Who Buries the Dead

Book 10: Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

Genres: Historical Fiction; Mystery; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

The grisly murder of a West Indies slave owner and the reappearance of a dangerous enemy from Sebastian St. Cyr’s past combine to put C. S. Harris’s “troubled but compelling antihero” (Booklist) to the ultimate test in this taut, thrilling mystery.
London, 1813. The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription King Charles, 1648 suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenth-century Stuart monarch. Equally troubling, the victim’s kinship to the current Home Secretary draws the notice of Sebastian’s powerful father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who will exploit any means to pursue his own clandestine ends.
Working in concert with his fiercely independent wife, Hero, Sebastian finds his inquiries taking him from the wretched back alleys of Fish Street Hill to the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair as he amasses a list of suspects who range from an eccentric Chelsea curiosity collector to the brother of an unassuming but brilliantly observant spinster named Jane Austen.
But as one brutal murder follows another, it is the connection between the victims and ruthless former army officer Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, that dramatically raises the stakes. Once, Oliphant nearly destroyed Sebastian in a horrific wartime act of carnage and betrayal. Now the vindictive former colonel might well pose a threat not only to Sebastian but to everything—and everyone—Sebastian holds most dear.

Release date: March 3, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

The Sebastian St. Cyr Series

Chapter 1

Sunday, 21 March 1813

T hey called it Bloody Bridge.

It lay at the end of a dark, winding lane, far beyond the comforting flicker of the oil lamps of Sloane Square, beyond the last of the tumbledown cottages at the edge of a vast stretch of fields that showed only black in the moonless night. Narrow and hemmed in on both sides by high walls, the bridge was built of brick, worn and crumbling with age and slippery with moss where the elms edging the rivulet cast a deep, cold shade.

Cian O’Neal tried to avoid this place, even in daylight. It had been Molly’s idea to come here, for on the far side of the bridge lay a deserted barn with a warm, soft hayloft that beckoned to young lovers in need. But now as the wind tossed the elms along the creek and brought the distant, mournful howl of a dog, Cian felt the hard, pulsing urgency that had driven him here begin to ebb.

“Maybe this ain’t such a good idea, Molly,” he said, his step lagging. “The barn, I mean.”

She swung to face him, dark eyes shiny in a plump, merry face. “What’s the matter, Cian?” She pressed her warm, yielding body against his, her voice husky. “You havin’ second thoughts?”

“No. It’s just . . .”

The wind gusted up stronger, banging a shutter somewhere in the night, and he jerked.

To his shame, he saw enlightenment dawn on her face, and she gave a trill of laughter. “You’re scared.”

“No, I ain’t,” he said, even though they both knew it for a lie. He was a big lad, eighteen next month and strong and hale. But at the moment, he felt like a wee tyke frightened by old Irish tales of the Dullahan.

She caught his hand in both of hers and backed down the lane ahead of him, pulling him toward the bridge. “Come on, then,” she said. “How ’bout if I cross first?”

It had rained earlier in the evening, a brief but heavy downpour that left the newly budding leaves of the trees dripping moisture and the lane slippery with mud. He felt an icy tickle at the base of his neck and tried to think about the sweet warmth of the hayloft and the way Molly’s soft, eager body would feel beneath his.

They were close enough to the bridge now that Cian could see it quite clearly, its single arch a deeper black against the roiling darkness of the sky. But something wasn’t quite right, and he felt his scalp prickle, his breath catch, as the silhouette of a man’s head loomed before them.

“What is it?” Molly asked, the laughter draining from her face as she whirled around and Cian started to scream.

Chapter 2

Monday, 22 March, the hours before dawn

T he child lay curled on his side in a cradle near the hearth, his tiny pink lips parted with the slow, even breath of sleep. He had one tightly clenched fist tucked up beneath his chin, and in the firelight the translucent flesh of his closed eyelids looked so delicate and fragile that it terrified his father, who stood watching him. Someday this infant would be Viscount Devlin and then, in time, the Earl of Hendon. But now he was simply the Honorable Simon St. Cyr, barely seven weeks old and oblivious to the fact that he had no more real right to any of those titles than his father, Sebastian St. Cyr, the current Viscount Devlin.

Devlin rested the heel of one outthrust palm against the mantelpiece. His breath came harsh and ragged, and sweat sheened his naked flesh despite the air’s chill. He’d been driven from his sleep by memories he generally chose not to revisit during daylight. But he could not stop the images that came to him in the quiet hours of darkness, visions of dancing flames, of a woman’s tortured body writhing in helpless agony, of soft brown hair fluttering against the waxen flesh of a dead child’s cheek.

The past never leaves us, he thought. We carry it with us through our lives, a ghostly burden of bittersweet nostalgia threaded with guilt and regret that wearies the soul and whispers to us in the darkest hours of the night. Only the youngest children are truly innocent, for their consciences are still untroubled, their haunted days yet to come.

He shuddered and bent to throw more coal on the fire, moving carefully so as not to wake the sleeping babe or his mother.

When Sebastian was a child, it had been the custom for the infants of the aristocracy and the gentry to be farmed out to wet nurses, often not returning to their own families until they were two years of age. But it was becoming more common now for even duchesses to choose to nurse their own offspring, and Hero, the child’s mother and Sebastian’s wife of eight months, had been adamantly against hiring a wet nurse.

His gaze shifted to the blue silk–hung bed where she slept, her rich dark hair spilling across the pillow. And he felt it again, that nameless wash of apprehension for this woman and this child that he dismissed as lingering wisps from his dream and fear born of a guilt that could never be assuaged.

A clatter of hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels over granite paving stones carried clearly in the stillness of the night. Sebastian raised his head, his body tensing as the carriage jerked to a halt and a man’s quick, heavy tread ran up his front steps. He heard the distant peal of his bell, then a gruff, questioning shout from his majordomo, Morey.

“Message for Lord Devlin,” answered the unknown visitor, his voice strained by a sense of urgency and what sounded very much like horror. “From Sir Henry, of Bow Street!”

Sebastian threw on his dressing gown and slipped quietly from the room.

Chapter 3

T he head had been positioned near the end of one of the low brick walls lining the old bridge, its sightless face turned as if to watch anyone unwary enough to approach. A man’s head, it had thick, graying dark hair, heavy eyebrows, and a long, prominent nose.

“Nasty business, this,” said the burly constable, the pine torch in his hand hissing and spitting as he held it aloft in the blustery wind.

Sir Henry Lovejoy, the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, watched the golden light dance over the pale features of that frozen, staring face and felt his stomach give an uncomfortable lurch.

The night was unusually cold and starless, the flaring torches of the constables fanning out along the banks of the small stream filling the air with the scent of burning pitch. They’d need to make a more thorough search of the area in the morning, of course. But this was a start.

Even in daylight, this rutted, muddy lane was seldom traveled, for beyond the winding rivulet spanned by the narrow, single-arched bridge lay a vast open area of market and nursery gardens known as the Five Fields. All were shrouded now in an eerie blackness so complete as to seem impenetrable.

Hunching his shoulders against the cold, Lovejoy moved to where the rest of the unfortunate gentleman’s strong, solid body lay sprawled in the lane’s grassy verge, his once neatly arranged linen cravat disordered and stained dark, the raw, hacked flesh of his neck too gruesome to bear close inspection. He’d been Lovejoy’s age, in his fifties. That should not have bothered Lovejoy, but for some reason he didn’t care to dwell on, it did. He drew a quick breath fouled with a heavy, coppery stench and groped for his handkerchief. “You’re certain this is—was—Mr. Stanley Preston?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the constable. A stout young man with bulging eyes, he towered over Lovejoy, who was both short and slight. “Molly—the barmaid from the Rose and Crown—recognized the, er, head, sir. And I found his calling cards in his pocket.”

Lovejoy pressed the folded handkerchief to his lips. Under any circumstances, such a gruesome murder would be cause for concern. But when the victim was cousin to Lord Sidmouth, a former prime minister who now served as Home Secretary, the ramifications had the potential to be serious indeed. The local magistrate had immediately called in Bow Street and then withdrawn from the investigation entirely.

The sound of an approaching carriage, driven fast, jerked Lovejoy’s attention from the blood-drenched corpse at their feet. He watched as a sleek curricle drawn by a pair of fine chestnuts swung off Sloane Street to run along the north side of the square and enter the shadowy lane leading to the bridge.

The driver was a gentleman, tall and lean, wearing a caped coat and elegant beaver hat. At the sight of Lovejoy, he drew up, and the half-grown groom, or tiger, who clung to a perch at the rear of the carriage leapt down to run to the horses’ heads. “Best walk them, Tom,” said Devlin, jumping lightly from the curricle’s high seat. “That’s a nasty wind.”

“Aye, gov’nor,” said the boy.

“My lord,” said Lovejoy, moving thankfully to meet him. “My apologies for calling you out in the middle of such a wretched night. But I fear this case is worrisome. Most worrisome.”

“Sir Henry,” said Devlin. Then his gaze shifted beyond Lovejoy, to the severed head perched at the end of the bridge, and he let out a harsh breath. “Good God.”

The Viscount was some two score and five years younger than Lovejoy and stood at least a foot taller, with hair nearly as dark as a Gypsy’s and strange amber eyes that gleamed a feral yellow in the torchlight as the two men turned to walk toward the stream. “Have you learned anything yet?” he asked.

“Nothing, really, beyond the victim’s identity.”

They had first met when Devlin was wanted for murder and Lovejoy had been determined to bring him in to trial. In the two years since that time, what had begun as respect had deepened into an unlikely friendship. In Devlin, Lovejoy had found an unexpected ally with a fierce passion for justice, a brilliant mind, and a rare genius for solving murders. But the young Viscount also possessed something no Bow Street magistrate or constable could ever hope to acquire: an innate understanding and knowledge of the rarified world of gentlemen’s clubs and Society balls frequented by the likes of the man whose head now decorated this deserted bridge on the edge of Hans Town and Chelsea.

“Were you acquainted with Mr. Preston, my lord?” Lovejoy asked as Devlin paused to study the dead man’s bloodless features. The wind shifted the graying hair in a way that, for one horrible moment, made the man seem almost alive.

“Only slightly.”

Preston’s fine beaver hat lay upside down at the base of the pier, and Devlin bent to pick it up, his face thoughtful as he felt the crown and brim.

Lovejoy said, “I fear Bow Street is going to come under tremendous pressure from both the Palace and Westminster to solve this. Quickly.”

Devlin’s gaze shifted to meet his. They both understood the ways in which that kind of pressure could lead to the hasty arrest and conviction of an innocent man. “You’re asking for my help?”

“I am, yes, my lord.”

Lovejoy waited anxiously for a response. But the Viscount simply stared off across the darkened fields, his face giving nothing away.

Lovejoy knew Devlin’s own near-fatal encounter with the clumsy workings of the British legal system had much to do with his dedication to seeking justice for the victims of murder. But the magistrate had always suspected there was more to it than that. Something had happened to the Viscount—some dark but unknown incident in the past that had driven him to resign his commission in the Army and embark on a path of self-destruction from which he had only recently begun to recover.

The wind gusted up stronger, thrashing the limbs of the elms along the creek and sending a torn playbill scuttling across the bridge’s worn brick paving. Devlin said, “The crown and upper brim of Preston’s hat are wet, but not the underside. And since the hair on his head looks dry too, I’d say he was out walking in the rain but was killed after it let up. What time was that?”

“About half past ten,” said Lovejoy, and let go a sigh of relief.

Chapter 4

S ebastian turned to where Preston’s body lay on its back, arms flung out to the sides, one leg slightly bent, the wet grass dark with his blood. He’d seen many such sights—and worse—in the six years he’d spent in the Army. But he’d never become inured to carnage. He hesitated for the briefest moment, then hunkered down beside the headless corpse.

“Who found him?” he asked, resting a forearm on one knee.

“A barmaid and stableboy from the Rose and Crown,” said Lovejoy. “Just after eleven. It was the barmaid—Molly Watson, I believe she’s called—who alerted the local magistrate.”

Sebastian twisted around to study the deserted lane. “What was she doing here at that time of night?”

“I haven’t actually spoken to her. Sir Thomas—the local magistrate—told her she could go home before I arrived. But from what I understand, she couldn’t seem to come up with a coherent explanation.” Lovejoy’s voice tightened with disapproval. “Sir Thomas says he suspects their destination was the hayloft of that barn over there.”

Sebastian had to duck his head to hide a smile. A staunch reformist, Lovejoy lived by a strict personal moral code and was therefore frequently shocked by the activities of those whose approach to life was considerably freer than his own.

“Was his greatcoat open like this when he was found?” asked Sebastian. He could see Preston’s pocket watch lying on the ground beside his hip, still fastened to its gold chain.

“One of the constables said something about searching the man’s pockets for his cards. I suspect he must have opened the greatcoat in the process.”

Sebastian jerked off one glove and reached out to touch the blood-soaked waistcoat. His hand came away wet and sticky. “He’s still faintly warm,” he said, wiping his hand on his handkerchief. “Do you know when he was last seen?”

“According to his staff, he went out around nine. His house isn’t far from here—just off Hans Place. I’m told he was a widower with two grown children—a son in Jamaica and an unmarried daughter. Unfortunately, the daughter spent the evening with friends and has no knowledge of her father’s plans for the night.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the darkened, grassy banks of the nearby stream. “I wonder what the devil he was doing here. Somehow I find it doubtful he was looking for a warm hayloft.”

“I shouldn’t think so, no,” said Sir Henry, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “You’ll be sending the body to Gibson?” he asked. A one-legged Irish surgeon with a dangerous opium addiction, Paul Gibson could read the secrets of a dead body better than anyone else in England.

Sir Henry nodded. “I doubt he’ll be able to tell us anything beyond the obvious, but I suppose we ought to have him take a look.”

Sebastian brought his gaze, again, to the head on the bridge, the puddle of blood beneath it congealed in the cold. “Why cut off his head?” he said, half to himself. “Why display it on the bridge?” It had been the practice, once, to mount the heads of traitors on spikes set atop London Bridge. But that barbarity had been abandoned nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.

“As a warning, perhaps?” suggested Sir Henry.

“To whom?”

The magistrate shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“It takes a powerful hatred—or rage—to drive most people to mutilate the body of another human being.”

“Rage, or madness,” said Sir Henry.

“True.”

Sebastian went to study the ground near the bridge’s old brick footings. He carried no torch, but then, he didn’t need one, for there was an animal-like acuity to his eyesight and hearing that enabled him to see great distances and in the dark, and to distinguish sounds he’d come to realize were inaudible to most of his fellow men.

“What is it?” asked Sir Henry as Sebastian slid down to the water’s edge and bent to pick up an object perhaps a foot and a half in length and three or four inches wide, but very thin.

“It appears to be an old metal strap of some sort,” said Sebastian, turning it over in his hands. “Probably lead. It’s been freshly cut at both ends, and there’s an inscription. It says—” He broke off.

“What? What does it say?”

He looked up. “It says, ‘King Charles, 1648.’”

“Merciful heavens,” whispered Sir Henry.

Every English schoolboy knew the story of King Charles I, grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots. Put on trial by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan cohorts, he was beheaded on 30 January 1649. Only, because the old-style calendar reckoned the new year as beginning on 25 March rather than the first of January, chroniclers of the time recorded the execution date as 1648.

“Perhaps it’s unrelated to the murder,” said Sir Henry. “Who knows how long it’s been here?”

“The top surface is dry, so it must have been dropped since the rain let up.”

“But . . . what could a man like Stanley Preston possibly have to do with Charles I?”

“Aside from sharing the manner of his death, you mean?” said Sebastian.

The magistrate tightened his lips in a way that whitened the flesh beside his suddenly pinched nostrils. “There is that.”

A church bell began to toll somewhere in the distance, then another. The mist was beginning to creep up from the river, cold and clammy; Sebastian watched as Sir Henry stared off down the lane to where the oil lamps of Sloane Square now showed as only a murky glow.

“It’s frightening to think that the man who did this is out there right now,” said the magistrate. “Living amongst us.”

And he could do it again.

Neither Sir Henry nor Sebastian said it. But the words were there, carried on the cold, wild wind.

Chapter 5

T he smell of freshly spilled blood had spooked the horses so that Sebastian had his hands full as he turned the curricle toward home.

“Is that really an ’ead on the bridge?” Tom asked as they swung into Sloane Street. “A man’s ’ead?”

“It is.”

The tiger let out his breath in a rush of ghoulish excitement. “Gor.”

Small and sharp faced, the boy had been with Sebastian for more than two years now. Not even Tom knew his exact age or his last name. He’d been living alone on the streets when he’d tried to pick Sebastian’s pocket—and ended up saving Sebastian’s life.

More than once.

Sebastian said, “It belongs—or I suppose I should say belonged—to a Mr. Stanley Preston.”

Tom must have caught the inflection in Sebastian’s voice, because he said, “I take it ye didn’t much care for the cove?”

“I barely knew him, actually. Although I must admit I have difficulties with men whose wealth comes from sugar plantations in the West Indies.”

“Because they grow sugar?”

“Because their plantations are worked not by tenants, but by slaves—mostly Africans, although they also use transported Irish and Scottish rebels.”

They bowled along in silence until they’d passed the Hyde Park Turnpike and were weaving their way through the quiet, rain-drenched streets of Mayfair. Then Tom said suddenly, “If ye didn’t like ’im, then why ye care that somebody offed ’im?”

“Because even those who own West Indies plantations don’t deserve to be brutally murdered. Apart from which, I find the idea of sharing my city with someone who goes around cutting off the heads of his enemies somewhat disconcerting.”

“Discon-what?”

“Disconcerting. It makes me feel . . . uncomfortable.”

“I reckon it was a Frenchman,” said Tom, who had a profound suspicion of foreigners in general and the French in particular. “They’re always cuttin’ off folks’ ’eads.”

“An interesting theory that certainly merits consideration.” Sebastian drew up before the front steps of his Brook Street town house. The oil lamps mounted on either side of the door cast a soft pool of golden light across the wet paving, but the house itself was dark and quiet, its inhabitants still sleeping. “Take care of the horses, then go to bed and stay there. It’s nearly dawn.”

Tom scrambled forward to take the reins as Sebastian dropped lightly to the pavement. “Ye gonna ’ave a lie-in?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t reckon I will,” said Tom, his chin jutting forward mulishly.

Sebastian grunted. The lad’s grasp of the concept of obedience was still rather shaky.

He watched Tom drive off toward the mews, then turned to enter the house. Moving quietly, he stripped off his clothes in the dressing room and slipped into bed beside Hero. He didn’t want to wake her. But the need to feel her warm, vital body against his was too strong. He carefully slid one arm around her waist and pressed his chest against the long line of her back.

Her hand came up to rest on his, and in the darkness he saw her lips curve into a soft smile as she shifted so she could look at him over her shoulder. “You were a long time,” she said. “Was it as bad as Sir Henry’s message led you to expect?”

“Worse.” He buried his face in the dark, fragrant fall of her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

“Can you sleep?”

“In a while.”

“I can help,” she said huskily, her hand sliding low over his naked hip, his breath catching in his throat as she turned in his arms and covered his mouth with hers.

He came downstairs the next morning to find Hero in the entryway wearing a hunter green pelisse and velvet hat with three plums. She was pulling on a pair of soft kid gloves but paused when she looked up and saw him.

“Well, good morning,” she said, her eyes gently smiling at him. “I didn’t expect to see you up this early.”

“It’s not early.”

She shifted to adjust her hat in the looking glass over the console. “It is when you’ve been up most of the night.”

She was an extraordinarily tall woman, nearly as tall as Sebastian, with hair of a rich medium brown and fine gray eyes that sparkled with an intelligence of almost frightening intensity. She had the kind of looks more often described as handsome than pretty, with a strong chin, a wide mouth, and an aquiline nose she had inherited from her father, Lord Jarvis, a distant cousin of the mad old King George and the real power behind the Prince of Wales’s fragile regency. Once, Jarvis had tried to have Sebastian killed—and undoubtedly still would, if he found it expedient.

“Another interview?” he asked, watching her tilt her hat just so. “What is it this time? Dustmen? Chimney sweeps? Flower girls?”

“Costermongers.”

“Ah.”

She was writing a series of articles on London’s working poor that she intended to eventually gather together into a book. It was a project that disgusted her father, both because he considered such activities unsuitable for a female, and because the entire undertaking smacked of the kind of radicalism he abhorred. But then, Hero had never allowed her father’s expectations or prejudices to constrain her.

She said, “Stanley Preston’s murder is in all the morning papers. Was he truly decapitated?”

“He was.”

She pivoted slowly to face him again, her eyes wide and still.

He said, “Do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

“Of course.” Slipping off her pelisse, she followed him into the library, where he’d left the ancient metal strap on his desk.

“I found this not far from Preston’s body.” He handed her the length of lead and gave her a brief description of the scene at the bridge.

“‘King Charles, 1648,’” she read, then looked up at him. “I don’t understand. What is it?”

“I could be wrong, but I’ve seen strips of metal like this before, wrapped around old coffins.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting this came from the coffin of Charles I?”

“I don’t know. But it’s telling the inscription reads, ‘King Charles’ rather than ‘Charles I,’ and 1648 rather than 1649. Where exactly is Charles I buried? I’ve realized I have no idea.”

“No one does. After the execution, there was talk of interring him in Westminster Abbey. But Cromwell refused to allow it, so the King’s men took the body away at night and buried it in secret. There are conflicting reports about what they did with him. I’ve heard speculation he may be somewhere in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. But no one knows for certain.” She frowned. “What were Preston’s politics?”

“I’d be surprised if he nourished any secret nostalgia for the Stuarts, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She ran her fingertips over the scrolled engraving, her features composed but thoughtful. “Do you mind if I show it to Jarvis?” she asked, reaching for her pelisse again.

“He’s not going to like my involving you in another murder investigation.”

“Don’t worry,” she said as Sebastian took the pelisse from her hands to help her with it. “I seriously doubt he could dislike you more than he already does.”

He laughed at that. Then he turned her in his arms, his hands lingering on her shoulders, his laughter stilling.

“What?” she asked, watching him.

“Just that . . . whoever killed Stanley Preston was either driven by a rage bordering on madness, or he is mad. And of the two, I’m not certain which makes him more dangerous.”

“Madness is always frightening, I suppose because it is so incomprehensible. Yet I think I’d fear more the man who is brutal but sane, and therefore capable of shrewd, cold calculation.”

“Because he’s clever?”

“That, and because he’s less likely to make mistakes.”

Chapter 6

S ebastian ordered his curricle brought round and came out of the house half an hour later to find Tom walking the grays up and down Brook Street. It had rained again sometime in the early morning hours, leaving the pavement wet, with dull, heavy clouds that pressed down on the city’s crowded rooftops and soaring chimneys. The horses’ breath showed white in the cold.

“If you fall asleep and tumble off your perch,” said Sebastian, taking the reins, “I won’t stop and pick you up.”

But Tom simply laughed and scrambled back to his place.

They headed south, curling around the edge of Hyde Park, where faint wisps of mist still drifted through the trees and the distant clumps of shrubs were no more than blurred shadows.

There’d been a time not so long ago when Knightsbridge and Hans Town were sleepy, pleasant villages lying several miles beyond the sprawl of London. Now, neat terrace houses of three and five stories—plus basements and attics—lined spacious squares and a broad thoroughfare called Sloane Street that stretched from Knightsbridge down toward Chelsea and the Thames. This was a district favored by prosperous barristers, physicians, and bankers, with a scattering of respectable lodging houses and workshops and a few more modest but comfortable homes for tradesmen.

Reluctant to disturb Preston’s grieving daughter so early in the day, Sebastian went instead to the Rose and Crown. A well-tended inn built of brick in the last years of the eighteenth century, it had a freshly whitewashed arch leading to a bustling yard and a public room that smelled of b