Chapter 49 #4
Emmanuel stared down at the wooden carving but made no move to take it.
“He liked to think of himself as a wolf, you know—Toole, I mean. He was always calling us a ‘pack’ or talking about ‘going in for the kill’ and throwing back his head and howling. He did it one time around Ciana, and she told him he was nothing like a wolf—that their most distinctive characteristics are loyalty, courage, and dedication to their families. She said they risk their lives to protect the vulnerable, they mate for life, and the female wolves are the real leaders of their packs. Needless to say, Toole…resented that.” He swallowed hard.
“I didn’t know until today that he’d gone back to her shop with Keebles and Wilcox.
That’s when he took the carving. I still don’t understand how it ended up on Primrose Hill, unless maybe he was dancing around with it that night, howling at the moon, and dropped it. You know he had to have been drunk.”
Sebastian held out the wolf again. “Do you think she’ll want it back?”
This time Emmanuel did take the carving, his nostrils flaring on a deeply indrawn breath as he swiped his thumb over the Celtic knot on the wolf’s flank.
He shook his head, a muscle jumping along his jaw as he walked over to rest the carving atop the glowing coals on the hearth.
For a moment it lay there, a dark smoking shadow surrounded by shimmering red-hot embers.
Then the fire flared up hot and bright, and the wolf burst into flames.
Shortly before seven o’clock that evening, Sir Henry Lovejoy came to see Sebastian.
“I thought you’d like to know,” said the magistrate as he settled beside the drawing room fire with a cup of tea, “that we’ve identified the ruffian who stabbed Lord Wilcox.
He was seen at one point following his lordship up Cockspur Street, and then again by someone else a short time later as he left the alley behind the King’s Mews. ”
Sebastian looked up from pouring his own tea. “You know who he is?”
“We do indeed. He’s a blackguard from Tothill Fields named Reginald Dennings. The man has been implicated in so many murders he should by rights have been hanged long ago. But the truly interesting part is that he was found near the Serpentine about an hour ago, shot in the back.”
“He’s dead?”
“He is. We’ve spoken to his wife. She says someone paid him to kill your nephew, but she insists she has no idea who.”
Sebastian came to stand beside the fire, his tea held forgotten in his hand. “Do you believe her?”
“Frankly? No. But the Chief Magistrate has discussed the information with Lord Sidmouth, and both agree Dennings must have been hired—and then killed—by either Lord Bridgewood or Sir Samuel Toole.” Lovejoy paused.
“You disagree?” said Sebastian.
“I agree the suggested solution ties everything up neatly. And yet…”
“And yet?”
“I can’t get past the impression that the woman knows more than she’s willing to admit. Because with both Bridgewood and Sir Samuel dead, why is she still afraid?”
“When was Dennings last seen?”
“Around eight last night.”
Sebastian raised his tea to his lips and took a slow swallow.
By eight o’clock last night, Sir Samuel and Lord Bridgewood had both been dead for nearly five hours.
But since Sebastian had fiddled the timing of the events in Swine Court to help account for the missing hours between the shootings and his own arrival at Lovejoy’s house in Bloomsbury, there was no way he could say it.
He was careful to wait until later, when he was walking Lovejoy downstairs, before asking, “Are Sidmouth and Sir Nathaniel Conant still intent on finding Damion Pitcairn?”
“They are, yes,” said Lovejoy, pausing at the base of the stairs. “Last I heard, they were sending Runners to the ports.”
Sebastian looked over at him. “Dover?”
Lovejoy shook his head. “Southampton and Portsmouth. Personally, I find it unlikely a man with Pitcairn’s background would be interested in a ship headed for either the West Indies or the United States, but Sidmouth is oddly obsessed with reports he’s received of a yellow-bodied cabriolet seen first in the Haymarket, then headed toward Hampshire.
Gravesend strikes me as a far more likely resort, but what do I know?
” He settled his hat on his head. “I’ll send word if I hear anything. ”
Sebastian watched the door close behind the magistrate. He was still standing in the entry hall, his arms crossed at his chest, his eyes narrowed as he stared unseeingly at the wooden panels, when Hero came to stand beside him.
“Short of hiding behind a boulder on the turnpike to Gravesend and shooting any Bow Street Runners headed east,” she said, “there is absolutely nothing else you can do at this point.”
He turned toward her. “You keep saying that.”
She sighed. “Come eat dinner.”
Shortly after nine that night, Sebastian ordered his carriage brought round and set off for Tothill Street. He took with him two stout footmen armed with blunderbusses.
He was in no mood for any nonsense.
Reginald Dennings had kept his wife and six children in a squalid basement room in a ramshackle seventeenth-century building off Child’s Lane.
Sebastian had to knock three times before the door was answered by a hard-faced, slatternly looking woman with a split lip, a purpling eye, and a hungry babe wailing in a basket on the floor behind her.
If Reginald’s widow was grieving the recent death of her husband, she hid it well.
She tried lying to Sebastian, swearing at him, and weeping pitiful tears before giving in to a combination of subtle insinuations of a return of the constables from Bow Street and a nice bribe.
What she told him took his breath, so that he had to squeeze his eyes shut for an instant, even though he’d been expecting it.
Even though he knew there was, really, no other explanation.
Wednesday, 4 December
At half past four the next morning, Sebastian stood at his bedroom window, his gaze on the dark wet rooftops and clustered chimneys that stretched away to the east. The light rain that had started up just after midnight was still falling; he could see the cold, silvery slashes caught in the light of the streetlamps below, hear the small, hard drops pattering on the wet pavement.
But otherwise the night was dark and quiet.
“The ship should have sailed,” said Hero, coming to stand beside him, her gaze, like his, on the sleeping city around them.
“Yes. The question is, Were Pitcairn and Sasha Stone on it?”
She met his gaze. He had left Tom at the port, supplied with funds, a swift horse, and instructions to ride for London as soon as the Argonaute sailed or if Bow Street showed up to make an arrest. But Gravesend was twenty-eight miles away, which meant it would still be hours before they knew anything.
One way or the other.
Dawn was just beginning to break when Sebastian drove to St. James’s Square.
Leaving his curricle waiting beside the silvery waters of the square’s wide central pool, he walked up the eastern range of elegant houses to where his sister’s traveling carriage waited outside her door, along with a rented wagon piled high with baggage.
As he drew nearer, he could see Amanda standing beside her carriage, a small leather case in her arms, her head tilted back as she said something to her abigail, who had already climbed up to arrange the pile of warm rugs and pillows on the carriage’s velvet seats.
“Going someplace?” he said, walking up to his sister.
Amanda glanced over at him, then handed the case up to her woman and said briskly, “Fanny and I are leaving for Wilcox Hall. I’ve decided to bury Bayard in the chapel there.”
She turned and was brushing past him toward the house when he said, “I know what you did.”
She drew up abruptly, her features held tight with disdain as she swung slowly to face him. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
He kept his voice low and even. “Where did you even get Dennings’s name?
From Bayard himself? Telling the man to meet you in Hyde Park for the balance of his payment was risky, you know.
He might easily have killed you…although I suppose it never occurred to the poor sucker that you could kill him. ”
She threw a warning glance at the nearby servants. “What nonsense is this?”
“The veil was definitely effective; I don’t see how anyone will ever be able to positively identify you.
The thing is, try as I might, I can’t think of a single tall, fair-haired, fashionably dressed woman besides you who might have an interest in hiring someone to stab your son in the back. Can you?”
She kept her lips pressed tightly together, her nostrils pinched as she stared back at him.
“I can understand why you did it,” he said.
“Not that I condone double murder, of course, but I do understand why you did it. Bayard was a loose cannon, and if the truth of his most recent activities were to become known, the scandal would have ruined not only you, but his wife and unborn child as well. But I’m curious, Amanda: Aren’t you concerned the baby might be born a girl?
It could be, you know. And then this house and Wilcox Hall will pass to that distant Wilcox cousin whose name I can never recall. ”
A slow smile curled her lips. “Fanny is carrying twins.”
The implication was obvious. “Ah. How clever. This way you can essentially guarantee that at least one will be a boy. Who knows? You might even get an heir and a spare out of it. Have you already lined up a likely infant? Of course, given that you’ll require a newborn, you’ll need more than one pregnant woman standing by, just to be certain you get at least one male.
How many do you reckon you’ll need? Three?
Four? I wonder: Are you planning to kill the mothers when you no longer need them, just to make certain they can never talk?
Although I suppose a few well-aimed threats would probably suffice to keep them quiet. ”
“You are disgusting,” she said, and turned toward the house again.
“I won’t let you get away with this, Amanda,” he said, raising his voice. “You know that, don’t you?”
“And how precisely do you propose to accomplish that self-imposed task?” she said without even looking back at him.
“I don’t know. But I won’t stop trying.”
At that, she drew up and turned to walk back to him, not stopping until she was right in front of him.
“I did what I had to do,” she said, her voice kept low.
“And if you had any feeling for this family, you’d have done it yourself long ago.
Bayard was mentally unwell, a disgrace to his family, and a danger to his society.
You know that every bit as well as I do.
Why do you care what happened to him? Would you rather Hendon have been forced to watch his grandson hang for murder?
At least this way we’ve all been spared that.
Or do you hate me so much that you’d actually have liked to see me thus humiliated? ”
He shook his head. “I don’t hate you, Amanda.”
He saw the flare of disbelief in her eyes. “And now you really must excuse me, Devlin.” She turned again toward the house. “We leave in a few minutes.”
He let her go.
He was walking back to where he’d left Giles with the curricle when he heard a familiar voice calling him.
“Gov’nor! Oye there, gov’nor!”
Sebastian turned to find his tiger pelting across the square toward him, one elbow cocked skyward so he could hold on to his hat. He looked dusty, disheveled, and bone-tired.
“I like t’ ‘ave never found ye!” said Tom, skidding breathlessly to a halt beside him.
“And?” said Sebastian, his voice tight.
“The Argonaute sailed just after four.”
“And Pitcairn and his sister? Were they on it?”
“They were on it, gov’nor.” The boy’s eyes danced as he flashed a toothy grin. “They got away!”