Chapter 3
The smell of burnt meat hung like a dirty presence in the cold night air. It was a stench that no man who’d ever smelled charred human flesh could forget.
Sebastian found the odor clinging to his nostrils as he climbed the narrow footpath that wound up Primrose Hill, the frost-tipped, winter-killed grass of the gentle slope glowing silver in the fitful moonlight, the white fog of his exhalations billowing around him in a ghostly nimbus.
And he felt himself hurtled back in time, to the days when his life had been filled with the roar of cannons and the reek of gunpowder and the screams of dying horses and wounded, sobbing men.
He pushed the memories away.
The old bullet wound in his right leg was beginning to ache, and he paused for a moment, glancing back at the base of the hill to where he had left Bayard snoring in Hendon’s carriage.
Still more than half-drunk, the younger man had fallen asleep and been impossible to rouse.
And the truth was, Sebastian no longer needed him.
The pungent smell carried by the wind told its own story.
He walked on. He was close enough now to the top of the hill to see the faintly glowing embers of the dying fire.
He tried to recall whether he’d ever met Marcus Toole, and resurrected a memory of a young man of average height, medium brown hair, and unremarkable features; a man unapologetically proud of his ancient pedigree, of his ringing baritone and firm seat in the saddle, and of the wealth, title, and Norfolk estate that would someday be his.
Except now he was just a charred lump of black, burnt flesh on a cold, windswept hill.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Sebastian as he drew up beside the dead man’s scorched boots.
What was once a roaring bonfire had been reduced by now to a crumbling pile of blackened, half-incinerated lengths of wood resting on a bed of white ash, with only the faint glow of a few hot coals visible here and there.
The hideous remnants of Marcus Toole lay sprawled on top like a late addition or an afterthought.
Had he already been dead when his clothes went up in flames and the fire began to lick at his flesh?
Sebastian hoped so. The man had fallen—or been thrown—onto the fire on his stomach, with one leg bent at an angle and his arms flung out at his sides.
If a man passed out and fell into a fire, would he wake up?
Sebastian wondered. Maybe it depended on how drunk he was.
What about an apoplexy or heart seizure?
They might be rare in young men still in their twenties, but not unknown.
There could be an innocent explanation for what he was looking at.
But he doubted it.
He began to walk in an ever-widening circle around the firepit and its reeking, mutilated horror, studying the ground, looking for something—anything—that might explain what had happened here.
But the ground was hard, and the dead vegetation in the area well trampled by many feet, for even without the neo-Druid movement, Primrose Hill was near enough to London to be a popular spot.
Frustrated, Sebastian was turning back toward the carriage when for a brief moment the clouds that had obscured the moon shifted and he caught the gleam of something smooth lying half hidden in the rank dead grass at his feet.
Reaching for it, he found himself holding a small piece of wood carved in the shape of a wolf.
Seated on its haunches, its head thrown back in a howl, the wolf was perhaps five or six inches tall.
It was a beautiful piece, haunting and powerfully evocative.
And high on the wolf’s flanks, on both sides, the artist had carved an intricately intertwined Celtic knot.
The early hours of Sunday, 24 November
“Merciful heavens,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, one splayed hand pressed against the small of his back as he leaned over to study the stiff, hideously burnt corpse in the flickering light of a horn lantern held aloft by one of his constables.
More constables were fanning out around them in a search of the area, the feeble glow of their lanterns wavering pinpoints in the blackness.
The wind had come up shortly after midnight, cold and damp and heavy with the scent of promised rain. “What a frightful sight.”
“That it is,” said Sebastian, standing beside him.
He watched as Lovejoy tilted his head first one way, then the other, his gaze solemn as he studied what was left of the dead man’s black, ravaged face.
Barely five feet tall, the magistrate was slightly built, with a bald head, an almost comically high voice, and a fierce dedication to truth that sometimes brought him into conflict with both his fellow magistrates and the powerful men around the Prince Regent.
He was the least senior of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates and had at one time been a successful merchant.
But the brutal, senseless murder of his wife and child and the profound spiritual crisis that followed had altered the course of his life forever.
It was now nearly six years since the time when Sebastian had been a fugitive accused of a murder he didn’t commit and Lovejoy the man charged with the task of bringing him in.
In the years since, the magistrate and the aristocratic former cavalry captain had forged an unusual but strong friendship, based on mutual respect and a shared determination to find a measure of justice for the victims of murder.
“Hopefully the poor man was dead before this happened.” Lovejoy straightened with a quickly concealed grimace, his hand dropping back to his side. “You say he’s Sir Samuel Toole’s son, Marcus?”
“Probably.”
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “Only probably?”
Sebastian nodded to the charred figure before them. “Who could recognize him like this?”
“True.” His features set in thoughtful lines, Lovejoy turned to stare out over the rolling plain to the south, where the dim glow of the lights of London showed in the distance.
“I suppose it is theoretically possible that Marcus Toole—or someone else—could have killed another young man and dumped his body on the fire in the hopes it would be burned beyond recognition. Improbable, perhaps, but certainly possible.”
Sebastian could think of another possibility, but he was careful to keep that one to himself. “Tell me about Gilbert Keebles. How did he die?”
“It was rather strange. A couple of mud larks found his body washed up on the riverbank down by Rotherhithe. He was last seen in what I gather was an advanced state of intoxication when he left his friends at the cockpit on Birdcage Walk, so initially it was assumed he’d fallen into the river drunk and drowned.
Then the surgeon who performed the autopsy discovered a knife wound in his side.
The curious thing, though, is that he hadn’t been robbed. ”
“I’m surprised the mud larks who found him didn’t strip him.”
“I’ve no doubt they would have if a constable hadn’t chanced to come along at just the right moment.”
“Fortuitous.”
“Indeed. The generally accepted explanation is that he must have been stabbed by footpads, then tumbled in the river and drowned while trying to escape them. But there’s no proof of it, obviously.”
Sebastian watched as a couple of the men from one of London’s deadhouses unloaded a shell from the cart they’d left at the base of the hill and began to trudge up the footpath toward them. “The murders of two friends occurring so close together is rather…odd.”
“It does lend a certain amount of credence to your nephew’s fear that someone is deliberately targeting his friends.
” Lovejoy’s face took on a flat, pained look.
“Marcus Toole’s father, Sir Samuel, is both a substantial Norfolk landowner and a member of Parliament, while Keebles’s father, General Sir Peyton Keebles, was a hero of the American War.
I fear the city’s newspapers are going to whip their readers into a frenzy over this. ”
“Which means the Palace will want someone arrested and hanged. Quickly.”
Lovejoy met Sebastian’s gaze, nodded, then looked away. “It’s unfortunate Lord Wilcox was too”—he hesitated as if searching for the right word—“distraught to be of any further use tonight.”
“Hopefully when he sobers up later today, he’ll be able to recall more clearly what happened,” said Sebastian.
He had insisted Bayard take Hendon’s coach and personally explain the situation to Sir Henry, while Sebastian himself stayed to keep watch on the murdered man’s body.
But in the end Lovejoy had given up trying to get much sense out of the younger man and simply dropped Lord Wilcox off at his doorstep in St. James’s Square before heading out to Primrose Hill with his constables.
“What precisely were Toole and your nephew doing here, anyway?”
“From the sound of things, they were drinking at Chalk Farm Tavern and one or the other of them—Bayard says it was Toole, but who knows?—came up with the brilliant idea of climbing the hill and lighting a bonfire.”
“Don’t tell me they’re part of this new movement to resurrect the culture and religion of the Druids.”
“Bayard says no. They were just drunk and kicking up a lark.”
Lovejoy frowned, for he took as dim a view of the excessive consumption of alcohol as of the neo-Druid movement.
“I doubt that will stop Fleet Street from publishing endless speculations linking what happened here tonight to the ancients’ propensity for burning human sacrifices.
” He paused, then added, “You don’t think that’s what’s at work here, do you? ”
“No.”
Lovejoy nodded. “Let’s see that carving you found again.”
The magistrate’s frown deepened as he took the piece and turned it over and over in his hands. “Where precisely was it?”
Sebastian jerked his head toward where the men with the shell had almost reached the crest of the hill. “About there, just off the footpath.”