I take it that was Monsieur Vaundreuil and Colonel Foucher?”

“It was, yes.”

Sebastian watched through the old-fashioned, wavy glass in the multipaned front windows as the two men hailed a hackney. The tall, rather gaunt man with the military bearing was unknown to him. But he recognized Harmond Vaundreuil immediately. He had seen the Frenchman just the week before, briefly, in Pall Mall, riding in a carriage with the King’s powerful cousin, Charles, Lord Jarvis.

Ruthless, cunning, and utterly devoted to both the monarchy and Britain, Lord Jarvis controlled a personal network of spies and informers that made him virtually omnipotent. He was also Sebastian’s new father-in-law.

And a dangerous, deadly enemy.