C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

“I don’t think Lady Wilcox intends to allow herself to be denied.” Sebastian reached for his coat. “There’s a hussar captain named Hugh Wyeth staying at the Shepherd’s Rest in Knightsbridge. He was wounded in Spain last November and is still recuperating, although he could be exaggerating the lingering effects of his injuries for my benefit. He presents himself as genial, uncalculating, and even tempered; I’d be interested to know if he truly is.”

The valet smoothed the set of the coat across Sebastian’s shoulders. Calhoun was a genius at repairing the ravages that the pursuit of murderers could sometimes wreak on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But he also possessed other, considerably more unusual talents that made him especially valuable to a gentleman with Sebastian’s interests.

Amanda’s footsteps sounded in the hall.

“If he’s not,” said Calhoun, “the staff at the inn should know it. I’ll see what they have to say.”

“I’d also be interested in learning more about his movements last Sunday. But be careful,” Sebastian warned as Calhoun moved to open the door. “If Wyeth is our killer, the man is dangerous.”

A roguish gleam showed in the valet’s eyes. “He’ll never know I’ve been asking about him; never you fear.” He opened the door and bowed as Amanda swept past him. “Lady Wilcox.”

Amanda ignored him.

“Dear Amanda,” said Sebastian, reaching for his driving gloves as Calhoun quietly withdrew. “What a distinctly unfashionable hour for a social visit.”

Amanda’s nose quivered with the intensity of her dislike. “This isn’t a social visit.”

The eldest of four children born to the Countess of Hendon, Amanda was twelve years Sebastian’s senior. She’d been blessed with their mother’s slim, elegant figure and glorious golden hair. But she had inherited the Earl’s rather blunt features instead of the Countess’s famous beauty, and a lifetime of angry resentment had by now etched a permanently sour expression on her face.

“You’re at it again, I hear,” she snapped. “Dabbling in a murder investigation like some common Bow Street Runner.”

“I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘dabbling,’ exactly.”

“You know this is the beginning of Stephanie’s second season, yet you accost the Home Secretary in the middle of Countess Lieven’s ball? Countess Lieven , of all people? One might almost suspect you of deliberately attempting to ruin my daughter’s chances of securing an advantageous alliance.”

Sebastian studied his half sister’s haughty, angry face. She had never made a secret of her dislike of him, even when they were children. But it was only recently that he’d come to understand why.

Had she been born male, the title of Viscount Devlin, heir to all the Earl of Hendon’s vast estates, would have been hers. But because she was a girl, that coveted position had gone instead to Hendon’s firstborn son, Richard. After Richard’s death, Hendon’s second son, Cecil, had become Viscount Devlin. And with Cecil’s death, the mantle had passed to Sebastian-the boy child who was not even Hendon’s own son, but a by-blow produced by an illicit liaison between the Earl’s lovely Countess and some nameless, unknown lover.

“As it happens, I like Stephanie,” said Sebastian, drawing on his gloves.

“Then one can only assume you are doing this in some vicious attempt to harm me.”

The extent of his sister’s capacity for self-absorption still had the power to stun him, even after all these years. “Actually, Amanda, I am ‘doing this’ because somewhere out there, walking the same streets as you and I, is a very brutal, dangerous killer.”

“You are Viscount Devlin,” she said through gritted teeth. “However unfit you may be to occupy such an exalted station, it is nonetheless yours, and one might hope you would at least attempt to exert yourself to behave accordingly.”

He flexed his hands in the tight leather gloves, then reached for his high-crowned hat. “You could try consoling yourself with the thought that I am not being paid for my efforts, so at least our exalted name remains unsullied by the stench of trade.”

A flare of raw hatred glittered in the depths of her eyes-those blue St. Cyr eyes that were so unlike Sebastian’s own yellow ones. “I should have known better than to try to talk to you,” she said.

“Yes, you really should have.” He glanced at the mantel clock. “And now you must excuse me, Amanda. I’ve someone to meet.”

“You still intend to continue this nonsense? Despite everything I’ve said?”

“Yes.”

“You bastard.”

“Yes,” he said again, and watched her sweep from the room.

Dr. Douglas Sterling’s rooms lay on the second floor of a late-eighteenth-century brick building near the northwestern corner of Chatham Place. The address was not fashionable, but it was respectable, the street door shiny with a fresh coat of green paint, the banister of the grand staircase fragrant with beeswax, the carpet underfoot worn but not threadbare. Sebastian could hear a woman singing sweetly in the rooms overhead. But when he reached the upper corridor and rapped on Sterling’s door, the knock went unanswered.

He had already checked the physician’s favorite coffeehouse across the place, only to be told that the old man had yet to put in an appearance.

“Ain’t like him not to be here,” the coffeehouse owner had said in response to Sebastian’s inquiries. “In fact, I was about to send one of my lads over to check and see if he’s all right. He’s always here five minutes after I open, every morning. You could set your watch by him, you could.”

Sebastian knocked again at the old doctor’s door, aware of a rising sense of disquiet.

“Dr. Sterling?” he called.

An eerie, oppressive stillness hung in the air. Even the singing woman upstairs had quieted.

Sebastian tried the knob and felt it turn in his hand. Hesitating, he reached for the dagger he kept in his boot, then slowly pushed open the door.

The panel creaked inward on its hinges, revealing a room still in heavy shadow and crowded with furniture, as if the resident had moved here from more expansive quarters yet been loath to part with any of his belongings.

“Dr. Sterling?” he called again, even though the silence in the rooms was absolute, the drapes at the front windows overlooking the square still drawn tight.

He could feel his breath quickening and his pulse pounding as his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. He threaded his way through the crowded furniture toward the inner room. “Dr. Sterling?”

The old physician lay sprawled just inside the doorway to the bedroom, his back a ripped, bloody mess, his hands curled up as if he’d been reaching for something as he fell. His old-fashioned powdered wig lay near one shoulder. But his neck ended in a raw, pulpy mess of flesh and bone and sinew.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Sebastian, the gorge rising in his throat as his gaze followed a trail of blood to the bed.

Nestled amidst the pillows, Douglas Sterling’s bald head stared back at him with wide, sightless eyes.

“Damn,” said Sebastian, wiping the back of one hand across his mouth.

Damn, damn, damn.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Lovejoy, staring down at the aged physician’s bloody body.

“No,” agreed Sebastian.

Lovejoy rubbed his eyes with one thumb and forefinger and sighed. “When you spoke with him yesterday, he gave no hint of the purpose of his meeting with Stanley Preston last Sunday?”

“None. But something must have happened to frighten him-or at least make him reconsider his silence-because he sent a message last night asking to see me. Unfortunately, it was nearly midnight by the time I received it.”