Chapter 14
Sebastian found Sir Henry Lovejoy standing beside the north wall of a half-built brown brick villa, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his greatcoat as he studied the limp body of Phineas Upcott hanging before him.
The length of rope tying Phineas’s neck to one of the crosspieces of the bricklayers’ wooden scaffold was long enough that the dead man’s feet dangled only a foot or so above the ground.
Lovejoy had set a horn lantern nearby, for the night was dark here, darker than in the city, with its stretches of new gaslights and old-fashioned oil lamps.
This was a part of Marylebone that had been laid out in a grid of proposed streets and squares in preparation for a building boom that was expected to accompany the construction of the Regent’s New Street and nearby Regent’s Park.
But a combination of the postwar economic slump and the miserably cold weather Britain had been enduring now for more than a year had dampened enthusiasm for the project.
The lights of only a few scattered houses showed here and there in the black emptiness of the surrounding wind-whipped, frost-nipped fields.
“Who found him?” said Sebastian, pausing beside the magistrate.
“A hackney driver coming back from taking a fare up to Alpha Road. He stopped and ducked around here to relieve himself, only to realize he was standing virtually face-to-face with a dead man. “
Sebastian was silent, his gaze on the slight, gently swaying corpse, his thoughts on the vital young man he’d seen just that morning. Phineas Upcott’s face was so engorged and discolored as to be virtually unrecognizable, his eyes wide and staring, his tongue protruding hideously.
Lovejoy said, “It could be a suicide.”
“It could be, but I doubt it. He actually came to see me this morning. He was afraid that whoever murdered Keebles and Toole was going to kill him next. And it looks as if they did.”
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “How well did you know the young man?”
“Not well. His father is a baronet—Sir Lawrence Upcott—who owns a prosperous estate in Berkshire and tends to stay there. Phineas is—was—his heir, but preferred life in London. I believe he kept lodgings in St. James’s Street.”
“Ah. Perhaps this time we’ll have the opportunity to actually search the victim’s rooms.”
“It might be a good idea to move quickly. I suspect Sir Lawrence will be leaving for London as soon as he hears what has happened.”
“We’ll do it at first light,” said Lovejoy, his gaze drifting over the surrounding empty fields. “I wonder what Upcott was doing all the way out here. It’s difficult to believe his killer brought him here, but I suppose it is possible.”
“Maybe.” Sebastian turned to look back toward the street as a cart with a couple of men from the deadhouse drew up behind his waiting curricle. “You’ll be sending the body to Gibson?”
“Yes.” Lovejoy watched in silence as the men unloaded their shell from the back of the cart. Then he said, “Three wellborn young gentlemen murdered within weeks of each other. It’s…horrifying.”
Sebastian had to force himself to look again at the dead man’s ghastly, bloated face. “I think we can now safely assume we’re not dealing with a coincidence.”
Lovejoy met his gaze and nodded solemnly.
“Ever hear of a knight of the road named Sid Diamond?” Sebastian asked his valet later that night.
Jules Calhoun looked up from brushing Sebastian’s coat. A small, lithe man in his thirties with fair hair, a high forehead, and blue eyes, he’d been with Sebastian for years and was invariably both unflappable and affable. “I don’t believe so, my lord. Are you interested in him?”
“I’d like to know more about him, if possible.”
Most gentlemen’s gentlemen would be insulted by the suggestion that they might be familiar with a highwayman. But Calhoun had grown up in a succession of notorious flash houses famous for the unsavory nature of their clientele. His eyes crinkled in a smile. “That should be possible.”
Monday, 25 November
Sebastian lay awake for much of what was left of that night. He could hear the wind shifting the bare branches of the distant trees in Grosvenor Square and, from someplace nearer, the howl of a dog that sounded almost like a wolf.
“You need to sleep,” said Hero at some point before dawn, shifting her head on her pillow so she could look over at him.
“I am trying.” He rolled onto his side to face her. “I keep remembering how frightened Phineas was when he came to see me. He was afraid, he came to me for help, and I let him down.”
She rested her hand, gently, against his chest. “He must have known more about what happened to Toole and Keebles than he let on.”
“I don’t think he knew precisely why they were killed, but he obviously knew far more about the various nasty things they’d done than he was willing to tell me.
Hell, he took part in them.” Reaching out, he drew her into his arms and held her close.
“I need to talk to Royston-Jones. From the sound of things, he left Chalk Farm Tavern the night they tangled with Sid Diamond because he was disgusted by what his friends were doing. If nothing else, I should be able to get the name of the ‘greenhead’ from him.”
Hero rested her cheek on his chest. “Have you learned anything about that Clerkenwell coffeehouse?”
“Not yet.” He ran his fingers through her hair.
“Sometimes when a man is murdered, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would want to kill him.
But with this lot, we’ve already uncovered nearly half a dozen people with a reasonable motive for murder, and I suspect we’ve barely scratched the surface. ”
“I keep thinking about what Sid Diamond told you—that Hendon would be better off mourning a murdered grandson than having to watch him hang. The things we know Bayard and his friends did—to Accum, to the young man up at Chalk Farm, and all the rest of it…they might be disgusting, but none of them are anywhere near a hanging offense.” She paused.
“Well, I suppose stealing Diamond’s horse was, but I can’t see a highwayman pressing charges. ”
“No; you’re right. Other than the horse, it’s all been about intimidation, humiliation, and cruelty as a form of entertainment, of sport.” He met her troubled gaze. “Which begs the question: What the hell is it that we don’t know?”
Emmanuel Royston-Jones’s famous father, Zacharia Royston-Jones, was known as one of the wealthiest men in all the kingdom.
Zacharia owed the foundations of his business empire to his own father, Joshua Jones, who’d gone from unloading ships on the docks of Newcastle to building them.
But Zacharia had extended the family’s holdings far beyond his father’s ambitious beginnings, expanding into both wartime shipping and sugar plantations.
By marrying the daughter of an earl—albeit an impoverished, relatively recent Irish one—and hyphenating his common last name with hers, he had successfully joined his plebeian blood to the aristocracy.
But his crowning achievement had been the betrothal of his only son, Emmanuel, to Lady Anne Crawford, the daughter of a duke.
And then she had died, just weeks before the wedding.
As he mounted the front steps of Emmanuel Royston-Jones’s handsome town house overlooking Berkeley Square, Sebastian was aware of the black mourning wreath on the door, the black crepe festooning the windows.
How many months had passed since Lady Anne’s death?
Four? More? But this was not four-month-old crepe, he realized.
Which meant the bereaved groom hadn’t been able to bear letting it be taken down and had instead ordered it renewed.
Emmanuel received Sebastian in an icy, half-empty drawing room overlooking the square, standing before a fire that had been newly kindled on the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back.
The shipping magnate’s heir was slightly above average in height, with curly black hair cropped short, a strong nose and chin, and blue-gray eyes visibly shadowed by a powerful, abiding grief.
“Please, have a seat, my lord,” he said, extending a hand toward the two pale blue silk–covered chairs that stood beside the fire. “May I offer you some tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Sebastian, adjusting the tails of his coat as he sat.
There was a table between the chairs and a new floral carpet on the floor, but that was the extent of the room’s furnishings.
“My apologies for the condition of the room,” said Royston-Jones, coming to sink into the other chair.
“But the truth is, the entire house looks like this. My father bought it for Annie and me, you know, when we were first betrothed. She was the one coordinating the furnishing, but then…” He fell silent, his expression vaguely baffled, as if he couldn’t quite understand how the half-empty room could still be here when the woman who’d taken such delight in decorating it was gone.
“I’ve been thinking about selling the place, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do it.
She loved it so much. I can still see her standing at the windows there, smiling at the way the evening sun soaked the grass and trees in the square with a rich golden light.
” His voice caught. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how memories can be both painful and dear? ”
“Yes.”
The younger man brought his gaze back to Sebastian’s face and swallowed. “I heard about Phineas Upcott. That’s why you’re here, is it? Because of what’s happened to the three of them—Marcus, Gil, and Phineas?”
Sebastian nodded. “I’m told you used to be friends with all three men.”