“Perhaps. Yet Preston could conceivably have found the proof he needed to make them stick.”
“I’m afraid your information is sadly inaccurate, Devlin. Stanley Preston and I had a nice little chat the Friday before he died. And the very next day, he formally retracted his allegations.”
“Threatened him, did you? With what? Did you suggest that something vile might befall his daughter, if he continued?”
“Does it matter? The point is, I had no reason to kill him. In fact, I had every reason not to—particularly in such a spectacularly gruesome fashion that could only serve to attract attention to the very falsehoods I wished to quiet.”
“He could have changed his mind.”
Oliphant gave a low laugh. “The man wasn’t that stupid.” He started to brush past Sebastian, heading back toward the gaming house.
“Tell me about Diggory Flynn,” said Sebastian.
Oliphant hesitated for the briefest instant—so briefly that Sebastian afterward wondered if he might have imagined it. Then he quickly mounted the steps, rapped sharply on the gaming house door, and disappeared inside.
That night, Sebastian dreamt of blood-soaked orange blossoms and a laughing man with mismatched eyes in a strangely lopsided face.
He left his bed just before dawn, when the air was tangy and crisp, the dark streets below empty and quiet. He was standing at the window and watching the first hint of light spread across the sky when Hero came to wrap her arms around his waist and press her warm, soft body against his naked back.
She said, “Troublesome dreams?”
He rested his hands on hers. “Yes.”
She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “I owe you an apology. I thought you were wrong, you know—that you were allowing your own past with Oliphant to influence your thinking about Stanley Preston’s killer. But revenge and fear are powerful motives, and Oliphant obviously possessed both.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the lightening sky above the rooftops. “I could still be wrong. Sometimes I think I keep trying to prove that Oliphant is the murderer just so that I can kill him.” He paused as a chorus of morning birdsong filled the air, sweet and bright and achingly clear. “But I’m still missing something—something vitally important. And I’m afraid more people are going to die because of it.”
“Perhaps you’ll find some hint of what it is at Windsor this morning,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said, and turned to take her in his arms.
Chapter 33
Saturday, 27 March
S ebastian reached Windsor shortly before ten that morning.
The sky was a limpid blue filled with clusters of white clouds that turned the castle’s soaring sandstone walls and towers by turns moody and golden in the fitful spring sunshine. The black-cassocked man who hurried out into the lower court to meet his curricle was tall and rail thin, with greasy, limp hair and an extraordinarily large, toothy mouth. “Lord Devlin!” he exclaimed, bowing nearly double. “This is an honor—truly an honor. Allow me to introduce myself: Rowan Toop, my lord, virger of St. George’s. Unfortunately, the Dean had a previous engagement this morning that will preclude him from meeting with you. But he sends his regrets and has instructed me to cooperate with you in every way possible.” He laced his long, bony fingers together and rested them against the front of his cassock, his face frozen in an eager grin that was wide enough to look almost painful.
“I understand the burial of the dead is under your charge,” said Sebastian, dropping lightly to the ground. He exchanged a meaningful look with Tom, who nodded almost imperceptibly before driving off toward the stables.
Toop’s grin faltered. “It is, yes, to be sure, to be sure.” He bowed again. “The Dean tells me you’d like to view the newly discovered royal burial chamber.”
“That would be helpful, yes.”
The virger extended a hand toward St. George’s ancient, soot-stained facade. “If you will come this way, my lord?”
They climbed the steps to the grand royal chapel and pushed open one of the heavy, weathered west doors. The soaring, stone-vaulted nave lay hushed and empty in a rich, colorful light that poured in through the high rows of stained-glass windows above.
“I fear this theft has been a shock to Dean Legge. A terrible shock,” said Toop as he paused in the narthex to light a simple horn lantern he then carried with them to the padlocked gate in the quire. Setting down the lantern, he fished a large iron key from the depths of his cassock and held it up as if for Sebastian’s inspection. “Had this gate specially installed, he did—not that it did much good, unfortunately.”
Sebastian studied the stout iron bars and padlocked heavy chain. “When exactly was it installed?”
“Ordered it put in just after Lord Jarvis’s first inspection of the tomb, he did.”