Page 52 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
T hat night, Sebastian sat beside the bedroom fire, a glass of brandy cupped in one hand, his gaze on the dancing flames before him.
“Do you think any of what Father Ambrose told you is true?” said Hero, coming to stand behind his chair and loop her arms around his neck.
He tipped back his head so that he could look up at her, one hand coming up to rest over hers. “Some of it, undoubtedly. The question is what? And how much?”
She was silent for a moment, her gaze, like his, on the fire. “Is it possible Jamie killed Lord Preston?”
“I was wondering that myself, at first. If Father Ambrose knew—or suspected—that Jamie was the killer, I can see the priest turning himself in, both to save the boy and to keep an innocent man like Hugh from hanging for a murder he didn’t commit. The problem with that scenario is that I can’t see a fourteen-year-old street rat like Jamie being calculating enough—or knowing enough about the tarot—to hang Farnsworth up like Le Pendu .”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy. “I think Father Ambrose actually did kill Farnsworth. And it was probably deliberate, too.”
“Why deliberate?”
“Because Gibson told me that if Farnsworth was hit from the front, his killer is in all likelihood left-handed, but if he was hit from behind, then I’m looking for someone right-handed.” Sebastian took another drink. “The first time I met him, Father Ambrose was gardening. And he was working with his right hand.”
“That’s disturbing.” She rested her chin on the top of his head. “If Father Ambrose is actually that ruthless and brutal, then it’s possible he also killed Half-Hanged Harry— if he thought Harry had seen him with Farnsworth. But what possible reason could a French priest from Southwark have to kill Letitia Lamont?”
“No reason I can think of. Which makes me suspect that Harry and Letitia were both killed by someone else. Someone in possession of an exceedingly rare tarot deck.”
“And this ‘someone’ left the tarot cards to make everyone think their deaths were the work of whoever murdered Lord Preston?”
“It would be a clever thing to do, wouldn’t it? Particularly if one had a solid alibi for the night Lord Preston was killed.”
She eased the brandy from Sebastian’s grasp, took a sip, then handed it back to him. “And this ancient burned-out courtyard with its water-filled stone sarcophagus? You think it truly exists?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” Setting aside his drink, he tightened his hand on Hero’s to pull her around and take her in his arms. “Can I interest you in some early-morning exploration?”
Tuesday, 27 August
The next morning dawned cool but calm and clear, with a fine mist that hung over the unnaturally still waters of the river and drifted through the gaping doorways and empty windows of the ancient, fire-blackened palace walls.
“I didn’t realize so much of it was still here,” said Hero as they picked their way through the ruins. “Just hidden away behind the dilapidated warehouses and tenements that were built in and around it over the centuries. Forgotten.”
“Like the Winchester Geese buried in Cross Bones,” said Devlin.
“Or young women deemed by Lord Preston and his friends to be too dangerously ‘immoral’ to be allowed to live.” She was silent for a moment, her head falling back as she stared up at the broken remnants of the Great Hall’s once-magnificent rose window. “I keep thinking: If what Father Ambrose told you is true, how could it all have come about? I mean, how do three people decide to commit murder together? Were they just sitting around one evening, drinking their good French brandy, digesting the lovely dinner they’d eaten at their club, and grumbling about the way the loose, morally deficient women of the lower orders were driving up the parish poor rates? And then one of them—Farnsworth or perhaps one of his confederates—up and says”—she lowered her voice in a brutal imitation of Farnsworth’s tone— “What we ought to do is just kill the little whores. Kill them, toss their bodies in the river, and save ourselves the cost of dealing with both the hussies and their useless spawn.” She let her voice come back to normal. “And the other two, they raise their glasses and go, Hear! Hear! Capital idea, old fellow ?”
Sebastian looked over at her and smiled. “Probably something like that, yes.”
“God help us,” said Hero, taking his hand as they climbed over the broken remnant of a brick wall.
They were in what might once have been a large workroom of some sort. The roof was now open to the sky, its ancient beams blackened and collapsed. Clambering over piles of rubble, they made their way to a gaping doorway that opened onto a small courtyard. And then Hero paused, her breath leaving her chest in a rush. “Oh, no. There it is.”
An ancient sandstone coffin some five and a half feet long and perhaps three feet high stood against the courtyard’s far wall. Looking as if it might date back to the twelfth or thirteenth century, it bore on its long side a large incised Greek cross surrounded by sheaths of palm fronds. At some point—perhaps during the time when Oliver Cromwell had gifted the bishops’ palace to his cronies—the sarcophagus had been dug up, the bones of its original occupant unceremoniously dumped out, and the stone coffin moved here to serve as a trough for watering animals or processing wool. The large hole in the center of the base that had once allowed the fluids from the decaying body to drain away had been sealed tight and a smaller hole drilled at one end. That hole was now fitted with what looked like a very new cork, still in place, so that the recent rains had filled the crudely chiseled stone interior nearly to its brim.
“Somehow,” said Hero, “I didn’t think it would really be here.”
“Neither did I.” He let his gaze rove around the courtyard. Its high brick walls were largely intact, and someone at some point had cleared the space of rubble and debris. An archway tucked away in a corner of the western wall opened to a short lane, also cleared, that led back to Clink Street.
“That’s how they did it,” he said. “It’s a perfect setup. With everything around here burned, this place must be deserted at night. All they’d need do is drive a carriage or closed cart down that lane, drag their victims in here, hold their heads underwater until they quit struggling, then haul the bodies out onto what’s left of the old dock and dump them in the Thames. It would be appallingly easy.”
Hero went to stand in the broken archway, one hand coming up to rest against the stone coping as the breeze off the river lifted the curls around her face and ruffled the modest plumes in her hat. “How many? I wonder. How many women have they killed?”
“I suspect we’ll never know.”
“Will they keep doing it, do you think, with Farnsworth now dead?”
“Why not? Not here, perhaps. But there must be other places that would serve their purpose almost as well.”
“I wonder how they set about identifying the women they wanted to kill.”
“If I had my guess, I’d say through the Society for the Suppression of Vice.”
“Or the courts.”
“Or the courts,” he agreed.
She turned to face him again, her hand falling back to her side, her features solemn. “We must stop them.”
“Yes. But first we need to identify precisely who ‘they’ are.”
She gave a faint shake of her head. “How?”
“I think I know where we can start.”