What Angels Fear (2 page)

“No. But I have ears.”

“So do I. And I don’t hear a thing. I swear, Sebastian, you must be part bat. It’s unnatural.”

A minute or two later, a carriage appeared out of the gloom, a pair of showy blacks pulling a high-perch phaeton containing two men and followed at a discreet distance by a simple gig. The doctor.

A tall, lanky man with straight, thinning brown hair and an aquiline nose jumped down from the phaeton’s high seat. Across the mist-blown field, Captain John Talbot’s gaze met and held Sebastian’s for one long moment. Then he turned away to strip off his coat and gloves.

“Right then,” called the captain’s second, a mustachioed military man who clapped his hands together in a false show of heartiness. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Those rumors I mentioned?” Christopher said in an undertone as he and Sebastian moved forward. “They say the last time Talbot fought a duel, he chose twenty-five paces, then turned and fired after twelve. Killed the man. Of course, Talbot and his second swore the distance had been settled at twelve paces all along.”

“And his rival’s second?”

“Shut up about it when Talbot threatened to call
him
out—for naming Talbot a liar.”

Sebastian gave his friend a slow smile. “Then if Talbot should have occasion to call you out for a similar reason, I suggest you choose swords.”

“You’ve the pistols?” said Talbot’s second, as Sir Christopher walked up to him.

A brace of pistols in a blue velvet-lined walnut box was produced, inspected, and loaded by the seconds. Talbot made his choice. Sebastian took the other pistol in his hand, felt the cool, familiar weight against his palm, the deadly hardness of steel against his curled finger.

“Ready, gentlemen?”

Back-to-back they stood, then began to walk, each step measured to the steady drone of the counted paces.

“One, two . . .”

The doctor ostentatiously turned his back, but Christopher stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and watchful, his face pale, anxious. Sebastian knew his friend wasn’t only worried about Talbot’s intentions, that Christopher had other misgivings. Christopher didn’t understand that there was a fine line between seeking death and being indifferent to its occurrence. A line Sebastian had yet to cross.

“. . . three, four . . .”

He had an unexpected memory, of a misty summer morning long ago, on a grassy slope near the Hall, when his two older brothers had still been alive, and his mother. The air had smelled of the fresh scones they’d brought for tea, and ferns, and the restless sea beating against the rocks in the cove far below. They’d played Drakes-and-Dragons that morning, the four of them, counting out the movements “. . . five, six . . .” as they wove in and out, even his mother, her head thrown back, laughing, the strengthening sun bright on her golden hair. Only his sister, Amanda, had sat aloof, as she always did. Aloof and disapproving and angry for reasons Sebastian never quite understood.

“. . . eight, nine . . .”

The metal of the pistol’s trigger felt cold and solid against Sebastian’s finger, the wind-swirled mist damp against his cheeks. He forced himself to focus on this moment, this place. The lark called again, from nearer the base of the hill. He could hear the gurgle of a distant stream, the clip-clop of a horse, ridden at a slow trot up the road.

“. . . ten, eleven . . .”

It was the hesitation in the other man’s stride between the tenth and eleventh count that warned him. That, and the whisper of cloth rubbing against cloth as Talbot turned.

“. . . twelve—”

Sebastian spun about and dropped into a crouch at the precise moment that John Talbot fired, so that the bullet intended for Sebastian’s heart grazed his forehead instead. Then, gun empty and dangling slack in his hand, Talbot had no choice but to stand, body turned sideways, jaw clenched tight, nostrils flaring with each indrawn breath as he waited for Sebastian’s shot.

Calmly, purposefully, Sebastian raised his pistol, took aim, and fired. Captain Talbot let out a sharp cry and pitched forward.

The doctor scrambled out of the gig and ran toward him.

“Bloody hell, Sebastian,” said Christopher. “You’ve killed him.”

“Hardly.” Sebastian let the pistol fall to his side. “But I imagine he’ll find it damned uncomfortable to sit down for a while.”

“I say, I say, I say,” blustered Talbot’s second, his mustache working back and forth. “Most ungentlemanly conduct, this. Englishmen stand and fire weapons
from their feet
. Someone ought to fetch the constables. There’ll be murder charges brought for this, mark my words.”

“Be quiet, man,” said the doctor, snapping open his case. “No one I’ve treated yet has died from being clipped across the arse.”

Sir Christopher began to laugh, while Sebastian stretched to his feet and walked across the field to collect the other pistol. He’d promised Melanie he wouldn’t kill her husband.

But she hadn’t said anything about not making the bastard suffer.

Chapter 2

I
t was in the retrochoir that Jem first noticed the blood.

He’d known something was wrong before that, of course—known it as soon as he opened the north transept door. For thirty years now Jem Cummings had been sexton here at St. Matthew of the Fields. It was part of his job to see that the church was locked up tight every night and unlocked again the next morning.

So Jem knew.

They had a young rector what’d taken over the living three years ago—the Reverend McDermott, he was. McDermott hadn’t liked the idea of keeping the church locked at night. But then Jem had told him about that time back in ’92, when them bloodthirsty heathen Frogs had been rampaging across the Channel and the old reverend had come in one morning to find the high altar smashed and pigs’ blood splattered across the choir walls. When he heard about that, Reverend McDermott dropped his talk about leaving the church open real quick.

It was the pigs’ blood that Jem was remembering now as he staggered toward the nave, his bum leg hurting bad in the damp cold, his eyes straining as he peered into the early morning gloom. Yet the peace of the church seemed undisturbed, the high altar pristine and untouched, the sacristy door protecting the church’s precious, consecrated vessels solid and locked. The pounding of Jem’s heart began to ease.

Then he saw the blood.

He didn’t know what it was at first. Only dark smudges, faint but growing more distinct, more discernibly in the shape of men’s shoe prints as he traced the trail across the worn paving slabs toward the Lady Chapel. The cold of the ancient stone walls seemed to seep into his very bones, his breath coming ragged in his tight chest as he crept forward, his body shaking so badly he had to clench his teeth to keep them from rattling.

She lay on her back, sprawled in an obscene posture against the polished marble steps that led up to the chapel’s altar. He saw bare thighs, spread wide and gleaming white in the lamplight. A froth of lace edged what had once been a fine satin flounce, torn now, and stained with the same darkness that smeared her thighs. Eyes wide and glassy stared at him from beneath a head of golden curls tipped back at an unnatural angle. At first he thought the front of her gown was black, but as he inched closer, he saw the gaping gashes across her throat and he understood. He understood, too, where all the blood had come from. It was everywhere, the blood, worse even than that long-ago day when the Jacobin fanatic had thrown buckets of the stuff around the choir. Only, this wasn’t pigs’ blood. It was her blood.

Jem stumbled backward, his elbow knocking painfully against the edge of the Lady Chapel’s intricately carved stone screen as he squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out that horrific vision.

But nothing would ever blot out that smell, the cloying, sickening mingling of blood and candle wax and raw, sexual fulfillment.

Chapter 3

I
t was almost noon by now, but the light filtering down through the stained-glass windows in the apse of St. Matthew of the Fields was still feeble, diffuse.

Sir Henry Lovejoy, chief magistrate for Westminster at Queen Square, let his gaze travel over the blood-splattered chapel walls, the thick pools of congealing gore standing out dark and cruel against the white marble of the altar steps. He had a theory, that the incidence of crimes of violence and passion was higher on those days when the yellow fog held London in its choking, deadly grip.

But it had been a long time since London had seen a crime like this one.

To one side of the Lady Chapel, a small, ominously still form lay hidden beneath a cloth stained dark and stiff with so much blood that Lovejoy had to force himself to walk over to it. Bending, he flipped back the edge of the fabric, and sighed.

She’d been pretty, once, this woman. And young. Any untimely death was tragic, of course. But no man who’d ever loved a woman, or watched with pride and fear the tentative first steps of a child, could look upon that youthful loveliness and not experience an added weight of sorrow, an extra edge to his sense of outrage.

His knees creaking in complaint, Lovejoy lowered himself into a squat, his gaze still fixed on that pale, blood-streaked face. “Know who she is?”

The question was addressed to the only other person in the chapel, a tall, well-built man in his mid-thirties, with fair, fashionably disheveled hair and an intricately tied cravat. As Queen Square’s senior constable, Edward Maitland had been the first authority of any consequence called to the scene and had been the one handling the investigation to this point. “An actress,” he said now, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his weight rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as if to contain his impatience with Sir Henry’s slow, methodical ways. “A Miss Rachel York.”

“Ah. I thought she looked familiar.” Swallowing hard, Lovejoy eased the cloth from the rest of the girl’s body, and forced himself to look.

Her throat had been repeatedly, viciously slashed in long, savage gashes. Which explained the sprays of blood on the walls, he supposed. So much blood, everywhere. Yet Rachel York’s death had not been quick, or easy. Her fists were clenched as if in endurance, and bruises showed dark and ugly against the pale, bare flesh of her wrists and forearms. The skin high on her left cheek had been split by a harsh blow. The torn, disarrayed emerald satin gown and ripped velvet pelisse told their own story.

“He had his way with her, I take it?” said Lovejoy.

Maitland shifted his weight back onto the heels of his expensive boots and balanced there, his gaze not on the girl but on the high, blue and red stained glass of the eastern window. “Yes, sir. No doubt about that.”

No doubt indeed, thought Lovejoy. The inescapable tang of semen still hung in the air, mingling with the heavy metallic odor of blood and the pious sweetness of incense and beeswax. He let his gaze travel over the girl’s carefully composed limbs, and frowned. “She was lying like this, when you found her?”

“No, sir. She was there, before the altar. Weren’t proper to leave her that way. This being a church and all.”

Lovejoy straightened, his gaze drifting back to those blood-smeared marble steps. Every candle on the altar had guttered down and gone out. She must have lit them all, he thought, before she died. Why? In piety? Or because she was afraid of the dark?

Aloud, he said, “What was she doing here, do you suppose?”

Maitland’s brows twitched together in a swift, betraying movement instantly stilled. It was obviously a question that hadn’t occurred to him. “That I can’t say, sir. The sexton found her when he came to open the church this morning.” He pulled a notebook from the pocket of his greatcoat and flipped it open with the ostentatious display of attention to detail that sometimes grated on Lovejoy’s nerves. “A Mr. Jem Cummings. Neither he nor the Reverend”—there was a brief ruffling of pages—“Reverend James McDermott say they’ve ever seen her before.”

“They lock the church every night, do they?”

“Yes, sir.” Again Maitland consulted his notebook. “At eight sharp.”

Reaching down, Lovejoy carefully replaced the cloth over what was left of Rachel York, only pausing at the last moment to study, once again, that pale, beautiful face. She had a French look about her, with the fair curls and widely spaced brown eyes and short upper lip often found in Normandy. He’d seen her just last week, with Kat Boleyn in the Covent Garden Theater’s production of
As You Like it
. Seen her and admired her, not simply for her beauty but for her talent. He had a clear image of her upon the stage, her hands held high in the clasp of her fellow cast members as they took their final bow, her eyes bright and shining, her smile wide and triumphantly joyous.

He jerked the cloth back over those still, bloodstained features and turned away, his gaze narrowing as he took in the layout of the old church, the aisled nave and wide transepts, the choir and broad apse. “This Mr. Cummings . . . does he say he came back here, to the Lady Chapel, before locking up last night?”

Maitland shook his head. “The sexton says he glanced back here from the retrochoir and gave a loud halloo, warning that he was about to lock up. But he didn’t actually venture into the chapel itself, sir. And he wouldn’t have seen her from the retrochoir. I checked myself.”

Lovejoy nodded. In the damp coolness of the church, some of the pools of blood had yet to dry. Glossy and thick, they shimmered darkly in the lamplight, and he took care to avoid stepping in them as he walked slowly about the chapel. There’d been so many big, careless feet tramping in and out of the chapel in the past six hours that it would be impossible to accurately reconstruct what the floor had looked like, before the sexton’s arrival. But it seemed somehow disrespectful, a violation of that poor girl lying there against the wall, to be tromping heedlessly through what had once been her life’s blood. So Lovejoy tried to avoid it.

He stopped in front of the small altar’s white marble steps. The blood was thickest here, where she’d been found. A lantern lay on its side, its glass shattered. He twisted around to glance back at his constable. “Any idea who was the last person to use the Lady Chapel?”