Page 44 of Who Cries for the Lost

“Any idea how he died?”

“No. He was healthy, and there’s no sign of any wound on the part of him that we have. Which means he could have been shot in the face, bashed in the head, or...” She paused.

“Or what?”

“Or decapitated while still alive.”

Jesus, thought Sebastian. “No scars anywhere on his body?”

“No. No scars, no birthmarks, no noticeable moles.”

“I wonder what his hands might have revealed.”

She looked up. “You think that’s why the hands were cut off? Because they could have helped identify him?”

“I can’t come up with any other reason.” Beyond the history of what we used to do to people after we tortured them into saying they were witches or werewolves, he thought, but he kept that to himself. “Can you?”

Her gaze drifted away, to a sprawling, ancient rosebush awash in fist-sized, gloriously scented pink blooms, but he did not think she was really seeing it. “The hands are a particularly human part of our bodies, are they not? They’re like the face and the eyes. Students of anatomy frequently find dissecting them... disturbing.”

“Yet this killer had no problem at all chopping them off.”

“Perhaps the victim—whoever he was—used his hands to do something that enraged his killer. A man uses his hands for many things, yes? To steal. To wound or kill. To touch a woman.”

It was an explanation that hadn’t occurred to Sebastian, one that might conceivably provide a link between Miles Sedgewick and this unidentified victim—if only they knew who the hell the man was. And he felt it again, that upswelling of frustration and anger that was as useless as it was corrosive.

He glanced back toward the house. “When will Gibson be... better?”

“Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“He’s going to kill himself if he keeps this up much longer.”

“Yes.”

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the Frenchwoman beside him. “What can I do?”

“Help him find the courage to do what he must do—or at least try.”

“How?”

But she simply stared up at him, her face pale and solemn, her eyes defiantly dry.

That morning, Hero had arranged to interview a wherryman who worked Puddle Dock, just below Blackfriars Bridge. But when her carriage turned onto New Bridge Street, they found the way to the wharves blocked by a pushing, shouting crowd of fishermen and bargemen mingled with everything from costermongers and shopkeepers to beggars and crossing sweepers. The air was filled with excited voices and the barking of dogs.

Putting down her window, Hero stared out over the churning sea of bobbing hats and bonnets, but she couldn’t begin to see what had attracted the mass of people. “What is it?” she called up to her coachman.

He shook his head. “I can’t tell, my lady.”

“I’ll get down here.”

His face went slack. “But, my lady!”

She gathered her skirts. “You heard me.”

She waited while her footman let down the carriage steps, then descended to the pavement. A half-grown leatherworker’s apprentice went to dart around her, but she reached out to snag his arm, swinging him around to face her.

“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened?”

Tall and skinny, the lad looked to be perhaps thirteen or fourteen, with sandy hair and a sunburned nose and a pronounced overbite. “They done found a man’s body lodged up against one o’ the piers o’ the bridge!” he said, his thin chest jerking with his labored breathing. “And he’s missin’ his head, jist like that fellow they found down by the Isle o’ Dogs a few days ago!”