Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 42

Captain Hugh Wyeth was throwing darts by himself in the Shepherd’s Rest public room, pitching one after the other at a battered board hanging against a pockmarked wall. He hardly seemed to be focusing or even looking, and yet his aim was true every time.

“You’re good,” said Sebastian, coming to lean against a nearby wall.

“I’ve had a lot of practice lately. There’s not much else to do.”

“When do you rejoin your regiment?”

Wyeth let fly another dart. “According to the doctors, not as soon as I had hoped.”

“Who were you with?”

“The Twentieth Hussars.”

“The Twentieth Hussars used to be stationed in Jamaica.”

Wyeth looked over at him, puzzled. “We were, yes. Why?”

“Did you ever meet Dr. Sterling there?”

“Not to my knowledge. Was he in Jamaica?”

“As it happens, yes.”

The captain sent his last dart flying at the target. “You look like you’re dressed for a ball.”

“I am.”

Wyeth grunted and went to retrieve his tightly clustered darts. He no longer wore his sling, but Sebastian noticed he held his right arm stiffly against his side.

Sebastian said, “You told me you didn’t know Sinclair Oliphant. Yet he seems to know you.”

Wyeth looked around in surprise. “What?”

“He’s the one who told me you were stationed in Jamaica-presumably to shift suspicion away from himself and onto you.”

“Did it work?”

When Sebastian returned no answer, the captain gave a soft, humorless laugh and said, “I suppose the fact that you’re here tells me all I need to know.” He walked back to the throwing line, then paused, weighing his first dart. “Why would I kill some old doctor? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know. But then, I can’t figure out why anyone would want to murder him-unless it was because he knew something worrisome about whoever killed Stanley Preston.”

Wyeth threw his dart and practically missed the target entirely.

Sebastian said, “Ever hear of a man named Rowan Toop?”

“No. Why? Is he dead too?”

Sebastian nodded. “They found him this morning, at Windsor.”

“Someone cut off his head?”

“No, actually; he drowned.”

“You think I did that?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know what might have taken Stanley Preston to Bucket Lane last Sunday, would you?”

“Where?”

“Bucket Lane. Off Fish Street Hill, near London Bridge.”

“No. Don’t tell me someone’s died there too?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Wyeth threw the rest of his darts at the target, one after the other in rapid succession. This time, they were spread all over the round wooden board in a chaotic pattern.

Sebastian said, “Last Sunday at Lady Farningham’s musical evening, you and Miss Preston quarreled. That’s why you left early, isn’t it? In fact, Miss Preston herself left not long after you did.”

“So?”

“Why did you quarrel?”

“Does it matter?”

“You tell me. Does it?”

The captain twitched one shoulder and said nothing.

Sebastian studied the younger man’s angry, tightly held features. “Sinclair Oliphant told me something else. He says that six years ago, you tried to elope with Miss Preston. Only, her father and brother caught up with you and brought her back.”

Sebastian watched the blood drain from the captain’s face. “How the devil did he know that?”

“Stanley Preston made himself Oliphant’s enemy, and Oliphant is the kind of man who makes it his business to know his enemies’ most dangerous secrets. So it’s true?”

Wyeth swallowed hard. “Yes. Look-I’m not proud of what we did, but. . we were both very young and desperate, and. . we didn’t understand the gravity of what we were doing.”

“It certainly does much to explain Preston’s animosity toward you.”

Wyeth tightened his jaw and said nothing.

“Miss Preston is of age now. Yet most women are reluctant to marry without their father’s blessing.” Particularly when there’s a potential inheritance involved, Sebastian thought. “Would she have married you, do you think, if her father continued to withhold his consent?”

“Stanley Preston was never going to change his mind, believe me.”

“So would she have married you anyway?”

Wyeth swung to face him, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “You think I would have done that to her? Married her without his blessing? Preston would never have forgiven her. He swore he’d cut her off without a penny and never speak to her again, and he meant it. Yet you think I would have married her anyway? Taken her away from a life of comfort to make her follow the drum and live in poverty? My God; what kind of man do you take me for?”

“You were certainly ready to elope with her six years ago.”

“I was eighteen! I told you, I’m not proud of what happened six years ago. But I know better now.”

“She wouldn’t have been completely penniless,” said Sebastian. “She’d still have had her mother’s portion.”

“Her mother’s portion amounts to even less than my annual pay. Enough to help buy a few promotions, perhaps, and ease the worst hardships that come with life in the Army. But without her inheritance from Preston, I could never have given her anything like the kind of life she’s always known.”

“Is that so important?”

“You know it is. I’ve seen what poverty can do to a gently reared woman. My grandfather was never as wealthy as Preston, but my mother still grew up surrounded by servants, with a carriage and her own pony and summers spent at the seaside. With five daughters and an estate entailed to the male line, my grandfather couldn’t give her much of a dowry, but she was pretty enough that he hoped she’d attract suitors anyway. And she did-the grandest being a man worth ten thousand pounds a year.”

“She turned them all down to marry your father?”

Wyeth nodded. “My father’s living was worth barely two hundred pounds a year.” He gave a ragged laugh. “Once, she’d worn ball gowns worth nearly that much.”

“Were they happy?”

“They were happy with each other, yes. But her life was. . hard. She’d cry sometimes, when she didn’t know I could hear her. She worried constantly, about where they were going to find the money to fix the vicarage roof, or pay my school fees, or provide for my three sisters. All that worry and fear. . In the end, it killed her. That’s when I realized how selfish I’d been, asking Anne to marry me, expecting her to endure a different version of the kind of life that killed my mother.”

“You’re saying that when faced with a choice between love and wealth, a woman should choose wealth?”

“No. But-”

“You think your mother would have been happier married to a man with ten thousand pounds a year whom she didn’t love?”

“No. But-”

“And if your father had made the choice for her by walking away, would she have been happy?”

Wyeth glared at him. “God damn you. Who are you-an earl’s son, heir to a grand fortune-to presume to pass judgment on me? What do you know of the kind of choices the rest of us must make?”

“More than you might think,” said Sebastian.

He was turning away when Wyeth’s fist caught him high on the side of his cheek.

“You let him hit you?” said Hero, holding a twisted cloth filled with ice against the rapidly purpling bruise.

“Not exactly,” said Sebastian, wincing. “But I did provoke him. It didn’t seem right to hit him back.”

“You’re going to end up with a black eye.”

“It won’t be the first.”

She made an incoherent noise deep in her throat and went to refill her cloth from the bucket of ice provided by Calhoun. “If he were clever, Captain Wyeth would be trying to convince you that Preston had agreed to let him marry Anne. Instead, he insists Preston would never have consented, then goes on to detail why a man of honor would never marry Anne without her inheritance. It’s as if he were determined to tie a noose around his own neck and hang himself.”

“I know. Which, ironically enough, makes me think he probably didn’t kill Stanley Preston.” Sebastian went to peer at his discolored face in the washstand mirror. “I wish I could say I felt the same way about Miss Anne Preston.”

Hero turned to look at him, the ice-filled cloth held slack in her hand. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that she personally stabbed Preston and Sterling and cut off their heads. But she wouldn’t be the first woman to hire someone to do her dirty work for her. Someone such as, say, Diggory Flynn.”

“Surely she can’t be that diabolical? To kill her own father. .”

Sebastian shrugged. “Patricide, matricide, fratricide: They seem so unnatural that we’re repelled by the very thought. Yet they happen-often enough that we’ve even coined words for them. Anne Preston wanted Captain Hugh Wyeth, but she knew he’d never marry her without her inheritance. Not because he’s a greedy fortune hunter, but because he saw what poverty did to his mother and he’s too noble to do that to a woman he loves.”

“So she removes Stanley Preston, and now she’s free to marry her captain and receive her inheritance? Is that what you’re suggesting? His noble qualms are stilled, and she never needs to worry about having to wash her own clothes in a muddy stream in some backward part of the world? Yes; it makes sense-if she’s that shockingly selfish and coldhearted. But it doesn’t give her a reason to kill Douglas Sterling.”

“Just because we don’t know of a reason doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”

Hero set aside the ice-filled cloth. “Why order the killer to cut off his victims’ heads?”

“Perhaps that was his own embellishment. Or perhaps she thought a more gruesome killing would help deflect suspicion from her.”

“Surely she can’t be that. . evil.”

“I wouldn’t have said so. But I’ve been wrong about people before.” He took the ice-filled cloth and carefully pressed it against his face. “The problem is, it still doesn’t explain why Stanley Preston made a most uncharacteristic visit to Bucket Lane just hours before he was killed.”

“That could be entirely unrelated to anything.”

“It could be,” said Sebastian, remembering the dusky-skinned woman with the long neck and the strange, turquoise eyes. “But I doubt it. And if it is related, then whoever Preston went to see that day might very well be in danger-although they probably don’t know it.”

Hero went to hunker down beside the black cat curled up before the dressing room fire. “One of the costermongers I interviewed lives near Fish Street Hill,” she said, her hand trailing down the cat’s back. “I could ask him to look into it. They all seem to know each other.” She shifted her hand to scratch behind the cat’s ears. “And Rowan Toop? How do you think he fits into all this?”

“I think he stole the royal relics from the crypt and was selling them to Preston. They’d arranged to meet at Bloody Bridge, except by the time Toop arrived, Preston was already dead. Toop was probably so horrified by what he discovered that he ran off-dropping the inscribed coffin strap in the process. It’s hard to say whether or not he saw-or knew-something that could have identified the killer. But the killer obviously thought he did. And killed him too.”

Hero kept her gaze on the cat. “Or Toop could have been so rattled by recent events that he simply slipped in the mud while taking his dog for a walk and pitched into the Thames-without anyone’s help.”

“True.” Sebastian set aside the melting ice and reached for a clean cloth to dry his face. “I’m hoping Gibson will have an answer when I see him tomorrow.”

If he’s not lost in an opium-induced fog, thought Sebastian.