Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 37

Jamie Knox was stripped down to his shirtsleeves and chopping kindling in the ancient courtyard at the rear of the Black Devil when Sebastian walked up to him.

He glanced over at Sebastian but kept at his task, the muscles in his back bunching and flexing beneath the linen of his shirt as he swung the axe. “Still looking for your murderer, are you?”

“Yes. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

Sebastian held up the silver and bluestone necklace so that the pendant dangled from its chain. “Have you ever seen this before?”

Knox paused to swipe one forearm across his sweaty forehead, then reached out and cupped the pendant in his left palm, his yellow eyes narrowing. “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

“I’m told it can be seen in a seventeenth-century painting that hangs in the portrait gallery of Northcott Abbey, near Ludlow.”

Knox gave a soft grunt. “And you’re thinking that because I’m from Shropshire, I might’ve seen this painting? It’s a grand place, Northcott Abbey. Last I heard, Lord and Lady Seaton were more than a bit choosy about who they invited inside. Or do you suspect me of having prigged the bobble at some point in my long and varied career?”

“Actually, it once belonged to my mother. An old Welshwoman gave it to her before I was born.”

Knox reached for a pitcher of ale that rested atop a nearby stretch of stone wall, and drank heavily. Then he stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, his breath coming heavy from his labors, his gaze thoughtful on Sebastian’s face. “You ever been to Shropshire?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Not since I was quite young.”

“You have people there?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

A breeze gusted up, filled with the rattle of dead leaves across the ancient paving and the whisper of unanswered questions that had never been asked.

Knox wiped his sleeve across his forehead again. “When I was sixteen, I couldn’t get away from there fast enough. Took the King’s shilling and marched off to see the world, convinced I’d never want to go back. But lately I find myself thinking Shropshire wouldn’t be such a bad place to raise a family.”

“You could still go back. They have pubs in Shropshire.”

Knox’s teeth flashed in a smile as he hefted his axe. “So they do.”

Once, the tavern keeper had told Sebastian that his mother was a young barmaid who’d named three men as the possible father of her child: a Gypsy stable hand, an English lord, and a Welsh cavalry officer. But she died before she was able to tell anyone which of the three the boy resembled.

For Sebastian, the desire to know the truth-the truth about the mysterious man who may have sired them both, the truth about the shared blood that in all likelihood flowed through their veins-was like an open, festering wound. As a boy, he’d grown up with two brothers-or rather, two half brothers, sons of the Earl of Hendon and his unfaithful Countess. Both were long dead. Now Sebastian looked at Jamie Knox and wondered if he were looking at another brother, a third half brother he’d never known he had. It was, Sebastian knew, the real reason he kept coming back here. The real reason the two men kept circling around each other, for he didn’t need to be told to know that Jamie Knox was as puzzled and intrigued as he.

“I heard an interesting tale last night,” said Knox as he turned back to his work, his axe blade biting deep into a new length of wood.

Sebastian watched him free the axe and swing again. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Seems a month or so ago, your Stanley Preston bought a medieval reliquary from Priss Mulligan. Paid a pretty penny for it, he did, only to discover just last week that it’s a fake. And that Priss knew it all along.”

“So what did he do?”

“Went charging over to Houndsditch and demanded his money back. Even threatened to expose Priss to the authorities.”

“When was this?”

“Last Saturday.”

“The day before he was killed?”

“That’s right.”

“How reliable is your source?”

Knox paused to look at Sebastian over one shoulder, his lean face slick with sweat, his expression unreadable. “Very.”

“And how did Priss Mulligan respond to Preston’s threat?”

“She swore that if he so much as thought about going to the authorities, she’d send her lads to strangle Preston with his own intestines and feed what was left of him to the dogs.”

“Colorful,” said Sebastian.

Knox sank his axehead deep into the chopping block and straightened. “She is that-and more.”

Priss Mulligan was winding the key of a mechanical nightingale when Sebastian pushed open the battered door and walked into her shop.

Despite the brightness of the afternoon, the interior was gloomy, the small panes of the front windows thick with the accumulated grime, cobwebs, and entombed dead insects of centuries. Rather than look up, Priss simply kept winding the gilded, jewel-encrusted trinket, and he realized she must keep lookouts posted on the street outside, because she’d obviously known he was coming.

“Back again, are you?” she said, setting the trinket on the counter between them. The nightingale began to sing melodiously, its delicate, gilded wings beating slowly up and down, its tiny beak opening and closing, the jeweled collar around its neck glittering with simulated fire.

“Interesting,” said Sebastian, watching it.

“Ain’t it just? And the jewels are real rubies and sapphires too-no paste.”

“Of course they are,” said Sebastian.

Rather than take offense, she laughed out loud, her small beady eyes practically disappearing into her fat face.

He nodded to the mechanical bird between them. “Where does it come from?”

“Persia. Or maybe China. Does it matter? Sings as sweet and sunny as an angel of the good Lord, it does.”

The clear notes began to slow down, the key cleverly concealed in the bird’s tail feathers turning slower and slower, the wings seeming to grow heavier and heavier with each flutter.

He said, “I’ve discovered you’ve been less than honest with me.”

She gave him a look of shocked innocence. “You don’t say?”

“Last Saturday, Stanley Preston came charging into your shop and accused you of cheating him. He threatened to turn you in to the authorities as a fence, whereupon you threatened to strangle him with his own intestines and feed what was left of him to the dogs.”

“Nah, that weren’t it. Don’t know who you been talking to, but I said I was gonna strangle him with his own guts and feed his privates to the dogs.”

Sebastian studied her broad, still smiling face. “Yet you told me you hadn’t seen the man in a month or more.”

She shrugged. “Reckon I forgot.”

“You forgot.”

“Got a terrible memory, I do.”

“You do realize, of course, that his threat to turn you over to the authorities gives you a powerful motive for murder?”

“It might-if I’d thought he meant it. Only, he didn’t.”

“So certain?”

“Course I’m certain. Everybody cheats each other in this business-when they can. And the buyers is as guilty as the sellers. You such a flat as t’ think Preston cared whether the stuff he bought here was stolen or not? He couldn’t expose me without exposing himself, now, could he?”

“He could claim not to know the origins of your merchandise.”

“To be sure, he could. But then, so could I, now, couldn’t I?” She poked one short, fat finger toward him. “If he’d been strung up by his own innards and gelded, you might be able to pin this on me. But he weren’t. So get out of me shop.”

Sebastian nodded to the now silent bird on the counter between them. “How much is the nightingale?”

She snatched it up and cradled it against her massive bosom as if it were something rare and precious to her. “’Tain’t for sale. Not to you.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on her face. “Ever have dealings with anyone from Windsor Castle?”

Her unexpected, slow smile betrayed not a hint of either recognition or alarm. “I told you, I only deal in human heads if they’re gilded and studded with jewels.”

“I don’t recall saying anything about a head,” said Sebastian, and walked out of her shop.

The sun was sinking low in the sky when Sebastian joined Gibson for a pint at an ancient, half-timbered tavern near the Tower. The Irishman’s eyes were hollow and bruised-looking, and there was a decidedly green tinge to his face.

“You think it was a trap?” said Gibson, wrapping his unsteady hands around his tankard. “That Priss Mulligan used the King’s head as bait to lure Preston to Bloody Bridge and then kill him?”

Sebastian leaned his shoulders against the worn, high back of the old-fashioned settle. “I think it’s a strong possibility, yes.”

Gibson drained the rest of his ale and set aside the empty tankard. “How do you know your unknown thief himself isn’t the killer? Maybe he decided to kill Preston, steal whatever money he’d brought, and then sell the head to Priss Mulligan.”

“That’s also a possibility.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Why would a simple thief go to all the trouble of cutting off Preston’s head and setting it up on the bridge?”

“Why would anyone who wasn’t more than a wee bit crazy?”

“True.” Sebastian signaled the barmaid for two more pints. “There is a third possibility.”

“There is?”

“Preston could have been at the bridge to meet whoever stole the royal relics. Only, someone else followed him to the bridge and killed him.”

“Someone like Wyeth or Oliphant?”

“Or even Henry Austen. After all, we only have his word as to the nature of their quarrel.”

Gibson grunted. “What I don’t understand is how this old physician-Sterling-fits into anything. Why kill him?”

“My guess is he figured out who killed Preston, or at least had a pretty good idea.” Sebastian frowned. “Although there could always be another link that I’m missing entirely.”

Gibson swiped a shaky hand down over his pale, clammy face. “Alexi says she gave you the results of Sterling’s autopsy.”

“She did, yes.” Sebastian studied his friend’s heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes. “Did you ever get a chance to look at the body yourself?”

Gibson shook his head, his gaze sliding away.

“How’s your leg now?” Sebastian asked gently.

“Better.”

Sebastian remained silent, but Gibson seemed to know the direction of his thoughts, for he said, “It’s barmy, if you ask me-thinking you can get rid of the phantom pains from a man’s missing leg with nothing more than a box and mirrors.”

“We don’t understand much about the mind or how it functions, do we? Madame Sauvage seems to think it could work. So why not try it? What have you to lose?” Besides your pain and an opium addiction that’s going to kill you, Sebastian thought, although he didn’t say it.

Gibson set his jaw and shook his head, and Sebastian knew his refusal was all tied up with his pride, and a fear of looking foolish or weak, and a host of other emotions Sebastian couldn’t even guess at and suspected Gibson himself had no desire to probe.

The surgeon waited while the buxom young barmaid set two new tankards on the table, then said, “So where’s this king’s head now, do you think?”

“I suppose that depends on whether the thief and the killer are the same person. But if the thief isn’t the killer, then I’m afraid he’s probably in danger-and I suspect he knows it.”

Gibson stared at him. “How you figure that?”

“One of two things: either the killer used the King’s head to lure Preston to Bloody Bridge, in which case the thief knows who the killer is, or the thief had nothing to do with the murder but arrived at the bridge in time to see something.”

“What makes you think he saw something?”

“Because someone-either the thief, the killer, or Preston himself-dropped that inscribed lead strap beside the stream. And if it was the thief, then he must have been too rattled-or afraid of being seen-to take the time to look for it in the dark. Otherwise, why leave something that valuable-especially something that has the potential to tie him to murder?”

Gibson leaned forward. “Maybe that’s why Sterling was killed. He was a physician, after all. Most of them are more interested in drinking urine and dispensing potions than in studying anatomy, but some do. Could be he had ties to the resurrection men working out at Windsor and figured out who your thief was.”

Sebastian paused with his tankard lifted halfway to his mouth. “Do you know any of them?”

Gibson shook his head. “Resurrection men are fiercely territorial, and the lads I deal with tend to stick to the churchyards of the City or Mayfair. But I’ll bet that virger you talked to could give you their names. He might not have ever managed to catch them red-handed, but he knows who they are-you can count on that.”

“Actually, he was at pains to convince me that virtually anyone in Windsor could have accessed the crypt-something I suspect the Dean would be shocked to hear.”

Gibson grunted. “Sounds like he probably deals with them himself. God knows he wouldn’t be the first.”

Sebastian tried to picture toothy Rowan Toop surreptitiously leaving greased gates unlocked in anticipation of the stealthy midnight visits of body snatchers, or offering to sell choice items lifted from the crypts under his care.

And Sebastian found he had no difficulty imagining either scenario.