What Angels Fear

Chapter 47

Kat was in her dressing room, attending to her correspondence some hours after Sebastian had left, when her flustered maid showed Leo Pierrepont to the room. Kat looked up from her writing desk in surprise. “Is this wise, Leo?”

Pierrepont tossed his hat onto a nearby table and went to stand before a window overlooking the street. “He was here last night, was he?”

“Sebastian, you mean? Dear Leo. What have you been doing? Peeking through my curtains?”

He kept his gaze on the scene outside the window. “And Lord Stoneleigh?”

Kat set aside her pen and leaned back in her chair. “I’ve grown tired of his lordship. I’ve no doubt he’ll recover from the heartbreak in”—she hesitated, a cynical smile touching her lips—“a fortnight, shall we say?”

Leo said nothing. Their association had always been like this. Kat had made it clear from the beginning that she would choose her own lovers—or victims, as Leo liked to refer to them. For while Kat frequently cooperated with Leo, she had never precisely worked for him. He might make requests, but he knew better than to try to give her orders.

He swung suddenly away from the window, his face unexpectedly drawn in the pale morning light. “This involvement of yours with Devlin is dangerous. You realize that, don’t you? He suspects that my relationship with Paris is not precisely as I would have people believe it to be.”

Kat pushed away from her writing desk and stood up. “As long as it’s only a suspicion—”

“He also knows about the missing documents.”

Kat stood perfectly still. “What missing documents, Leo?”

His thin nostrils flared on a suddenly indrawn breath. “Last week while I was in Hampshire someone took some papers from the hidden compartment in my library’s mantel. A man and a woman, working together.”

“Who do you suspect? Me?”

Leo shook his head. “This was the work of amateurs.” He hesitated, then said, “I think it was probably Rachel.”

Kat felt a shiver of apprehension run up her spine. “What sort of documents are we talking about here, Leo?

One of his shoulders twitched in a typically Gallic gesture. “Love letters from Lord Frederick to a handsome young clerk in the Foreign Office. The birth certificate of a child born on the Continent some years ago to Princess Caroline. That sort of thing.”

“What else?”

Amusement suddenly lightened his intense gray eyes. “You don’t really expect me to tell you, now do you, mon amie?”

Kat did not smile. “Anything that implicates me?”

He shook his head. “No. You should be safe enough—unless you do something foolish. I, on the other hand, might find it prudent to leave London precipitously. If so, I’ll try to send you word. You know where to go?”

“Yes.” It had all been arranged before, including the name of the out-of-the way inn south of town where she would try to meet with him, if possible, should he be forced to flee England.

Kat watched him reach for his hat. This theft of what must have been a valuable cache of documents cast Rachel’s death in a new, sinister light. “Tell me something, Leo. Why did you return early from Lord Edgeworth’s country house party last Tuesday?”

He swung to look back at her. “I received word that an emissary from Paris would be contacting me. Why?”

“So you were meeting with him during the hour or so that you neglected your guests?”

“Yes. He arrived earlier than I expected.” Leo cocked his head, his assessing gaze studying her face. “Are you back to thinking that I killed Rachel, hmm?”

“It would appear you had reason.”

Pierrepont settled his hat on his head. “So did your young viscount.”

“Did he? And how’s that?”

The Frenchman smiled. “Ask him.”

Sebastian was just leaving the Rose and Crown and heading toward Covent Garden when a scruffy boy of about eight came running after him with a note from Paul Gibson.

Come see me when you get the chance, the Irishman had written in a hasty scrawl. I’ll be at the Chalks Street Almshouse until noon.

Tossing the boy a penny, Sebastian hesitated, then turned his steps toward the East End.

Housed in a soot-blackened cluster of ancient stone buildings that had once been a Franciscan monastery, the Chalks Street Almshouse lay on the edge of Spitalfields, not far from Shepherds’ Place. Run by a private benevolent society as a humane alternative to the city’s public workhouses and poorhouses, the almshouse provided clothing and food and limited shelter to the area’s poor. Paul Gibson could often be found there at odd hours, bandaging workingmen’s wounds, examining infants that refused to thrive, and surreptitiously dispensing preventatives to the district’s growing population of prostitutes.

“They get younger and younger every year,” said Gibson with a sigh, as he drew Sebastian into the small, unheated alcove allotted to him by the almshouse directors. “I don’t think I’ve seen one over the age of sixteen today.”

Through the room’s single, grime-incrusted leaded window, Sebastian watched the doctor’s last patient dart furtively across the street. The girl looked all of twelve. “It’s not a vocation conducive to longevity.”

“Unfortunately, no,” said Gibson, his eyes blessedly clear and bright this morning. “It occurred to me the area’s filles de joie might be a good source of information about gentlemen with certain vile tastes, but I haven’t turned up anything of use in that respect so far.” Gibson wiped his hands on a towel and went to close the door to the cabinet where he kept a few meager supplies. “There is one thing I thought you should know about, though. I’ve had this nagging feeling ever since I finished Rachel York’s autopsy—this feeling that I was overlooking something. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then last night when I was giving my lecture at St. Thomas’s on musculature, it came to me.”

Sebastian swung away from the window, his gaze searching his friend’s face. “What’s that?”

“One of the first things I noticed when I was bathing Rachel York’s body was that her hand had been broken. From the nature of the break, it was obvious it had occurred after rigor mortis had set in, which is why I didn’t attach much importance to it at first. I simply assumed it was done by the woman hired to lay out the body—it’s often necessary, you know. But last night, I got to thinking . . .”

“Yes?”

“If the laying-out woman had to break Rachel’s hand to get it open, then it must have been clenched. Like this.” Gibson held up his fist. “But we know Rachel was scratching at her attacker.” He uncurled his fingers into a clawing position. “Like this.” He relaxed his hand. “If she’d been raped before death, then I’d say perhaps she clenched her fists at the end, the way a person tends to do when they’re trying to endure something painful. But we know that’s not the case.”

“So what are you saying? That she died clasping something in her hand?”

Gibson nodded. “I suspect so. Of course it could have been something as innocuous as a clump of hair she’d torn from her attacker.”

“Or it could have been something considerably more significant. There’s no way we’ll ever know now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m trying to locate the woman who laid out the body. If I can convince her I don’t mean to prosecute her for theft, she might tell me.”

Sebastian went to stand again beside the window overlooking the narrow, refuse-filled street. Dark gray clouds hung low over the city, promising rain. After a moment, the Irishman came to stand beside him, his gaze, like Sebastian’s, on the lowering sky. “Have you given any more thought to taking a little vacation in America?”

Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “I’m not likely to have much luck finding Rachel York’s killer in some place like Baltimore or Philadelphia, now am I?”

“It’s not Rachel York I’m thinking about. She’s dead. It’s Sebastian St. Cyr who’s worrying me.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I can’t leave, Paul. There’s more involved in this than I realized at first. Far more.”

Paul Gibson perched on a nearby stool while Sebastian outlined Rachel’s involvement with Leo Pierrepont. “So what do you think?” said the Irishman when Sebastian had finished. “That Pierrepont found out she’d taken the papers from him and killed her?”

“Either him, or one of the men against whom the French were collecting damaging information. I doubt Lord Frederick and my father are the only men Rachel approached. Any one of them could have killed her.”

The doctor nodded. “She was involved in dark doings, that girl. Dark doings with dangerous men.”

“I suspect the pages torn from her appointment book are linked to Lord Frederick and Pierrepont, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to know for sure.” He blew out a harsh breath. “It’s even possible Pierrepont’s documents have nothing to do with her death at all, beyond explaining why she was at that church so late at night.”

Gibson studied him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve found something else, have you?”

Sebastian met his friend’s gaze, and nodded. “My nephew, Bayard. He seems to have been infatuated with the woman. Followed her everywhere.”

“A common enough occurrence, surely, when one is dealing with beautiful actresses and opera dancers, and callow young men newly on the town?”

“Perhaps. Except that the Saturday before Rachel died, Bayard flew into a rage at Steven’s and threatened to kill her. Said he was going to rip her head off.”

“Ah. Not so common. Is he capable of such a thing, do you think?”

“I never liked him as a child. He could be cruel. Vicious even . . .” Sebastian let his voice trail off. “Yet it doesn’t seem possible that he could have done it, given that he spent the evening in a very public display of riotous excess before passing out in front of Cribb’s Parlor. His own father took him home.”

Gibson sat silent for a moment, lost in thought. “No, it doesn’t seem possible, does it? And there’s that other woman, Mary Grant. Why would Bayard track her down and kill her?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No reason I can think of. Although for that matter, the same could be said of Hugh Gordon. Rachel owed him money, and he’s badly dipped enough that he might well have killed her in a fit of temper if she refused to pay. But why the maid? It doesn’t make any sense. Unless—” Sebastian broke off suddenly.

“Unless . . . what?”

Sebastian sat forward suddenly. “Unless Gordon hunted Mary Grant down because he was looking for the papers Rachel had taken. Think about it: Gordon knew Rachel was involved with Pierrepont and the French. What if he also knew she’d stolen the documents and was planning to sell them? He might well have decided to get his hands on them and sell them himself.”

“And where does Mr. Gordon say he was last Tuesday night?

Sebastian pushed away from the stool. “He says he was at home, studying his lines. But according to a cranky old Irishman named Paddy O’Neal, Gordon went off in a hackney just before nine o’clock.”

“Any idea where he went?”

Sebastian smiled. “Westminster.”

Sebastian found Hugh Gordon in a cloth warehouse in the Haymarket, where the actor was inspecting an array of Bath superfine on a shelf against the side wall.

“Oh, God. It’s you again,” he said, when Sebastian came to stand beside him. “What the devil do you want now?”

“How about the truth for a change?” Sebastian leaned against the nearby dark-paneled wall and smiled. “You followed Rachel to St. Matthew’s last Tuesday night. Didn’t you?”

“What?” Gordon glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Of course not. I told you, I was home last Tuesday night, studying lines.”

“That’s not what Paddy O’Neal says.”

“Paddy? What the hell has that dotty old Irishman to do with this?”

“He says you pinched the hackney he’d called that night. And took it to Westminster.”

“He’s lying.”

“Is he? You needed money—lots of money, more even than Rachel owed you. I think you found out about the documents Rachel took from Pierrepont and came up with the bright idea of scaring her into giving them to you. Only, she refused.” Sebastian leaned in close and lowered his voice. “That’s when you grabbed her, wasn’t it? Maybe even gave her a shake, just like you used to do. Only, this time Rachel fought back. Tried to claw your eyes out. So you backhanded her—”

“This is crazy,” Gordon began.

”—across the face,” continued Sebastian without pause. “And when she came at you again, you pulled the blade from your walking stick and slit her throat. And then, because fighting with women always makes you hard, you raped her—”

“What?” The word came out in a low-voiced explosion of shock. “What are you saying? That Rachel was raped after she was killed?”

“That’s right,” said Sebastian. “I suppose it takes something out of a man, giving in to that kind of bloodlust and passion. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t until the next day that you finally made it around to Rachel’s rooms, hoping to find the papers there. Only, her maid had cleaned the place out by then, hadn’t she? So you had to track her down. And when you found her, you killed her, too. Why, I wonder. Because she didn’t want to let you take the papers? Or was it because by then you’d realized you’d acquired a taste for dead women?”

Gordon’s Adam’s apple moved painfully up and down as he swallowed, hard. “I swear to God, it’s not what you think.”

Sebastian pushed away from the wall, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

Gordon took a quick step back and licked dry lips with a nervous dart of his tongue. “You’re right. I did go to Westminster that night. But I wasn’t anywhere near St. Matthew’s.” He hesitated, then said in a rush. “There’s this woman. Her . . . her family wouldn’t approve, if they knew she was seeing me, so we meet at an inn. A place near the Abbey. The Three Feathers, it’s called. We were there half the night. You can check with the innkeeper if you want.”

Sebastian nodded. It would be easy enough, as the man said, to check. A flicker of movement in the street drew Sebastian’s attention to the shop’s bowed front window. It had begun to rain, a fine mist slowly turning the pavement dark and wet. He glanced back at the actor. Hugh Gordon, too, was watching the street.

Sebastian studied the man’s suddenly heightened color. It occurred to him that while Gordon had expressed shock at the idea that Rachel had been raped after death, he had shown no surprise when Sebastian mentioned the documents taken from Pierrepont. “And yet you did know about the papers Rachel took from Pierrepont.”

Gordon jerked. “All right. Yes. I did know. Rachel let it slip when I was pressing her for the money. But I swear to God, I didn’t kill her.”

Sebastian shifted so that the actor was between him and the shop’s front door. “Who else knew Rachel had those papers?”

“I don’t know. How could I? Why don’t you ask her lover?” The actor’s lower lip protruded in a pronounced sneer. “He ought to know. After all, he helped her steal them.”

A man hovered just outside the shop door. He had his head turned so that Sebastian could see little of his face. But there was something familiar about the set of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw. “Her lover?” said Sebastian sharply. “Who? What’s the man’s name?”

“Donatelli. Giorgio Donatelli,” said the actor just as Edward Maitland, followed by another constable, came hurtling through the shop’s front door.