Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 32

For several years now, Sir Henry Lovejoy had made his home in a neat row house on Russell Square. The district was genteel but far from fashionable, which suited Henry just fine. Once Henry had been a moderately successful merchant. But the deaths of his wife and only daughter had wrought changes in his life. Henry had undergone a spiritual revelation that turned him toward the Reformist church, and he had decided to devote the remainder of his life to public service.

He sat now in his favorite chair beside the sitting room fireplace, a rug tucked around his lap to help ward off the cold as he read. The fire was not lit; Henry never allowed a fire to be laid in his house before October first or after March 31, no matter what the weather. But he felt the cold terribly and was about to get up and ring for a nice pot of hot tea when he heard a knock at the door below, followed by the sound of voices in the hall.

Mrs. McCoy, his housekeeper, appeared at the sitting room door. “There’s a Lord Devlin to see you, Sir Henry.”

“Good heavens.” Henry thrust aside the rug. “Show him up immediately, Mrs. McCoy. And bring us some tea, please.”

Lord Devlin appeared in the sitting room doorway, his lean frame elegantly clad in the buckskin breeches and exquisitely tailored silk waistcoat and dark blue coat of a gentleman.

“Well,” said Henry, “I see you’ve put off your Bow Street raiment.”

Amusement gleamed in the Viscount’s strange yellow eyes. “You’ve heard from Sir James, I take it?”

“And Sir William. Please have a seat, my lord.”

“Do they still doubt the relevance of Donne’s poem?” Devlin asked, settling himself in a nearby chair.

“At the moment, I think Bow Street would investigate the Archbishop of Canterbury himself if someone were to suggest it might be relevant to these murders. It seems Lord Jarvis has taken an interest in the case. An intense interest.”

“Ah. I’ve just had a rather remarkable conversation with the man myself.”

“Lord Jarvis?”

Sebastian nodded. “It seems his son was a passenger on a ship that sailed from India some five years ago. A merchantman named the Harmony, captained by Edward Bellamy. Among the other passengers were Sir Humphrey Carmichael and Lord Stanton.”

“Merciful heavens.” Henry sat up straighter. “I remember the Harmony. It was in all the papers.”

His lordship hesitated as Mrs. McCoy appeared in the doorway bearing a serviceable tray piled with a teapot and teacups and a plate of small cake slices. Lord Devlin waited until she had poured the tea and withdrawn; then he gave a terse recitation of his conversation with Jarvis.

“I wasn’t in England five years ago,” he finished. “But you say you recall the incident?”

“Oh, yes. It was quite the sensation.” Henry set aside his tea untasted and arose to pace thoughtfully up and down the small room. A lurid explanation was taking form in his imagination. He kept trying to push the idea from his mind, but the tie between the murders and the Harmony’s harrowing experience raised a grisly possibility he could not seem to banish. At last he said, “You know what this suggests, don’t you?” He turned to the Viscount. “The butchering of the bodies…the draining of the blood…” His voice trailed away.

Devlin met his gaze and held it. “Englishmen have resorted to cannibalism before when faced with starvation and death.”

Henry drew a handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into its snowy folds. “I don’t believe there was any suggestion that while they were becalmed the officers and passengers of the Harmony…”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” said Devlin, when Henry left the rest of his sentence unsaid. “It’s an unwritten rule of the sea that the prohibition against cannibalism may be suspended in the case of shipwreck survivors or men becalmed. Think of the Peggy, or the raft of the Medusa. Sometimes the survivors admit to what they’ve done. At other times there is only a suspicion that lingers over them.”

“Usually they eat the bodies of their companions who are the first to die—is that not true?”

“Usually. But lacking that option, lots can be drawn and the loser sacrificed for the good of his companions. Only somehow I can’t see Sir Humphrey Carmichael or Lord Stanton putting their names in a hat for the chance to become their companions’ dinner.”

“No,” agreed Henry.

“Which leads to the suspicion that the victim, if there was one, was selected more arbitrarily. We need to know the names of any other passengers aboard the Harmony on that voyage, as well as the owners of the ship and its cargo.”

“The records of the inquiry should be on file at the Board of Trade,” said Henry.

Devlin set aside his cup and rose to his feet. “Good. Let me know what you discover.”

“You forget, my lord. Bow Street has taken over the case.”

Devlin smiled and turned toward the door, then hesitated. “One more thing. There’s a captain in the Horse Guards named Peter Quail. When he was with my regiment on the Continent, he took a fiendish delight in torturing and mutilating prisoners. I know of no link between him and the Harmony, but you might set one of your constables to discovering his whereabouts on the nights of the murders. Good evening, Sir Henry.”

Henry thought about that morning’s terse conversation with the magistrates of Bow Street and sighed.

Later that night, Kat sat before the mirror in her dressing room at the theater. In the flickering candlelight, her reflection looked pale, strained. The scent of oranges, greasepaint, and ale still hung heavy in the air, but the theater stretched out quiet around her. The farce had long since ended.

Aiden O’Connell had not come.

With a hand that was not quite steady, she locked away the rest of her costume and stood. Two more days. She had two more days, and she was, if anything, farther from finding a way out of her dilemma than she had been before.

That night, Sebastian dreamed of broken bodies and torn flesh, recent images of young men with butchered limbs blending with older memories of endless bloody carnage on the killing fields of Europe. Waking, he reached for Kat, not remembering until his hand slid across the cool empty sheet beside him that he slept in his own bed, alone.

He sat up, his heart pounding uncomfortably, the need to hold her in his arms strong. Slipping from his bed, he went to jerk open the drapes.

The waning moon cast grotesque patterns of light and shadow across the street below. It had been his intention to meet Kat at the theater after her performance, but she’d told him no, she wasn’t feeling well. She certainly didn’t look well, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy lidded. But he knew from the way she failed to meet his searching gaze that she was lying. Another man might have been suspicious, jealous. Sebastian knew only a deep and powerful sense that something was terribly wrong.

He was failing her; he knew that. She was in trouble, and for some reason he couldn’t understand she felt unable to confide in him. Or had she tried to turn to him for help, he wondered, only to find him so preoccupied with stopping this killer that she came away thinking he had no time for her? He realized he couldn’t even be sure.

Which was, he supposed, a damning conclusion.