Who Buries the Dead (26 page)

“I have a very active imagination.”

Austen gave a startled laugh. “You must. I’m not convinced even my sister Jane could have come up with that one.” The banker stared off across a sunlit pasture dotted with grazing brown cows. His eyes narrowed, as if he were struggling to come to some sort of decision. Then he said, “Jane told me something the other day that might interest you, by the way.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You know that fellow who keeps a curiosity shop in Chelsea?”

“Basil Thistlewood?”

“That’s him. Well, it seems that when she arrived at Alford House to take Anne up in my carriage, Preston and Thistlewood were standing in the middle of the street, shouting at each other. She didn’t think too much of it at the time—Preston was always squabbling with someone, you know. But while she has no desire to say something that might throw suspicion on an innocent man, she’s begun to wonder if perhaps you shouldn’t know about it.”

“This happened last Sunday evening?”

“Yes; around nine,” said Austen. “That surprises you; why?”

Sebastian swung his horses in a wide loop at the crossroads and headed back toward Brompton Row. “Because Thistlewood claims he never left his coffeehouse that day at all.”

B
asil Thistlewood was standing beneath the elms lining the Thames at Cheyne Walk and throwing chunks of bread to a gathering of some half a dozen ducks when Sebastian walked up to him. The spring sunlight glimmered on the wide stretch of river beside them, and the limbs of the budding trees overhead throbbed with birdsong.

The curiosity collector cast a quick, sideways glance at Sebastian, then went back to pitching bread. “Didn’t expect to see you again.”

“You should have,” said Sebastian, watching the ducks dart after the bread, their feathers iridescent in the sunlight. “When you stand in the middle of the street shouting at someone who turns up dead later that very evening, you have to expect that sooner or later someone is going to remember it.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“Does it matter?”

“S’pose not.” Thistlewood tore off another chunk of bread and pitched it at the ducks.

“Care to tell me about it?”

Thistlewood twitched one shoulder. “Not much to tell. Friend of mine’s got a shop in Knightsbridge. I was walking back from visiting him and just minding my own business when Preston comes barging out of his house and chases after me, accusing me of all sorts of outlandish stuff.”

“What sort of outlandish stuff?”

“Watching his house.”

“Were you watching his house?”

“Well, I may’ve stopped and looked at it. But I weren’t
watching
it. I was coming back from having a game of chess with Rory. You can check; he’ll tell you—Rory Lemar, lives over his tobacco shop in Knightsbridge. You ask him, and he’ll tell you I was there.”

“You told me you never left your coffee shop that Sunday.”

Thistlewood sniffed. “What you think? That I’m gonna step forward and volunteer the information that Preston and me had words an hour or two before he got himself killed?”

“It does rather make it look as if you have something to hide.”

“Just ’cause I hid the fact I saw him that day don’t mean I killed him!”

“Some might interpret it that way.”

The curiosity collector pressed his lips together and thrust them out in a way that made him look somewhat like a disgruntled turtle.

Sebastian said, “It was Rowan Toop who showed you the lead-wrapped bodies of the woman and child you told me about; wasn’t it?”

Thistlewood’s eyes widened. “I read about what happened to him in the papers. What are you saying? That I maybe killed him too? I didn’t.”

“But you did know him.”

“I knew him. Never bought nothin’ from him, though. I told you before—I can’t afford to pay for the things I put on display.”

“And Toop wanted to be paid?”

“He did indeed.”

“Did Toop ever sell items to Stanley Preston?”

“I can’t say for certain, but I ’spect so.” The curiosity collector shot Sebastian another one of his sideways glances. “You think whoever lopped off Preston’s head also done for Toop?”

“I think it more than likely.”

“Well, all I know is, it weren’t me. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you: I’m not a violent man.”

“Despite your fascination with swords and headsmen’s axes and executioners’ blocks?”

“You don’t find ’em fascinating?”

“In a macabre sort of way, I suppose I do. But they also repel me.”

Thistlewood tore off another piece of bread and chucked it at the ducks. “I reckon we’re all afraid of death. We know we’re gonna die, but none of us wants to.” He gave a strange, watery chuckle. “Some folks, they’ve got this notion that if they think about death, they’re inviting it closer. So they don’t want to be reminded of it in any way. But then there’s others who think that by gettin’ close to death—by staring it in the face, so to speak—we make it less scary.”

“I take it you fall into the latter category?”

Thistlewood gave another of his odd chuckles. “Reckon I do. And you too.”

“Me?”

“Why else would you do what you do? Look for murderers, I mean.”

Sebastian started to deny it. If asked, he’d have said his dedication to finding a measure of justice for the victims of murder had far more to do with guilt and a need for redemption than with a fear of death. And yet . . .

He watched as the curiosity collector crumpled the last of his bread and scattered it in the water. The branches of the elms overhead cast shifting patterns of light and shade across the waves washing gently against the riverbank; the air smelled of damp earth and the wild mint that grew in the hollows between the gnarled roots. He listened to the splash of a wherryman’s oars farther out on the Thames, heard the squeals and laughter of children playing in a nearby pasture. And he was forced to acknowledge that, in a sense, Thistlewood was right. Except it wasn’t his own death Sebastian feared but the death of those he loved, lest they be forced to pay with their own lives for the lives of the women and children he’d failed to save.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Thistlewood asked suddenly. “Surely you have—you being in the Army and all.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I attend the hangings at Newgate, sometimes. I watch the hangman pull that lever and I think, What must it feel like, to kill someone? To know that one minute they’re living and the next they’re not, and it’s
you
who’s done that.” He looked at Sebastian expectantly, his lips pulled back in a hopeful, almost eager half smile.

But Sebastian only shook his head, unwilling to satisfy the man’s ghoulish curiosity.

Until that moment, Sebastian would have said he doubted that Thistlewood had anything to do with the recent string of murders. Despite Thistlewood’s lies, despite the public arguments and intense professional and personal jealousy, Sebastian had largely discounted him as a suspect, instead becoming more and more convinced that the grisly killings were the work of someone hired by Sinclair Oliphant or Priss Mulligan, or perhaps even by Preston’s own daughter, Anne.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Mica McDougal leaned against his donkey cart, his beefy arms crossed at his chest, first one cheek, then the other puffing out with air as he stared thoughtfully at Hero.

“Stanley Preston? Ain’t ’e the cove what got ’is ’ead cut off out at Bloody Bridge?”

Hero nodded. “He visited Bucket Lane just hours before he was killed. I’m trying to find out why he went there and whom he saw.”

McDougal squinted up at the thick gray clouds scuttling in overhead to rob the day of its promise of warmth and sunshine. A cold wind had kicked up, ruffling the feathers of the gulls screaming overhead and intensifying the odor of raw fish that rose from both the man and his cart. “Ye thinkin’ maybe some coster done fer ’im?”

“No; not at all. But two other people who knew Preston and saw him that day are now dead too. Which means that whoever Preston visited in Bucket Lane could very well be in danger. Only he—or she—might not know it.”

McDougal brought his gaze back to her face. “Well, I can look into it, m’lady. But I can’t guarantee they’ll be willin’ t’ talk t’ ye.”

“I know. Just . . . whoever it is, please try to help them understand that their lives might be threatened. If they know anything—anything at all—it’s important for them to come forward.”

He rasped one palm across the several days’ worth of beard shading his jaw. “I’ll try, my lady. I’ll try.”

The rain was already beginning to fall by the time Hero made it back to Brook Street, a fine but hard-driven rain that swirled in wind-whipped eddies between the tall town houses and stung the tender bare skin of her face.

She had just stepped from her carriage and was about to mount the front steps when she saw Devlin round the corner from Bond Street, the capes of his black greatcoat flapping in the wind, his hat tipped low against the downpour.

“Devlin,” she called, and he looked up, his face lean and unsmiling. Then his strange yellow eyes widened, his body jerking as the crack of a rifle shot reverberated between the tall row houses.

A shiny wet stain bloomed dark against the darkness of his coat.

“No!”
Hero screamed.

The bullet’s impact spun him around. He grasped the iron railing of a nearby house’s area steps. Tried to stay upright. Crumpled slowly to his knees.

“Oh, my God.
”
Hero ran, hands fisted in her skirts. Her world narrowed down to a gray wet canyon where the only sound was a desperate gasping she dimly recognized as her own, and the only color the red splash of Devlin’s blood.

“Sebastian.”

She dropped to her knees beside him, hands reaching for him. He lay curled on his side away from her, the rain washing over his pale face. She touched his shoulder and he turned toward her. She saw the confusion in those familiar yellow eyes, the pain that convulsed the features that were so like Devlin’s. But it wasn’t Devlin.

It was Jamie Knox.

S
ebastian reached home just as Pippa, the barmaid from the Black Devil, was coming down the front steps. She had a paisley shawl drawn up over her head and a child of perhaps a year on her hip. At the sight of Sebastian she paused, her arms tightening around the child, so that he squirmed in protest.

“It’s your fault!” she screamed, tears mingling with the rain on her face. “I told him no good would come of it, but would he listen to me? No. He never listened t’ me.”

Sebastian stared at the child in her arms. It was a boy, with fine-boned features and a small, turned-up nose and the same yellow eyes that stared back at Sebastian from his own mirror.

From his own infant son.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

Her laugh was raw, torn; not really a laugh at all. “You sayin’ you don’t know? He’s layin’ up there in one of your own fancy beds, dyin’ because of you, and
you don’t know
?”

He grabbed her arm more roughly than he’d intended. “Knox?”

She jerked away from him. “You tell him— You tell him, I won’t stay and watch him die.” And she pushed past him, her head bowed against the rain, her shoulders convulsing with her sobs as the boy gazed back at Sebastian with a solemn, intense stare.

Gibson was coming out of the guest bedroom at the end of the hall when Sebastian reached the second floor.

“How is he?”

The surgeon rubbed his eyes with a spread thumb and forefinger. “I’ve done what I can. The bullet ripped through his lungs and lodged beside his heart. He’s bleeding inside, and there’s no way to stop it. At this point, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Surely there’s some hope—a chance—”

Gibson shook his head. “Lady Devlin thinks whoever shot him mistook Knox for you.”

Sebastian felt an aching hollowness open up inside him, carved out by denial and rage and a hideous, familiar sense of guilt. “Where was he?”

“Just steps from your front door.” Gibson started to say something else, then stopped.

“What?” asked Sebastian.

“It’s just . . . the resemblance is uncanny.”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, and turned toward the bedroom.

He found Knox lying with his eyes closed, so ashen and still that for a moment Sebastian thought him already dead. Then he saw the rifleman’s bare, bandaged chest jerk, heard the labored rasp of a dying man’s breath.

Hero sat nearby, her fingers laced together in her lap, her eyes sunken and stark, as if she’d just been given a glimpse into the yawning mouth of hell. “He was coming to see you,” she said softly.

“Do you know why?”

She shook her head. “He tried to say, but it didn’t make any sense. And then he lost consciousness.”

Sebastian stared down at the pale face that was so like his own. And he knew a renewed surge of anger and regret and a panicked sense of impending loss that he could do nothing—nothing—to avert.

Knox drew another ragged breath and opened his eyes. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said, his voice a hushed quaver.

Sebastian felt his throat seize up, so that for a moment all he could do was set his jaw and nod.

“You asked . . . You asked about Diggory Flynn.”

“Never mind about Flynn. You need to save your breath.”

A ghost of amusement flitted across the former rifleman’s features. “Save it for what? It’s probably Flynn who killed me. They say . . . he’s a good shot.”

“Who is he?”

Knox’s head moved restlessly against his pillow. “He doesn’t . . . really exist. But there’s . . .” His breath caught on a cough, and a line of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.

Sebastian reached for his handkerchief and carefully wiped away the blood.

Knox licked his dry lips “They say there’s a Buckinghamshire vicar’s son . . . served as an exploring officer in the Peninsula . . . likes to use that name.”

“Who told you this?”

“Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know . . . any more.” Knox’s hand came up to grasp Sebastian’s wrist. “Tell . . . tell Pippa . . . I’m sorry. The boy . . .” He drew in a noisy, oddly sucking breath. “Should have married her. Know what it’s like . . . growing up the bastard son of a barmaid. Now . . . too late.”

“No.” Sebastian took Knox’s hand in both of his and gripped it with a determined fierceness. “It’s not too late. I can find a vicar. Get a special license and—”

But Knox’s hand lay limp in Sebastian’s grasp. And as he watched, the eyes that were so much like his own grew unfocused and empty, and the bandaged chest lay ominously still.

“Breathe, damn you!” Sebastian sank to both knees, the rifleman’s hand still clenched tightly between his own as he watched, waited for the next breath.

“Breathe!”

He was aware of Hero coming to stand beside him, felt her touch on his shoulder although he did not look up. She stood beside him as the minutes stretched out, until the absence of life had shifted from a dread to an undeniable certainty.

Finally, she said, “I am so sorry, Devlin.”

He suddenly felt bone tired, his eyes aching, a tight band squeezing his chest as he shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t even know who he was. Don’t know if I just lost a brother, or not.”

“Does it matter?”

“On one level, no. But . . . I should know.”
A man should know his own brother,
thought Sebastian.

His own father.

She turned toward him, cradling his head in her palms to draw his body against her soft warmth. The only sounds were the patter of the wind-driven rain striking the windowpanes, the fall of the ash on the hearth, and his own anguished breath.

“I thought he was you,” Hero said to Sebastian later as she sat by the fire in the library, a forgotten cup of tea on the table at her side. “I saw him coming around the corner from Bond Street as I was stepping down from the carriage. I called to him—called your name. And then I saw the bullet hit his chest and I thought you were dead. I thought I’d lost you and . . .”

She swallowed, her voice becoming shaky. Hushed. “I didn’t know I could hurt that much inside. Then I realized it wasn’t you, it was Knox, and I was glad because it meant you were still alive.” Her face took on a stark, fierce look. “God help me, I was glad.”

He knelt at her feet, his hands entwined with hers in her lap. He’d seen her shoot an attacker in the face and bash in a murderer’s head without losing her composure or equanimity. But what had happened today had obviously shaken her badly; he could feel the fine trembling going on inside her still.

She said, “And then that poor woman—Pippa—came, and even though I felt sorry for her, all I could think was how relieved I was that it was her man who was dying. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. Because if I lost you . . . I don’t know how I’d bear it.”

His hands tightened on hers. He understood how she’d felt because he’d known the same helpless despair when he thought he was about to lose her in childbirth. He said, “I’m sorry, Hero. I’m so sorry. But . . . I can’t stop what I do, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

She loosed her hands from his grip to press her fingers against his lips. “I’m not asking you to stop. I won’t pretend I don’t fear for you—I fear for
myself
, because I know my love for you makes me vulnerable. But I know too that what I feel is the same fear endured by every woman whose man ever marched off to war; every wife who watches her son or lover sail to sea or go down in a mine to earn his bread. Risk is a part of what it means to be alive. We can’t live our lives in a constant, paralyzing fear of death.”

“Some do,” he said, his lips moving against her fingers.

A fierce light shone in her eyes. “Yes. But I refuse to.”

Her words echoed something Kat Boleyn had said to him once, long ago. He shifted his hands to Hero’s shoulders, leaned forward until his forehead was pressed against hers. “I will be careful. I can promise you that.” Once, he had been careless with his life, heedless of whether he lived or died.

That was no longer true.

She gave him a sad smile. “I know.”

He kissed her, hard, on her mouth, then rose to unlock the upper right drawer in his desk and withdraw a sleek, walnut-handled dueling pistol. This was not the small, double-barreled flintlock he often carried, which was easily concealed but accurate only at close range. This pistol was made with a long, lightly rifled barrel that made it deadly even at some distance.

“You think the shooter was Diggory Flynn?” she asked, watching as Sebastian set about loading and priming the pistol.

“I’d say it’s more than likely, yes. I think he was watching the house, waiting for me. He saw Knox, and like you, he assumed Knox was me.” Sebastian paused, his hands stilling at their task as the bitter truth of it all washed over him anew. “Knox died because he looked like me. He died in my place.”

She rested her hand on his arm. He thought she was going to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t keep blaming himself for deaths caused by others. Instead, she said, “Will you kill him?”

“First, I’m going to find out who hired him.” Sebastian slipped the pistol into the pocket of his caped greatcoat. “And then I’m going to kill him.”