C Harris: Where Shadows Dance

“No, no, Mr. Trevithick, let me thank you ,ʺ she said, cutting him off. “What a wonderful experience! And do let me know when the tracks are repaired so that I may have another ride around your amazing circus.”

“You can’t be serious,” whispered Sebastian as they pushed their way through the crowds rushing forward to gawk at the steaming, hissing engine.

“But I am.” She drew up just inside the palisade’s gate, her gaze scanning the crowd for her abigail. “Where is that woman of mine?”

Sebastian spied the harried, pale-faced maid threading her way toward them. He said, “I’ll let you know the details once I’ve spoken to the Archbishop.”

Miss Jarvis nodded, her gaze on the abigail.

He found himself studying the woman beside him. She had a streak of soot across her cheek; a lock of soft brown hair had escaped from beneath her hat. The combination made her look both less formidable and considerably more likeable.

“You won’t regret this,” he said suddenly.

She brought up a hand to shove the stray lock of hair back up under her hat with a brisk motion. “It was always my intention to never marry. To be forced to do so, now, seems somehow a defeat.”

He reached out to wipe the smudge of soot from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Yet you also told me that your one regret was that you would never have children.”

An uncharacteristic rush of color tinged her cheeks, and she tightened her grip on her parasol. “Yes, well ... We have already remedied that, have we not?”

“Oh, Miss ,” exclaimed the abigail, rushing up to them. “What a frightful thing! You could have been killed!”

Miss Jarvis turned toward her maid. “Nonsense, Marie. I am quite all right.” She nodded to Sebastian with what struck him as a regal inclination of her head. “My Lord Devlin.”

He tipped his hat. “Miss Jarvis.”

He stood at the gate, his gaze following her across the square. He was still watching her when Tom drew up the curricle beside him.

“What did you discover?” Sebastian asked, leaping up to take the reins.

Tom scrambled back to his perch. “Yer Sir ’Yde Foley takes’is nuncheon at a public house on the corner o’ Downing Street. The Cat and Bagpipe.”

Ancient and low ceilinged, its atmosphere permeated with the wood smoke and spilled ale of centuries, the Cat and Bagpipe had once echoed with the shouts and bawdy songs of medieval pilgrims to the nearby shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Its current patrons were considerably more sedate, being drawn largely from the government offices occupying the warren of old houses fronting Downing Street and St. James’s Park.

Pushing his way through the early afternoon crowd of clerks and MPs, Sebastian found Sir Hyde Foley eating a plate of sliced boiled beef at an age-darkened oak table near the pub’s vast stone hearth. A slim man with pale skin and dark hair, he watched Sebastian’s progress across the hazy room with narrowed eyes.

“Let me tell you right off,” he said as Sebastian drew up beside his table, “that if you are here as your father’s emissary—”

“I am not.” Without waiting for an invitation, Sebastian drew out the opposite chair and sat. “I’m told Mr. Alexander Ross worked for you.”

Foley cut a slice of beef. “He did. Why do you ask?”

Sebastian studied the other man’s thin, sharp-boned face. “You don’t find the sudden death of a healthy young man at the Foreign Office cause for concern?”

Foley chewed slowly and swallowed. “Mr. Ross died of a defective heart.”

Sebastian caught the eye of the plump, middle-aged barmaid and held up two fingers. “Mr. Alexander Ross died from a stiletto thrust to the base of his skull.”

Foley hesitated with his fork raised halfway to his mouth. “How do you know this?”

“That, I am not at liberty to say.”

“Indeed. So I am simply to take your word for it?”

Sebastian waited while the barmaid set two foaming tankards on the battered tabletop between them. Then he said, “When exactly did you last see Mr. Ross?”

Foley frowned as if with thought. “He died ... when? Last Sunday?”

“Either early Sunday morning or sometime Saturday night.”

Foley shrugged. “Then I suppose I must have seem him that Saturday, at the Foreign Office. Why?”

Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of his ale. “What precisely were Mr. Ross’s duties with the Foreign Office?”

“He dealt with foreign nationals.”

Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that anything beyond that is none of your damned business.”

Sebastian smiled and took another sip of ale. “What was your opinion of him?”

“Ross?” Foley shrugged. “He was a good man. A very good man. We were sorry to lose him. Too many young men in his situation would have treated his position in the Foreign Office with negligent indifference. Not Ross.”

“‘In his situation?’ What does that mean, precisely?”

“Only that his brother, Sir Gareth Ross, is both childless and half-paralyzed from a carriage accident. As the heir presumptive, Alexander Ross would doubtless have inherited—had he lived.”

“Sir Gareth’s fortune is considerable?”

“Considerable? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But comfortable, definitely comfortable. The family is an old one, while the estate—Charlbury Priory—is both ancient and widely admired.”

“Ross was how old? Twenty-five? Thirty?”

“Six-and-twenty, I believe. He’d been with the Foreign Office since coming down from Cambridge.”

“Always in London?”

Foley carved another slice of beef. “With the exception of a two-year stint at our embassy in St. Petersburg, yes.”

“He was in Russia?”

“That’s right.”

“By which I can assume that some of the ‘foreign nationals’ he dealt with here in London were Russian?”

Foley raised his own tankard to his lips, his gaze meeting Sebastian’s over the rim. “You may assume anything you like.”

Sebastian leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed at his chest, and smiled. “I’m told Ross was expecting a visitor Saturday night. You wouldn’t by any chance know who that was?”

Foley shook his head. “Sorry. No.”

“Do you know if he had any financial difficulties? A mistress? Gambling debts, perhaps?”

“Hardly. We’re pretty careful about that sort of thing.”

“Know of anyone who might have wanted him dead?”

Foley set down his fork with a clatter. “You can’t be serious about all this?”

Sebastian ignored the question. “No enemies?”

Foley held his gaze. “None that I am aware of, no.”

“Any recent quarrels?”

Foley was silent for a moment.

“What?” prompted Sebastian.

The Undersecretary drained the last of his pint and gave a soft laugh.

Sebastian said, “So he did have an argument. With whom?”

Sir Hyde Foley reached for his hat, his chair grating across the old stone-flagged floor as he pushed to his feet. “Good day, my lord.”

Quickly paying off his tab, Sebastian reached the flagway in time to see Foley turn to stride up Pall Mall, away from his offices in Downing Street.

Tom was waiting nearby.

“Get down and follow him,” said Sebastian, leaping into the curricle to take the reins. “I want to know where he goes.”

Paul Gibson spent most of the morning dissecting Alexander Ross’s chest cavity. He found no evidence of any heart disease or other natural disability. He was so engrossed in his task that he barely managed to grab time before his scheduled lecture at St. Thomas’s to study the Bills of Mortality for London and Westminster.