Why Mermaids Sing (24 page)

T
he mare was tiring by the time the river came into view, its storm-churned surface as agitated and gray as the sky above it.

Mud flying from his horse’s hooves, Sebastian tore up the hill to the wide green where the ancient Norman bulk of St. Andrews brooded over a deserted, rain-drenched graveyard. He leapt down, his boots squelching in the mud, his gaze scanning the quiet scene. He’d been hoping to find Lovejoy and his constables already here, ahead of him.

A half-grown lad hurrying past on his way to the High Street cast Sebastian a queer look.

“You, lad,” said Sebastian. “Has there been a magistrate here? From London?”

“No.” The boy backed away, his eyes wide as he stared at Sebastian’s blood-splattered silk waistcoat, his torn and bloodied coat.

Sebastian fumbled for his purse. “Here’s a shilling for you, if you’ll walk the mare up and down the lane. And a promise of two more when I come back.”

The boy looked hesitant, but relented at the sight of the coins in Sebastian’s hand.

Sebastian splashed up the walk to the physician’s white frame house. He plied the front knocker hard, then listened to the sound of it echo away to nothing. “Anyone there?” he shouted against the roar of the rain.

The house before him lay still and silent.

He took a step back, his gaze scanning the yard. Water gushed off the eaves. He could see a stable with room for two horses at the base of the garden and beside it an open-sided shelter where the physician doubtless kept his carriage. The space was empty.

The sprigs of hay found on the bodies of young Stanton and Carmichael suggested they’d been held and killed in a barn or a stable. Yet surely Newman hadn’t brought his victims here to Avery, where the chances of accidental discovery loomed large. So if not here, then where?

“Hello?”
Sebastian called again.

He was about to swing away when he heard the latch turn. The door opened a crack and the housekeeper peered out at him, her features pinched with suspicion and anxiety. He was acutely conscious of his beard-roughened chin, his disheveled clothes.

Then she must have recognized him, because her expression cleared. “Goodness, it’s you, my lord. Whatever has happened to you? Do come in and sit down, quickly.”

Sebastian stayed on the porch. “Where is Dr. Newman?”

“I’m afraid the doctor is not in, my lord.” She spoke with a studied deliberation that made Sebastian want to grab and shake her, just to get her to speak faster. “Went off late last night, he did, in his gig. Told me not to expect him back before Monday.”

“Have you any idea where he might have gone?”

The housekeeper frowned. “I’m afraid he didn’t say.” She hesitated, then added slowly, “I know he sometimes goes to Oak Hollow Farm for a few days, so I suppose it’s possible he—”

“Oak Hollow Farm?” said Sebastian sharply.

“It’s a property he inherited from his uncle. It did have tenants, but they emigrated to America last year, so it’s empty now. He’s been spending quite a bit of time there these last few months. Actually, I believe he was there just last—”

“How do I get there?”

The question seemed to surprise her, but after a moment, she stepped out onto the small portico to point into the driving rain. “You take that lane, just to the north of the church. Keep going past the village of Ditton until you see the ruins of an old medieval tower. The farm’s there, just below the ridge.”

“Thank you.” Sebastian stepped back into the rain. “There’ll be a magistrate and constables here soon from London. Give them the information you’ve just given me.”

“A London magistrate?” The housekeeper clucked her tongue. “Whatever for?”

But Sebastian was already running toward his horse.

C
rumbling and open to the sky, the medieval watch-tower stood on a rocky ridge overgrown with brambles and hawthorn.

Sebastian paused beside the broken entrance, now a gaping hole that showed only a tumble of weed-choked fallen stones within. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, the wind a lonesome thing that whistled through the old arrow slits and ruffled the Arab’s wet mane. The air was filled with mist and the smell of wet leaves and grass and a faint hint of woodsmoke that drifted up from below. But the tower was long deserted, the ancient stone walls blackened by the fires of centuries of vagrants who’d found shelter there.

Sebastian nudged the mare forward, to the edge of the ridge. Oak Hollow Farm lay just beyond the tower, in a shallow depression below the cusp of the hill overlooking the distant downs. A single line of smoke drifted up from a chimney at the far end of the farmhouse.

The house was a low, rambling structure, built of coursed rough stone with mullioned windows and a thatched roof. Once, the farm must have been prosperous, but signs of recent neglect lay everywhere: in the cottage garden of roses and lavender and marigolds left to run rampant, in the broken hinge of the wood house door that creaked slowly in the wind. Beyond the house, the farm’s cluster of stone outbuildings and wooden pens stood empty and silent beneath the gray sky.

Rather than come at the farm directly, from the open road, Sebastian cut through the copse of mingled chestnuts and oaks below the ridge. A few hundred yards uphill from the house, he dismounted, staggering slightly as an unexpected wave of light-headedness washed over him. Gritting his teeth, he looped his horse’s reins around a low branch and continued on foot.

At the edge of the wood he paused, watching for any movement, any sign of life beyond that pale line of drifting smoke. Nothing. He knew he was making a dangerous assumption—that Newman was in the room with the smoking chimney—but he tried not to think about that as he darted across the open field and ducked around the side of the house. Pressing his back against the wall, he paused for a moment and waited for his head to clear. Then he edged around until he was close enough to peer through the room’s heavy, leaded glass window.

He found himself looking at a kitchen, a big farm kitchen with a wide-mouthed, smoke-darkened stone hearth that stretched across most of the far wall with a clutch of dusty pots that dangled from a blackened beam. At the battered, scrubbed table in the center of the room sat Dr. Aaron Newman, his back to the window. As Sebastian watched, the doctor wrapped his fist around the neck of a brandy bottle and raised it to his lips to drink deeply. A well-kept fowling piece—an over-and-under flintlock shotgun with a brass butt cap and steel trigger guard—lay on the table just inches from his hand.

Anthony Atkinson was nowhere in sight.

Sebastian blew out a long, slow breath. The boy could be anywhere in the house or outbuildings, or he could be dead. But Sebastian had come to the conclusion there was a good chance the child still lived. Newman had planned each of his murders with a chilling degree of precision and ruthlessness. The man might be a physician rather than a surgeon, but he would still be familiar with the effects of time on a corpse. And anyone intending to drag a dead body into London in the dead of the night would want to avoid dealing with a cadaver in the full grip of rigor mortis.

With effort, Sebastian checked his first impulse, which was to burst into the kitchen and end it all right here, right now. Against that shotgun, he had only the knife in his boot. And while ordinarily that would have been enough, Sebastian knew he would be taking a terrible chance now. His left arm hung nearly useless at his side, and he was dangerously light-headed, whether from loss of blood or concussion, he had no way of knowing. Better to get the boy away by stealth, quickly and quietly. He could deal with Aaron Newman later.

Turning away from the window, Sebastian flattened his back against the house wall, the stones cold and sharp against his palms. His gaze swept the kitchen yard, with its wood house and smokehouse, and moved on to the buildings clustered around the farmyard, the henhouse and pigsty, wagon shed and stables, barn and calf pens. All appeared empty, the old manure heap in the center of the yard now blackened with age and rain. Neither the doctor’s gig nor his horse was anywhere to be seen.

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the stable. Constructed of the same coarse, rough stone as the other farm buildings, it had a thatched hipped roof with a central gable for the hayloft, and a wide set of double doors that doubtless gave access to a carriage room. The carriage doors were closed, but Sebastian could see freshly churned mud in the yard before them.

Sucking in a deep breath tinged with woodsmoke and the smell of damp stone, he eased away from the window and worked his way back toward the corner of the house. Wary of being seen if Newman should chance to stand and glance out the window, Sebastian approached the farmyard by swinging out in a wide arc, his boots squelching in the mud as he neared the abandoned pigsty.

It was raining harder now, big drops that pattered on the thatched roofs and ran down the back of Sebastian’s collar as he sprinted across the farm road to the carriage doors. The doors were old and warped, and slid apart with a harsh grating that was lost in the sound of trees bending in the wind and rain slapping into mud. Squeezing through the narrow opening, Sebastian quickly eased the doors shut behind him.

He found himself in a space some twenty feet deep and twelve feet wide. The air here was thick with the smell of dust and hay and fresh manure. A black gig, its padded leather seat still wet with that morning’s rain, stood in the dim light. Halfway down the wall to his right, an arched opening framed with dressed stone gave access to a darkened corridor.

Skirting the gig, Sebastian ducked through the arch to find himself in a cobbled passage. Beyond a narrow flight of stairs leading up to the hayloft stretched a row of three horse stalls, with a harness room and feed bin ranged along the opposite side of the passage. A Dutch door at the far end of the passage doubtless led to a fenced side yard.

“Anthony?” Sebastian called, the clatter of his bootheels on the cobbled floor echoing in the stillness. A big bay tethered in the first stall lifted its head, its ears flicking forward as it whinnied loudly. From the copse up the hill came a distant answering nicker.

“Bloody hell,” whispered Sebastian, slipping the knife from his boot. If Newman heard the horses and decided to investigate…

Sebastian moved quickly down the passage. The second stall stood empty in the dull light cast by its high cobwebbed window. Outside he could hear the rain pick up again, beating harder on the thatched roof overhead. His stomach clenching with the knowledge of what he might find, Sebastian moved on to the last stall.

The boy lay curled up against the thick planked walls of the third stall, his hands and feet bound, a gag prying his mouth open in an awkward rictus. His eyes were closed, his face pale and streaked with dirt and the tracks of dried tears. But Sebastian could see the shudder of his stained white nightshirt where it stretched across his chest.

“Anthony?” Sebastian hunkered down to touch the boy’s shoulder. “I’m here to take you home. Everything’s going to be all right.”

The boy’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again, his breath coming slow and shallow. Newman had obviously dosed the boy liberally with laudanum.

“Don’t be afraid of the knife. I’m going to use it to cut you loose.” His hand sweaty on the handle of the blade, Sebastian sliced through the ropes at the boy’s hands and feet, then loosed the gag at his mouth.

“You need to wake up for me, Anthony.” He grasped the boy’s shoulders to give him a little shake. “Can you stand?”

Anthony’s eyelids opened again, his eyes glassy, his head rolling on his neck.

“Come on then.” Slipping his hands beneath the boy’s armpits, Sebastian hauled him upright, staggering slightly as he took the boy’s weight. For one perilous moment, the barn’s dusty light dimmed, and Sebastian’s head swam.

“I don’t think I can carry you, lad.” Sebastian wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist. “You’ve got to at least hold on and try to walk. Can you do that?”

Anthony’s lips parted, his thin chest shuddering as he sucked in a deep breath and nodded.

“Good lad.” Sebastian lurched toward the passage. He wasn’t sure if he was holding the boy up, or if it was the other way around. The rain pounded on the roof, pattered against the high windows. He was concentrating so hard on putting one foot in front of the other that it wasn’t until they’d reached the arched entrance to the carriage room that Sebastian heard the slap of boots in the mud outside and the rasp of the carriage doors opening.

S
ebastian shoved the boy behind him. “The door at the other end of the passage,” he whispered. “Get yourself out of here, then run like hell for the wood.” As long as Sebastian could keep Newman at the entrance to the carriage room, the shadowy recesses of the passage would be out of his line of vision.

Aaron Newman loomed in the open carriage doors, a lean figure silhouetted against the rain-filled yard. “Stay right there and put your hands where I can see them,” said the doctor, the fowling piece gripped in both hands. “Do it, my lord. Or I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

Sebastian braced his hands against the stone doorframe beside him and said, “It’s over, Dr. Newman.”

The doctor’s hands tightened on the shotgun’s ornate stock. “I beg to differ with you, my lord, but I don’t see it that way.”

Sebastian was aware of the boy’s frightened breathing behind him, the furtive patter of bare feet on the cobbled floor as Anthony crept toward the far end of the passage. Sebastian managed to keep his voice calm, although he could feel his pulse racing in his neck. “I didn’t come alone. Sir Henry Lovejoy and some half a dozen of his constables are on their way here.”

Newman raised one eyebrow. “You came ahead, did you? How foolhardy of you.”

By now Anthony had reached the far end of the passage. “I know about your son,” said Sebastian, scuffing one bootheel across the cobbles to cover the scrape made by the door’s bolt being drawn back. “I know what they did to him on the
Harmony
. I understand your anger and your desire for justice. But why not kill the men responsible for what happened to him? Why murder their innocent children?”

Newman shook his head, a muscle jumping along his tightened jaw. “Death ends all suffering. I wanted them to pay for what they did to Gideon and for what they did to me. I wanted them to feel what I have felt, to suffer what I have suffered. They killed my son. I killed theirs.”

“Edward Bellamy didn’t kill your son.”

“He didn’t protect him, either. My son was entrusted to his care. Bellamy was captain of that ship. If anyone had the power to stop what happened, it was him.”

Sebastian felt the brush of cool air from the door easing open at his back, heard the slow creak of a hinge as Anthony Atkinson moved oh so carefully.

“Yet you killed the Reverend Thornton’s son first. Why?”

“Thornton was a man of God.
A man of God
. He urged them to kill my son.
Urged
them! Mary Thornton told me about it when she was dying. About how the good Reverend reassured the others that God would forgive them. Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he?”

“Did you kill her? Mary Thornton, I mean.”

Newman shook his head. “God killed her.”

Sebastian was watching the man’s wild gray eyes. And so he knew the instant the doctor heard the bang of the Dutch door flying fully open, the distant slap of running feet hitting the muddy yard.

His lips peeled away from his teeth in a painful grimace.
“You bastard.”
Sebastian jerked back just as Newman tightened his finger on the shotgun’s trigger and fired.

The first barrel discharged in a deafening blast of fiery powder and shot that sent bits of stone coping and wooden splinters from the stairs flying. The air filled with thick smoke and the stench of cordite.

Sebastian took one step toward the open door at the end of the cobbled aisle, then knew it for a mistake. Newman still had another barrel. Silhouetted against the open doorway, Sebastian would be impossible to miss.

He dove instead into the first stall, his injured shoulder exploding in fire as he careened into the plank wall and slipped to his knees. The carriage horse whinnied in alarm, its head tossing, its hooves clattering on the straw-covered cobbles.

Sebastian rolled quickly to his feet, his head spinning as he drew back into the shadows. He could feel the drops of mingled sweat and rainwater dripping from his hair to roll down his cheeks, hear the doctor’s boots in the cobbled passage. Slipping his knife from his boot, Sebastian reached out and unhooked the bay’s tether. He held the length of leather clutched in his fist, the edges of the stiff hide digging into his palm as he waited for Newman to come into view.

He watched the doctor pass the stall, his gaze fixed on the open doorway at the end of the passage. The bay snorted and tossed its head, just as Sebastian let the tether drop.

The sound of the leather slapping against the stall’s heelpost brought Newman’s head around, his eyes wide. Sebastian pricked the bay’s flanks and sent it charging out of the stall. Newman took a quick step back, his finger tightening on the trigger in a reflex action. The fowling piece exploded in a deafening concussion that filled the stables with flames and smoke. Shot ripped through the nearest heelpost, torn shards of wood and splinters flying through the air as Sebastian dove into him.

The force of the impact sent Newman crashing back against the harness room wall. Their feet tangled, Newman going down to smack his back hard against the cobbled floor. Sebastian slammed on top of him, the knife blade held tight against the doctor’s throat.

In the sudden stillness, his ears still ringing from the shot, Sebastian could hear the sawing of his own breath and the roar of the rain through the open doors. And something else. The distant thunder of approaching horses ridden fast.

Newman’s lips parted, his chest shuddering as he sought to draw air into his aching lungs. “Kill me,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

Sebastian shook his head. He thought about Francesca Bellamy, about Lady Carmichael, about Dominic Stanton’s mother, now half mad with her grief. And he felt a rush of fury that submerged all shreds of pity or understanding. “No. You said it yourself. Death ends all suffering. And you deserve to suffer. For what you did to those innocent young men and for what their deaths have done to those who loved them.”

They heard a shout from the yard and a boy’s thin voice saying, “In the stables. They’re in the stables.”

Newman’s eyes squeezed shut, his breathing still ragged. “I did it for Gideon. I was never able to do anything for him in life. The least I could do was avenge his death.”

“No.” Sebastian closed his fist on the doctor’s coat and hauled him to his feet. “You did it for yourself.”