Page 4 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
“B it gruesome, isn’t it?” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, his knees popping in protest as he squatted down beside the gently swaying cadaver to peer at the dead man’s bloated, discolored face. The rain had died shortly after Sebastian sent Tom off to Bow Street, but it had begun again with a vengeance, drumming loudly overhead and billowing in through the chapel’s open doorway and gaping window.
Sir Henry was one of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, a small, sparse man with a high-pitched voice, a balding head, and an intense dedication to such undervalued principles as truth and fairness. In his late fifties now, he had once been a successful merchant. But the murder of his wife and young daughter fifteen years earlier had forced him to reevaluate his choices in life. After undergoing a severe spiritual crisis, he decided to dedicate himself to public service and had been a magistrate ever since.
Sebastian had known the taciturn magistrate for over five years, ever since that dark time in Sebastian’s life when he’d been accused of murder and Lovejoy the man tasked with seeing him captured. Since then, the two men had forged a rare friendship, based on mutual respect and a shared passion for seeing justice done in a woefully unjust world.
“Was he alive when he was hung up like this, do you think?” asked Lovejoy, squinting up at the worn rope that had been used to fasten the dead man’s straight left leg to an aged, exposed beam barely visible through the rubble of the collapsed stone vaulting overhead.
“I doubt it. The wound above his ear wouldn’t have killed him, but the blow to the back of his head caved in his skull.”
“That would be a mercy if it meant his death came quickly,” said Lovejoy. Shifting position, he leaned forward to take a closer look at the dead man’s head. “Yes, that wound is quite ghastly. He must have been beaten about the face, as well, for it to be so badly bruised.”
“Possibly. Although that could simply be due to gravity.”
Lovejoy looked up at him. “Gravity?”
“Once the heart stops pumping, a body’s blood tends to settle into whatever parts are the lowest—in this case, the head and face—so it becomes…discolored.”
“Lovely,” said the magistrate, bracing a hand flat on the floor so he could push to his feet. “Are we quite certain this is indeed Lord Preston Farnsworth? I met him once, but it’s been several years, and with his face like this…”
“It’s Farnsworth. Look at his watch.”
Lovejoy stared at the distinctive timepiece in silence for a moment, then said, “Oh, dear.”
Oh, dear, indeed, thought Sebastian. Lord Preston Farnsworth was the younger son of the late Third Duke of Eversfield and brother to the current holder of the title, Archibald Douglas Farnsworth, the Fourth Duke. Lord Preston himself had a reputation as a charming, witty, but determinedly upright and moral man who’d dedicated his life to such worthy causes as ending the slave trade and advocating before Parliament in favor of the creation of a centralized, uniformed police force to control the upsurge of crime in London. But his brother, the Duke, was a very different sort of man, addicted to games of chance of every description, notorious for keeping a string of wildly expensive mistresses, and rarely seen abroad when he wasn’t the worse for drink. Unsurprisingly, the Duke was one of the Prince Regent’s boon companions. And that meant the Palace was going to insist on seeing someone caught and punished for this. Quickly.
“How long do you suppose he’s been hanging here?” said Lovejoy, hunching his shoulders against the unseasonable cold. “A day?”
“At least. He’s quite stiff.”
“That would fit with when he disappeared. His sister reported him missing yesterday afternoon, but he was last seen Saturday night. I gather she lives with him?”
Sebastian nodded. “In St. James’s Square.” A dedicated spinster, Lady Hester Farnsworth had moved in with her brother shortly after Lord Preston’s lovely young wife ran off with a dashing cavalry officer named Major Hugh Chandler. That salacious scandal had rocked the ton—and earned Lord Preston the enduring sympathy of Society’s outraged matrons. “I don’t recall seeing anything about him being missing in the papers.”
“That was at Lady Hester’s request. She didn’t want a fuss made in case there was an innocent explanation for his absence. It seems Lord Preston went out walking Saturday evening sometime around half past seven. Lady Hester herself retired to her rooms shortly afterward, so she didn’t realize her brother hadn’t returned until she learned of it from the servants shortly after noon the following day.”
“Does she know where he went?”
“She says she does not.” Lovejoy paused for a moment. “Did you know Lord Preston well?”
“Not well, no.”
Lovejoy let out his breath in a long, pained sigh. “I met him when we were both called upon to testify before one of the parliamentary committees investigating crime in the city. How ironic that a man who campaigned so tirelessly for the creation of a centralized police force should himself fall victim to such a vicious crime.”
“That it is.”
His brows drawing together in a faint frown, Lovejoy let his gaze drift over the shadowy, cobweb-draped walls of the chapel’s once elegant interior. “Do you think he was killed elsewhere and then brought here for some reason?”
“That’s what I thought, at first. But I looked around after I sent Tom off to Bow Street, and there’s a two-foot length of bloodstained old timber up near the altar that looks as if someone used it as a club, and a patch of relatively fresh blood on the paving stones nearby. I think he was killed here.”
“Yes, I see it now,” said Lovejoy, going to study the pool of dried blood beside the altar. He looked up thoughtfully. “Whatever could have brought Farnsworth here, of all places? It’s hardly the sort of destination one is likely to choose when simply out for an evening stroll.”
“He could have come here to meet someone.”
“Someone unsavory, from all appearances.”
“Very.”
Lovejoy’s features hardened. “It’s unfortunate the boy who discovered him ran off like that. The least he could have done was wait around and save us the bother of now having to find him.”
“He was frightened.”
“Understandably so, I suppose. Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t simply help himself to the dead man’s watch and fob and take off. But then, perhaps he was afraid to touch the body. You say he’s Irish? They do tend to be a superstitious lot.” Lovejoy turned to stare again at the upside-down corpse now swaying macabrely back and forth as a cold, damp blast of wind gusted in through the collapsed section of the back wall. “What a very odd way for the killer to have posed the body.”
“It’s Le Pendu ,” said Sebastian.
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “What do you mean?”
“In the version of the tarot that’s popular in southern France, there’s a card called Le Pendu , the Hanged Man. It depicts a man hanging exactly like this—upside down by one foot, with his hands behind his back.”
Lovejoy looked troubled. “A coincidence, surely?”
“Possibly.”
“Hopefully.” Lovejoy thrust his own hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat as the silence between them filled with sounds of the rain splashing on the worn paving stones of the courtyard, the wind whistling through the broken wall, and the murmur of distant voices. Then one of the constables he’d left waiting outside appeared in the doorway to say, “The men from the deadhouse are here with the shell, Sir Henry. You want we should let them in now?”
“Yes, tell them to come in, Constable Sutton.” To Sebastian, Lovejoy said quietly, “This card…what is it supposed to mean?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I have no idea. But I doubt it’s anything good.”