Page 44 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)

“Perhaps Lord Preston didn’t go to the chapel that night,” said Hero, later, as she and Sebastian walked along the swollen gray waters of the Serpentine in Hyde Park. “At least, not willingly. The killer—or killers—could have confronted him in his rooms, dragged him down the stairs, and manhandled him around the corner. Not as early as seven that evening, of course, but later—much later, when no one was awake to hear.”

They were taking advantage of a break in the weather to get the children out in the fresh air, with Sebastian carrying Miss Guinevere on his shoulders and the two boys running back and forth on the path ahead of them. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed as he watched Simon pause, his gaze following the hopping progress of a fat toad toward the water’s edge. “Perhaps. Or the killer could have been waiting for Farnsworth outside the house—someone who knew his habit of going there on Saturday nights. If the man stuck a pistol in Farnsworth’s side, there’d have been no need to manhandle him. I suspect he’d have gone quietly enough.”

“Simon,” called Hero. “Don’t even think about getting any closer to the edge of that lake.” To Sebastian, she said, “Except that if the killer had a pistol, why bash in Farnsworth’s head with a cudgel? Why not simply shoot him?”

“Perhaps our killer was afraid someone might hear.”

“He shot Half-Hanged Harry,” said Hero.

“True. But Harry might not have been as quietly cooperative as an arrogant, overconfident duke’s son.”

She was silent for a moment, watching Sebastian as he lowered the now squirming baby from his shoulders to his arms. “I can think of another scenario.”

He looked over at her. “What?”

“We know Farnsworth enjoyed hurting and humiliating women. What if he frightened the woman he’d picked up that night so badly that she ran away from him? Or perhaps she’d been supplied by a brothel. Many of their women are either trapped or tricked into a life they never wanted; she might have seen an opportunity to run away and taken it. He chases after her, following her around the corner into Swallow Street. She sees the entrance to the courtyard and ducks into it, not realizing it’s a dead end, and finds herself trapped in the chapel. Desperate to defend herself, she grabs a hunk of wood, hits him with it, and kills him.”

“And then strings him upside down and carefully poses him in the posture of Le Pendu ? Why would she do that?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

He shifted his hold on the still-squirming baby. “To mock him, perhaps. Or to shame him. Or…” He paused. “Or to send us a message.”

She lifted Guinevere from his arms and balanced the baby on one hip. “What message?”

“Think about this: If whoever killed Lord Preston had taken his watch and purse and simply left him lying in those ruins with his head bashed in, everyone would have assumed it was the work of footpads. It’s the sort of thing the Bourbons’ assassin has been doing, and so far it’s worked just fine for him. Of course, the murder of a duke’s brother would have caused far more of a sensation than the death of a few random Frenchmen. The editors of all the newspapers would have written countless articles bemoaning the supposed rise of crime in the city. But then Bow Street could have rounded up a batch of prominent thieves and hanged them with much solemn pontificating on the wages of sin, and that would have been that. Instead, by posing Farnsworth in such a shocking, sensational posture, his killer has forced us all to focus on Lord Preston’s life—to look into who might have wanted him dead and why. And what we’re finding has been quite illuminating, to say the least.”

“Because we’re looking at it from a different angle,” said Hero. “Wasn’t that one of the card’s meanings?” She fell silent for a moment, her arms tightening unconsciously around the baby. “I can’t see a simple, frightened whore running away in terror having the presence of mind to come up with something like that.”

“No,” said Sebastian, one hand flashing out to grab Simon before the little boy tumbled into the lake. “Neither can I.”

They arrived back at Brook Street to find Sebastian’s tiger impatiently awaiting him.

“There y’are, gov’nor!” said Tom, leaping up from the chair where he’d been perched with his crossed ankles swinging restlessly back and forth. “I still ain’t found that blasted Jamie Gallagher, but wait till ye hear this !”

Sebastian sent for hot tea and biscuits for Tom, then took the lad into the library and poured himself a glass of wine.

“Start at the very beginning,” said Sebastian, wise by now to the ways of his tiger.

Tom sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Well, ye see, I been lookin’ for ’im all over St. Giles and I ain’t stirred up a whisker of anybody who’s ever heard of the lad. So I got t’ thinkin’ ’bout how there’s plenty o’ Irish on the other side of the river, and that jist because this Jamie’s been hangin’ around Swallow Street and Great Marlborough Street don’t mean ’e’s necessarily from anywhere around there, if’n ye get me drift? So I took meself off t’ Southwark, and what d’ ye think? Turns out ’e’s been on the streets down there ever since ’is da died a couple o’ years back. They say ’e usually hangs around Naked Boy Court, but ain’t nobody seen ’im this last week or so.”

Sebastian took a long, slow sip of his wine. “And where exactly is this Naked Boy Court?”

“Off Deadman’s Place. But ’ere’s the really interestin’ part: Seems ’e used t’ have a sister called Jenny. After their da died, Jenny took up with some costermonger. From what I hear, ’e was a real looker, but also somethin’ of a rotter. Left ’er with a babe, on account o’ which she ended up in the Bridewell. And then, jist as soon as she got out, she disappeared.”

The boy paused dramatically, his face alight with excitement.

“And?” prompted Sebastian.

“At first folks thought she musta jist took off. But then, a few days later, some wherrymen fished her body outta the Thames. Everybody said she musta killed herself on account o’ the shame of all that’d happened. But Jamie, ’e was convinced she’d been murdered. And get this: Word is he swears Lord Preston Farnsworth is the one musta done it!”

Sebastian froze with his wineglass raised halfway to his lips. “What made him come to this conclusion?”

“That I never could find out. But it makes ye think, don’t it?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, setting aside his wine. “Yes, it certainly does.”

Father Ambrose was eating a plate of sausage and eggs in an old half-timbered, low-ceilinged tavern near the wharves when Sebastian came to stand on the far side of his table.

“Monsieur le vicomte,” said the priest, setting down his fork and swallowing hard. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.”

Sebastian curled his hands around the edge of the heavy old table and leaned into it. “I’ve spent the better part of the past week looking for a boy named Jamie Gallagher. Something like fourteen or fifteen years old. Small for his age. Blue eyes. Black hair. Very bright. The assumption at first was that he was probably from around St. Giles because he’s the one who found Lord Preston hanging in Swallow Street, and I saw him later in Great Marlborough Street. Except now I discover he’s actually from Southwark, and if you try to tell me that you don’t know him, I’m sorry, but I won’t believe you, Father.”

The priest finished chewing another mouthful of sausage and swallowed again. “No, I won’t deny it.”

“Why the bloody hell didn’t you tell me you knew the boy who’d found Lord Preston?”

“I know many people.”

“Don’t play games with me, Father. I want to know about Jenny Gallagher.”

At her name, the Frenchman’s eyes widened. Then he set down his fork again with a clatter and pushed heavily to his feet. “Very well; I can tell you some—but not quite all—of what I know.”

They turned toward the river, past the burned-out ruins of old brick warehouses, gray rotting docks, and charred remnants of mean tenements. A cold wind was kicking white spume off the tops of the turgid waves out on the Thames and ruffling the feathers of the sea gulls keening overhead. This was a part of Southwark that had once been the site of the sprawling great palace of the Bishops of Winchester, and reminders of it were everywhere, from the place-names like Clink Street and Winchester Yard to the ancient, fire-blackened stone walls of the bishops’ Great Hall and various other parts of the vast medieval complex that had recently been revealed by a massive fire that had swept through there.

“She was a lovely child, little Jenny Gallagher,” said the priest, his gaze on the broken remnants of the hall’s great rose window rising high above them. “Bright, cheerful, always laughing—one of those people who seem to grab life with both hands and drink of it with an infectious delight.” He smiled for a moment as if at the memory. Then the smile faded. “After Liam Gallagher—their father—died, she took up with a young costermonger named O’Malley. A handsome devil, no doubt, but a man with a dark, dark soul. He used to hit her, and when he found out she had his babe growing in her belly, he beat her dreadfully, probably in the hopes that she might lose it. That’s when she finally left him. But the parish goes after the fathers of illegitimate babes, you know, to force them to pay support, so after the child was born, O’Malley threatened to kill it. She knew him well enough to be afraid he’d actually do it, so she abandoned the little boy on the altar up at St. George’s.”

“Why there?”

The priest shrugged. “St. George’s is a wealthy parish. She thought if the child had any chance of surviving, it would be there. But she was seen leaving the church by a charwoman, and the rector had her hauled up before the magistrates. She was sentenced to six months in the Bridewell.”

“The rector being Mr. Carmichael?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the little boy?”

“He went into the Bridewell with her, of course. Except they’re not exactly known for being overly generous with food, are they? Jenny’s milk dried up, and the child died.” The priest paused, his gaze on the crumbling stones of the palace’s old cellars. “When she was let out at the beginning of summer, she came to see me. Between what she’d been through with O’Malley, those months in the Bridewell, and losing her babe, she was a changed woman—somber, desolate. So when the wherrymen pulled her body out of the river a few days later, most people assumed she’d killed herself. But she hadn’t.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I heard her confession. Obviously, I can’t go into detail, but…let’s just say she wasn’t planning to kill herself.”

“Perhaps something happened that changed her mind.”

“I suppose anything’s possible, but “—he paused—“the thing is, you see, there’ve been an extraordinary number of young women pulled from the Thames over the last two or three years. Some from Southwark, some from London or Westminster. The authorities assume they’ve killed themselves, so the postmortems are typically cursory. The lucky ones are buried in their local poor hole, while the unlucky ones end up at the crossroads with a stake through their hearts.”

Sebastian stared out over the churning, white-topped waters of the river, toward the worn stone piers of London Bridge. He was thinking about the decomposing corpse of a young woman he’d seen lying on the stained granite slab in Paul Gibson’s dank outbuilding. “When exactly did she die?”

“It must have been late June, or something like that.”

“And what made Jamie think Lord Preston had anything to do with it?”

The French priest met Sebastian’s hard gaze and held it. “I can’t tell you that.”

Sebastian tried hard to swallow his frustration. “Had she been raped?”

“What?” The question seemed to puzzle him. “No; nothing like that. What makes you ask?”

“Something I learned this morning.”

“You can’t…surely you can’t be thinking that Jamie killed Lord Preston? He’s a boy!”

“Boys can kill. Can and do.”

The priest sucked in a quick breath. “Does Bow Street know?”

“What I’ve discovered about Jamie? No.”

“But you will tell them?”

“Eventually,” said Sebastian, “although not just yet. If you can come up with any explanation besides chance as to how a boy who suspected Lord Preston of murdering his sister somehow ended up being the one to stumble upon the man’s dead body, I’d like to hear it.”

But Father Ambrose simply turned to stare out over the scorched ruins of the once-grand palace of the Bishops of Winchester, his eyes narrowed and his features troubled.