C Harris: Where Shadows Dance

“You were never supposed to meet him at Cribb’s Parlour that night. Instead, he was waiting for you at his lodgings—at around eight, not midnight—and you found him very much at home and alive. He invited you in, perhaps even offered his old friend a glass of wine. After all, he’d just learned from Ezekiel Kincaid that the United States had declared war on Britain and he was doubtless concerned about what effect this new development would have on Russia’s chances of cementing an active alliance with Britain. Ross liked Russia; he had good memories of his time there and he wanted to see British troops deployed to help stop Napoléon from reaching Moscow. He had tried but failed to get in contact with Foley, so it makes sense he’d be anxious to discuss this latest development with his old friend.” Sebastian paused. “He didn’t expect his old friend to thrust a stiletto blade into the base of his skull.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Chernishav, turning to toss a portmanteau into the back of the cart.

Sebastian said, “I suppose it was an act of desperation, a spur-of-the-moment decision to kill Ross before he had a chance to pass his information on to his superiors at the Foreign Office. The ironic thing is, I’m not convinced Sir Hyde Foley wouldn’t have ordered Ross to keep the information to himself, even if Ross had lived long enough to report to him. But you had no way of knowing that, and I suppose it was a risk you felt you couldn’t afford to take. So when your good friend turned his back on you—perhaps to pour you another drink?—you quietly slipped your stiletto from your walking stick and drove it into the base of his skull. Then you stripped the bloody clothes from your good friend’s body, placed him in bed to make it look as if he had died naturally, and carried the bloodstained clothing away with you. You figured you could trust Jasper Cox to guard the secret for his own reasons, but you weren’t so sure about Ezekiel Kincaid. So you tracked him to the Bow and Ox in Rotherhithe and sent him a note purportedly from Jasper Cox, asking that he come to the St. Helena tea gardens—”

“This is preposterous!”

“Where you waylaid him and killed him, too. Probably also unnecessary, under the circumstances, but you’re nothing if not thorough. You drove his body to Bethnal Green wrapped in a tarp on the floor of your curricle and dumped him in a ditch. Then you had Ross’s bloodstained clothing cleaned and, after Sir Gareth Ross had returned to his home in Oxfordshire, you slipped the items back into his cupboards. Nice attention to detail, by the way. The only thing that confused me for a while was the intruder I encountered in Ross’s room. Then I realized he was probably sent to make certain Ross hadn’t left any written record of what he’d learned from Kincaid.”

Chernishav had given up all pretense of loading the cart. “An interesting theory,” he said. “Except of course it is only that—a theory, with no proof. You’re grasping, Devlin. And why? Madame Champagne is dead. Let it all end with her.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Taking the copy of the French War Minister’s dispatches from Ross’s rooms was a mistake. So was dumping Kincaid’s body in Bethnal Green. It was dark that night, but not that dark. You were seen.”

The Russian’s nostrils flared on a quickly indrawn breath. “This is nothing more than a pitiful attempt to disrupt relations between our two countries by unjustly accusing me of this barbarous crime. Yet even if it were true—which it is not—you forget that I am a member of my country’s diplomatic posting. According the Diplomatic Privileges Act of 1708, your law can’t touch me. I have diplomatic immunity.” He reached for a bulky portmanteau, his fist tightening around the handles as he straightened. “When the Staryy Dub sails in the morning, I will be on it.”

His gaze on the silver-headed walking stick tucked under the Russian’s arm, Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “Your third mistake was in trying to distract me by kidnapping Miss Hero Jarvis. No one has immunity from Jarvis ... or me.”

Chernishav swung the leather portmanteau at Sebastian’s head.

Sebastian threw up his arms and caught the heavy blow with a block, staggering as the impact reverberated through his body. He saw the flash of the Russian’s boot heel aimed at his groin and leapt backward, crashing into the pile of bandboxes and trunks. He stumbled and went down.

The Russian tossed the portmanteau at him and turned and fled into the gathering gloom.

“Hell and the devil confound it,” swore Sebastian, bandboxes tumbling around him as he struggled to his feet.

He could hear the clatter of boot heels on cobbles as the Russian darted up the passage that ran along the side of the Adington Buildings. Sebastian pelted after him into a damp, narrow alley that erupted onto a deserted wharf littered with coiled hemp and piles of crates and a cluster of white gulls that rose up, screeching, as Chernishav raced across the weathered planks.

This was a part of Westminster where the stately streets surrounding the Houses of Parliament and the abbey degenerated rapidly into a warren of age-blackened houses. Distilleries and blacksmiths’ forges and scrap ironmongers’ shops opened onto coal yards and a long string of wharfs where barges from the counties upriver unloaded everything from hay to stone and timber. Now, in the rapidly descending darkness, the waterfront stood empty, the barges riding at low tide and battened down against a storm that sent streaks of lightning flickering over the roiling horizon.

With Sebastian some thirty feet behind him, Chernishav sprinted across an open stretch of planking to where the looming high walls of a riverside brewery rose, dark, soot-streaked brick against a rapidly darkening sky. The heavy, pungent smell of fermentation and hops mingled with the scent of tar and the smells coming off the water. Rows of casks turned on their sides and stored in towering stacks three and four high threw dark shadows across the yard. Chernishav ducked between the rows of casks, and a sudden stillness settled over the deserted waterfront.

The Russian had stopped.

Sebastian drew up sharply as thunder pealed slowly across the water. Then his preternatural hearing caught the quiet hiss of a well-oiled blade being pulled from its sheath.

He crept forward, his senses alert to the least flicker of movement, the betraying whisper of an indrawn breath. He had just reached the end of the first row of barrels when he heard the faint scrape of wood against wood. He leapt back and felt a gust of wind as the wall of casks beside him began to move.

They crashed down around him in a rolling, clattering, bouncing cascade of shattering staves and ringing iron. A dog began to bark hysterically, its chain rattling; a watchman shouted in the distance.

Sebastian caught the patter of footsteps running away fast. He clambered over the piles of shifting, broken barrels in time to see the Colonel disappear around the edge of the brewery.

Bloody hell.

He chased the Russian through a stone wharf, with its towering walls of roughly quarried granite and sandstone, and into the yard of a pottery factory. A flash of lightning lit up the waterfront, limning a long rambling building of rough brick with a low-slung tile roof and towering twin chimneys. Sebastian drew up abruptly at the base of a high, platformlike shelf that stretched along the end of the building and was stacked with massive earthenware pots.

The Colonel had stopped running again.

Sebastian heard a soft thump followed by a faint clink , as of unglazed, fired clay tapping against its neighbor. Looking up, he grasped the edge of the wide shelf above his head and carefully levered his weight onto the high platform. The rain was falling harder now, pocking the heaving dark surface of the river and pinging noisily against the stacks of pots and urns, pipes and culverts. Moving quietly, he swung up onto the overhanging roof, then rose to a crouch.