What Remains of Heaven (6 page)

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Authors: C. S. Harris

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: What Remains of Heaven
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“None.” Gibson tossed aside the rough towel he’d been holding. “The papers are saying the Bishop surprised a thief who’d taken advantage of the crypt being opened to rob the burials.”
“I suppose it’s a more reassuring tale than the alternative—that someone deliberately bludgeoned the Bishop of London to death.”
Gibson looked over at him. “Any idea who?”
“Not a clue. Not even a suspect.” Sebastian hunkered down to study the dead man’s bloodied head. “What can you tell me about his murderer?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. Judging from the position of the wound, I’d say the Bishop was hit from the front, by someone who was right-handed. The assailant was either extraordinarily tall, or the Bishop was positioned below him—as if sitting, or at least crouching.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you look closely, you’ll notice that the wound isn’t exactly on the side of his head. It’s up toward the crown. The only way anyone could strike at that angle is if he were standing above the Bishop, or if he were considerably taller than the Bishop—which is unlikely, given that Bishop Prescott was an unusually tall man himself.”
“You think the Bishop could have been crouched down beside
him
?” said Sebastian, nodding toward the shrouded form on the stretcher behind them.
“From the way I understand the two men were found, I’d say that’s highly probable. The Bishop was lying virtually on top of the earlier victim.”
Reluctantly, Sebastian went to draw back the covering from the eighteenth-century corpse, and let out his breath in a sharp hiss. “Good God.”
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” said Gibson, limping over to stand beside him.
“That’s one word for it.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had much of a chance to examine this one yet, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“Really?” Sebastian studied his friend’s rapt expression. “You’d love the crypt of St. Margaret’s, then.”
“I would indeed. What an opportunity!”
Sebastian ducked his head to hide a smile.
Beneath the froth of lace, the once fine blue velvet coat, and the satin waistcoat, the body’s sinew had shriveled and sunk. Yet it was obvious that the corpse had belonged to an unusually large man, robust of frame and full of flesh. Time and the action of the chemicals in the crypt had withered and distorted the features of his face and darkened the skin until he looked like an aged Moor from the mountains of Morocco. Without the chin strap that normally held a burial’s jaw closed, his mouth had fallen open in a gaping, hideous yowl, but where once had been eyes were now strange, paperlike wisps.
“Old fly pupae,” said Gibson, when Sebastian looked up in question.
Sebastian cleared his throat and overcame the urge to draw the covering back up over that horror. “I understand this one was stabbed in the back with a dagger?”
“That’s right.” Gibson limped over to retrieve an object from the bench and held it out. “This.”
The blacked blade was long and thin, cast in one piece with the handle, then hammer-forged to produce a diamond blade cross-sectioned without any sharpened edges. A stabbing weapon, it was designed not to cut, but to penetrate deeply.
“A fine weapon,” said Sebastian, running his thumb along the delicate floral scroll of acanthus leaves and flowers that decorated the handle. “Renaissance, perhaps?”
“I’d say so, yes. Italian.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the withered cadaver at their feet. “What I want to know is, what the hell was our gentleman in velvet and lace doing down in that crypt in the first place?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t alone.”
Chapter 8
 
After allowing his awed tiger a suitable amount of time to gape at the mummified corpse in Gibson’s dissection room, Sebastian drove to St. James’s Square, where a vast mansion known as London House served as both the London residence and the official chambers of the Bishop of London. A thick layer of straw had already been laid on the street outside of Number 32; the blinds were drawn at all the windows, and every opening had been hung with black crepe. When Sebastian rang the heavy iron bell, a sepulchral-looking servant ushered him into a darkened entry.
A hushed voice behind him said, “Lord Devlin, I take it?”
Sebastian turned to find a lean, flaxen-haired cleric regarding him from the doorway of the small chapel that lay just to the right of the entrance. “Yes.”
The cleric stepped forward in a waft of incense. “I am Dr. Simon Ashley, the Bishop’s chaplain. The Archbishop has asked me to render you whatever assistance is necessary to expedite your endeavors to make sense of this dreadful tragedy.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian.
The Chaplain laced his fingers together and bowed. Somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, he had a fine-boned, delicate face and the pale complexion of a man whose life was lived indoors. To the uninitiated, the position of chaplain might seem a lowly office. It was not. Bishop Prescott had once served as chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester, while the current Archbishop of Canterbury had been chaplain to the Bishop of Durham. Serving as a Bishop’s chaplain was an important step up the ecclesiastical ladder.
“I assume you’ll wish to begin with—” The Chaplain broke off, his thin nose twitching.
“It’s the crypt,” said Sebastian, letting his gaze drift around the entry with its gleaming marble floors, its soaring wall panels, its rows of heavy oils framed in gilt and hung with more black crepe. Yards and yards of black crepe. “I’m told the odor lingers.”
“Yes, well . . .” The Chaplain cleared his throat and ges tured with one hand toward the stairs. “The Bishop’s official chambers are this way. If you’ll come with me?”
Sebastian followed the black-robed man up the grand staircase, their footsteps echoing in the stillness of the vast house. “The Bishop was here yesterday?”
“Most of the day, yes,” said the Chaplain, pausing on the first floor to throw open the doors to a set of apartments to the left of the stairs. “He had a number of appointments. We weren’t scheduled to move to Lambeth Palace—the Bishop’s summer residence—for another fortnight.”
These rooms, like those below, were in shadow, the blinds drawn fast. But Sebastian’s eyes were unusually well adapted to the dark. Pausing just inside the entrance, he let his gaze wander over the wainscoted anteroom, its gilded, velvet-covered benches and unlit branches of wax candles in gleaming brass sconces. Beyond the anteroom lay a second, smaller chamber with a broad desk. Sebastian had taken two steps toward it when the Chaplain cleared his throat again.
“You’ll understand, of course, that ecclesiastical affairs are often of a, shall we say,
delicate
nature?”
Sebastian looked around. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, the Archbishop has delegated to me the task of going through the Bishop’s papers. I can assure you that if I find anything that appears relevant to his death, I will of course pass it on to you.”
“In other words, the Archbishop would rather I refrain from rifling through the Bishop’s drawers? Is that what you’re saying?”
The Chaplain gave a nervous titter, but didn’t contradict him.
Sebastian wandered the rooms, his hands clasped behind his back. The Chaplain trailed at a distance of six or seven feet, a handkerchief pressed surreptitiously to his nose. But there was little enough for Sebastian to see. As an administrator, Prescott had obviously possessed a passion for neatness; the surface of his desk was clean and polished, every drawer carefully closed. If the Bishop had any skeletons in his life, he’d kept them tucked away, out of sight.
“What about the Bishop’s private apartments?” said Sebastian.
“They’re upstairs. This way.”
The Bishop’s private chambers on the second floor were more relaxed and informal, for it was here that Prescott had passed his leisure hours. A riding quirt and a pair of gloves rested beside a snuffbox on the gleaming surface of the inlaid round table at the center of the room, as if their owner had just stepped out and would return in a moment. Near the hearth, a book lay open across the arm of an overstuffed chair. Sebastian glanced at the title.
The Libation Bearers
, by Aeschylus.
He turned in a slow circle. Most of the walls not taken up with windows were covered by vast floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Running his gaze over the titles, he was surprised to see the works of Cicero and Aristotle, Plato and Seneca, nestled beside the more predictable volumes on Aquinas and Augustine.
“An interesting collection,” said Sebastian.
“The Bishop began his career as a classics scholar at Christ’s College, in Cambridge.”
“He had no family?”
“A nephew only. His wife passed away some eight or nine years ago. There were never any children.”
“Was he close to his nephew?”
“Very. Sir Peter was like a son to him.”
Sebastian swung around to look back at the Chaplain. “The Bishop’s nephew is Sir Peter Prescott?”
“That’s right. You know him?”
“We were at Eton together.” Sebastian remembered Sir Peter Prescott as an ebullient, good-natured boy with ruddy cheeks and a ready laugh that hid a quiet streak of mule-headed obstinacy. Aloud, he said, “At exactly what time did Reverend Earnshaw reach London with news of the discovery in the crypt?”
“Reverend Earnshaw arrived shortly after five. But as he was closeted with the Bishop in private, the details of his conversation with the Bishop were unknown to us.” The Chaplain’s thin nose quivered with indignation at what he obviously considered a personal slight. “Even when the Bishop ordered his carriage for later that evening, he remained uncharacteristically secretive as to the exact nature of his errand.”
Sebastian frowned. “When did Earnshaw leave?”
“Some twenty minutes after his arrival.”
“Yet the Bishop himself didn’t set out for Tanfield Hill until—what? Seven?” Tanfield Hill lay an hour’s drive to the west of London. “Why the delay?”
The Chaplain sniffed. “Again, the Bishop did not take me into his confidence. I do know he had an important appointment scheduled for six. Presumably, he was reluctant to cancel it.”
There was a simple opening cut into the wall beside the hearth. Going to stand in the doorway, Sebastian saw that it led to a small bedchamber, unexpectedly plain, almost Spartan, the bed narrow and hard. He said, “It seems a strange thing for Earnshaw to have done, to involve the Bishop of London, personally, in the discovery of a decades-old murder in a rural parish church.”
The Chaplain cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, the Bishop provided us with little information before his departure. Only that there was an incident in Tanfield Hill requiring his attention, and that he might not return before midnight.”
“He didn’t mention the murder?”
“No.”
Sebastian cast one last glance around the rooms, then turned toward the stairs, the Chaplain following at a noticeable distance. As they reached the first floor, Sebastian said, “How long have you served as Prescott’s chaplain?”
“Four years now.”
“So you knew him well.”
The Chaplain gave a slight bow. “Quite well, yes.”
“Did he have many enemies?”
Sebastian expected a quick, automatic denial. Instead, the Chaplain said, “The Bishop was not a man to back away from taking an unpopular stance. Unfortunately, such men do make enemies. Many enemies.”
“What kind of unpopular stances are we talking about?”
“Catholic emancipation. The need for child labor laws. Slavery ...”
“Prescott was an abolitionist?”
“It was his principal cause. The Bishop of London is responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Colonies, and Bishop Prescott took that aspect of his duties very seriously. As far as he was concerned, seeing the Slave Trade Act passed a few years ago was only the beginning. He was determined to get a Slavery Abolition Act through Parliament.”
“That’s definitely a good way to make enemies,” said Sebastian. Some very powerful men in England had fortunes sunk in the West Indies; the loss of the islands’ slave labor would ruin them. “Ever hear anyone wish the Bishop harm?”
“You mean, threaten him?” The Chaplain paused at the base of the staircase, his brow furrowing as if he were in thought. But he only shook his head and said, “No. I don’t think so.”
Sebastian studied the cleric’s lean, acerbic face. The man was a terrible liar. “I’d be interested to see a list of the Bishop’s appointments for the past several weeks.”
The Chaplain sniffed. “I will check with the Archbishop. If he has no objection, I’ll direct the diary secretary to make you a copy of the Bishop’s schedule.” He nodded to a hovering footman to open the front door. “You’re actually the second person today to ask for that information.”
“Oh? Who was the first?” said Sebastian, pausing at the top of the front steps to look back. “One of the Bow Street magistrates?”

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