Page 10 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)

S ebastian returned to Brook Street to find an ornate gentleman’s carriage with four well-matched, cream-colored horses drawn up before his house and the ponderous figure of Archibald Douglas Farnsworth, Fourth Duke of Eversfield and brother to the late Lord Preston Farnsworth, descending the front steps.

The Duke was taller than his dead brother and considerably heavier. He might be only in his fifties, but his hair was already white and wispy, his eyes bloodshot, his face bloated and blotchy. There were few vices in which His Grace did not indulge with gusto, and it showed. He weighed some fourteen or fifteen stone, had lost a high percentage of his teeth, and suffered from a tendency to both gout and dropsy. But he was as always impeccably dressed, wearing pale yellow pantaloons, a well-tailored navy coat, and an elaborately tied cravat.

“Ah, there you are,” said the Duke, drawing up halfway down the steps at the sight of Sebastian. “Devilish glad you caught me.” He hesitated. “That is, you do have a moment, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sebastian, handing the reins to Tom and jumping down. “Come in, please. Brandy?” he offered, leading the way to the library.

Eversfield swiped the back of one meaty fist across his lips. “I’ll take Scotch if you’ve got it.”

“I have, indeed.” Sebastian poured a generous measure of Scotch in one of the crystal glasses kept on a table near the hearth and handed it to his guest.

“Thank you kindly,” said the Duke, taking a deep drink. “Ah, excellent. I’m here because Bow Street is being bloody close-lipped about everything, and I hoped I could count on you to give it to me straight: Is it true what the papers are saying? That Preston was found hanging upside down by one foot, with his hands tied behind his back?”

Sebastian poured himself a brandy, then carefully replaced the carafe’s stopper. “It is true, yes. But he didn’t die that way. He was killed by a blow to the back of his head, so he didn’t suffer.”

“Thank God for that. But…you’re saying someone strung him up like that after he was dead? Why would anyone do that?”

“I have no idea. Do you?”

The Duke’s eyes widened. “Me? No. We weren’t close, Preston and I; never were. There’s nearly ten years between us, y’know, so I suppose that’s probably part of it, although I’ll be the first to admit it’s not the whole story. The thing is, whatever our differences are now, I dearly loved the little boy he once was and it’s hard—damned hard—to think of him dying like that.”

“Do you know if your brother ever had anything to do with the tarot?”

“ Preston? Good God, no. He hated fortune-tellers—said they did the devil’s work for him.” Eversfield grimaced. “He talked like that, you know; always going on and on about sin and sloth and all manner of other pious claptrap. Can’t imagine who he got it from. M’ father was never a churchgoing man, and the only Bible verse our mother ever quoted was something about bridling tongues and deceiving hearts.”

Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy. “Who do you think killed him?”

The Duke shook his head slowly back and forth. “Damned if I know. Like I said, we weren’t close. Preston disapproved of me and my ways.” Eversfield drew the word out, so that it sounded more like disapproooved . “It was one of his favorite expressions; he disapproooved of so many things, my brother. The last time I saw him, he called me a godless, immoral heathen. So is it any wonder I avoided him as much as possible?”

“I take it he got on well with your sister, though?”

“Hester?” Eversfield rolled his eyes. “Oh, Lord, yes. Two of a kind, they are—or were, I suppose I should say. Last time I was crazy enough to accept one of Hester’s invites to dinner, they did their damnedest to convince me that this crazy weather we’ve been having means the world is coming to an end.”

“They aren’t alone in that belief.”

The Duke stared at him. “Don’t tell me you think it, too?”

“Me? No.”

“Thank God for that.” The Duke took another deep swallow of his Scotch.

“Was that the last time you saw your brother?” said Sebastian. “At this dinner?”

Eversfield looked thoughtful. “Well, it’s the last time I spoke to him. I did see him briefly last Saturday, in the Strand, but I didn’t talk to him—only nodded in passing, on account of him being deep in what looked like a pretty intense conversation with that French priest.”

“What French priest?”

“Father Anselm, I think his name is.” The Duke frowned. “No, that’s not it. Abbott? No. Ambrose? Yes, that’s it: Father Ambrose. He ministers to that appalling colony of Irish immigrants in Southwark—them and whatever French Catholics down there haven’t scurried back across the Channel now that old King Louis is sitting on his throne all right and tight again. Came here as a refugee from the Revolution himself, I’m told. One of those nonjuring priests. Guess he didn’t want to wait around and get his head chopped off along with all the others—not that I can say I blame him for that.”

“What time was this? That you saw your brother with this priest, I mean.”

“Musta been shortly before noon. I’m not normally abroad at that hour, but I had the devil of a toothache and was on my way to the dentist.”

“Do you know what this French priest had to do with your brother?”

“No idea at all. Preston couldn’t abide Catholics, y’know. In another age he’d have given old Richard Topcliffe a run for his money.”

“But you know this priest?”

“Yes, but only because he tutors the son of one of m’ friends.”

“In French?”

“French, maths, history, natural science, what have you. M’ friend’s son needs all the help he can get. Boy takes after his mother, I’m afraid. She’s as pretty as all get-out, but a sillier widgeon never made her curtsy at Almack’s—and that’s truly saying something.”

“You never married yourself?”

“Me?” The Duke’s eyes bulged. “Good Lord, no. Almost got caught once. It was a close-run thing, I can tell you. But after that I learned to be more careful.”

“So Lord Preston was your heir?”

“He was, yes.” Eversfield froze with his Scotch raised halfway to his lips. His hand shook, and he lowered the glass without taking a sip. “You can’t…you can’t think that’s why Preston was killed.”

“No. But I don’t see how we can ignore it as a possibility, either. Who is next in line?”

Eversfield’s features contorted with the effort of thought. “It’s a cousin of some sort…second or third, I believe, although there could be a remove in there somewhere. Always expected Preston to step into my shoes when the time came, so I can’t say I ever paid too much attention to m’ relatives—there’s too damned many of ’em to begin with, and they’re all as boring as hell. It’s one of ’em, obviously, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you which one. Hester would know. That’s the sort of thing she keeps track of.”

“Your brother’s death must be hard on her.”

“Truth be told, I haven’t seen her yet, although I suppose I should mosey on over there.” He sighed. “God help me.” He polished off his drink with a flourish and set the empty glass aside. “Thank you for your time, your Scotch, and your honesty, Devlin. I suppose there’ll be an inquest?”

“There will be,” said Sebastian, walking with him to the front door. “But I haven’t heard the time or place yet.”

The Duke paused in the doorway, his hat in his hands, his head shaking sadly back and forth. “I still can’t believe Preston is dead. Dead .” Then he settled his hat on his head, nodded to Morey, and said, “Do give my best to Lady Devlin.”

“Yes, of course.”

Sebastian watched as one of the Duke’s footmen leapt forward to help hoist His Grace up into the waiting carriage. Then he turned and climbed the stairs to where Hero sat beside the drawing room’s bowed front window, half her attention on the notes she was organizing from that morning’s interview, the other half keeping an eye on little Miss Guinevere, who was sitting on a rug nearby and babbling a steady string of utterly incomprehensible nonsense as she placed a collection of colorfully painted wooden blocks one by one into a bucket and then took them out again.

“Learn anything?” asked Hero, setting aside her notebook.

Sebastian went to settle on the rug beside their daughter. “Maybe. Maybe not. I gather Lord Preston and his brother the Duke were not what you might call close.” He accepted a block handed to him by Guinevere, said, “Thank you,” then looked over at Hero. “You wouldn’t happen to be familiar with a French priest named Ambrose—or something similar—would you? I’m told he works with the poor Irish and French immigrants in Southwark and tutors gentlemen’s sons in French and maths on the side.”

“You mean Father Ambrose de Sancerre? What could he possibly have to do with a man like Lord Preston?”

Sebastian dropped the block into the bucket, then said to Hero, “The Duke tells me he saw his brother talking to this priest last Saturday, which strikes me as…strange. What do you know of him?”

“Not a great deal. I’ve only met him once, but he’s a memorable man, very wise and kind and…” She paused, as if searching for the right words. “I don’t quite know how to describe it, but the closest I can come up with is ‘intense.’ He’s very passionate about the work he does with the poor. It’s his life. As I understand it, he supported the Revolution in its early days but eventually turned against it because of its excesses. I gather he lost virtually his entire family, and at one point was arrested and condemned to death for hearing confessions and saying Mass clandestinely.”

Guinevere chose that moment to dump out her blocks all at once, then babbled a string of nonsense at her father and handed him the empty bucket. “My turn, is it?” He reached for one of the blocks. “Shall we start with the yellow one?” To Hero, he said, “Interesting. How did he get out of that?”

“I didn’t hear that part. But I think he went to Spain first and then came to England.”

“And yet he chooses to remain here rather than return to France now that the Bourbons have been restored to their ancestral throne?”

A faint gleam of amusement showed in her brilliant gray eyes. “I had the distinct impression he’s not what you might call an admirer of monarchy. After all, he has dedicated his life to working with the poor and oppressed. And he did support the Revolution at first, remember?”

“Ah. So how does an anti-monarchist French Catholic priest who ministers to the poor come to know the wealthy and fervently anti-Catholic brother of an English duke?”

“That I can’t begin to imagine.”

Sebastian fell silent, his attention seemingly all focused on his daughter, who was now handing him the blocks one at a time so that he could put them in the bucket. He was aware of Hero watching him, and after a moment she said, “What is it, Devlin?”

He looked up, his fist tightening around the block in his hand. “After I spoke to Gibson this morning, I went to see Madame Blanchette. She tells me Le Pendu can symbolize treachery and betrayal but also sacrifice, the need to view things from a different perspective, the acceptance of one’s fate, or even redemption.”

“So much?”

“Evidently. Although of course it’s always possible that whoever killed Farnsworth has no idea what the card means and simply posed his victim’s body that way for some other reason entirely.”

“But you don’t think so?”

Sebastian dropped the last block in the bucket, kissed his daughter on the top of her head, and pushed to his feet. “No. No, I don’t.”