Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 3

The head had been positioned near the end of one of the low brick walls lining the old bridge, its sightless face turned as if to watch anyone unwary enough to approach. A man’s head, it had thick, graying dark hair, heavy eyebrows, and a long, prominent nose.

“Nasty business, this,” said the burly constable, the pine torch in his hand hissing and spitting as he held it aloft in the blustery wind.

Sir Henry Lovejoy, the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, watched the golden light dance over the pale features of that frozen, staring face and felt his stomach give an uncomfortable lurch.

The night was unusually cold and starless, the flaring torches of the constables fanning out along the banks of the small stream filling the air with the scent of burning pitch. They’d need to make a more thorough search of the area in the morning, of course. But this was a start.

Even in daylight, this rutted, muddy lane was seldom traveled, for beyond the winding rivulet spanned by the narrow, single-arched bridge lay a vast open area of market and nursery gardens known as the Five Fields. All were shrouded now in an eerie blackness so complete as to seem impenetrable.

Hunching his shoulders against the cold, Lovejoy moved to where the rest of the unfortunate gentleman’s strong, solid body lay sprawled in the lane’s grassy verge, his once neatly arranged linen cravat disordered and stained dark, the raw, hacked flesh of his neck too gruesome to bear close inspection. He’d been Lovejoy’s age, in his fifties. That should not have bothered Lovejoy, but for some reason he didn’t care to dwell on, it did. He drew a quick breath fouled with a heavy, coppery stench and groped for his handkerchief. “You’re certain this is-was-Mr. Stanley Preston?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the constable. A stout young man with bulging eyes, he towered over Lovejoy, who was both short and slight. “Molly-the barmaid from the Rose and Crown-recognized the, er, head, sir. And I found his calling cards in his pocket.”

Lovejoy pressed the folded handkerchief to his lips. Under any circumstances, such a gruesome murder would be cause for concern. But when the victim was cousin to Lord Sidmouth, a former prime minister who now served as Home Secretary, the ramifications had the potential to be serious indeed. The local magistrate had immediately called in Bow Street and then withdrawn from the investigation entirely.

The sound of an approaching carriage, driven fast, jerked Lovejoy’s attention from the blood-drenched corpse at their feet. He watched as a sleek curricle drawn by a pair of fine chestnuts swung off Sloane Street to run along the north side of the square and enter the shadowy lane leading to the bridge.

The driver was a gentleman, tall and lean, wearing a caped coat and elegant beaver hat. At the sight of Lovejoy, he drew up, and the half-grown groom, or tiger, who clung to a perch at the rear of the carriage leapt down to run to the horses’ heads. “Best walk them, Tom,” said Devlin, jumping lightly from the curricle’s high seat. “That’s a nasty wind.”

“Aye, gov’nor,” said the boy.

“My lord,” said Lovejoy, moving thankfully to meet him. “My apologies for calling you out in the middle of such a wretched night. But I fear this case is worrisome. Most worrisome.”

“Sir Henry,” said Devlin. Then his gaze shifted beyond Lovejoy, to the severed head perched at the end of the bridge, and he let out a harsh breath. “Good God.”

The Viscount was some two score and five years younger than Lovejoy and stood at least a foot taller, with hair nearly as dark as a Gypsy’s and strange amber eyes that gleamed a feral yellow in the torchlight as the two men turned to walk toward the stream. “Have you learned anything yet?” he asked.

“Nothing, really, beyond the victim’s identity.”

They had first met when Devlin was wanted for murder and Lovejoy had been determined to bring him in to trial. In the two years since that time, what had begun as respect had deepened into an unlikely friendship. In Devlin, Lovejoy had found an unexpected ally with a fierce passion for justice, a brilliant mind, and a rare genius for solving murders. But the young Viscount also possessed something no Bow Street magistrate or constable could ever hope to acquire: an innate understanding and knowledge of the rarified world of gentlemen’s clubs and Society balls frequented by the likes of the man whose head now decorated this deserted bridge on the edge of Hans Town and Chelsea.

“Were you acquainted with Mr. Preston, my lord?” Lovejoy asked as Devlin paused to study the dead man’s bloodless features. The wind shifted the graying hair in a way that, for one horrible moment, made the man seem almost alive.

“Only slightly.”

Preston’s fine beaver hat lay upside down at the base of the pier, and Devlin bent to pick it up, his face thoughtful as he felt the crown and brim.

Lovejoy said, “I fear Bow Street is going to come under tremendous pressure from both the Palace and Westminster to solve this. Quickly.”

Devlin’s gaze shifted to meet his. They both understood the ways in which that kind of pressure could lead to the hasty arrest and conviction of an innocent man. “You’re asking for my help?”

“I am, yes, my lord.”

Lovejoy waited anxiously for a response. But the Viscount simply stared off across the darkened fields, his face giving nothing away.

Lovejoy knew Devlin’s own near-fatal encounter with the clumsy workings of the British legal system had much to do with his dedication to seeking justice for the victims of murder. But the magistrate had always suspected there was more to it than that. Something had happened to the Viscount-some dark but unknown incident in the past that had driven him to resign his commission in the Army and embark on a path of self-destruction from which he had only recently begun to recover.

The wind gusted up stronger, thrashing the limbs of the elms along the creek and sending a torn playbill scuttling across the bridge’s worn brick paving. Devlin said, “The crown and upper brim of Preston’s hat are wet, but not the underside. And since the hair on his head looks dry too, I’d say he was out walking in the rain but was killed after it let up. What time was that?”

“About half past ten,” said Lovejoy, and let go a sigh of relief.