Why Mermaids Sing (12 page)

F
or several years now, Sir Henry Lovejoy had made his home in a neat row house on Russell Square. The district was genteel but far from fashionable, which suited Henry just fine. Once Henry had been a moderately successful merchant. But the deaths of his wife and only daughter had wrought changes in his life. Henry had undergone a spiritual revelation that turned him toward the Reformist church, and he had decided to devote the remainder of his life to public service.

He sat now in his favorite chair beside the sitting room fireplace, a rug tucked around his lap to help ward off the cold as he read. The fire was not lit; Henry never allowed a fire to be laid in his house before October first or after March 31, no matter what the weather. But he felt the cold terribly and was about to get up and ring for a nice pot of hot tea when he heard a knock at the door below, followed by the sound of voices in the hall.

Mrs. McCoy, his housekeeper, appeared at the sitting room door. “There’s a Lord Devlin to see you, Sir Henry.”

“Good heavens.” Henry thrust aside the rug. “Show him up immediately, Mrs. McCoy. And bring us some tea, please.”

Lord Devlin appeared in the sitting room doorway, his lean frame elegantly clad in the buckskin breeches and exquisitely tailored silk waistcoat and dark blue coat of a gentleman.

“Well,” said Henry, “I see you’ve put off your Bow Street raiment.”

Amusement gleamed in the Viscount’s strange yellow eyes. “You’ve heard from Sir James, I take it?”

“And Sir William. Please have a seat, my lord.”

“Do they still doubt the relevance of Donne’s poem?” Devlin asked, settling himself in a nearby chair.

“At the moment, I think Bow Street would investigate the Archbishop of Canterbury himself if someone were to suggest it might be relevant to these murders. It seems Lord Jarvis has taken an interest in the case. An intense interest.”

“Ah. I’ve just had a rather remarkable conversation with the man myself.”

“Lord Jarvis?”

Sebastian nodded. “It seems his son was a passenger on a ship that sailed from India some five years ago. A merchantman named the
Harmony
, captained by Edward Bellamy. Among the other passengers were Sir Humphrey Carmichael and Lord Stanton.”

“Merciful heavens.” Henry sat up straighter. “I remember the
Harmony
. It was in all the papers.”

His lordship hesitated as Mrs. McCoy appeared in the doorway bearing a serviceable tray piled with a teapot and teacups and a plate of small cake slices. Lord Devlin waited until she had poured the tea and withdrawn; then he gave a terse recitation of his conversation with Jarvis.

“I wasn’t in England five years ago,” he finished. “But you say you recall the incident?”

“Oh, yes. It was quite the sensation.” Henry set aside his tea untasted and arose to pace thoughtfully up and down the small room. A lurid explanation was taking form in his imagination. He kept trying to push the idea from his mind, but the tie between the murders and the
Harmony
’s harrowing experience raised a grisly possibility he could not seem to banish. At last he said, “You know what this suggests, don’t you?” He turned to the Viscount. “The butchering of the bodies…the draining of the blood…” His voice trailed away.

Devlin met his gaze and held it. “Englishmen have resorted to cannibalism before when faced with starvation and death.”

Henry drew a handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into its snowy folds. “I don’t believe there was any suggestion that while they were becalmed the officers and passengers of the
Harmony
…”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” said Devlin, when Henry left the rest of his sentence unsaid. “It’s an unwritten rule of the sea that the prohibition against cannibalism may be suspended in the case of shipwreck survivors or men becalmed. Think of the
Peggy
, or the raft of the
Medusa
. Sometimes the survivors admit to what they’ve done. At other times there is only a suspicion that lingers over them.”

“Usually they eat the bodies of their companions who are the first to die—is that not true?”

“Usually. But lacking that option, lots can be drawn and the loser sacrificed for the good of his companions. Only somehow I can’t see Sir Humphrey Carmichael or Lord Stanton putting their names in a hat for the chance to become their companions’ dinner.”

“No,” agreed Henry.

“Which leads to the suspicion that the victim, if there was one, was selected more arbitrarily. We need to know the names of any other passengers aboard the
Harmony
on that voyage, as well as the owners of the ship and its cargo.”

“The records of the inquiry should be on file at the Board of Trade,” said Henry.

Devlin set aside his cup and rose to his feet. “Good. Let me know what you discover.”

“You forget, my lord. Bow Street has taken over the case.”

Devlin smiled and turned toward the door, then hesitated. “One more thing. There’s a captain in the Horse Guards named Peter Quail. When he was with my regiment on the Continent, he took a fiendish delight in torturing and mutilating prisoners. I know of no link between him and the
Harmony
, but you might set one of your constables to discovering his whereabouts on the nights of the murders. Good evening, Sir Henry.”

Henry thought about that morning’s terse conversation with the magistrates of Bow Street and sighed.

Later that night, Kat sat before the mirror in her dressing room at the theater. In the flickering candlelight, her reflection looked pale, strained. The scent of oranges, greasepaint, and ale still hung heavy in the air, but the theater stretched out quiet around her. The farce had long since ended.

Aiden O’Connell had not come.

With a hand that was not quite steady, she locked away the rest of her costume and stood. Two more days. She had two more days, and she was, if anything, farther from finding a way out of her dilemma than she had been before.

That night, Sebastian dreamed of broken bodies and torn flesh, recent images of young men with butchered limbs blending with older memories of endless bloody carnage on the killing fields of Europe. Waking, he reached for Kat, not remembering until his hand slid across the cool empty sheet beside him that he slept in his own bed, alone.

He sat up, his heart pounding uncomfortably, the need to hold her in his arms strong. Slipping from his bed, he went to jerk open the drapes.

The waning moon cast grotesque patterns of light and shadow across the street below. It had been his intention to meet Kat at the theater after her performance, but she’d told him no, she wasn’t feeling well. She certainly didn’t look well, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy lidded. But he knew from the way she failed to meet his searching gaze that she was lying. Another man might have been suspicious, jealous. Sebastian knew only a deep and powerful sense that something was terribly wrong.

He was failing her; he knew that. She was in trouble, and for some reason he couldn’t understand she felt unable to confide in him. Or had she tried to turn to him for help, he wondered, only to find him so preoccupied with stopping this killer that she came away thinking he had no time for her? He realized he couldn’t even be sure.

Which was, he supposed, a damning conclusion.

T
HURSDAY
, 19 S
EPTEMBER
1811

S
ebastian hesitated in the cool morning shadows of the ancient arcade, his gaze on the gentlewoman ladling porridge at a table set at the far end of the courtyard.

The poor and hungry of the city pressed past him, their gaunt frames clad in filthy rags, their faces drawn and desperate. The smell of unwashed bodies, disease, and coming death mingled with the dank earthy scent of the old stones around them. Once, before Henry VIII cast his covetous eyes upon the wealth of the church, this had been the cloisters of a grand convent. Now it was a half ruin that served as an open-air relief center, part of a vast yet woefully inadequate network of private charities that struggled to alleviate the worst of the sufferings of London’s burgeoning population of poor.

A young girl clutching a wailing baby cast Sebastian a curious look, but he kept his attention fixed on the gentlewoman quietly dispensing porridge: Lady Carmichael. A tall, starkly thin woman in her late forties, she wore a plain black apron tied over a fine walking dress also of unrelieved black, for she was in deepest mourning. Beneath a simple black hat covering dark hair heavily laced with gray, her face looked nearly as gaunt and drawn as those of the men and women who crowded around her, cracked and chipped bowls clutched eagerly in desperate hands.

Sebastian had known other women dedicated to good works. Most were nauseatingly condescending and self-righteously conscious of their ostentatious benevolence. Not Lady Carmichael. She worked with a quiet selflessness that reminded Sebastian of the nuns he’d encountered on the Iberian Peninsula and in Italy. She was as generous with her smiling words of encouragement as with her porridge. Yet she did not strike Sebastian as either gentle or soft. There was a firmness there, along with a calm self-possession that marked her as a strong, formidable woman.

Sebastian continued to hang back, watching her, until the last of the porridge was distributed and the throng began to thin. Only then did he step forward.

“Lady Carmichael?”

She turned at his words, her gaze assessing him. He had the impression she’d been aware of him, watching her from the shadows. “Yes?”

Sebastian touched his fingers to the brim of his hat. “I’m Lord Devlin. I’d like a word with you, if I may?”

Considering the way Sir Humphrey Carmichael had reacted, Sebastian knew he was taking a chance, identifying himself to her. She continued looking at him steadily for a moment, then said, “You wish to talk to me about my son.” It was not a question.

“Yes.”

She drew a deep breath that flared her nostrils, then nodded crisply. “Very well.”

She motioned to her servant to continue packing up the supplies, then turned to walk with Sebastian beneath the ancient arcade.

“Why have you involved yourself in this, my lord? What prompts a wealthy young nobleman to participate in a murder investigation? Hmm? Morbid curiosity? Arrogance? Or is it simple boredom?”

“Actually, it was at the request of a friend.”

She glanced sideways at him, one eyebrow raised in inquiry.

“Sir Henry Lovejoy,” he said.

“Ah. I see. Yet it’s my understanding Bow Street has taken over the investigation. And still you persist. Is that not arrogance?”

Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. “I suppose in a sense it is. But that’s only part of it.”

“And what’s the other part? Don’t tell me it’s a desire to see justice done. There is very little justice in this world, and you know it.”

“Perhaps. But I can’t allow something like this to continue, if I can stop it.”

Again that arch of the eyebrow. “You think you can stop it?”

“I can try.”

A brief flicker of what might have been amusement softened the grim line of her lips, then faded. “And have you discovered anything, my lord?”

“I think so, yes.” Sebastian studied the gentlewoman’s delicately boned profile. “Did you by any chance accompany Sir Humphrey on his trip to India five years ago?”

“India?” She swung to face him, the dark skirts of her mourning gown swirling softly around her. “Whatever has India to do with my son’s death?”

“Sir Humphrey and Lord Stanton were both return passengers aboard a ship called the
Harmony
, captained by Edward Bellamy.”

He watched her lips part on a quickly indrawn breath. “You think that’s the connection between the deaths of Dominic Stanton and my son? The
Harmony
?”

“Considering what happened to Adrian Bellamy on Tuesday night, yes.”

She brought up one hand to press her fingers to her lips. “You mean the young naval lieutenant killed on the docks? That was Captain Bellamy’s son?”

“Yes.”

“But his body wasn’t…” Her voice trailed off.

“No. But there is evidence his death is connected, nevertheless.
Were
you a passenger on that ship?”

She shook her head. “No. I do sometimes travel with my husband, but not on that trip, thankfully.” She turned to continue walking, the soft soles of her shoes whispering over the worn stones. “You’ve heard what happened to them?”

“Yes.”

“Sir Humphrey was ill for months after his return. I sometimes think he’s never entirely recovered from the ordeal.”

“Do you know who else was on that ship besides your husband and Lord Stanton?”

She hesitated, the frown lines between her eyebrows deepening with thought. Then she shook her head. “No. There were some six or seven others, but I don’t recall their names.”

“Was one of them a clergyman?”

“Actually, yes. A missionary and his wife returning from some years’ stay in India. I remember because he annoyed Sir Humphrey excessively.” Her gaze flickered over to Sebastian. “Why?”

“There was a young man murdered down in Kent last Easter, in Avery. The son of one Reverend William Thornton.”

“And this Reverend Thornton was on the
Harmony
, as well?”

“I don’t know for certain yet, but I suspect so, yes. I do know that he and his wife spent some years on a mission in India.”

They walked along in silence for a time, their footsteps echoing in the stone-vaulted corridor. At last she said, “It makes no sense. Why would someone be killing the children of the
Harmony
’s passengers?”

“Someone who wanted revenge, perhaps.”

“Revenge for what?”

Sebastian met her gaze and held it, and the air between them crackled with all that remained unsaid. The desperate, starving men and women of the
Harmony
might have kept their secret for five long years, but there was no escaping the implications suggested by the butchered bodies of their children.

Lady Carmichael’s eyes widened. She shook her head fiercely, her throat working hard as if she were forced to swallow a rise of bile. “No. You’re wrong. Nothing like that happened on that ship.”

“Can you be certain?”

Her voice throbbed with emotion. “My husband is a hard man, Lord Devlin. A hard, brilliant man who can be brutal in business if he must. But only in business. He could never, ever have done what you are suggesting. Never.”

Sebastian stared off across the now silent, half-ruined cloister, all that remained of what had once been a thriving community. “Most of us probably think we could never do such a thing,” he said. “Yet when faced with the stark choice between that and death, I suspect we’d all be uncomfortably surprised by how few would choose death.”

“You’re wrong,” she said again. But she was no longer looking at him, and Sebastian suspected she spoke the words in a futile effort to convince herself.