Page 53 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
Mr. Crispin Carmichael was in the vestry of his church, all the doors of the long line of cupboards before him thrown open and a frown forming a fine line across his high forehead as he stared at them. At Sebastian’s entry he closed one of the cupboard doors, then turned to greet him with a polite smile.
“Good morning, Lord Devlin,” he said as the rectory’s housekeeper curtsied and hurried away. “Forgive me for receiving you here, but I’ve made it a practice to personally inspect the vestments on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. The one time I delegated the task to a deacon, he missed a serious infestation of moths from what I believe is the Tineidae family. They had wreaked havoc by the time I discovered them. Absolute havoc.”
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” said Sebastian, his gaze drifting over the endless stacks of precious silks and fine wools. “I wanted to ask you about Jenny Gallagher.”
Mr. Carmichael turned to close another door, then paused, his fingertips coming up together to touch his lips as if in prayer. “Jenny Gallagher? The name is unfamiliar. Is she one of my parishioners? Has something happened to the poor woman?”
“It has, unfortunately. One of the church’s charwomen caught her leaving her newborn son on the altar steps. You had her hauled before the magistrates, who convicted her of child abandonment and sentenced her to six months in the Bridewell.”
“Ah, yes; I recall the incident now. Such a sad, sad case. I believe she later smothered the poor child.”
“Or he died when his underfed mother’s milk dried up.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Presumably, she was released. Let’s see…sometime late last spring, it must have been. If you’re looking for her, I suggest you direct your inquiries to Covent Garden or the Haymarket. That’s where her kind inevitably end up, I’m afraid.”
“As it happens, she’s dead. She was pulled out of the Thames in June.”
“Killed herself, did she? How terribly sad.” He heaved a great sigh. “The burden of guilt over the murder of her child must have been too great for her to bear.”
“Actually, it appears more than likely that she herself was murdered.”
“Oh, surely not.” Mr. Carmichael gave a prim, condescending smile. “Such women throw themselves in the Thames all the time, I’m afraid.”
“You know of others?”
The smile was gone. “Not from this parish, fortunately.”
“You don’t have any idea who might have killed her?”
“Me? Good heavens, no. How could I? Jenny, you say her name was? I barely remember her.”
And yet you set in motion the chain of events that ended her life, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Do you know if Lord Preston carried a walking stick with a blade concealed in its shaft?”
“He did, yes. It’s a clever thing. I believe he purchased it years ago when he was in Paris as quite a young man—back in ’eighty-eight or early ’eighty-nine, it must have been.”
“Did he typically carry it when he went for his evening walks?”
“Always. He was most concerned about the dreadful level of crime in the city, you know; he carried it everywhere.”
“That makes sense,” said Sebastian, who had also sent a note asking Lovejoy to confirm the point with Farnsworth’s valet. “I’m told Lord Preston was particularly disturbed by the number of what he called ‘immoral women’ in the city. Is that true?”
“Oh, yes. We’ve been concerned about the deleterious impact of such women on society for years.”
“Are there other members of the Society for the Suppression of Vice who shared Lord Preston’s emphasis on the conduct of these women?” He’d almost said Lord Preston’s obsession , but changed it just in time.
“Doesn’t every decent, right-thinking man worry about such things?” said Mr. Carmichael. “It’s how it all starts, you know—with lust-filled, incorrigible women luring innocent young men into a life of vice and crime.”
“Yes, of course,” said Sebastian. Reaching into his coat, he drew out the Tower and the Devil cards from Bassano’s deck. “Are you by chance familiar with these?”
Mr. Carmichael’s lips flattened into a thin, tight line of distaste as he reached gingerly to take the Devil. “It’s Satan, of course. How utterly abhorrent.” He looked up. “But what has any of this to do with the death of Lord Preston?”
“That card was left on the body of a woman named Letitia Lamont. She had been released from the Tothill Fields Bridewell just hours before she was killed.”
“And you think her death is somehow related to what happened to Lord Preston? Simply because this card was found on her? Bit fanciful of an idea, isn’t it?”
“Is it? How familiar are you with the palace of the Bishops of Winchester?”
Mr. Carmichael handed him back the card. “You mean the ruins of that section of Southwark that burned several years ago? There’s not much left of it anymore, is there?”
“Not much,” Sebastian agreed, tucking the cards away. “Someone was saying they thought Lord Preston might have been coming to see you the night he was killed. Is that possible?”
It was a lie, of course, but considerably less confrontational than asking the churchman bluntly, Where were you that night?
The vicar looked puzzled. “I can’t imagine he would have been coming here. I was meeting with some of the leading members of our vestry that evening.”
“And Lord Preston would have been aware of that?”
“Oh, yes; in fact, we’d discussed several items I was intending to present. I don’t know who suggested such an idea to you, but they must surely have been mistaken.”
“And you can’t think where Lord Preston might have been going that night?”
“No.” The vicar’s eyes drifted sideways to the still-open cupboards. “If there is nothing else, my lord, I do need to finish this task. I am scheduled to visit Lady Simpton this afternoon to offer my condolences on the recent death of her father.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“Anytime,” said the vicar, turning back to the stacks of silk and fine woolen garments, the cost of which would have kept his poorest parishioners fed through many a brutal winter. “Anytime.”
“So, what do you think?” Hero said later, looking up from where she sat beside the drawing room fire, Miss Guinevere asleep in her arms. “Could the good vicar of St. George’s be one of the men who has been helping Lord Preston cleanse the city of wayward young women?”
Sebastian poured himself a glass of burgundy and came to stand beside her. “I certainly see it as a possibility. But that could just be because I don’t like coldly ambitious prelates.”
“He certainly is that.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “Sir Henry tells me that, according to his valet, Lord Preston was indeed carrying his walking stick when he went out that evening. And it did contain a concealed blade.”
“And the man didn’t think to say something about it before? It—” She broke off as the sound of someone knocking loudly on the front door reverberated through the house. “Expecting anyone?”
“No.”
He heard the murmur of a boy’s familiar voice, followed by Morey’s curt reply. Then the majordomo climbed the stairs to pause with a bow at the door of the drawing room and say, “The lad who came to see you last week is here again, my lord. With a young female.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged quick glances. Then Hero rose carefully with the sleeping babe in her arms while Sebastian said to Morey, “Show them up right away.”