“Even to save your own life?”
But she only shook her head, a sad smile playing about her full, beautiful lips.
Leaving the house in Cavendish Square, Sebastian walked into a crisp night scented by a pungent mixture of coal smoke and damp stone and the hot oil from the street lamps that flickered faintly, as if stirred by an unseen hand. He started to leap up into his waiting carriage, then changed his mind and sent his coachman home.
Turning toward Regents Park, he walked down wide, paved streets lined with stately brick and stucco houses that stood where just twenty-five years before he and his brothers had run through meadows golden with ripening hay. In those days, there’d been a small pond shaded by chestnuts—just about there, he decided, where that livery stable now stood. He remembered one time when his brother Cecil had found an old Roman coin buried in the mud while they were collecting tadpoles, and Richard, the eldest and therefore their father’s heir, had tried to claim it as his own in some twisted interpretation of the rules of primogeniture. Their mother had been there too, the sun warm on her fair hair, her voice gay with laughter as she separated the squabbling boys. And none of it—none of it—had really been as he’d thought it to be.
At what point? he thought again. At what point do the last barriers drop? When are the final secrets revealed?
But when he arrived back at Brook Street, it was to find Hero’s bedroom in darkness. He stood for a moment in the doorway and watched the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. Then he turned away.
By the time he awoke the next morning, she had already left for more of her interviews.
Thursday, 24 September
At precisely five minutes to eleven the next morning, Sebastian walked into the Lambeth Street Public Office to find Bertram Leigh-Jones bustling about with flapping robes, his wig askew as he sorted through a stack of files.
“We don’t open until eleven,” snapped the magistrate. “What do you want?”
“I’m wondering if you have a list of the people who owed Daniel Eisler money.”
Leigh-Jones grunted, his attention all for his files. “Now, why would I want something like that?”
“From what I’m hearing, Eisler dabbled in everything from blackmail to magic to sexual exploitation. A man like that accumulates a lot of enemies.”
The magistrate looked up. “Maybe. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Russell Yates is the one who actually killed him. He’ll be standing trial this Saturday.”
“Rather hasty, don’t you think?”
“As it happens, no, I don’t. The man is clearly guilty. Why keep him locked up at His Majesty’s expense when he could provide a spot of sport for the populace by dancing at the end of a rope?”
Sebastian studied the man’s overfed, self-confident face. “I’ve heard it said that when King George was still in his right mind, it was his habit to personally examine the cases of each and every prisoner condemned to death in London. They say he could frequently be found weighing the evidence against them in the small hours of the night, and that he would closet himself with his chaplain to pray at the time of their deaths.”
“Did he, now?” Leigh-Jones banged his files together and gathered them under one beefy arm. “Well, it’s no wonder he went mad, then, now, isn’t it? If you ask me, a morning spent watching a half dozen rascals hang is nearly as good a sport as a foxhunt.” He gave Sebastian a broad wink. “You could join us afterward at the keeper’s house for a breakfast of deviled kidneys. It’s quite the tradition, you know. Now, you’ll have to excuse me; I’ve a hearing to attend.” He put up a hand to straighten his wig. “Good day to you, m’lord.”
Chapter 41
H
ero spent much of the morning in the shadow of Northumberland House, interviewing the gang of young sweepers who worked Charing Cross. An irregular open space at the end of the Strand where Whitechapel, Cockspur, and St. Martin’s Lane all came together, the intersection was heavily traveled. All agreed it was a “capital spot” with lots of “gentlefolk” passing to and fro. The problem was, there were simply too many of the lads for any of them to do well.
She was talking to a tall, gangly redhead named Murphy when she became aware of the sensation of being watched. She glanced around, her gaze assessing the intersection’s fenced-in bronze equestrian statue, the classical facade of the Royal Mews, the flock of ragged, barefoot boys clutching brooms. She had never considered herself a fanciful woman. But the unsettling conviction remained.
“It’s that feller over there,” said Murphy when she glanced around for the third or fourth time. “Be’ind the dustman’s cart just outside the coaching ’otel there. ’E’s been staring at ye fer a good long while.”