When Gods Die (34 page)

“Oh, my lord,” gushed the woman, sinking to her knees. “Our Amelia’s a good girl—truly she is. She only did what she was told, like a proper servant, when—”

Sebastian cut her off. “Is she here now?”

“No, my lord. She’s—”

“Get her.”

A crowd of stair-stepped children filled the open doorway behind the woman. She twisted around, her gaze singling out a thin boy of perhaps eleven or twelve. Normally, a lad of that age would be off earning money to help his family. That he was here now suggested that the boy, like his sister, must have worked at the Norfolk Arms. Last night’s fire would be hard on this family.

“Nathan,” said the woman. “Go. And be quick.”

Sebastian watched the boy dash off, then turned back to the woman. “I would like to come in and sit down.”

Mrs. Brennan stumbled to her feet, her thin chest jerking with each rapid breath. “Yes. Of course, my lord. Please, come in.”

The house was neat and tidy, the dirt floor swept, the walls scrubbed clean. There were two rooms, one above the other, with a steep set of steps along one wall leading up to the second floor, where the children doubtless slept. It was a luxury for a family to have two rooms. In some parts of London families slept twenty and more to a room.

Shoving the baby into the arms of a girl of about seven, Amelia’s mother showed Sebastian to a settle beside the empty hearth. Fronted by a crude trestle table with benches, the hearth took up most of the back wall. A box bed stood in the far corner, where in the dim light Sebastian could make out the huddled shape of a man lying on one side so that he faced the wall.

“He hurt his legs some months back,” said the woman, following Sebastian’s gaze. “His legs and his head. He hasna been able to work since. He cain’t even walk.”

Which explained the rotting eave and broken hinge on what had once been a well-tended cottage, Sebastian thought. Without its major wage earner, this was a family sliding toward the edge of disaster. Through the open door at the rear, Sebastian could see a small yard with a washhouse and a big copper kettle steaming over a brassier. According to the man at the Norfolk Arms, Amelia’s mother worked as a laundress. When she brought him a pot of ale, Sebastian’s gaze fell on her cracked, raw hands. A woman could scrub clothes until her hands bled, and still she wouldn’t be able to earn enough to feed a family of ten.

“Our Amelia’s a good girl, truly she is,” Mrs. Brennan said again, her red hands twisting in the cloth of her apron. “She was only doin’ what she was told.”

“Which was?” Sebastian cradled the ale pot in his hands, but he was careful not to taste it. Not after what had happened to Guinevere Anglessey in this neighborhood.

The click of a woman’s pattens on the muddy cobbles outside brought Mrs. Brennan around, her face pinched and anxious. Amelia paused on the threshold of the open door, her hands gripping either side of the frame, her pale eyes widening. At the sight of Sebastian, she whirled to run, then let out a soft cry when Andrew, one of the strapping footmen Sebastian had brought with him, stepped forward to grasp her by the arms.

“There, there now, miss,” said Andrew. “I believe his lordship was wishing to speak with you.”

Chapter 59

“A
melia, please,” said Mrs. Brennan. She reached out to loop an arm around the neck of one of the younger children and pull him closer to her, as if she might somehow protect him from what was about to happen.
“Please.”

Amelia’s pale gray eyes met her mother’s darker, troubled gaze. She hesitated, then bent to unstrap her pattens. When she straightened, her face was carefully wiped clean of all expression.

She came to slide onto the bench on the far side of the table. Four of the younger children crowded around her, their faces solemn as they stared at Sebastian. The girl with the baby hung back against the far wall, but her gaze, like her siblings’, was fixed on Sebastian. Only Amelia refused to look at him, her gaze on the table before her.

“I want you to tell me precisely what happened at the Norfolk Arms last Wednesday,” he said to her. “I already know about the murder. All I need you to do is confirm the details.”

She brought up both hands to smooth her lank hair away from the sides of her face. Her expression might be calm, but her hands were shaking. She sucked in a deep breath, her teeth working her lower lip. “I didn’t know nothin’ about it till it was all over.” She glanced up at him once, quickly, then away. “I swear I didn’t. We was busy that afternoon and I was workin’ the common room. Then Mr. Carter, he comes to me and says he wants me to help him buy a dress for…for the lady.”

Sebastian waited. A quiver of revulsion bordering on horror passed over the girl’s face. “He wanted me to go with him to make sure he bought the right size. He said she was tall, like me. But he made me look at her, so I’d be sure.”

“You went with him to Long Acre?”

She nodded. “That green gown, I told him it was too small, but he was that set on buying it. He said it was just the thing for—” She broke off.

“For a lady to wear to the Brighton Pavilion?” Sebastian finished for her.

Her head bowed until he could see the crooked white line of the part in her hair, her hands clutched together on the worn tabletop. “He said it’d fit, that her ladyship weren’t such a strappin’ wench as me.”

“Only you were right, weren’t you? It was too small. Did they make you wash her ladyship’s body and dress her, as well?”

Amelia’s gaze flew to her mother. Mrs. Brennan pressed her lips together, then gave a barely perceptible nod of her head.

Amelia sucked in another shaky breath. “Mum does most of the laying out round here. While Mr. Carter and I was gone, he had Mum brought in to see to the lady.”

Sebastian glanced at the woman who stood beside the empty hearth, her thin shoulders hunched, her hands clutching her elbows close to her sides. “Did he tell you what they intended to do with the body?” Sebastian asked.

It was Amelia who answered. “No. But we heard them talkin’. They was at the other end of the room, arguing, while Mum and I got the lady dressed and finished cleanin’ up the mess.”

“The mess?”

“In the room where she died.”

“And where was that?”

The girl’s forehead puckered with confusion, as if she’d expected him to know this, since he knew so much else. “The best upstairs parlor.”

Sebastian set aside the untouched pot of ale and pushed to his feet. “Tell me about the necklace,” he said. “The silver necklace with the bluestone disk. Was her ladyship wearing it when you first saw her?”

Again, that furtive exchange of glances between mother and daughter. “No. It was on the floor, underneath her,” said Amelia. “Mum found it when she was cleanin’ her up. The clasp was bent a bit, but I was able to straighten it out enough so’s we could get it back on her.”

“And then what did you do?”

Amelia swallowed. “We rolled the lady up inside a length of canvas, and Mr. Carter and me carried her down the back steps and out into the alley. They had a cart waitin’.”

“What kind of a cart?”

Amelia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Just a cart, like the ironmongers use. It was empty ’cept for some canvas bags filled with ice, and a big chest.”

“A chest?”

“That’s right. One o’ them fancy Chinese chests, with black lacquer work all covered with paintings of dragons and trees picked out in yellow and red.”

Sebastian gave a wry smile. He remembered noticing the chest when he’d looked around the Yellow Cabinet in the Pavilion. He’d seen the chest, and hadn’t given it a second thought. The Prince was always ordering cartfuls of oddities and trifles for the Pavilion. No one would question or even remember the delivery of yet another Chinese lacquered wood chest, while the ice…

The ice could very well have come from the inn’s own cellars. It wasn’t so uncommon these days. The extra cold would have delayed the onset of rigor mortis enough for Guinevere’s killers to haul her body down to Brighton in the cart, then stuff her into the chest and carry her into the Pavilion.

Yet all those hours in the cart had left their mark in the pattern of lividity Paul Gibson had identified so accurately on Guinevere’s body, just as the passing of the hours had left their own signs, signs that could be read by those who knew how to interpret them. But whoever had killed Guinevere Anglessey and conspired to implicate the Prince Regent in her murder hadn’t known about those signs, hadn’t known that their victim’s very body would betray them.

“Who else came to the inn that afternoon?” Sebastian asked aloud. “Do you remember?”

Amelia shook her head, her face confused as if she couldn’t quite understand where he was going with the question. “The usual crowd. The common room was full.”

“I’m not talking about the common room. I’m interested in anyone who might have gone upstairs.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Like I said, we was busy.”

“You didn’t see a young gentleman? A handsome gentleman with dark eyes and light brown hair?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t see nobody!”

The girl was becoming agitated, her back held tight, her eyes wide. Sebastian eased up on her. “Several nights ago, some men unloaded a cargo into the inn’s cellars. One of them was a gentleman, a thin man with longish blond hair. Do you know who he was?”

“No.”

Sebastian pressed his hands flat on the tabletop and leaned into them, his arms straight. “The woman whose murder you helped to conceal was a marchioness. The Marchioness of Anglessey. Did you know that?”

Amelia looked up at him, her chest rising and falling with her quick breathing. “But we didn’t do nothin’!” She scrambled up from the bench and backed away from him. “We only did what we was told.”

“It’s enough to get you hanged. You and your mother both.” Sebastian’s gaze swept the huddled, silent children. “And then what will become of them?”

The woman beside the empty hearth let out a sharp cry. Sebastian didn’t even glance her way.

Amelia covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes squeezing shut. Then her hand slipped away and her eyes opened slowly. “I’ve seen him around the inn a few times,” she said, meeting Sebastian’s compelling gaze. “But I don’t know his name. I swear to God I don’t. He usually comes with his lordship.”

“His lordship?”

“They was both there that day. I thought you knew. He’s the one brought the cart.”

Sebastian searched her face, looking for signs of deceit. “You’re certain this other man was a lord?”

Her head nodded vigorously up and down. “A tall gentleman, with red hair. Lord…I can’t remember it exactly. It’s like that stone they use. You know the one? They use it for all the grand buildings.”

“Portland?”

“Yes. That’s it. Lord Portland.”

Chapter 60

I
ntent on intercepting the Home Secretary before he left Whitehall for the Regent’s fete, Sebastian directed his coachman toward Westminster.

The shadows were only just beginning to lengthen toward evening; the Regent’s first guests wouldn’t be arriving for hours. But the streets were already packed with crowds surging toward Carlton House in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the exiled French royal family and two thousand noblemen and -women arriving at what was being called the grandest, most extravagant sit-down dinner in the history of the European monarchy. By the time Sebastian’s carriage had passed Temple Bar and swung onto the Strand, the horses were barely moving. They sidled nervously in their traces, the lightly sprung coach rocked from side to side by the jostling crowd.

Sebastian threw open the door. “Get the carriage out of this,” he shouted to his coachman. “I’ll make better time on foot.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Leaving the carriage awash in a sea of ragged humanity, Sebastian threaded his way through a crowd that grew increasingly surly as he neared Somerset House. “They say they’s gonna let us in tomorrow to look at the place,” yelled one man. “Them nobs, they get to eat and drink their fill. All we getta do is look.”

“Hear, hear,” murmured a score of men near him.

Sebastian pushed on, aware of the sullen looks being cast his way. He found himself regretting the exquisitely cut coat of fine blue cloth, the skintight leather breeches and shining top boots that unmistakably marked him as a gentleman. Prinny had planned this fete as a grand celebration of the inauguration of his Regency. But it occurred to Sebastian as he looked into the sweating, bitter faces around him that the Prince had misjudged his populace. People were angry, resentful. Tomorrow, the Prince would again leave London for Brighton. What better time, thought Sebastian, to stage a coup?

Someone up ahead began to sing,
“Not a fatter fish than he/Flounders round the polar sea….”

An ugly chorus of jeers swelled through the crowd. A dozen more voices took up the ditty,
“See his blubber and his gills/What a world of drink he swills….”

“Oy, who ye think yer shovin’ there?” growled a voice behind Sebastian.

Sebastian threw a glance over his shoulder. A dark-haired man with a craggy face, lips peeled back and jaw set in determination, was pushing his way through the crowd, his gaze fixed on Sebastian.

The mob surged, hemming in Sebastian. Craggy Face lunged, his right hand fisted around a dagger. Sebastian tried to feint to the left, but the crowd was too close. The searing edge of the blade slid across his ribs, slicing through coat, waistcoat, and shirt to nick the flesh beneath.

“Every fish of generous kind,”
sang the throng,
“scuds aside or shrinks behind….”

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, bringing the edge of his hand chopping down on the man’s wrist. “You’ve ruined another of my coats!”

Craggy Face yelped. His fist reflexively opened to drop the knife into a scuffle of rough-booted feet.

“But about his presence keep,”
roared the crowd,
“all the monsters of the deep….”

The man grabbed for Sebastian’s arm. Cupping his left hand over his right fist, Sebastian drove his elbow back into Craggy Face’s stomach. The man’s eyes flared wide, the breath gusting out of his pursed lips as he doubled over. He stumbled back, careening into a carpenter’s apprentice in a paper cap.