Where Serpents Sleep

Chapter 52

SUNDAY, 10 MAY 1812

“My lord? My lord.” Sebastian opened one eye, tried to focus on the lean, serious face of his valet, then gave it up with a groan. “I don’t care if the entire city of London is afire. Just go away.”

“Here,” said Calhoun, slipping what felt like a warm mug into Sebastian’s slack hand. “Drink this.”

“What the devil is it?”

“Tincture of milk thistle.”

Sebastian opened the other eye, but it didn’t work any better than the first. “What the hell are you doing here? Go away.”

“A message has arrived from Dr. Gibson.”

“And?” Sebastian opened both eyes this time and clenched his teeth as the room spun unpleasantly around him.

“It seems the authorities have recovered the body of a military gentleman by the name of Max Ludlow. Dr. Gibson will be performing the autopsy this morning, and he thought you might be interested.”

Sebastian sat up so fast the hot liquid in the forgotten mug sloshed over the sides and burned his hand. “Bloody hell.”

“Drink it, my lord,” said Calhoun, turning away toward the dressing room. “Nothing is better than milk thistle when you’ve got the devil of a head.”

The milk thistle helped some, but not enough to encourage Sebastian to do more than glance at the dishes awaiting him in the breakfast room before turning away and calling for his town carriage. The day had dawned cool but clear and far too bright. He subsided into one corner of his carriage and closed his eyes. Gibson’s autopsies were never pleasant, but Sebastian didn’t want to even think about the kind of shape Max Ludlow’s body would be in after ten days.

“ ’E’s in the room out the back,” said Gibson’s housekeeper when she opened the door to Sebastian. A short, stout woman with iron gray hair and a plain, ruddy face, she scowled at him with unabashed disapproval. “I’m to take you there. Not that I’m going any farther than halfway down the garden, mind you. It’s unnatural, what ’e does down there.”

Sebastian followed Mrs. Federico’s broad back down the ancient, narrow hall and through the kitchen to the untidy yard that led to the small stone building where Gibson performed both his postmortems and his illicit dissections. True to her word, halfway across the yard Mrs. Federico drew up short. “Viscount or no viscount, I ain’t goin’ no farther,” she said, and headed back toward her kitchen.

Sebastian had to quell the urge to follow her. He could already smell Max Ludlow.

“There you are,” said Gibson, appearing at the building’s open doorway, his gore-stained hands held aloft. “I thought you’d be interested in this.”

Sebastian tried breathing through his mouth. “Where did they find him?”

“In Bethnal Green. Wrapped in canvas and dumped in a ditch along Jews Walk.”

“I suppose it’s better than the Thames,” said Sebastian. He’d seen bodies pulled out of the river after a week. It wasn’t a sight he cared to see again.

“There was water in the ditch.”

“Good God,” said Sebastian. He should have had more of Calhoun’s milk thistle.

Gibson ducked back into the building’s dank interior. After a brief hesitation, Sebastian followed.

Naked and half eviscerated, the body on the room’s stone slab looked like something out of his worse nightmares. One glance at the bloated, waxy flesh and its resident insect population was enough. Sebastian stared at the ceiling. “Are they sure that’s Max Ludlow?” Sebastian asked when he was able.

“Someone from the regiment identified him. In another day it probably would have been impossible. Parts of the body were already virtually reduced to bones, but thanks to the way he was lying, the face is actually fairly well preserved.”

Sebastian held his handkerchief to his nose and resisted the impulse to take another look. “Any idea how he died?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Gibson turned around to reach for a tin basin. “I found this in his heart.”

Sebastian stared down at a bloody pair of strange, broken blades, handleless and oddly shaped. “What are they?”

“It’s a broken pair of sewing scissors,” said Gibson, setting the bowl aside so that he could demonstrate an upthrusting, twisting motion. “Whoever killed him must have stabbed him with the scissors, then broken them off when they hit a rib.”

“So he was killed by a woman,” said Sebastian.

“Not necessarily, but more than likely. Did Hannah Green ever mention how Rachel Fairchild killed the man in her room?”

Sebastian shook his head. “She may not have known.” He went to stand in the yard just outside the door to try to breathe. It didn’t help.

Wiping his hands on a stained cloth, Gibson came out with him. “I heard about the fire at the Academy last night. That makes four more dead.” He brought up one splayed hand to rub his temples. “I thought I’d left carnage on this scale behind when I got out of the Army.”

Sebastian jerked his head toward the dark, foul room behind them. “That body on your slab was once a hussar captain, remember?”

Gibson’s hand slipped back to his side, his eyes widening. “What are you saying? That you think these killers are military men?”

“It’s what war teaches us, isn’t it? Not just to kill, but to kill on a grand scale.”

“There’s a difference between killing enemy soldiers on a battlefield and slaughtering unarmed Englishwomen in a London slum.”

“You mean because one is sanctioned by authority and the other is not?”

“Well, yes.”

In the silence that followed, the endless drone of buzzing flies sounded both abnormally loud and oppressively familiar. It was the sound of death. Sebastian said, “Some men learn to like killing. Or at least, they learn not to shrink from it. And that can be just as dangerous.”

Gibson squinted up at the clouds beginning to gather on the horizon, his face grim. Sebastian knew what he was remembering, the images that haunted both men’s dreams. The Portuguese peasants shot down in their fields along with their mules and their dogs. The Spanish families burned alive in their farm-houses. Gibson said, “But for British soldiers—officers—to kill Englishwomen . . .” He shook his head. “I know that shouldn’t make a difference, yet to most people it does.”

“It makes a difference because most people have a tendency to see anyone who speaks a different language or has darker skin as somehow less human than themselves. But a lot of people see prostitutes as less than human, too. Their lives are considered cheap. Expendable. If it hadn’t been for Miss Jarvis, the eight women who died at the Magdalene House would already be forgotten.”

“But why would hussar officers want to kill the Prime Minister?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian admitted.

Gibson jerked his head toward the dank room behind them. “If it’s true . . . if Max Ludlow was one of the three men Hannah Green was telling us about, then who were the other two?”

“At this point, I’d put my money on Patrick Somerville being one of them.”

“The hussar captain from Northamptonshire? Do you think Hannah could identify him?”

“She might not be able to remember names, but women in her line of work learn to recognize faces.”

“Yet it won’t be enough, will it?” said Gibson. “Even if Somerville was at the Academy the night Rachel Fairchild and Hannah Green fled, there’s still nothing to tie him to the Magdalene House killings. Or to last night’s attack.”

“No. But Miss Driscoll might be able to do so.”

Gibson looked confused. “Miss Driscoll. Who is she?”

“The Academy’s blind harp player.”

Gibson’s frown deepened. “If she’s blind, how can she identify him?”

Sebastian thought about explaining, then gave it up. “Never mind. Just lend me some paper and a pen, would you?”