Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 51

“Once I give this information to Bow Street,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, “I have little doubt but what they’ll move to arrest Mr. Forbes.” Henry focused his gaze on Lord Devlin. “Do you think he’s guilty?”

They sat in the modest drawing room of Henry’s Russell Square house, the remnants of tea spread on the table before them. Shifting in his chair, the Viscount stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Forbes seems the most likely suspect, obviously. But is he guilty? I honestly don’t think so. The pieces of the puzzle are all fitting neatly together, but the picture they make seems somehow off-kilter. I can’t explain why.”

“He’s the only man with a motive that I can see.”

“There’s no doubt it’s a powerful motive,” Devlin agreed, “knowing your son was killed and eaten by a shipload of starving men and women.”

“Did they kill the boy, do you think? He might simply have died. He was injured, after all. Without adequate food or water…”

“He could have died of his injuries. But there have been other instances in which starving Englishmen and women have been reduced to feeding upon their dead companions—or have drawn lots. The fact that this company kept quiet about what they did suggests the boy was simply killed out of hand.” He blew out a long breath. “I doubt we’ll ever know the truth.”

“No, you’re probably right.” Henry sighed. “I’ll take this information to Sir James at Bow Street tonight.”

Devlin fixed him with an uncomfortably fierce yellow stare. “I suppose you must, but—” He broke off.

Henry raised one eyebrow. “You think there’s something you’ve missed?”

“I don’t know. I wish I understood better the part Jarvis’s son played in all this.”

“There is no evidence that Matt Parker’s brother spoke the truth. Who would take the word of a hanged sailor against the testimony of the likes of Sir Humphrey Carmichael or Lord Stanton?”

The Viscount set his teacup aside and stood up. “In this instance? I would.”

Sebastian returned to his house on Brook Street to be intercepted in the hall by his majordomo.

“There is a woman here to see you, my lord. A foreign woman and a child. They insisted upon waiting, so I have put them in the drawing room.”

“A Mrs. Bellamy?” said Sebastian sharply.

“That is the name she gave. Yes, my lord.”

Sebastian turned toward the stairs. “Send up some tea and cakes, Morey, and tell them I won’t be but a moment.”

He found Mrs. Bellamy seated in one of the cane-backed chairs beside the front bow window. At the sight of him, her mouth parted in surprise and she dropped the black-edged handkerchief she had been clutching. The child, Francesca, perched on the edge of a sofa near the empty hearth, a scorched leather-bound volume clutched against her thin chest, her eyes huge in a wan, pale face.

“Mrs. Bellamy, Francesca. My apologies for keeping you waiting. You should not have troubled yourself to make the journey up to London to see me. I would have been more than happy to wait upon you in Greenwich, had you but sent word.”

The Captain’s widow cast her daughter a quick, enigmatic glance. “Oh, my lord! I did not wish to trouble you at all. I thought Mr. Taylor must have left your card with me by mistake, and I came only in the hopes you might be able to direct me to him. It was Francesca who insisted we stay.”

Sebastian went to pour the tea that stood, neglected, upon the table. “Please accept my apologies for the deception I practiced upon you in Greenwich. I feared if I approached Captain Bellamy under my own name, he might refuse to see me.”

Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “And why would that be, my lord?”

“I suspect the Captain was warned not to speak to me.” He held out a cup. “Please, have some tea.”

She took the cup automatically, but did not drink it.

He turned toward Francesca. “And you, Miss Bellamy? Would you care for some tea and cakes?”

“No, thank you,” she said with painful seriousness, and held out the leather-bound book. “We’ve brought you this.”

“What is it?” asked Sebastian, not moving to take it from her.

It was Mrs. Bellamy who answered. “The ship’s log. From the Harmony. The evening he—he fell in the river, Captain Bellamy spent hours sitting at the table after supper, reading the log and drinking rum. Before he went out, he threw it on the hearth and lit a fire. But the fire didn’t catch properly and Francesca pulled it out.”

Sebastian watched the child run one hand over the log’s charred binding. “Have you read it?” he asked, glancing at the widow.

She flushed and shook her head. Too late, Sebastian remembered what Tom had told him in Greenwich, that the Captain’s young Brazilian wife was illiterate. “No,” she said. “But Francesca has.”

Sebastian’s gaze met the child’s, and he saw there the horrified confirmation of everything he’d suspected and more. “You read what happened after the mutiny?” he asked softly.

“I read it all.”

Dear God, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “And still you brought it to me?”

She nodded, the muscles in her jaw held tight. “It’s why Adrian died, isn’t it? It’s why they all died. Because of what Papa and their parents did on that ship.”

Impossible to lie to the child. All he could say was, “I suspect so.”

“Do you know who is doing it?”

“Not yet.”

She laid the log on the tea table and pushed it toward him. “Perhaps this will help.”