They were rounding the long, sweeping curve from Oxford Street to Broad. The fog was thicker here nearer the river, the dark trees and squat bell tower of St. Giles looming ghostlike out of the mist.
“What is it?” she asked, just as a team of black horses erupted from a narrow lane to their left, eyes wild, hooves flashing, nostrils flaring wide in the cold night. In the horses’ wake, a heavy, old-fashioned traveling coach careened from side to side, its coachman driving straight toward Kat’s delicate town carriage.
“What the hell?” swore Yates as their own coachman shouted in alarm. Horses squealed, the carriage lurching sharply as their driver hauled his team hard to the right. Kat had a tilted vision of tumbled gray tombstones and the rusty spikes topping the churchyard wall.
The carriage shuddered to a standstill.
“Are you all right?” asked Yates.
“Yes. But—”
The coachman’s startled cry cut through the night, followed by an ugly thump.
She said in a low, urgent voice, “Yates,” just as a man dressed in footmen’s livery and a powdered wig jerked open the carriage door, a blunderbuss pistol in one hand.
“What the devil?” thundered Yates.
The man grabbed Kat’s wrist and hauled her forward. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of this,” he warned Yates in an unexpectedly cultured voice.
“This is madness,” said Kat, falling heavily against him as he dragged her through the doorway to the pavement. The air was cold and damp against her face, the churchyard’s earthy scent of decay thick in her nostrils. “We have nothing of value for you to steal!”
He pressed the cold steel of his pistol’s muzzle against her temple and gave her a tight smile. “There’s only one thing I need from you.”
Panic thundered her heart, caught her breath in her tight throat as she heard the soft snick of the pistol’s hammer being pulled back. She lunged wildly against the hand on her arm, but his grip tightened cruelly, holding her fast.
She saw Yates rear up in the open carriage doorway, a small pistol in one hand. The night filled with the roar of flames and the acrid stench of burnt powder, and the chest of the man holding her dissolved in a warm, wet spray of blood.
He went down, hard.
“Mason!” shouted a second assailant, who’d been holding a gun to the head of Kat’s own wide-eyed footman.
“Yates! Look out!” cried Kat as the second assailant turned, leveled his double-barreled pistol on Yates, and fired.
“Yates!” she screamed.
Yates tumbled face-first to the pavement.
Arm outstretched, the assailant calmly cocked his pistol’s second barrel and turned the muzzle toward Kat.
Kat froze.
“No! Leave her,” shouted the heavy coach’s tall, dark-caped driver. “That’s Russell Yates you’ve just killed, you fool. You know our orders. Grab Mason and let’s get out of here.”
“Yates?” Kat went to crouch beside him. She was only dimly aware of the dark coachman whipping his horses, the old coach pulling away.
“Oh, Yates,” she whispered, and gathered his bloody, broken body into her trembling arms.
An hour later, Kat was crossing the entry hall of her Cavendish Square house when a preemptory peal sounded at the front door.
She was expecting Paul Gibson, for she’d asked the surgeon to come examine her injured coachman. Instead, her butler opened the door to Charles, Lord Jarvis.
She froze, one hand on the newel post, her husband’s blood still soaking the bodice and skirt of her silk evening gown.
Jarvis carefully removed his mist-dampened hat, a faint smile touching his lips as he met her furious gaze. “I believe we need to talk. Don’t you agree?”
Chapter 52
T
hat evening, Hero attended a concert with her mother while Sebastian settled in the library with a glass of brandy and the English translation of The Key of Solomon. He was still at it some hours later when Jules Calhoun returned from St. Botolph-Aldgate.
“Discover anything?” Sebastian asked, thankfully setting aside the ancient grimoire.
“I did, actually,” said Calhoun. “It seems that in the immediate aftermath of the murder, Lambeth Street showed little interest in interviewing the residents of the area.”
“When Yates was in custody.”
“Yes. But constables began canvassing the neighborhood on Wednesday, asking all sorts of questions.”
“Interesting, given that Leigh-Jones was at the time still confidently insisting on Yates’s guilt.”
“Indeed, my lord. Yet it was Mr. Leigh-Jones himself who spoke to the corner greengrocer yesterday morning.”
“Not today?”
“No, my lord. Definitely yesterday.”
“So before Foy’s death. I wonder what—”
“Gov’nor!”
Sebastian broke off as Tom’s voice echoed through the house. They could hear the boy’s footsteps pounding across the entry’s marble floor. “Gov’nor!” The tiger burst into the room, eyes wide, chest heaving, mouth agape as he sucked in air.
“Well, what is it?” asked Sebastian.
“It’s Russell Yates! ’E’s dead.”