Page 32 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
Jules Calhoun picked up the slime-smeared coat with one crooked finger, his nose crinkling as he held it out at arm’s length. A lean, lithe man with straight fair hair and even features, the valet had been with Sebastian nearly five years now and had never yet complained about the havoc the pursuit of murderers tended to wreak on Devlin’s wardrobe. But then, that could be because he had started life in one of London’s most infamous flash houses.
“And to think you’ve only worn it twice,” he said with a sigh. “But I’ll try, my lord.”
“You’ll never get the smell out of it,” said Sebastian, stripping off his cravat and dropping it on top of his muck-stained white silk waistcoat. “Tell me this: Is your mother likely to be at the Blue Anchor or the Red Lion tonight?”
Calhoun looked over at him. “The Red Lion, I should think, my lord. Shall I ready the new Bath superfine?”
“For dinner, yes.” Sebastian peeled off his grimy shirt and tossed it atop the growing pile. “But after that I’ll be needing something a little different.”
?Several hours later, inconspicuously clad in a black cravat, worn shirt, stained breeches, and battered brown corduroy coat—all culled from the secondhand stalls of Rosemary Lane—Sebastian trolled a string of cheap public houses and gin shops that stretched from Soho to Covent Garden and beyond. These were the kinds of establishments favored by dockers and drovers; bricklayers, costermongers, and navvies; thieves, fences, prostitutes, and various others stigmatized by the likes of Lady Hester and the Reverend Crispin Carmichael as the “lower orders.”
Sebastian slipped easily through the rough, boisterous crowds, for he’d learned long ago that an effective disguise involves more than a simple change of clothing; it requires a man to alter his entire way of walking and standing, of holding his head and looking at the world. Gone was the proud, confident Earl’s heir; in his place was a slump-shouldered man who knew what it was like to go to bed cold and hungry night after night; who knew the fear of Newgate and the hangman’s noose and the threat of transportation to Botany Bay. He bought endless foaming tankards of beer and shots of Blue Ruin, none of which he ever got around to drinking; he listened to men’s jokes and tirades, asked a few carefully worded, strategic questions, and eventually ended up at the Red Lion.
Tucked away on an ancient side street not far from the death-haunted expanse of Smithfield, the Red Lion was a ramshackle, Tudor-era inn notorious as the haunt of housebreakers, footpads, highwaymen, and whores. He found the taproom crowded with a motley collection of its usual clientele, its heavy-beamed low ceiling and ancient walnut wainscoting dark with the smoke of centuries and the worn flagstone paving underfoot strewn with sawdust. Buying a pint from the brawny, stony-faced ex-prizefighter behind the bar, Sebastian retreated to an empty table near the cold hearth and waited.
Slowly sipping his beer, Sebastian watched the former pugilist disappear through a doorway behind the bar, then reappear a moment later. A couple of highwaymen who’d been sitting at a nearby corner table slipped away; a tattered, aging streetwalker in a torn red dress came in, quickly drank a tankard of ale while still standing at the bar, and left again. Then a tall, upright woman with thick black hair only beginning to be touched by gray appeared from behind the bar to walk up to Sebastian’s table. Now somewhere in her fifties, she was still a handsome woman, with fine bone structure, a graceful carriage, and dark, knowing eyes.
“I know you’re not here for the beer,” said Grace Calhoun, settling in the seat opposite Sebastian to fix him with a steady stare.
He raised his tankard and took a deep swallow. “Not exactly, although I’ll admit it’s welcome.”
She leaned back in her chair, her eyes hooded, her face giving nothing away. She was a formidable woman, uneducated but brilliant and shrewd and more than a bit ruthless—as one would expect of someone who ran two of the most notorious flash houses in all of London. “Jules tells us you’re lookin’ into the murders on Swallow Street.”
“You know anything about them?”
“Why would I?”
He took another sip of his drink. “Did you know Harry McGregor?”
She huffed a soft, muffled laugh. “I hear Bow Street’s thinkin’ about pinnin’ Farnsworth’s killing on Harry and then trying to claim he shot and hanged himself.” She pressed her lips together and gave a disbelieving shake of her head. “Poor Harry, he wasn’t just half-hanged; he was half-crazy. I ain’t sayin’ he wasn’t capable of killing Farnsworth, but there’s no way he would have bothered to string the bastard up in some fancy pose like that. And he sure as hell wouldn’t hang himself.”
“That was pretty much my thinking.” Sebastian swiped the pad of one thumb at a line of foam trailing down the side of his tankard. “I hear you told Farnsworth you’d like to put his head on a pike.”
“No; what I said was I’d like to see his head on a pike.” She tipped her head to one side, studying him thoughtfully for a moment. “Where did you get that from, anyway?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.” A faint smile played about the corners of her lips. “I must have scared him more than I’d realized.”
“So what did he do to you to inspire you with such a bloodthirsty ambition?”
“He didn’t do anything to me; his kind know better than to go after anyone who’s liable to fight back—and fight back dirty. It’s what he did to another publican I know.”
“Lionel Sykes?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where’d you hear about him?”
“From the same source.”
She was thoughtful a moment. “I can’t see why someone would be tryin’ to stick these killings on Lionel. It’s true that Farnsworth ruined him, but then, Farnsworth ruined a lot of people. And Lionel, he’s a gentle soul.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Well enough.” She rested her forearms on the table and leaned into them, her features unreadable. “It’s a nasty trick that damned Society plays on the publicans they’ve decided to target. They send a young woman to pretend to faint outside his house on a Sunday, and then when the publican kindly offers the woman something to drink, the bastards haul the poor sucker up before the magistrates for trading on the Sabbath.”
“But the fine isn’t exactly ruinous, is it?”
“No, because the law they have to use is so old. But they have other tricks, too, and they played them all on Lionel. Poor man had just lost one of his daughters, but Farnsworth didn’t care. He eventually convinced the Home Secretary that Lionel’s pub had become a hotbed of Radicals, so they yanked his license.”
“Was it? A hotbed of Radicals, I mean.”
Again that faint smile. “Maybe. There’s lots of hungry, out-of-work men around these days.”
“Where would I find Sykes now?”
The smile was gone. “Even if I knew, you think I’d tell you?”
“I mean him no harm.”
“That don’t mean no harm would come to him, and you know it.”
Sebastian wasn’t going to deny it. He said, “Who do you think killed Farnsworth?”
She flattened her hands on the battered old tabletop and stood up. “I neither know nor care. That man hid a dark, nasty soul behind a show of canting holiness. He obviously messed with the wrong person and paid for it, and the world is better off because of it.” She started to turn away, then paused, her gaze on his face. “Why do you even care? Why waste your time tryin’ to figure out who killed him?”
“Because the authorities are going to blame someone for this murder, and if I can’t find the real killer, then they’ll hang some innocent like your friend Lionel Sykes.” Or Hugh, he thought, but didn’t say. He drained his tankard and set it aside. “You wouldn’t happen to know a young Irish lad named Jamie Gallagher, would you? An orphan, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but looks younger?”
“Never heard of him. What’s he have to do with any of this?”
“He claims to have found Lord Preston’s body.”
“?‘Claims’? You thinkin’ he didn’t?”
“Honestly?” Sebastian pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “I don’t know what to think at this point.”
?“So did you learn anything?” Hero asked, later, as she lay in Sebastian’s arms.
He ran his hand up and down her side. “Not really. I learned that the ‘morally deficient orders’ of this city despised Lord Preston every bit as much as he despised them—and with good reason. From what I was hearing tonight, he ruined a lot of people’s lives—or at least increased the burdens on lives that were already difficult enough. But that’s not exactly a surprise, is it? If he’d been hit over the head and left to bleed to death in some dark alley, then we’d be looking at hundreds of suspects—if not more.”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“No.” He drew her closer. “And I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”