“Whom had he murdered?”
“His own wife, that’s who. Mattie was her name. Now, I’m not sayin’ she were anythin’ like an angel—she had a tongue on her could blister the hide off a mule, and she was a bit too fond of the gin, if ye know what I mean? But then, what woman wouldn’t be, if’n she had to put up with the likes of Abel Bullock?”
“What happened?” Sebastian asked.
“Mattie come to Madame Sauvage one night maybe three, four weeks ago. A sight she was, with both eyes black and a split lip and hurtin’ so bad she could hardly walk. Madame Sauvage had delivered Mattie’s last babe, ye see, so I guess Mattie figured she could trust her. Claimed she’d tumbled down the stairs, but any fool could take one look at her an’ see she’d been worked over by a man’s fist. Kicked her too—right in her belly. Madame Sauvage did what she could, but some things can’t be fixed. Died, she did. Somethin’ ruptured inside her.”
“There was an inquest?”
“Aye. Problem was, the Bullock brothers, they both swore she’d fallen down them steps. And though there was plenty what heard her screaming an’ Abel cursin’ her and hittin’ on her, folks was too scared to step forward and say it.”
“Afraid of the Bullock brothers, you mean?”
The woman dropped her voice and leaned forward, her eyes opened so wide he could see the white rimming her gray irises. “Mattie weren’t the first them two ’ave killed.”
“So what happened?”
“Madame Sauvage come forward. Said there weren’t no doubt but what Mattie’d had a beatin’, and that before Mattie breathed her last, she said her husband had done it.”
“And the coroner believed her?”
“She was real persuasive, she was. They committed Abel to Newgate to stand trial. Not for manslaughter, but murder.”
“He died of gaol fever before he came to trial?” asked Sebastian, his head tipping back as he studied the attic windows in the Dutch-like roofline of the corner house.
“He did. And ever since, Sampson Bullock’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s gonna make her pay. He says—” She broke off, her mouth sagging open, her head turning as a low rumble reverberated across the square.
Sebastian saw a flash of light behind the windows on the fourth floor of the corner house. A concussive blast shattered the morning calm, splintering windows and sending roof tiles and singed rafters exploding upward on a massive white plume of billowing smoke.
Then a hail of gritty dust and glass and burnt debris rained down on the screaming crowd in the square.
Chapter 34
His breath coming harsh and fast, Sebastian tore up the stairs. He paused on the second landing to yank off his cravat and tie it around his mouth and nose. From above came the crackle of flames biting into dry old wood and the roar of a combustion so fierce he could feel the draft on the sweat of his forehead. Somewhere between the second and third floors he came upon a little girl in a singed pinafore, her fair curls framing a pallid, smudged face. He scooped her up, her limp hand dangling as he plunged back downstairs with her.
He was aware of grim-faced men pushing past him up the stairs, some armed with axes, others carrying flexible leather hoses clamped together with brass fittings. He stumbled out into the rubble-strewn, misty square to find it filled with screaming women and shouting men and the clanging bells of the engines, each with a pair of men frantically working the cross handles to pump water from their cisterns. He started across the pavement toward the square’s central gardens, rubble and broken glass crunching beneath his feet, and heard someone scream, “Georgina!”
The child in his arms stirred, and he turned to see a woman, tears streaming down her blackened face, her muslin gown hanging in dirty tatters, stumble toward him with arms outstretched.
“Georgina! Oh, thank God!”
Surrendering the child to her mother, Sebastian pushed his way back across the street. Someone handed him a tankard of ale and he paused to gulp it down thankfully. He was giving it back to a buxom woman with a tray when his gaze fell on the body of Alexi Sauvage’s Basque servant, Karmele, lying on the pavement where someone had left her, so blackened and shattered he didn’t need a second look to know she was dead.
Bloody hell. Swiping his sleeve across his face, he headed back into the house just as a tall, skinny man with a nasty gash across his forehead stumbled out the door to croak, “Ain’t nobody left alive in there.”
Sebastian grabbed his arm as he passed. “You’re certain?”
The man stared at him mutely and nodded, red-rimmed eyes pale in a black, sweat-streaked face.