The color in her cheeks darkened. “Yes.”
Sebastian said, “What made you decide to tell me this now?”
“It was something Jane—Miss Austen—said. She said I was wrong to keep back anything that happened that day. That each event by itself might not seem to mean anything, but that when taken together with everything else, it might very well provide the key you need to understand what happened to Father.”
She tented her hands over her nose and mouth, her eyes squeezing shut a moment before she said, “I didn’t tell you of it before because I was afraid it would make you even more convinced that it was Hugh who’d killed Papa. But he didn’t! You must believe me. He’s not some conniving fortune hunter; he’s a worthy, honorable man—far more noble and high-minded than I am. He didn’t kill my father.”
“No,” said Sebastian. “But I think I know who did.”
Chapter 52
S ometimes, solving a murder could be as simple as asking the right questions. Except that in this case, Sebastian hadn’t been asking the right questions.
At least, not about the right person.
He spent the next several hours visiting those London coffeehouses and pubs favored by men with extensive connections to the West Indies. The conversations were oblique, the queries carefully worded, the answers often guarded or merely suggestive.
But in the end, the information he gleaned was damning.
Hero was strolling the rear gardens with a bundled-up Simon in her arms when Sebastian walked up to her. Her cheeks were pleasantly flushed by the cool air. But her eyes were troubled, and he knew that whatever costermonger’s story of hardship and deprivation she’d heard that morning still haunted her.
He said, “Difficult interview?”
She drew a deep breath and shifted Simon’s weight so that she could press her cheek against the child’s. “A little girl. She sells nuts in taverns. Alone.”
He wanted to say, Why don’t you stop doing this to yourself? Why torment yourself with the ugly realities of a part of London life of which most gentlewomen remain blissfully ignorant? But he knew that was precisely what she wanted to change; she wanted the spoiled, complacent, self-satisfied residents of the West End to know what life was like for those less fortunate. In her own way, she was as driven as he.
The baby fussed, and she loosened her hold on him, saying, “I’ve heard back from my Fish Street Hill costermonger. He contacted me after I talked to Sarah.”
“And?”
“He says Stanley Preston was in Bucket Lane to see a woman. Unfortunately, she refuses to speak with us, although he did accidentally let slip a name: Juba.”
Juba. It was an African name, often given in the American colonies to girls born on a Monday morning. Sebastian suspected it belonged to the beautiful, dusky-skinned woman who had confronted him in the lane.
“You think this Juba could be Preston’s daughter?” said Hero.
“Actually, I think it far more likely her connection is to Sir Galen Knightly.”
“Knightly?” Hero stared at him. “Are you serious?”
She listened while he told her of the sudden aversion to Knightly that Preston had expressed the morning of his murder, of the dark-haired gentleman who had questioned Cian O’Neal, and of Sebastian’s own conversations with various West Indies planters.
“Knightly told me once that he inherited his plantations and slaves,” said Sebastian. “He claimed to be a kindly master who would gladly free all of his slaves if the law didn’t make it so onerous. But none of that is true. He’s actually extended his holdings of both land and slaves in the years since his great-uncle’s death. And while there isn’t a planter in Jamaica who doesn’t make use of the whip, I’m told Knightly’s punishments can be unusually brutal—particularly if he’s enraged. They say he doesn’t lose his temper often, but when he does, he’s vicious. He once personally slashed a slave’s throat with a cane knife when the man mishandled a favorite mare.”
“Killed him?”
“Yes. Practically took off the poor man’s head—although of course they made up some tale for the authorities.”
“So what do you think Stanley Preston and Douglas Sterling could have done that drove Knightly into a murderous rage?”
“I think Sterling must have told Preston something that Sunday morning, something that convinced Preston he didn’t want his daughter to marry Knightly and that sent him to talk to Juba in Bucket Lane.”
“But Preston knew Knightly well. He had to know of his temper and his treatment of his slaves. So what could Sterling possibly have said that would suddenly turn Preston against the man?”
“Knightly told me once that Preston had a horror of miscegenation. And Juba is part African.”
“You think she could be Knightly’s daughter?”