Page 16 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
S ebastian careened around the corner into Davies Street in time see the unknown man in the pale gray greatcoat race past the arched opening to Davies Mews and keep going. Sebastian pelted after him, their bootheels clattering on the pavement to echo down the narrow, rain-washed street. One after the other they streamed past the entrance to a stableyard, past the mouth of a dark, noisome alley. But with every passing second, Sebastian was aware that he was gradually falling behind. The man might be roughly Sebastian’s age and size, but Sebastian was already gritting his teeth against the pain that shot up from the old wound in his thigh with every jarring step.
Putting on a burst of speed, the man swerved in front of an oncoming brewer’s wagon to dash across the street, heading toward St. George’s Market. As he leapt up onto the far pavement, he hesitated long enough to throw a quick glance back at Sebastian. And in that instant the man’s hawklike profile was silhouetted against the pale Portland stone of the building behind him. Then he darted around the corner.
Cursing silently to himself, Sebastian dodged the brewer’s wagon and sprinted after him, the wet pavement slippery beneath his leather soles, his thigh a howling agony. He exploded into the market square—
And found it empty, its stalls shuttered, the cold wind blowing a ragged playbill across the worn cobblestones.
The man in the caped greatcoat and polished French boots had disappeared.
?Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find Hero waiting at the top of the front steps.
“What was that about?” she asked.
The rain was coming down hard again, and he swiped one crooked elbow across his wet face as he turned to look back at the now deserted street. “I have no idea.”
Wednesday, 21 August
The next morning, Sebastian met with Sir Henry Lovejoy in a coffeehouse tucked away beneath the old stone arcade that stretched along the south side of Covent Garden Market. Normally at this hour the piazza would be a raucous, confusing bustle of shouting stallholders, peddlers hawking wares from battered trays slung from their necks, haggling buyers, barking dogs, braying donkeys, cracking whips, creaking cartwheels, and hordes of laughing, screaming, running children. But today the wet plaza was half-empty, both buyers and sellers abnormally subdued. The problem wasn’t simply that morning’s rain. The repeated, unprecedented late frosts and constantly soggy fields had hit the market gardens around London hard. That—combined with the endless months of disappearing jobs and depressed wages since Waterloo—was taking its toll. Even the coffeehouse was quieter than normal, the air thick with the smell of freshly ground coffee and wet wool, the few scattered patrons sitting with their hands wrapped around their hot drinks, their shoulders hunched and faces set in grim lines.
No one was laughing.
“We’re working with the Society for the Suppression of Vice to come up with a list of those who might have held Lord Preston responsible for their prosecutions,” said Lovejoy, taking a cautious sip of his hot chocolate. “Unfortunately, it looks as if it’s liable to be a long list. He was an industrious man, Lord Preston. Before the Society for the Suppression of Vice was formed, he was active with the Proclamation Society that preceded it. This Half-Hanged Harry McGregor you told us about was actually prosecuted by the Proclamation Society.”
“Any luck finding him?” said Sebastian, wrapping his hands around his hot coffee.
Lovejoy shook his head. “Not yet, but from all accounts he’s a decidedly unpleasant fellow. If he is our killer, we might be lucky enough to end all this quickly.” He paused, then added in a dry voice, “That would make the Palace—and Sir Nathaniel—happy.”
“Breathing down your necks, are they?”
Lovejoy sighed. “Heavily. It’s unfortunate the details of how Lord Preston was found hanging leaked to the newspapers. Sir Nathaniel was at first inclined to disbelieve that Lord Preston was deliberately posed in a way that echoed some tarot card. But now that the idea has taken hold in the popular imagination, we’ve started arresting every gypsy and fortune-teller we can get our hands on.”
“Lovely,” said Sebastian. Sir Nathaniel Conant had been Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate for several years now, ever since he’d flattered the Prince Regent by taking part in Prinny’s “delicate investigation” of his estranged wife, Caroline, the Princess of Wales. The plum position at Bow Street—and a knighthood—had been his reward. Sebastian raised his coffee to his lips. “Wasn’t Sir Nathaniel active in the Proclamation Society?”
“He was, yes. Like Lord Preston, he believes the prevention of crime is linked to the control of immorality.”
“So is he also a member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice?”
“I don’t believe so, no. As much as he admires their work, he believes membership to be inappropriate for magistrates. He was at the Great Marlborough Street office, you know, before moving to Bow Street.”
Sebastian took another sip of his coffee. “Did Farnsworth’s servants have anything interesting to say?”
“Not really. Both his valet and the butler confirmed that his lordship went out that evening for his usual after-dinner walk. The servants all describe their master as a morally upright, devout Christian who was invariably cheerful and polite, and none of them have any idea of anything that could have led to his murder.”
“You might want to talk to the valet again,” said Sebastian, giving the magistrate a succinct description of what he and Gibson had discovered. “It might not have anything to do with what happened to Farnsworth, but I find it doubtful his valet was unaware of his master’s active sex life. And that means he might not be being exactly truthful about other things.”
“Indeed,” said Lovejoy, looking troubled. “The note his lordship received before dinner is proving to be a bit of a puzzle. The butler, Dunstan, says it was delivered shortly before six by a lad who claimed to come from Viscount Sidmouth. But we’ve checked with the Home Secretary, and he knows nothing of it.”
“Interesting. I wouldn’t put it past Sidmouth to lie, but in this instance I can’t think of a reason he would. He could simply claim it was something innocuous and let it go at that.”
“Yes, well…” Lovejoy cleared his throat and looked away. There was a strong link between Sidmouth and all of the city’s public offices, but especially with Bow Street and Sir Nathaniel Conant. Not only did the Home Secretary appoint all of the offices’ stipendiary magistrates, but he also controlled an officious little man by the name of John Stafford. Officially, Stafford was simply Bow Street’s head clerk, but his true function was to recruit and direct the legion of informants and agents provocateurs the government used to spy on reformers, Radicals, dissidents, and basically anyone critical of the monarchy or Parliament.
Sebastian said, “What does Farnsworth’s butler remember about this lad?”
“He describes him as about sixteen or seventeen, tall and fair and decently dressed, although not in livery—which Dunstan concedes in retrospect he should have found odd.”
“So it obviously wasn’t Jamie Gallagher,” said Sebastian, setting his empty coffee mug aside.
Lovejoy looked surprised. “Did you think it might be?”
“No, not really. That would have been a bit too neat. Any luck finding the boy?”
“Jamie? No. Which is rather disturbing, given that he will need to testify at the inquest…although I doubt there’s much he could add at this point.”
“Probably not,” said Sebastian, and left it at that.
“It might help if this endless rain would stop,” said Lovejoy, his face bleak and strained with worry as he stared out at the sad, half-deserted marketplace.
?It was still raining some fifteen minutes later when Sebastian left the coffeehouse. He paused at the edge of the arcade’s drip line to button his greatcoat, his breath forming a vague white cloud of exhalation around him, his attention seemingly all for the desultory activity in the sodden marketplace before him. Some fifteen feet to his right, a tall, slender man in a light gray greatcoat and highly polished boots leaned casually against one of the arcade’s row of worn stone pillars, his face turned half away as he, too, stared out at the rain.
It was a profile Sebastian recognized.
Adjusting the tilt of his high-crowned hat, Sebastian turned to walk toward his unknown shadow. He expected the man to take off, losing himself quickly in the plaza’s crush of people and carts.
He didn’t.
“You didn’t run this time,” said Sebastian, halting before him.
The man turned his head to look directly at him. “Why should I?” he said in French. It was the French of the Vendée, Sebastian noticed; of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s ancient Poitou, a fervently Catholic region of France famous for having risen up against the revolutionary government in a bloody revolt that left over a quarter of a million people dead.
“You did before,” said Sebastian, answering him in the same language.
The man shrugged.
Sebastian studied the Frenchman’s narrow, aquiline nose, the deep-set charcoal-gray eyes, the jutting cheekbones and thin lips. As far as he knew, he’d never seen the man before last night. “Why are you watching me?”
Slowly, provocatively, those thin lips curled into a smile. “I’m looking for Maréchal Alexandre McClellan.”
Sebastian knew a jolt of jumbled emotions he was careful to keep off his face. “I’ve never met the man.”
“Perhaps. But the connection is there.”
“Who sent you? The Bourbons?”
The smile lingered as the man turned his head to gaze in silence at a donkey cart rattling past toward Bow Street.
Sebastian said, “I heard the Bourbons already had him killed.”
“No. Still trying.” The Frenchman brought up one hand to touch his hat in a mocking salute. “Bonjour, monsieur,” he said, and walked away, his open greatcoat flaring in the wind, the heels of his highly polished boots going tap-tap on the old cobblestones.
Sebastian was aware of a choking rush of rage that swept through him. He had an urge to reach out and grab the man by his shoulder to jerk him around and—
And what? thought Sebastian. It would be a satisfying but basically primitive gesture ultimately accomplishing nothing. He took a deep, steadying breath.
There was a better way.