C Harris - Where Shadows Dance

“Had Alexander quarreled with someone?”

What little color had been left in Sabrina’s face now drained away. She pushed up from the seat to take a quick, agitated turn about the room. “I probably shouldn’t even speak of it, but—” She swung back to face Hero. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“No, of course not,” said Hero with earnest mendacity.

Sabrina came to sit beside her again, her voice dropping low. “He was involved with something important at the Foreign Office. Sir Hyde had him handling these massive amounts of gold. It made Alexander dreadfully anxious. Don’t misunderstand me: He was excited about it, to be involved in something so important. But, well, who wouldn’t be nervous, dealing with so much money?”

“Gold?” said Hero.

Sabrina nodded. “I don’t know if it was a bribe or a payment or what, but it was being transferred in staged allotments to an agent of some foreign country.”

“What country?”

“Alexander wouldn’t say. He shouldn’t have told me what he did, but I had . . . overheard some things. Things I wasn’t meant to hear. He felt he needed to explain.”

Hero searched the girl’s delicate, grief-pinched face and wondered what she was hiding. “How was this transfer made?”

“I don’t know exactly. All I know is that it was going on for weeks, with deliveries being made every few days.”

“When was the last transfer?”

“Friday night.” Sabrina gave a ragged sigh that shuddered her small frame. “I know because he was to go with us to my aunt’s—Lady Dorsey’s—ball that night. She’s been sponsoring my come out, you see. Only, Alexander was so late we had to leave for the ball without him. When he finally did arrive, I ... I’m afraid I wasn’t as understanding as I might have been.”

In other words, Hero thought, Sabrina had subjected her betrothed to an angry, emotional scene she would probably now regret for the rest of her life.

Aloud, Hero said, “Was that the last time you saw him?”

Sabrina dropped her gaze to her lap, where her fingers were alternately pleating and smoothing the matte black cloth of her gown. “Yes.”

The girl was a terrible liar.

Hero said, “How did Alexander get along with Sir Hyde Foley? Do you know?”

Sabrina looked up. “Sir Hyde? Why, he always had great respect for him. At least until ...”

“Until?”

Sabrina’s gaze darted away and she shook her head. “They quarreled about something recently. Alexander wouldn’t say what.”

“Was it the gold, do you think?”

She thought about it a moment, then shook her head again. “I really don’t know.”

Hero studied her averted profile. “When was this?”

“That they quarreled? Wednesday? Perhaps Thursday. I’m not—”

She broke off as a ponderous step sounded in the hall and her brother entered the room.

Jasper Cox was older than his sister by a decade or more, and little like her. Where his sister was dark, he was fair; where she was thin, he was already stout and would probably run to fat by middle age. The same small features that gave his sister such a winsome, appealing look were lost in his own full-cheeked face. Hero had never liked him; he reminded her too much of his mother.

“Cousin Hero,” he said with boisterous heartiness, advancing on her with hand outstretched. “How good of you to come.”

Sliding off the bench, Hero found her hand taken in a firm grip. “Jasper,” she said.

He glanced over at his sister. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” His lips were smiling, but his eyes were hard. “You’ve not forgotten we’re to go to Lady Dorsey’s?”

“I’ve time yet, Jasper.”

Hero cast a deliberate glance at the mantel clock and withdrew her hand from Cox’s grasp. “Goodness, look at how late it is.” She turned to plant a kiss on Sabrina’s cheek. “I’ll see myself out.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” said Jasper, as if determined to see her off the premises and prevent her from having any further conversation with his sister.

Hero wondered why.

It took Paul Gibson the better part of the day, but he managed to get most of Alexander Ross back.

Then he ran into a snag with Jumpin’ Jack Cochran.

“Cain’t be done,” said the resurrection man when Gibson met with him in the grassy fields of Green Park.

“I’m willing to pay two hundred pounds,” said Gibson, then, “Three hundred!” when the resurrection man continued shaking his head.

Jumpin’ Jack hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spit it downwind. “’Taint a matter o’ the money. I’d do it fer ye if I could, Doctor. The thing is, ye see, there was a wee young lass planted in St. George’s Mount Street burial ground the very mornin’ after we lifted yer Mr. Ross, and her grievin’ parents have set a guard on the place.”

Gibson stared at him. “Can the guard be bought, do you think?”

Jumpin’ Jack scratched the several days’ growth of beard under his chin. “Meybe. It’s not like we’re wantin’ t’ steal the tyke, after all. I’ll see what I can do and get back with ye.”

S ebastian returned to Brook Street to find a note from Gibson awaiting him.

There’s something I think you need to see, the surgeon had written.

Puzzled, Sebastian called for his curricle and headed back to Tower Hill.

By the time he reached the surgery, the sun was high in the sky, the heat intense, and the smell emanating from the small, stonewalled mortuary at the base of the yard so rank it made his eyes water.

“My God,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “How do you stand it?”

Gibson glanced up with a grim smile. “After a while, you don’t notice it so much.”

“Is there a problem with Jumpin’ Jack?”

“No, no; things are progressing nicely,” he said a bit more airily than Sebastian would have liked.

He dropped his gaze to the bloated, discolored remnant of humanity that lay facedown on the slab between them. Six years of fighting across the battlefields of Europe, and the sight of raw, ugly death still unsettled him. “So what have you found?”

“Watch.” Reaching for a probe, Gibson slid the thin metal rod into a small slit at the base of the cadaver’s skull.

“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian softly. “He and Ross were killed by the same man.”

Gibson limped from behind the table. “Not just by the same man, but on the same night. The difference is, this one was left exposed to nearly a week’s worth of sun and the rain before he was brought in.”

“So who is he?” Sebastian asked, forcing himself to take a closer look at the wreck of a face.

“Last I heard, no one knows.” He nodded to the clothing stacked neatly on a nearby bench. “Those are his clothes.”

Sebastian went to study the coat, stained now with mud and vegetation and other things he didn’t want to think about. It was a gentleman’s coat, although far from the first stare of fashion. The breeches were a trifle worn, the linen fine but serviceable. He looked up. “No identification of any kind?”

“Nothing. Probably stripped off him when the body was dumped.” Gibson rolled the body onto its back with an unpleasant plop . “As far as I can tell, he was a man in his thirties. Well formed, slightly above medium height. Good musculature. Sandy-colored hair.” He pulled back the cadaver’s lips to reveal a ghoulish grin. “This is probably his most prominent feature. Look at the size of those front teeth. They overshot his lower jaw in a way that must have been prominent.”

“That’s all we have to go on? He was a man in his thirties with blond hair and buckteeth?”