Chapter 17
His thoughts in a dark place, Sebastian left the British Museum and went looking for Erasmus Inkberry.
But according to his housekeeper, the Celtic scholar had traveled down to Kent to study an ancient hill fort and wasn’t expected home until sometime Tuesday.
Frustrated, Sebastian went back to his curricle, leapt up into the high seat, and gathered the reins.
“Yer doin’ it again,” said Tom.
Sebastian glanced back at his tiger. “Doing what?”
“Jist sittin’ there, staring at the street.”
Sebastian laughed and gave his horses the office to start.
He drove next to Tower Hill, where he found the door to the stone outbuilding at the base of the garden standing open and Paul Gibson bent over the naked, eviscerated corpse of Phineas Upcott.
“Can you tell me anything yet?” said Sebastian, pausing in the open doorway, his hands braced against the frame.
Gibson set aside his scalpel with a clatter and reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “Not a lot. Probably the only thing of interest is that he was strangled first, and then someone tied that rope around his neck and dangled him off the scaffolding where he was found.”
“He was already dead when he was hanged?”
“Either dead or close to it.”
“So the hanging was staged?”
“Essentially, yes.”
Sebastian let his hands drop to his sides. “They were all staged. Keebles was stabbed before being thrown in the Thames, Toole was shot before being burned, and now Upcott was strangled before he was hanged.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right.”
Sebastian swore under his breath and turned to look out over the dreary, wet garden.
Gibson came to stand beside him. After a moment, he said, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Sebastian watched a couple of small fieldfares peck at the windfall apples that Gibson’s lover, Alexi, had left for the birds. “A rather earnest eighteen-year-old scholar recently sent down from Cambridge thinks it’s a reenactment of the human sacrifices described by Lucan.”
Gibson pulled at one earlobe. “Remind me who he was again?”
“Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, a first-century poet. He was born in Córdoba, Spain, but his mother was the sister of Seneca the Younger, Nero’s tutor, so Lucan went off to what everyone expected would be a brilliant career in Rome.
His only surviving poem was on the civil war between Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate.
He was very young when he wrote it, and then he fell afoul of Nero and was ordered to commit suicide or suffer hideous consequences.
So he opened his veins and died reciting his own poetry. He was twenty-five.”
“Lovely,” said Gibson.
Sebastian nodded. “Ever hear the expression ‘History has a cruel sense of humor; it repeats itself’? That was Lucan. He also said, ‘Truth is the first casualty of war,’ and ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ ”
“A wise man. Pity he died so young.” Gibson was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You think your nephew is in danger?”
“Of his group of six friends, three are now dead.”
“It’s interesting that if someone is intent on going after all six of them, he didn’t kill your nephew the same night he killed Toole. Bayard was there, wasn’t he?”
Sebastian looked over at his friend. “He was. And you’re right, it is puzzling.”
“So why spare Bayard while murdering his friend?”
Sebastian shook his head. He could think of at least one very good explanation, but it was troubling enough that he kept it to himself.
The town house Bayard had inherited from his father, the previous Lord Wilcox, stood in St. James’s Square, off Piccadilly.
It was the same house to which Sebastian’s half sister, Amanda, had come as an eighteen-year-old bride decades earlier, and she had continued as its mistress in the years since her husband’s death.
But with Bayard’s recent marriage, that situation was surely changing.
And as Sebastian climbed the front steps to the house’s neoclassical portico, he found himself wondering how his sister could possibly adjust to her new situation.
“My lord,” intoned Amanda’s butler with a bow, opening the front door.
No, not Amanda’s, Sebastian reminded himself. Bayard’s butler. “Crowley,” he said evenly.
“Lord Wilcox is in the library,” said Crowley in the same carefully colorless voice. “I’ve been instructed to show you in right away.”
“Expecting me, is he?” said Sebastian, following the butler across the marble-tiled entry hall.
“Anxiously, my lord.”
He found Bayard standing at the library windows, his gaze on the wet square outside.
He was in his shirtsleeves, his cravat gone, his collar askew, his silk waistcoat hanging unbuttoned.
He held a half-empty brandy glass in one hand; a day’s growth of beard shadowed his plump, pale cheeks, and Sebastian suspected he’d never made it to his bed last night.
“There you are,” said Bayard, turning abruptly to face him as Crowley bowed himself out. “You’ve seen this morning’s papers?”
“About Phineas Upcott, you mean?” said Sebastian. “Yes.”
Bayard sucked in a quick breath that shuddered his chest. “Do you believe me now? That someone is killing us? One by one?”
“Do you know why?”
“I keep telling you, no!” He drained his brandy, then raised the empty glass toward Sebastian. “Want some?”
“Thank you, but no,” said Sebastian. “You might consider going a little easy on it yourself.”
Bayard snorted and turned away to slosh more brandy into his glass. “You sound like my mother. She’s out with Fanny shopping for baby things. My lovely new bride is increasing, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Congratulations.”
Bayard waved his glass through the air in a mockingly magnanimous gesture and bowed. “Thank you, thank you. I’ve done my duty; the succession is secured—assuming it’s a boy, of course. So now I can die and no one would need even pretend to care.”
Bayard’s tendency toward self-pity had always been one of his more unattractive characteristics. Sebastian ignored it. “I need you to tell me again—honestly—what you were doing on Primrose Hill the night Toole was killed.”
“I told you! We were drinking at Chalk Farm Tavern, and Toole took it into his head that he wanted to climb the damned hill. I told him it was a cork-brained idea, but there was no dissuading him.”
“Did you try to dissuade him?”
“Of course I tried. I was ape drunk! You think I wanted to go tramping around the countryside in the middle of the night? It was cold as a witch’s kiss out there.”
“Is that what you were arguing about in the tavern?”
Bayard took a deep swallow and nodded. “Didn’t do any good, though. He said if I didn’t want to go, he’d go by himself. So I said, ‘Hang on; I’m coming.’ ”
Sebastian drew the wolf carving from his pocket and held it out. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Bayard glanced at it, then looked away, his features quivering. “No.”
“You’re quite certain?”
“Course I’m certain.” Bayard took another quick gulp of his brandy. “Where’d you get it?”
“I found it on Primrose Hill, near where Toole died,” said Sebastian, tucking the carving away. “Are you interested in the Druids or Celtic history?”
Bayard laughed. “Me? Are you roasting me?” He laughed again. “No.”
“What about Marcus Toole? Was he?”
“No. I told you, he thought it was funny.”
“Do you know anyone who is interested in the Celts?”
“No. What the bloody hell kind of milksop do you take me for?”
“Ever wonder why whoever killed Toole didn’t kill you that night, too?”
Bayard took another deep drink. “Of course I’ve wondered! The only thing I can figure is they didn’t see me. I walked off a ways when I went to take a piss, and then I was lying down.”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual that night before you passed out?”
“Who said I passed out?”
“You did. You said you went to take a piss, tripped and fell, then passed out.”
Bayard shook his head. “Don’t know if I’d say that I passed out, exactly. I sat down, closed my eyes for a bit, and fell asleep.”
“All right; did you see or hear anything unusual before you ‘fell asleep’?”
“No.”
“Are you certain you remember everything that happened from the time you left the tavern until you ‘fell asleep’?”
“Yes!”
“Is it possible that someone followed you from the tavern?”
“Who would follow us?”
“Someone you’d angered, perhaps. Do you remember having a run-in a month or two ago with a knight of the road named Sid Diamond?”
Bayard’s eyes widened. “Is that the highwayman’s name? You think he had something to do with what happened to Toole?”
“It’s possible. What about the Cambridge student you and your friends humiliated so brutally that same night?”
Bayard gave a loud, ringing laugh heavily tinged with scorn. “You can’t seriously think he had anything to do with what happened, can you? The fellow’s a namby-pamby nestle-cock.”
Sebastian watched Bayard take another drink. “I understand Emmanuel Royston-Jones was with you the night you were picking on Felton.”
Bayard frowned. “Was he? I can’t remember for certain, but he might’ve been. Why? What difference does it make if he was there or not?”
“I’m wondering why he isn’t your friend anymore.”
“Who said he isn’t? He basically lost interest in having fun when he was about to get leg shackled, and with the way he’s been moping ever since the chit died, who’d want him around?
” The sound of a carriage drawing up outside jerked Bayard’s gaze to the window again.
“Oh, lord, there they are, back already.” He drained the rest of his brandy in one long pull.
“Emmanuel doesn’t know what a lucky break the Fates gave him. ”
There was no mistaking the younger man’s meaning. Sebastian studied his nephew’s plump, sweaty face. “What made you decide to get married, Bayard?”
“It was Mother’s idea. To tell the truth, I don’t know how she talked me into it. Battiest thing I ever did, listening to her.” He slammed down his empty glass and headed for the stairs. “You will see yourself out, won’t you, Devlin? I’m off.”
Sebastian was in the entry hall, shrugging into his greatcoat, when Crowley opened the door for Amanda with a deep bow.
Some steps ahead of her daughter-in-law, the Dowager Lady Wilcox paused on the threshold, her jaw tightening at the sight of her half brother.
“So it is you,” she said in a bored voice, stepping into the hall.
“I thought I recognized the baseborn urchin walking those grays around the square. I had assumed the affectation of employing a pickpocket as your tiger would pall over time, but in that I obviously gave you too much credit.”
“Good afternoon, Amanda,” said Sebastian, reaching for his hat.
She was his senior by twelve years, the first child born to the marriage of the Earl of Hendon and his beautiful, wayward countess, Sophia.
Like their mother, Amanda was tall and gracefully formed, with guinea-gold hair little touched by gray even in her late forties.
But her features were all Hendon’s, and now that she was aging, the sour nature of her character had stamped itself plainly on her face.
If she had been born a boy, all that Sebastian now stood to inherit—titles, estates, and wealth—would eventually have been hers.
But because she was a girl, and because the truth of his parentage remained unknown, Sebastian was the heir to everything.
And she had never forgiven him for it.
“I take it you’ve come to see my son,” she said, jerking off her fine kid gloves and going to work on the buttons of her black satin-trimmed gray wool pelisse.
“You heard another of his friends was murdered last night?”
“I heard.”
“Who do you think is killing them?”
“I have no idea. And I must insist you refrain from discussing such a disturbing topic in the presence of my daughter-in-law,” she hissed as the new Lady Wilcox reached the top step and hesitated, her anxious gaze going from Amanda to Sebastian.
Born Miss Francis Leadmont, she was a quiet, unassuming girl, neither pretty nor plain, with mousy blond hair and gray eyes.
It was in many ways a brilliant match for the fifth daughter of Baron Leadmont.
Her family might be noble and respectable, but they were neither wealthy nor well-connected.
And with so many sisters and four brothers besides to be provided for, her dowry could only have been exceedingly modest. Yet Sebastian still couldn’t help but wonder what kind of father would give an innocent seventeen-year-old girl in marriage to a man with Bayard’s reputation.
She struck him as young, unsure of herself, and frightened.
“Lady Wilcox,” said Sebastian with a bow.
The girl colored noticeably as she sank into a deep schoolroom curtsy. “My lord.”
“Lord Devlin was just leaving,” said Amanda.
Sebastian glanced at his sister and said quietly, “If you know anything, you would do well to tell me, Amanda.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said, her nostrils flaring. “Good day, Devlin.”
“Good day, Amanda,” he said with a wry smile, touching one hand to the brim of his hat.
He was aware of his sister’s malevolent gaze burning into his back as he walked away.
Sister and brother had never been close, even as children, for she had hated him from the day of his birth.
It had taken Sebastian many years to understand why, although the depths of her hatred still had the power to shock him.
But Sebastian knew his sister well enough to know that what he saw in her face today was not only hatred; it was fear.
For some reason, Amanda was afraid of him.
Afraid of what he might discover.