Page 26 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
Most of the British Museum’s fossil holdings, donated to it over the years by gentlemen collectors, were kept tucked away in a bank of drawers and cabinets deep in the bowels of the building. It was there Sebastian found Lancelot Plimsoll, bent over a drawer of fossilized nautiloids.
“We need to talk,” said Sebastian, keeping his voice low. “In private.”
The geologist straightened. “But I—” he began. Then whatever he saw in Sebastian’s face caused him to quietly slide the drawer closed and reach for his hat.
Outside, they found the wind brisk and smelling strongly of coming rain. “Tell me this,” said Sebastian as they passed through the museum’s monumental sandstone gateway and turned toward Bloomsbury Square. “Did you have one confrontation with Lord Preston, or two? Because you were seen arguing with him near the end of last week—and I should warn you that I’ve just spent more hours than I had to spare talking to various members of the Geological Society, and I’m hearing from them that your recent attempts to be accepted into the Society were stymied by Farnsworth. And, as one of them put it, you flew into a towering rage over it.”
Plimsoll snorted. “Of course I flew into a rage! Who wouldn’t? The cretin wasn’t even a member of the Geological Society; he got some of his friends to blackball me. Me. Apart from William Smith himself, there isn’t anyone in Britain who knows more about this country’s stratigraphical makeup than I do.”
“And the Geological Society hasn’t allowed Smith to become a member, either, have they?” William Smith, the man who’d single-handedly just produced a detailed geological map of Britain—the first of its kind in the world—was scorned by the likes of Lord Preston because his father had been a simple blacksmith.
“No, they haven’t,” Plimsoll said, more calmly now. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, his gaze on the leafy green tops of the plane trees in the distant square billowing in the wind. “You’re right: I wasn’t being exactly truthful with you before. I did have a second confrontation with Farnsworth, last Friday. But for God’s sake, what are you thinking? That I killed the man? Over my society membership? What good would that do me?”
Sebastian supposed the answer to that would depend on how many members of the Geological Society agreed with Farnsworth that Plimsoll’s humble birth should preclude his ever being admitted to their learned association. But all he said was, “What did Archbishop Ussher have to do with it?”
Plimsoll looked confused. “Who?”
“Archbishop James Ussher, the seventeenth-century prelate who concluded that Creation occurred at six o’clock in the evening of the twenty-second of October 4004 BC.”
“Ah, yes; him . Farnsworth actually threw that ridiculous calculation up at me as ‘proof’ that my theories on the great age of the earth must be incorrect. It wasn’t only my humble birth he objected to, you see; he thought my ‘sacrilegious’ theories should in and of themselves preclude my ever being admitted as a member of any respectable society. In fact, he said that if it were up to him, he’d have me burnt as a heretic!”
“You’re fortunate you weren’t born two hundred years ago.”
“As are we all.”
“True,” said Sebastian. “So tell me this: How familiar are you with the tarot?”
Plimsoll stopped and turned to stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am, actually.”
“I read the earth below us, not cards, or the stars, or whatever they do.”
“Why do you think Lord Preston’s killer posed him in the posture of a figure from the tarot?”
“I have no idea. But Lord Preston Farnsworth was a pompous, self-congratulatory piece of shit, and men like that tend to make any number of enemies.” The geologist’s accent and careful diction were both beginning to slip. “Right before I lit into him that day, he was talking to one of his mates about some woman named Angelique. To hear him talk, you’d think she was the greatest threat to civilization since Salome—or maybe it was Jezebel; I tend to get them mixed up, I’m afraid. The Church of England and I parted ways long ago.”
“Angelique? Who is she?”
“Someone he wanted to find—and have executed, from the sound of things. But beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. It’s not as if I was deliberately listening to the conversation, you understand; I was simply waiting for the two men to finish talking and the other fellow to walk away.”
“And to whom was Lord Preston saying this?”
“Some rarefied prelate—tall, thin fellow dressed up as fine as a Bond Street Beau. I gathered he and Farnsworth considered themselves comrades-in-arms in the war against atheists, whores, blasphemers, republicans, and any number of other undesirables.”
Crispin Carmichael , thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”
“No, I swear it!” insisted Plimsoll, just as the heavy gray clouds above opened up and it began to pour.
?Adjusting his hat against the windblown rain, Sebastian went back to the wasteland that had once been Swallow Street. His conversation with Lancelot Plimsoll had—perhaps—answered one question. But not the others.
There were two obvious explanations for the murder of Half-Hanged Harry McGregor: Either whoever killed Farnsworth had then killed Harry because they believed the ex-convict could identify them, or else McGregor himself had killed Lord Preston, and then someone had killed McGregor in revenge, choosing the same site and leaving a tarot card because—
Because why? And why the hell would someone like Harry McGregor stage his victim’s body in such an elaborate pose? He wouldn’t. Which left only the first explanation—that McGregor had been murdered because he could identify Farnsworth’s killer.
So why hadn’t Harry told Sebastian what he knew? Because he’d thought he might be able to blackmail the killer? Was he really that stupid?
Probably.
Pausing at the base of the street, Sebastian let his gaze drift over the forlorn remnants of so many unknown, broken lives: a crumbling flight of stairs that disappeared into rubble; a stray dog that ran off when he called to it; the crushed husk of a child’s old tin drum. There was nothing he could see here that might explain why the killer—or killers—had chosen to use this place, twice, as the site of their murders.
One might argue that the chapel had been selected simply because the area was deserted; there was no one near to hear a startled cry of alarm, no one to wonder about the isolated report of a pistol shot. But there were other such places around the metropolis, so why had this one been chosen? For something as simple as proximity? Or for a different reason entirely?
Turning to look back up the street, Sebastian found himself remembering something Quinton-Thomas had said: that Lord Preston Farnsworth might have gone to Swallow Street to meet someone in connection with his work with the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
It was past time, Sebastian realized, to talk to one of those self-anointed saints.