Who Buries the Dead (10 page)

H
alf an hour later, Sebastian was walking out of the house toward his waiting curricle when a stylish barouche drawn by a team of blood bays and emblazoned with the Jarvis crest rounded the corner and drew up close to the kerb.

The carriage’s near window came down with a snap. “Ride with me around the block,” said Jarvis as one of his liveried footmen rushed to open the carriage door.

Sebastian paused at the base of the house steps. “Why?”

“Do you seriously expect me to discuss it in the street?”

Sebastian exchanged looks with Tom, who was standing nearby at the chestnuts’ heads. Then he leapt up into Jarvis’s carriage and took the forward bench.

“What you are about to hear is told in the strictest confidence,” said Jarvis as his team moved forward with a jerk.

Sebastian studied his father-in-law’s full, complaisant face. “Sent one of your minions out to Windsor Castle, did you?”

The other man’s eyes glittered with an animosity he made no attempt to disguise. “As it happens, I went myself.”

“And?”

“Charles’s I’s burial vault has been violated. The inscribed section of the lead band that once encircled the coffin has been removed, as has the King’s head.”

“The head?” Sebastian stared at him, his attention well and truly caught. “Was anything else taken from the crypt?”

“That has not yet been determined, although I have instructed the Dean and his virger to make a thorough investigation.”

“Did you open Charles’s coffin when you first inspected the vault for the Prince Regent?”

“I did not.” The carriage swung onto Bond Street, and Jarvis reached up to grasp the strap that dangled beside him. “It is the Prince’s wish that he be present at the coffin’s opening, with the contents to be inspected not only by himself, but by a number of other important individuals.”

“So if you never actually opened the coffin, before, how can you be certain the head was ever there? King Charles might have been buried without it.”

“The depression where the head once rested within the folds of the cerecloth is quite obvious. Apart from which, all the accounts we have of the events that occurred immediately after the execution state quite clearly that Charles’s head was sewn back onto the body before the dead King’s remains were put on display.”

“Was he put on display?”

“Of course he was. It would have been vitally important to the usurpers that the populace be convinced their King was indeed dead.”

Sebastian stared thoughtfully out the window at a costermonger with a gaily painted donkey cart, the boy beside him shouting, “Turnips, penny a bunch!”

“The princess Augusta is not expected to live out the day,” Jarvis was saying. “Her funeral will doubtless take place sometime next week, and the Regent is determined to hold the formal opening of Charles’s tomb immediately thereafter.”

Sebastian brought his gaze back to his father-in-law’s face. “I take it no one has told His Highness that someone already beat him to it? No wonder you didn’t want to discuss this in the street.”

Jarvis tightened his grip on the strap. “It’s conceivable the theft has political implications. Was Stanley Preston an admirer of the Stuarts?”

“The Stuarts certainly interested him. But I don’t know if you could say he admired them.”

“You’re certain?”

“No. At this point, I’m not certain of anything.”

“And you’ve learned nothing that might suggest who was behind the violation of the royal vault?”

Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. “No.”

Jarvis studied him through hard, narrowed eyes. “You find my question amusing?”

“Amusing? Not exactly. Two days ago, a man was murdered in a particularly brutal fashion by someone who is still out there, walking our streets. Yet your only concern in all this is how it might lead to the recovery of some moldering old head?”

“This is not simply some random ‘moldering old head’ we’re talking about,” snapped Jarvis in a rare show of irritation. “And as for whatever fears have been aroused amongst the populace by the grisly manner of this murder, they will be easy enough to assuage with a swift public hanging.”

“Whether the hanged man is actually guilty of the murder or not?”

“Fortunately, we don’t all share your maudlin obsession with guilt and innocence.”

Sebastian met his father-in-law’s hard, ruthless gaze and wondered why it had never occurred to him just how much Jarvis and Oliphant had in common.

The carriage swung back onto Brook Street, and Jarvis signaled his coachman to pull up. “I want that head.”

“If I should happen to come across it, I’ll see it’s returned to you.” Sebastian opened the door without waiting for the footman. Then he paused on the step to look back and say, “What do you know of Sinclair, Lord Oliphant?”

“The man who was until recently governor of Jamaica?” Jarvis frowned. “Very little. Why?”

“Colonial governors are appointed by the Crown, are they not?”

“Officially. But they’re handled by the Home Office.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Sebastian, stepping down.

Jarvis leaned forward, his hand coming up to stay the footman who had moved to close the door. “I don’t like Hero’s involvement in this affair; it’s too dangerous.”

“Hero lives her own life as she sees fit—as well you know.”

Something flared in the powerful man’s eyes. “If anything should happen to either my daughter or my grandson because of this ridiculous obsession of yours, you won’t live long enough to mourn them.”

Then he settled back, turned his face away, and signaled his coachman to drive on.

Sebastian drove his curricle to the Home Office, where he learned from a helpful clerk that Lord Sidmouth was in Downing Street and would surely be closeted with the Prime Minister for the rest of the day on a matter of supreme urgency that the clerk refused to particularize.

“Think ’e’s avoiding ye?” asked Tom when Sebastian took the reins again, then paused to stare thoughtfully toward the river.

“Perhaps. But perhaps not.”

The discovery that an undetermined number of royal relics—including the head of King Charles I—were missing from the chapel at Windsor Castle had added a bizarre new twist to the murder of Stanley Preston. It seemed probable that whoever stole the relics did so with the intent of selling them to Preston, either directly or—more likely—through some unknown middleman. Could that explain Preston’s presence at the bridge on such a cold, wet night? Was he there to take possession of the stolen relics?

The problem with that theory was that such items were typically delivered to their wealthy purchasers’ doorsteps, discreetly hidden inside straw-filled tea chests. Not handed over under cloak of darkness at the end of a deserted lane. Yet the presence of Charles I’s coffin strap at the murder scene suggested an undeniable link. Had the relics been dangled before Preston as clever bait to lure him to some out-of-the-way spot where he could be murdered? Why was the engraved strap left at the scene? Deliberately? Or by accident?

And where was the King’s purloined head?

Still pondering these questions and more, Sebastian turned his horses toward Knightsbridge and a ramshackle hostelry called the Shepherd’s Rest.

C
aptain Hugh Wyeth was playing solitaire at a table in the crowded taproom, a half-empty tankard of ale at his elbow, a deck of cards held in his left hand, his right arm resting in a sling. He looked up when Sebastian approached his table, his gaze assessing, guarded.

“You’re Devlin?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Wyeth set his deck of cards upside down amidst the ruins of his game. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Six years of war coupled with the pain of a severe injury and long recovery had etched lines in the captain’s once boyish face. But he was still, as Jane Austen had noted, devastatingly handsome in his regimentals, with black hair and blue eyes and lean, sun-darkened features. He gaze never left Sebastian’s. “I didn’t kill Stanley Preston.”

“I imagine it would be rather difficult to cut off a man’s head with your arm incapacitated,” said Sebastian, nodding to the sling.

“So it would—if I were right-handed. As it happens, I am not.”

“Ah.”

A group of laughing officers, some on crutches, others looking more hale, crowded into the taproom. Sebastian said, “Are you capable of walking?”

The captain rose to his feet. “Of course. It’s mainly my arm that’s still not working right. But I hope to be able to rejoin my regiment soon.”

“Where were you wounded?” Sebastian asked as they left the inn and cut across Knightsbridge toward the Life Guards barracks and the park beyond.

Wyeth stumbled as he stepped off the kerb, his lips tightening in a fleeting grimace as he regained his balance. “San Muñoz, last fall.”

“You’re certain you’re up to walking?” asked Sebastian, watching him.

“My leg gets stiff if I sit for too long, that’s all.”

They cut between the officers’ stables and the riding school, the tall brick buildings casting cold, dark shadows across the ground.

Sebastian said, “I take it Miss Preston warned you to expect me?”

“She did, yes. She’s terrified I’m going to be blamed for her father’s death.”

“Because Preston objected to your friendship?”

A gleam of self-deprecating amusement showed in the captain’s pain-shadowed face. “Oh, I don’t think he’d have had too much difficulty with our
friendship
. It was the prospect of something more serious that he found intolerable.” He watched a troop of new recruits leading their horses from the stables to the riding school, his smile fading as the clatter of shod hooves over cobbles echoed between the crowded buildings. “Look—I understand now just how presumptuous it was of me all those years ago to ask someone as young as Anne was then to share my life; to expect her to follow the drum and face all the hardships and dangers that come with being an Army wife. But at the time . . .” He hesitated, then shrugged. “We were both so young, and I was so very proud of my new colors—proud and utterly blind to how foolish it would have been for a woman with her prospects to throw herself away on a poor vicar’s son from the fens of East Anglia.”

The words were right: contrite, respectful of conventions, resigned. And yet . . .

And yet, Sebastian could sense the anger thrumming through the captain’s lean, battle-hardened frame. Anger at himself, for his lack of major advancement in the Army. Anger at the fates, for the impoverished birth that was none of his doing. Anger at society, for the barriers it had thrown up to keep him from marrying the woman he loved. He hid it well, but the anger was there, deep-seated and powerful.

Powerful enough to drive him to cut off a man’s head while in the grip of a murderous rage?

Perhaps.

“Your parents are still there?” asked Sebastian. “In East Anglia?”

“No. My mother died not long after I was sent overseas, and my father passed away six months ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve an older sister living here, in Knightsbridge. That’s why I came to London. She hasn’t the room to put me up in her house, but it’s good to at least have her nearby.” He cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “I didn’t come to London expecting to see Anne again, if that’s what you’re thinking. To be honest, I imagined she must have married someone else years ago.”

“But you did see her.”

“We encountered each other—quite by chance—in Bond Street one morning.” He swallowed hard, as if he found it necessary to choke back an upsurge of emotion before he could continue. “I thought I’d managed to forget her; truly, I did. But then I saw her, and it was as if all those years just . . . melted away.”

Sebastian stared off across the park to where a nursemaid was playing catch with her two young charges. He himself had loved passionately and unwisely as a very young man, and come home from war to discover his love for the beautiful, brilliant actress Kat Boleyn still as intense—and still as hopelessly, impossibly wrong in the eyes of society. It was a love that had come close to destroying him.

That might well have destroyed him, if it hadn’t been for Hero.

He said, “How did Preston find out you were in London again?”

“Some busybody spied Anne walking with me in the park last week and told him. He confronted Anne, and she confessed the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That our feelings have not changed.”

Sebastian watched one of the little boys catch the ball, then tumble over backward, his delighted laughter carrying on the breeze. Captain Wyeth’s frank confession gave the lie to what Anne Preston had told him just that morning. Was Wyeth more honest? Sebastian wondered. Or simply clever enough to realize that claims of mere friendship were unlikely to be believed?

He said, “I take it Preston was no more inclined to favor a match between you now than he was six years ago?”

Wyeth pulled a face. “Hardly. He had high hopes of Anne agreeing to marry some baronet who’s been courting her. Anne’s grandfather married a rich merchant’s daughter, you know, and then Stanley Preston himself improved the family’s social standing by marrying the daughter of an impoverished lord. It was his ambition to see Anne marry both a title
and
money. And he was not a man who liked to have his ambitions thwarted.”

“When did you last see him?”

Wyeth’s gaze slid away, his jaw hardening.

Sebastian said, “Recently, I take it?”

The other man nodded.

“Why?” asked Sebastian.

Captain Wyeth looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean, why, exactly, did you see him?”

“If you must know, he came barging into the taproom of the Shepherd’s Rest last Saturday evening. Threatened to horsewhip me if he ever found out I’d been near his daughter again.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I told him I’m not some slave on one of his plantations, and that if he ever tried it, I’d—” He broke off.

“You’d—what?”

Wyeth let out his breath in an odd expulsion that sounded like a laugh, but wasn’t. “I said I’d take the whip away and use it on him myself. But I didn’t kill him. I swear to God, I didn’t kill him.”

“Where were you Sunday night?”

“At a musical evening given by Lady Farningham.”

“The same event attended by Miss Preston?”

“As it happens, yes.”

“Did Stanley Preston know you were going to be there?”

“Good God, no.”

“So certain?”

“Yes. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have allowed her to attend.”

“What time did this musical evening end?”

“I couldn’t say. I myself left early.”

“And went where?”

“For a walk.”

“Alone? In the rain?”

“Yes, damn you.”

“You do realize Preston was killed sometime between half past ten and eleven?”

Wyeth was silent for a moment, his gaze narrowing as he watched a duck come in low to land on the shiny stretch of ornamental water beside them. Then he said again, more quietly this time, “I tell you, I didn’t kill him.”

“So who do you think did?”

“I don’t know! You think that if I had any idea, I wouldn’t tell you?” He put up his left hand to massage the shoulder of his wounded arm. “The truth is, Stanley Preston could become damnably abusive when in a passion. He could have tangled with anyone. I know he had a row recently with Thistlewood that nearly ended in blows.”

“Who?”

“Basil Thistlewood III. He keeps a cabinet of curiosities down on Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea. I’m told it’s been there forever—his grandfather actually started it.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Sebastian.

Wyeth nodded. “I remember my sister taking me to see it when I came to visit her one time as a lad.”

“Do you know why Preston and Thistlewood quarreled?”

“From what I understand, Thistlewood was in a rage over Preston’s acquisition of the Duke of Suffolk’s head. Claimed it should’ve been his by rights, only Preston cheated him out of it.”

“Thistlewood also collects heads?”

“He collects anything and everything.”

Sebastian studied the captain’s open, seemingly guileless face. He came across as an essentially pleasant young man—troubled and bitter, perhaps, but basically honest and straightforward and unaffected. And yet . . .

And yet, Wyeth and Anne Preston had just sent Sebastian in two very different directions, with Miss Preston pointing a subtle finger toward Oliphant, while Wyeth implicated the keeper of a Chelsea cabinet of curiosities.

And Sebastian couldn’t get past the suspicion that both helpful suggestions were as deliberate as they were coordinated.