Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 24

Douglas Sterling proved to be one of those aged gentlemen who still clung to the powdered wigs considered de rigueur for men of birth and education when they were in their prime.

Sebastian found him in a coffeehouse on the east side of Chatham Place, seated near the bowed front window where he could watch the steady stream of traffic passing back and forth on Blackfriars Bridge. He was hunched over a medical journal that lay open on the table before him, but looked up and frowned when Sebastian paused beside him.

His face was heavily lined with age, the skin sallow and blotched with liver spots. But his frame was still lean, his hands unpalsied, his dark eyes shiny with a belligerent intelligence. “You’re obviously not from Bow Street,” he said, his voice raspy but strong. “So what in blazes do you want with me?”

“Mind if I have a seat?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” said the old man, and returned pointedly to his reading.

Sebastian leaned one shoulder against a nearby wall, his arms crossed at his chest. Through the window he could see a massive farm wagon heavily laden with hay jolting and swaying as it came down off the bridge’s span. “Nice view,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Come here often, do you?”

“You must know I do; otherwise, you wouldn’t have found me here, now, would you?”

“I understand you’ve retired from the practice of medicine.”

“Pretty much.”

“Yet you consulted with Stanley Preston the very day he died?”

“I like to keep my hand in, now and then.”

“Now and then?”

“Yes.” The aged physician gave up all pretense of reading and leaned back in his chair. “Who are you?”

“The name’s Devlin.”

Sterling’s eyes narrowed. “The Earl of Hendon’s son?”

“Yes.”

“I hear you’ve taken a fancy to solving murders. In my day, gentlemen left that sort of thing to the constables and magistrates.”

“Like Constable Hart?”

Sterling grunted. “The man is beyond impudent.”

Sebastian studied the old doctor’s watery, nearly lashless dark eyes. “He thinks you’re hiding something.”

Rather than become flustered, Sterling simply returned Sebastian’s steady gaze and said, “He’s welcome to think what he likes.”

“It doesn’t disturb you that someone lopped off Stanley Preston’s head less than twelve hours after you saw him?”

“Of course it disturbs me-as it would any right-minded gentleman.”

“Yet you refuse to divulge information which could conceivably lead to the apprehension of his killer.”

“It is only your assumption-and that of the ridiculous Constable Hart-that I possess any such information.”

“Are you by chance acquainted with the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth?”

“Huh. Knew him before he was even breeched, I did-although I doubt he’d acknowledge the likes of me now that he’s become so fine. Lord Sidmouth, indeed. And his father no more than a simple physician, like me.”

“You were colleagues?”

“We were. Although it was years ago, now.”

“Yet you still maintained an acquaintance with Stanley Preston?”

“That strike you as odd?”

“I suppose not. Tell me this: Did Preston seem at all anxious when you last saw him? Frightened?”

“Hardly.”

“How often would you see him?”

“Not often.”

“Yet he consulted with you over a medical problem his own daughter didn’t know he had?”

“I don’t discuss my health with my daughters. Do you?”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“A son?”

“Yes.”

The old physician gave a throaty grunt. “Strapping young man like yourself, bet you think you want sons-carry on the name, make you proud at Oxford and on the hunting field, and all that rot. But mark my words: You get to be my age, it’s a daughter you’ll be wanting.”

Outside in the square, the hay wagon had caught a wheel in a rut and shuddered to a halt. Someone shouted as the driver cracked his whip.

Sebastian said, “What did you think of Preston’s interest in collecting the heads of famous men?”

The old physician thrust out his upper lip and shrugged. “Ever see the collection of anatomical specimens amassed by the late John Hunter? They’re in the care of the Royal College of Surgeons these days.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Mind you, Hunter’s collection was based on anatomical peculiarities rather than whatever fame or infamy the individuals may have managed to acquire in life. But his point was the same.”

“Was it? I’d have said the impetus behind Hunter’s collection was education and research.”

“He liked to think it was. Could even have started out that way. But if you’d ever observed his pride in his specimens, you’d know better.”

Sebastian studied the aged doctor’s sallow, wrinkled face. “Can you think of anything that might have taken Stanley Preston to Bloody Bridge last Sunday night?”

“No.”

“Ever hear of a man named Sinclair Oliphant?”

“No,” said Sterling again. Although this time he blinked, and his gaze skittered away.

“You’re certain of that?”

“Course I’m certain,” Sterling snapped and glared defiantly back at Sebastian again, as if determined to stare him down.

“Who do you think killed Stanley Preston?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“None?”

“None.”

“Then why your reluctance to discuss your last meeting with him?”

For one brief moment, Sterling’s jaw sagged, and Sebastian caught a glimpse of uncertainty and what might even have been fear in the old man’s eyes.

Then the aged physician clenched his teeth together. “My meeting with Stanley Preston last Sunday was private, and I intend for it to remain that way. You can stand there for the rest of the day as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve told you all you need to know.”

He hunched a shoulder and returned pointedly to his reading.

“Telling me what you think I need to know is not the same as telling me all you know,” said Sebastian.

But Sterling kept his stare fixed on the page before him, the powder from his old-fashioned wig dusting the shoulders of his worn coat.

Frustrated, Sebastian went next to the Home Office, where his second attempt to speak to Viscount Sidmouth was no more successful than the first. This time, the clerk insisted that his lordship was at Carlton House in consultation with the Regent and was not expected to return that day.

Sebastian studied the clerk’s pasty white face. He was a short, gently rounded man with a balding pate and a small, puckered mouth that curled up into what looked like a habitual condescending smile. “At Carlton House, you say?”

The smirk deepened. “That is correct.”

“You’re certain of that?” Sebastian could quite clearly hear the Home Secretary in conversation with a fellow cabinet member behind a nearby closed door. But the clerk had no way of knowing that.

“Of course I am certain,” said the little man with a sniff.

“It’s the oddest thing, but I’m beginning to get the impression the Secretary is deliberately avoiding me.”

The clerk stared back at Sebastian, pale eyes blinking rapidly.

If Sidmouth had been closeted with anyone else, Sebastian would have been tempted to set the supercilious clerk aside and open the door to the Home Secretary’s office. But Sebastian recognized the voice of the nobleman whose low, measured tones alternated with Sidmouth’s higher ranges: It was the Earl of Hendon, the man Sebastian had called Father until a short time ago.

Sebastian nodded to the closed door. “When the Secretary finishes his meeting with Lord Hendon, you can tell him that I’ll be back.”

The clerk gave a nervous titter. “When? When will you be back?”

“When will he be available?”

“I’m afraid I can’t really say. He’s busy. Very busy.”

“Then I suppose I’ll simply need to catch him when he’s not busy.”

The clerk’s smile slid into something less confident. “What does that mean?”

But Sebastian simply smiled and walked away, leaving the clerk bleating behind him, “But what does that mean? What does it mean?”

That night, Sebastian donned silk knee breeches, buckled dress shoes, and a chapeaux bras and took his wife to a ball.

The ball was given by Countess Lieven, the Russian Ambassador’s wife. Her husband had only recently been posted to the Court of St. James, yet the young Countess had already managed to make herself one of Society’s leaders. She was politically astute, totally unscrupulous, breathtakingly snobbish, charismatic, and brilliant. Her invitations were amongst the most sought after in London, and her approval was critical to any young lady making her debut into Society.

“If he’s that desperate to avoid you,” Hero said to Sebastian as their carriage joined the crush of fashionable vehicles making their way toward the Lievens’ town house, “maybe he won’t be there.”

“His daughter is making her come out this Season. He’ll be there.”