Sebastian shook his head. They had written down all the names on the vials and brought away with them Eisler’s account books. The rest they left as they had found it, carefully closing the section of paneling behind them. “No.”
Abigail pushed out her breath in a strange sound. “Eisler obviously realized Marcus wasn’t the type to do away with himself.” Her gaze returned to her brother-in-law’s name in the account book beside her, her brows twitching together in a troubled frown. “I wonder how Marcus managed to repay his debt.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged silent glances.
But if Abigail McBean did not know the truth, Sebastian had no intention of telling her.
“Admit it,” Hero said to him later, as they drove away from Abigail McBean’s modest Camden Place house. “You think Abigail killed him.”
Sebastian looked over at her. “Don’t you?”
He expected her to leap to her friend’s defense and insist Abigail McBean was incapable of murder. Instead, she said, “Do you think Abigail knows that Marcus Ridgeway forced his wife to prostitute herself to Eisler in order to pay off his debt?”
“I suspect she does—if she killed Eisler. Otherwise . . . I hope not. She doesn’t need to live with that knowledge on top of everything else.”
Hero said, “I keep thinking about all those glass vials. So many men and women, driven to death by that loathsome man.”
“And by their own weaknesses.”
When Hero remained silent, Sebastian said, “Think about this: Abigail McBean has known for the last five months that Eisler was implicated in the death of her sister and brother-in-law. Yet she continued to assist him with his interpretation of the ancient grimoires and their magic operations. Why?”
Hero shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you understand just how frightened of the souls of dead men Eisler was.”
“You think Abigail was deliberately feeding that fear? To torment him?”
“Yes.”
“So why kill him? Why not simply continue to torment him, if she’d chosen that as her means of revenge?”
Sebastian stared out the window at the rolling, misty undulations of Green Park, deserted now in the cold and damp. “Perhaps she learned of another victim, someone she knew and also cared about. Someone who made her decide Eisler needed to be stopped—permanently.”
“What other victim?”
But Sebastian only shook his head, his gaze on a fog-shrouded copse of oaks.
While Devlin settled down in his library with Eisler’s account books, Hero changed into a warmer carriage gown of soft pink wool and went in search of the crossing sweep named Drummer.
She found the boy working to clear a pile of fresh manure from his corner. He was reluctant to pause in his labors, but the promise of a silver coin lured him to the steps of St. Giles, where he sat with his bare hands tucked up beneath his armpits as he rocked back and forth for warmth. Hero noticed he had acquired a sturdy pair of leather boots, only gently worn by their previous owner.
“Ye want to know more about the crossin’ sweeps?” he asked, looking up at her.
“Not today. I was thinking about how you told me that you and your friends often go to the Haymarket in the evening.”
“Y-yes,” he said slowly, obviously confused by this new line of inquiry.
“Have you ever found girls for a gentleman who takes them to an old man living in a ramshackle house just off the Minories in St. Botolph-Aldgate?”
Drummer froze, his skinny little body tense, as if he were about to bolt.
“Don’t worry,” said Hero gently. “You won’t get into trouble for it. I’m trying to find a girl who was taken there last Sunday night. Do you know who she is?”
Drummer cast a quick glance around, as if to reassure himself that no one had overheard her question.
Then he nodded solemnly, his eyes wide and afraid.
Chapter 55
S
ebastian found the name he was looking for entered under the heading for June 1812.
Major Rhys Wilkinson’s debt was for five hundred pounds and had been partially repaid.
He set aside the ledger and rose to go stand with his palms resting on the windowsill, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the misty street before him. He tried to tell himself that the death of both men on the same night could be a coincidence. That Rhys was not the kind of man to commit cold-blooded murder over a debt of five hundred pounds. But he was haunted by the memory of a young girl with a dusting of cinnamon-colored freckles across her sunburned nose, who’d once shot a Spanish guerrilla point-blank in the face.
He was still standing at the window some minutes later when Hero’s stylish yellow-bodied town carriage drew up before the house. He watched her descend the carriage steps, a ragged, incredibly dirty, gape-mouthed child clasped firmly by one hand.