When Gods Die

Chapter 8

Sebastian found Paul Gibson on the floor beside the couch in the Yellow Cabinet, his wooden leg thrust out awkwardly to one side.

“Ah, there you are, Sebastian me lad,” he said, his eyes creasing into a smile as he glanced around at Sebastian’s entrance.

They were old friends, Sebastian and this dark-haired Irishman with the merry green eyes and a roguish dimple in one cheek. Theirs was a bond forged in blood and mud, and tested by suffering and want and the threat of death. Once, Gibson had been a surgeon in the British Army, a man whose fierce determination to help those in need often took him into harm’s way. Even after a French cannonball took off the lower part of his left leg, Gibson had remained in the field. But continuing ill health—and an accompanying weakness for the sweet relief to be found in poppies—had forced him to leave the army two years ago and set up a small surgery in the City, where he devoted much of his energy to research and the teaching of medical students, and to providing the authorities with his expert opinion in criminal cases.

“You made good time,” said Sebastian.

“Dead bodies don’t share their secrets for long,” said Gibson, returning his attention to what was left of Lord Anglessey’s beautiful young wife, Guinevere. “And this one has some interesting stories to tell.”

He had rolled the body so that it lay fully facedown on the floor. In the harsh light of day, the skin at the back of her neck could now be seen to have turned a greenish red. A faint odor like that of rotting meat permeated the chamber, although the heavy drapes had been pulled back and the long windows thrown open to flood the room with enough fresh air and sunlight to give the Prince Regent an apoplexy.

Sebastian went to stand beside the open windows, his gaze on the gulls wheeling and calling against the vivid blue sky above the Strand. “When would you say she died?”

“It’s difficult to be precise, but I think early yesterday afternoon is more likely than yesterday morning.”

Sebastian swung around. “Not last night?”

“No. Of that there is no doubt.”

“You know what this means, don’t you? The servants would have come in this room to build up the fire before last night’s performance. There’s no way the body could have lain here undiscovered for so long. She must have been killed someplace else and brought here just before the Prince discovered her.”

Gibson settled back on his sound heel and frowned. “You think this was set up to deliberately cast suspicion upon the Prince?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” Sebastian wandered the room, searching for something—anything—that he might have missed. The cabinet’s walls were hung with linen painted with a tracery of apple green foliage against a delicate yellow background. A series of giant arches, each containing a life-sized gilt figure of a Chinese woman, encircled the room. The oriental motif here was strong, with tables and chairs of a pale wood carved to resemble bamboo, and a large lacquered chest decorated with painted dragons that stood between two of the arches. “The Prince claims to have received a note from Lady Guinevere,” said Sebastian, inspecting one of the gilded ladies. “A note arranging a rendezvous with him here. Only, how could she have sent him a note if she was already dead?”

“She could have written the note earlier in the day.”

“I suppose it’s possible. Unfortunately, His Royal Highness doesn’t recall precisely when or how the note came into his hands.”

“In his cups again, was he?”

“From the sounds of things, yes.” Sebastian went to check the locks on the long windows. All were intact. But then, if someone had access to the Pavilion, it would have been easy enough to open one of the windows from the inside. How many people had attended last night’s musical evening? he wondered. The presence of the dispossessed French royal family had attracted even those who normally avoided the Pavilion; the reception rooms had been packed.

His eyes narrowing against the sun’s bright glare, Sebastian stared off across the park. It would take an extraordinary amount of sangfroid to carry a dead body across the Pavilion’s open grounds in the midst of one of the Prince’s musical evenings. Unless…

Unless, of course, the body had been moved to the Yellow Cabinet from someplace else inside the Pavilion.

“From the pattern of lividity,” Gibson said thoughtfully, “the body was obviously left lying on its back for several hours before someone slipped that blade into her.”

“What?” Sebastian looked around in surprise. He’d noticed the lack of blood in the room and simply assumed it was because the actual murder had taken place somewhere else. It had never occurred to him that Guinevere Anglessey had already been dead when she was stabbed. “But if the dagger didn’t kill her, then what did?”

“There’s no way to tell. Not without a proper autopsy.” Gibson looked up. “Any chance of it?”

Sebastian let out his breath in an ironic huff. “You certainly won’t get the local magistrate to commission one. He’s already decreed the lady’s death a suicide.”

“Suicide? How on earth did he come up with that?”

“The Regent’s physicians have concurred.”

Gibson was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I see. Anything to avoid casting suspicion on the Prince. Do you think her husband could be persuaded to order a postmortem?”

“I suppose that depends on whether or not the Marquis of Anglessey had something to do with her murder.”

Gibson reached to draw a white sheet over the body at his feet. “He does seem a likely suspect, does he not? What do you know of him?”

“Anglessey? He’s generally considered a sober enough man—keeps his estates in good order, and divides his time between them and affairs at the House of Lords. Or at least,” Sebastian added, “he was considered sober until his latest marriage.”

Paul Gibson glanced over at him in surprise. “Was she so unsuitable?”

“By birth, no. Only by age. Anglessey is a year or two older than my father.”

“Good God.”

“It would give Anglessey a motive both to kill his wife and to attempt to implicate the Prince in her murder, if Anglessey discovered the Prince was cuckolding him.”

“Was she one of the Prince’s paramours?”

“I honestly don’t know. The Prince claims they were barely acquainted.”

“But you don’t believe him.”

“He’s lying about something. I just don’t know what.”

Gibson began collecting his scattered instruments to stow them in his black leather bag. “Did you actually see this note the Prince says he received?”

“No. It’s gone missing.”

“By accident, or by design, I wonder.” Gibson pushed up to a stand, staggering slightly as his weight shifted to his wooden leg. “More’s the pity. I should think if you could discover the origins of that note, you’d likely have your killer.”

“Perhaps. Although I suspect our killer is much too clever to be caught so easily.”

Sebastian became aware of Paul Gibson’s intense green eyes studying him. “What’s any of this to do with you, Sebastian?”

With anyone else, Sebastian might have dissembled. But the friendship between him and the Irishman ran deep. Sebastian drew his mother’s necklace from his pocket. “Lady Guinevere was wearing this when she died.”

“A curious piece.” Gibson’s brows twitched. “But again, what has it to do with you?”

Sebastian held the necklace cradled in his palm. It had always seemed to him that the stones grew faintly warm against his skin. But in his mother’s hand, he’d seen the stones pulse with so much energy as to become almost hot to the touch…. Or at least, so it had seemed to him as a child.

“The necklace belonged to my mother,” he said simply.

Paul Gibson raised his gaze to his friend’s face. “Something strange is going on here, Sebastian. Something that could be dangerous. For anyone involved.”

“If you want to have nothing further to do with it, I’ll understand.”

Gibson made a swift, impatient gesture with one hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one I’m worried about. Who brought you into this?”

“Ostensibly, the Prince. In reality? Jarvis.”

“And you trust him?”

Sebastian gazed down at the still, ravaged body of the woman hidden beneath the sheet. “Not at all. But someone killed Guinevere Anglessey. Someone slipped that dagger into the livid flesh of her bare back and brought her body here to drape it across that couch in a deliberately suggestive posture. Lord Jarvis’s sole intent in all this is to protect the Prince. But mine is different. I’m going to find out who killed this woman, and I’m going to see that he pays for it.”

“Because of the necklace?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Because if I don’t, no one else will.”

“What does it matter to you?”

One of Guinevere’s slim white hands peeked out from beneath the sheet, its fingers curled lightly in death. Seeing it, Sebastian was reminded of another woman, left to die on an altar’s steps, her throat viciously slashed, her body obscenely violated; and another, hunted down like an unwary quarry and subjected to the same hideous end.

He had few illusions about the world in which he lived. He knew the shocking inequality between its privileged and its poor; he recognized the savage injustice of a legal system that could hang an eight-year-old boy for stealing a loaf of bread and yet let a king’s son get away with murder. Once, he’d been so repulsed by the raw barbarism and senseless cruelty of the wars his people fought in the name of liberty and justice that he’d been content simply to let himself drift, aimless and alone. Now that struck him as a reaction that was both self-indulgent and faintly cowardly.

Crouching down beside what was left of the young woman named Guinevere, Sebastian tucked the sheet over that pale, vulnerable hand and said softly, “It matters.”