Why Kings Confess

Chapter 36

Sebastian walked on, his senses suddenly, intensely alert.

The shadow’s footsteps kept pace with him.

He passed a gnarled old workman in a blue smock, his gray bearded face beaded with moisture, his head bent as he hurried on without a second glance. A moment later came the thump of two bodies colliding and the workman’s angry, “Oy! Why don’t ye watch where yer goin’?” The shadow’s footsteps hesitated for an instant, then resumed and quickened.

Sebastian stepped sideways, turning so that his back was to the brick wall of the town house beside him as he stopped and listened.

Damn this fog.

A man stepped out of the swirling mist: a gentleman, clad in a fashionable greatcoat and beaver hat with a heavy scarf that obscured the lower part of his face. He held his left hand straight down at his side, the folds of his greatcoat all but obscuring the dagger clutched in his fist.

“Looking for me?” said Sebastian.

For one startled instant, the man’s gaze met Sebastian’s and his dark, heavily lashed eyes blinked as he realized just how radically the situation had suddenly altered. Not only had he lost the benefit of surprise, but it was considerably easier to knife a man in the back than to confront him face-to-face.

Sebastian took a step forward. “What’s the matter? Can’t get at my back?”

The would-be assailant turned and darted into the street.

Sebastian leapt after him.

A team of bay shires appeared out of the fog, heads bent as they leaned into their harnesses, the heavily loaded dray they pulled rattling over the uneven paving. The man drew up and spun around, his knife flashing just as Sebastian’s foot slid on the wet stones. Before he could jerk out of the way, the blade slashed along Sebastian’s forearm. Sebastian fought to regain his balance on the icy pavement, slipped, and went down hard.

The man whirled and ran.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, scrambling to his feet, his bleeding arm held crimped to his chest. A whip cracked, the air filling with harsh shouts and the jingle of harness as a wide-eyed pair of grays reared suddenly in the gloom. Sebastian ducked out of the way of the horses’ slashing hooves, then swerved to dodge a lumbering dowager’s carriage.

By the time he reached the opposite footpath, the greatcoated man in the heavy scarf had disappeared.

• • •

“Your questions are obviously making someone uncomfortable,” said Gibson, laying a neat row of stitches along the gash in Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian grunted. “The question is: Who?” He was seated on the table in Gibson’s surgery, stripped to his waist, a glass of brandy cradled in his good, right hand.

Gibson tied off his thread. “Any chance Monsieur Harmond Vaundreuil could have had his own physician killed?”

“You mean because he discovered someone-probably Kilmartin-was trying to bribe Pelletan?” Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy. “It’s certainly possible. It wouldn’t matter whether or not Pelletan actually accepted Kilmartin’s bribe, if Vaundreuil somehow came to hear of it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Vaundreuil is afraid of something. I just don’t know what.”

“The other members of his delegation, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.” He remembered the horror Vaundreuil had shown when told the killer had removed Pelletan’s heart. He still believed that horror was real. But it was always possible the Frenchman had simply been ignorant of his own henchman’s viciousness.

Sebastian watched Gibson smear a foul-smelling salve over the wound. “What I find difficult to understand is why Vaundreuil or one of his associates would want to plant a charge of gunpowder in Golden Square in an effort to kill Damion Pelletan’s sister. But then, that could be because Madame Sauvage is being considerably less honest with us than she could be. About a lot of things.”

He was aware of Gibson stiffening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve discovered that Damion Pelletan was trying to convince Lord Peter Radcliff’s pretty young wife to run away with him. In fact, Pelletan and his sister were actually arguing about it just moments before he was murdered. Now, why do you suppose she neglected to tell us that?”

A woman’s voice sounded from the doorway behind him. “I’ve told you there is much I still don’t recall from that night.”

Sebastian turned to look at her. She wore the same old-fashioned gown from that morning, the smudges of black at her knees still visible from where she’d knelt beside the body of her dead servant woman. And it occurred to him that everything she owned had probably been lost in the explosion and fire.

He glanced at Gibson, who was preparing to wrap a bandage around the injured arm. A faint but clearly discernable flush of color rode high on the surgeon’s gaunt cheekbones. And Sebastian knew without being told that Gibson had offered the now homeless Frenchwoman a place to stay-and she had accepted.

He looked back at Madame Sauvage. “How long had you known?”

“That Damion wanted Julia to return with him to France? He only told me that night, as we were walking up Cat’s Hole to see Cecile.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“You mean that he had discovered Radcliff was beating her? Yes.”

“And it never occurred to you that a man violent enough to use his fists on his helpless young wife might also be violent enough to kill the man proposing to steal that wife away from him?”

“I told you, I only learned what Damion intended the night of the attack. I simply did not recall it.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the pale, fine-boned features of her face. Not only was she a habitual liar, but she wasn’t particularly good at it. How the hell Gibson couldn’t see that was beyond him. But all he said was, “Tell me about your father’s autopsy of the Dauphin in the Temple Prison.”

The sudden shift in topic seemed to confuse her. She stared at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

“Your father was one of the doctors who performed an autopsy on Marie-Therese’s ten-year-old brother, the Dauphin of France, after his death in prison. You were-how old? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“I was fourteen.”

“So you must recall something about it. I take it you were already interested in medicine at the time. Surely he discussed it with you.”

“He did.”

“Did he believe the dead boy he saw in the Temple was in fact the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?”

She moved to stand before the room’s fireplace, her back to them, her gaze on the small blaze on the hearth. “My father saw the boy alive only once or twice, when he was called to the Temple just days before the child’s death. He never had any doubt that the boy who died in prison was that same child.”

“Yet that’s not to say the child he treated was actually the Dauphin.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I have seen the autopsy report-my father kept a copy himself. It has been years since I read it, but I remember noticing that he was very careful to state that the body was identified by the jailors as belonging to the Dauphin. He himself did not make the identification.”

“Did he believe the dead child actually was the Dauphin?”

“I honestly do not know. It’s not something he likes to talk about. I do know he was confused because the jailors insisted to him that the child’s final illness had come on suddenly. Yet the boy died of a long-standing case of tuberculosis.”

“Did he? Or was that simply the story that was put out? A fiction much less damning than to admit that he died of mistreatment or neglect.”

“No; my father told me the child whose body he autopsied most definitely died of tuberculosis.”

Sebastian looked at Gibson, who had his head bent, his attention seemingly all for the task of tying off the bandage. In the sudden hush, the buffeting of the wind against the heavy old windows and the creak of a cart’s axle in the lane outside sounded unnaturally loud.

Alexi Sauvage said, “What precisely are you suggesting? A moment ago, you would have had me believe that Lord Peter Radcliff killed my brother for coveting his wife. Now you’re saying Damion’s death is somehow linked to an autopsy my father performed nearly twenty years ago? Are you actually suggesting that the Dauphin somehow survived his imprisonment, and my father knew it? But. . that’s absurd!”

“Is it?”

“It is, yes. My father must have believed the Dauphin died in the Temple. Otherwise, why would he-” She broke off, her chest jerking on a suddenly indrawn breath.

“What is it?” asked Sebastian, watching her. “Otherwise why would he what?”

Her tongue crept out to slide across her cracked lower lip. “At the conclusion of the autopsy, my father wrapped the boy’s heart in his handkerchief and smuggled it out of the prison hidden in the pocket of his coat. He soaked the heart in alcohol and has kept it preserved in a crystal vase in his office ever since.”

“Are you telling me your father was the physician who removed the Dauphin’s heart? And he still has it?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell us this? Why?”

Her jaw tightened, her eyes flashing with scorn. “My father has performed hundreds of autopsies over the course of his career. It is preposterous to think that Damion’s murder here, in London, is somehow linked to a death that occurred in Paris decades ago. My brother was killed because he was part of a delegation seeking a peace that is anathema to powerful interests here in England, both political and economic. Powerful interests that include your own father-in-law!”

Sebastian returned her hard stare. “I might be able to accept that more easily if it weren’t for one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Why would Lord Jarvis-or anyone else involved in the peace negotiations, for that matter-want to steal your brother’s heart?”