CHAPTER 1 #2
Having all the gruesome details at her fingertips . . .
Shooting up from her chair, Charlotte gestured at the stairs leading down to the tiny kitchen. “Fetch a lantern. I’ll just be a moment changing into my breeches and boots.”
A short while later, garbed as just another grubby urchin prowling the unlit streets, Charlotte squeezed through the back gate of the churchyard and followed the boys as they picked a path through the crumbling gravestones.
Scudding clouds hid the crescent moon and the faint mizzle of starlight was lost in the thick malodorous mists drifting up from the river.
Somewhere in the trees, a lone owl hooted.
Quickening her pace, she darted into the alcove between the buttresses and crouched down in front of the iron-banded side door. Raven was already at work on the lock, the thin shaft of his steel pick probing, probing . . .
Click.
The massive hinges swung open with a rusty groan.
“Keep watch out here,” whispered Raven to his brother. “The usual signal—two sharp whistles—if we need te scamper quick-like.”
Hawk nodded solemnly.
“I’ll go first, m’lady.” Raven drew a short cudgel from inside his jacket.
“No, stay behind me.” Charlotte slipped past him into the chill gloom. The air was damp and heavy with a cloying odor. The smell of old bones and moldering sadness. For those who lived outside the glittering opulence of Mayfair, life in London could grind even the brightest dreams into dust.
Shaking off such mordant thoughts, she waited to hear the door shut, then struck a flint to the lantern’s wick and eased back the shutter.
The oily beam flickered over the thick granite columns, the age-blackened oak pews, the mortared stone tiles....
“Holy hell,” hissed Raven through his teeth.
“Don’t come any closer,” Charlotte rasped as a spurt of bile, sharp and sour, shot up to burn the back of her throat. Swallowing hard, she crept closer to the body sprawled on the floor by the ornately carved lectern.
Dear God—so much blood.
Up close, the sight was more hideous than any demon-demented nightmare. The Right Reverend Josiah Holworthy—yes, she recognized him despite the disfigured face—was lying on his back, his arms outstretched as if in supplication to God for mercy.
If so, the plea had fallen on deaf ears.
His head . . .
Charlotte choked back a gag.
The slash of a blade had nearly severed the man’s neck, and his head, attached to his body by only a few bits of tendon, bone, and flesh, had fallen awkwardly to one side.
A dark, viscous pool was spreading out from beneath the crumpled coat collar, and rivulets of rusty red were snaking a serpentine trail over the grey stone.
Careful to avoid leaving any telltale scuff, Charlotte edged around for a different angle of view. Steady, steady. Her hand was trembling as she pulled a small notebook and pencil from her pocket.
“Cor, someone must have hated him awful bad,” murmured Raven, who had snuck up behind her despite the order to the contrary.
“Hold this,” she said, passing him the lantern to keep him occupied. It seemed pointless to argue with him. Having grown up in one of London’s roughest slums, he was no stranger to violence.
But this . . .
Dark spots discolored the reverend’s sightless eyes and his cheeks were badly burned by some sort of chemical.
Faint streaks of a greenish-yellow substance had dribbled down to his chin and a white powder flecked the pitted flesh where the liquid had started to dry.
Forcing her mind to concentrate on the tiny details helped control the violent churning in her stomach.
She opened the book to a fresh page and hurriedly made some notes.
The powder, she noted, was also caked at the corners of his mouth and the protruding tongue had turned a mottled black. A strange smell . . .
She crouched down and sniffed, then jotted down a few more lines.
A low sound gurgled in Raven’s throat.
“If you are going to cast up your accounts, kindly step outside,” said Charlotte coolly, hoping the challenge would make him forget his nausea. “We mustn’t leave any sign that someone has been in here.”
“I ain’t—I’m not—gonna shoot the cat,” he vowed.
“Then move the light a little to your left.”
“We gotta be going now.” Raven shot a nervous look down the main aisle towards the front entrance.
“In a moment.” Charlotte rose and slowly circled the corpse, making a few quick sketches. Stepping back, she noted a faint partial footprint in the dust of the side transept. Curious, she went to take a look. A boot—an oddly small one, with a distinctive mark cut into the heel.
Another quick crouch, another quick sketch.
“M’lady.”
“Yes, yes.” Charlotte stepped into the shadows to see where the footprints led, then changed her mind. The crime wasn’t her concern, just the gristly details. She returned to the body and crouched down for a last look.
Raven let out another impatient hiss. As she turned slightly to chide him, she caught sight of something caught in the dead man’s right-hand shirt cuff. A scrap of paper? After hesitating just a fraction, Charlotte reached out—
A sharp whistle, followed by another, shattered the silence.
“We gotta flee!” called Raven. He blew out the lamp.
“Now!”
Her fingers plucked the paper free, just as Raven grabbed her sleeve and yanked her to her feet.
Half stumbling, half running, Charlotte let herself be led. The boy was nimble as an alley cat and seemed to be able to see in the dark.
Thuds, shouts, and the clatter of boots echoed behind her. Up ahead, a sliver of starlight glimmered in the arched entryway.
“Hurry, hurry,” urged Hawk in a frantic whisper as he pushed the door a touch wider.
Raven bolted through the opening, dragging Charlotte with him.
She thought her lungs might burst, but somehow the boys hurried her to an even faster pace over the clotted earth and loose stones of the graveyard.
Finally, after they were two streets away from the church, Raven allowed her to slow to a walk.
Pulse pounding in her ears, heart thumping hard enough to crack a rib, Charlotte bent over and braced her hands on her knees. “That,” she gasped, “was close.”
And then she began to laugh.
“You’re mad, m’lady,” wheezed Raven. “Mad as a Bedlamite.”
“Yes, no doubt I am.”
* * *
Wrexford took a seat at the gaming table to the chant of “Satan, Satan,” from the other five men engaged in play.
While the others punctuated the words with a rhythmic pounding of their palms against the green felt, Fitzwilliam, a portly baron with a bald pate and ginger sidewhiskers, waggled a hand at one of the serving girls. “Bring us a bowl of syllabub!” he trilled. “Served hot as the devil’s pitchfork.”
“Stubble the attempt at humor, Fitz,” growled the earl as the others laughed uproariously. “You have more hair than wit.”
“Is it true that this morning’s cartoon showed the Divine Diana as your latest paramour?” asked Pierpont, once the hilarity had died away.
“Aye, she was shown curled in a crucible under his chair— and wearing naught but a fancy sapphire necklace from Rundell and Bridge,” piped up Sachem.
“A price tag was attached to the clasp. If you looked closely with a quizzing glass you could make out the amount—fifteen hundred guineas.” He looked at the earl. “True?”
“True,” confirmed Wrexford.
“I didn’t know you had seduced her away from Radley,” went Pierpont. “When did that happen?”
The earl shrugged off the question.
“I heard it was only three days ago,” offered Fitzwilliam.
“How the devil does A. J. Quill know these intimate details?” queried Sachem sourly. “The information he had on Greeley’s affair with the countess were of a very private nature.”
A good question, thought Wrexford.
“Hell’s teeth, the dratted scribbler must have spies everywhere. Perhaps Wellington should consider giving the fellow a general’s commission and assigning him to combat Bonaparte,” suggested Fitzwilliam. “The war would likely be over in a month.”
“Speaking of war,” said Pierpont, “things are getting awfully bellicose between you and Holworthy. If I were you, I would be tempted to march up to the pulpit and bloody his beak for mouthing such scurrilous slanders.”
“There are other ways of silencing him,” growled Wrexford. “But I’d rather not exert myself. What a pity A. J. Quill can’t dig up some prurient scandal concerning the holier-than-thou reverend—”
“Well, I don’t know about the scandals,” interrupted a familiar voice. “But apparently Heaven has heard your prayer about silencing the pompous windbag.”
Wrexford looked around. Excellent—if anyone could tease him out of a sullen mood it was Kit.
Christopher Sheffield, the earl’s closest friend since their Oxford days, sauntered up to the table and slouched against the back of Wrexford’s chair, a sardonic smile on his unshaven face.
“Or perhaps I should rather say hell has caught wind of your incantation.” Sheffield had a flair for theatrics. He picked at a thread dangling from his cuff, deliberately drawing out the moment of suspense.
“Cut wind, Sheffield,” growled Pierpont as he gathered up the cards for a new hand. “If you’ve something to say, spit it out. We’re in the midst of serious play here and are in no mood for interruption.”
“Ah, but another far more interesting game is afoot,” replied Sheffield, shifting his stance just enough to catch Wrexford’s eye.
“I’ve just come from White’s, which is all abuzz with the news that the Reverend Josiah Holworthy has just been found dead in St. Stephen’s Church on Black Swan Lane, his face burned by a noxious chemical, his throat cut from ear to ear. ”
The shuffling ceased.
“And wagers are already filling the betting book that you, my dear Wrex, are the odds-on favorite to be taken up for the murder.”