Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 35

Having exchanged the black Arab for his curricle, Sebastian rattled across the worn stones of London Bridge into Southwark. The sun shone warm and golden on the river, but the lanes around the Marshalsea prison were dark and dank, the air heavy with the foul stench of rubbish and rot and despair.

“Wesley Oldfield,” said Devlin, pressing a coin into the shaky hand of an old man he came across within the prison’s high gray brick walls. “Where might I find him?”

“Up the stairs. Last door to your right,” said the man in a surprisingly cultured voice.

“Thank you.”

Holding a handkerchief to his nose, Sebastian climbed the noisome, urine-stained stairs and made his way down a cold passage. The sound of a violin playing a sad, sweetly lilting tune came to him from the far side of the scarred old door at the end of the corridor. The music stopped when Sebastian knocked.

“Who is it?” called a tight, anxious voice.

“Viscount Devlin.”

The door jerked open.

An unkempt man stood on the far side. According to what Sebastian had been able to learn, Wesley Oldfield was in his late thirties. But the man before Sebastian looked a good twenty years older than that, his long, matted hair the color of a winter sky, his face sunken and gray with ill health. He stood hunched over, one hand on the edge of the door as if for support, the other arm cradling a battered violin. He peered at Sebastian through watery, washed-out blue eyes, his jaw slack. “Do I know you?”

“Mr. Wesley Oldfield?” said Sebastian.

The man ran one hand across the stubble on his chin in a self-conscious gesture. “That’s right.”

“May I come in?”

Oldfield hesitated, then took a step back and swept a flourishing bow. “Come in. Do come in. Pray accept my apologies for the less than salubrious nature of my accommodations.”

Sebastian stepped into a small, low-ceilinged room with a meager, empty fireplace and a single, barred window. The room was as unkempt as the man, and smelled foully of stale sweat and excrement and the slowly creeping madness that can come from a once-promising life now hopelessly derailed.

Oldfield moved awkwardly to clear the clutter of papers and books from the threadbare seat of a once grand chair. “Please. Sit down. I get so few visitors these days I fear I’m forgetting my manners. May I offer you brandy?” He reached for a bottle that stood open on a rickety table, then said, “Oh, dear,” and tssked softly to himself, staring down at the empty bottle. “I must have finished it last night.”

“I have no need of refreshment, thank you.” Looking at the broken man before him, Sebastian found it difficult to believe Oldfield could have anything to do with the murders. He wasn’t sure the man was even capable of remembering anything of significance about the Harmony or its last, fatal voyage.

“You’re the Earl of Hendon’s son, are you not?” said Oldfield, turning away to lay the violin in its case with an almost reverent air.

“You know my father?”

“I know of him.” The man swung back to fix Sebastian with an unexpectedly steady stare. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about the Harmony.”

The man’s reaction to this bald statement was utterly unexpected. The Harmony might have led to his ruin, but at the mention of the ship’s name, he came to perch on the edge of his unmade bed, a strange excitement animating his features as he leaned forward. “You’ve noticed it, too, have you?”

“Noticed what?”

“These killings. First the Reverend Thornton’s son—”

“You know about Nicholas Thornton?”

“Oh, yes, I know. First Thornton. Then Carmichael and Stanton. And now Bellamy. Someone is killing their sons.”

Sebastian stared into the man’s tortured, mad eyes. “Do you know why?”

“Why? Not exactly, no. But when you think about the way those young men were butchered, it gives you some ideas, does it not?” He broke off to cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “Is that why you’re here? You think I’m responsible?”

“You’re in prison,” said Sebastian.

An eerie smile played around the other man’s lips. “Yes. But we’re sometimes allowed out, you know.”

“Only during the day,” noted Sebastian. “Carmichael, Stanton, and Bellamy were all killed at night, when you’re locked in.”

Oldfield’s smile slipped. “True.” Then he brightened. “I could have hired someone.”

“You’re bankrupt.”

“There is that.” Oldfield sighed. “And I’ve no motive.”

Sebastian glanced around the cold prison cell. “No?”

Oldfield tssked again and shook his head. “It was the crew who insisted my cargo be thrown overboard. They thought the ship was going to sink.”

Sebastian started to remind him that the ship actually had sunk in the end. Then he changed his mind.

“It’s the crew who ruined me,” Oldfield was saying. His nostrils quivered, his hatred twisting his lips cruelly with each word. “Dirty, ignorant scum. Panicking. Abandoning the ship the way they did. Taking all the food and water. Leaving the others to die. I would gladly butcher every last one of their God-rotted carcasses. But—” He broke off, his voice and features suddenly returning to normal. “They’re already dead.”

“They’re dead?”

“That’s right. Most of them were killed by natives when their boat landed on the west coast of Africa. The few who survived were picked up by His Majesty’s Navy and brought back to London to hang.”

“You attended their trial?”

Oldfield cast him a scornful look. “What do you think? Every minute of it. Their trial and their hangings. One of the crewmen—I think his name was Parker—he made a bad end of it. Struggling and shouting even after they had the rope around his neck. He kept swearing the men who testified at his trial were lying.”

Sebastian sat forward. “Lying? About what?”

Oldfield shrugged. “I don’t recall now. It had nothing to do with me.” He scratched thoughtfully at the skin behind one ear. “But I do remember the man had a brother, a docker. He was there at the trial and at the hanging. Swore he’d see that the buggers paid for his brother’s death.”

“See that who paid?”

“Why, those who testified at the trial, of course.”

“And who was that?”

Oldfield smiled. “Bellamy. Stanton. Carmichael.” The smile slipped. “But not Thornton.” He looked confused. “At least, I don’t think Thornton was there.”

“Who else?” asked Sebastian, even as Oldfield turned to glance out the window.

The man didn’t answer.

Sebastian raised his voice and tried again. “Who else was at the trial?”

Oldfield swung his head to stare directly at Sebastian. The watery blue eyes widened with confusion. “What trial?”

Sebastian found Tom outside the prison, walking the chestnuts up and down the lane.

“Learn anythin’?” Tom asked as Sebastian leapt up to the curricle’s seat.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m afraid Mr. Oldfield’s misfortunes have addled his brain.” Sebastian took the reins. “I want you to find someone for me. A docker by the name of Parker. He had a brother hanged four years ago for the mutiny on the Harmony.”

Tom stepped back from the horses’ heads, one hand coming up to hold his hat in place. “You think he might be the cove what’s been doin’ the killin’?”

“He could be. Then again, he could also be a simple figment of Mr. Wesley Oldfield’s imagination.”

Sebastian gathered his reins. He knew a powerful urge to confront both Lord Stanton and Sir Humphrey Carmichael with what he had learned. Yet it would be a mistake, he knew, to approach either man now, before he’d learned the full story of the Harmony’s final voyage.

It was time, Sebastian realized, for another visit to the Reverend Thornton in Kent.