C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

Had Hugh Wyeth and Anne Preston attempted an elopement in the past? Sebastian wondered. If so, this was the first he’d heard of it. He kept his voice sounding bored. “This is your hint?”

“Oh, no; I assumed you already knew about the young captain. But are you aware, I wonder, that there are interesting links between the captain and Dr. Sterling?” Oliphant’s face creased into an indulgent smile. “Do you know where Captain Wyeth’s regiment was stationed before their transfer to Portugal?” He leaned forward and whispered loudly. “It was Jamaica.”

When Sebastian made no response, Oliphant’s lips pursed into a simulated moue of concern. “I’m afraid your obsession with the past is not only unhealthy, but is also negatively impacting your goal of catching this killer.” He raised one eyebrow in mocking inquiry. “At least, I assume that is your goal. Is it not?”

With a petulant frown, Lady Oliphant set aside her ice cup and shook out the skirts of her elegant satin ball gown. “Come away, Sinclair; do. I want to dance.”

Oliphant took her hand in his and rested it on the crook of his bent arm. “Of course, my dear.” He nodded casually to Sebastian. “Devlin.”

Sebastian watched them thread their way through the growing crowd of guests filtering into the supper room from the ballroom above. He watched as Lady Oliphant, a smile now plastered on her face, curtsied low to a dowager countess while Oliphant laughed heartily at a few pleasantries exchanged with her son, a cabinet minister.

The conviction that Oliphant was hiding something remained. But all the old doubts came crowding back as Sebastian acknowledged the possibility that maybe-just maybe-he was allowing the events of the past to color his interpretation of the present.

And because of it, men were still dying.

Captain Hugh Wyeth was throwing darts by himself in the Shepherd’s Rest public room, pitching one after the other at a battered board hanging against a pockmarked wall. He hardly seemed to be focusing or even looking, and yet his aim was true every time.

“You’re good,” said Sebastian, coming to lean against a nearby wall.

“I’ve had a lot of practice lately. There’s not much else to do.”

“When do you rejoin your regiment?”

Wyeth let fly another dart. “According to the doctors, not as soon as I had hoped.”

“Who were you with?”

“The Twentieth Hussars.”

“The Twentieth Hussars used to be stationed in Jamaica.”

Wyeth looked over at him, puzzled. “We were, yes. Why?”

“Did you ever meet Dr. Sterling there?”

“Not to my knowledge. Was he in Jamaica?”

“As it happens, yes.”

The captain sent his last dart flying at the target. “You look like you’re dressed for a ball.”

“I am.”

Wyeth grunted and went to retrieve his tightly clustered darts. He no longer wore his sling, but Sebastian noticed he held his right arm stiffly against his side.

Sebastian said, “You told me you didn’t know Sinclair Oliphant. Yet he seems to know you.”

Wyeth looked around in surprise. “What?”

“He’s the one who told me you were stationed in Jamaica-presumably to shift suspicion away from himself and onto you.”

“Did it work?”

When Sebastian returned no answer, the captain gave a soft, humorless laugh and said, “I suppose the fact that you’re here tells me all I need to know.” He walked back to the throwing line, then paused, weighing his first dart. “Why would I kill some old doctor? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know. But then, I can’t figure out why anyone would want to murder him-unless it was because he knew something worrisome about whoever killed Stanley Preston.”

Wyeth threw his dart and practically missed the target entirely.

Sebastian said, “Ever hear of a man named Rowan Toop?”

“No. Why? Is he dead too?”

Sebastian nodded. “They found him this morning, at Windsor.”

“Someone cut off his head?”

“No, actually; he drowned.”

“You think I did that?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know what might have taken Stanley Preston to Bucket Lane last Sunday, would you?”

“Where?”

“Bucket Lane. Off Fish Street Hill, near London Bridge.”

“No. Don’t tell me someone’s died there too?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Wyeth threw the rest of his darts at the target, one after the other in rapid succession. This time, they were spread all over the round wooden board in a chaotic pattern.

Sebastian said, “Last Sunday at Lady Farningham’s musical evening, you and Miss Preston quarreled. That’s why you left early, isn’t it? In fact, Miss Preston herself left not long after you did.”

“So?”

“Why did you quarrel?”

“Does it matter?”

“You tell me. Does it?”

The captain twitched one shoulder and said nothing.

Sebastian studied the younger man’s angry, tightly held features. “Sinclair Oliphant told me something else. He says that six years ago, you tried to elope with Miss Preston. Only, her father and brother caught up with you and brought her back.”

Sebastian watched the blood drain from the captain’s face. “How the devil did he know that?”

“Stanley Preston made himself Oliphant’s enemy, and Oliphant is the kind of man who makes it his business to know his enemies’ most dangerous secrets. So it’s true?”

Wyeth swallowed hard. “Yes. Look-I’m not proud of what we did, but. . we were both very young and desperate, and. . we didn’t understand the gravity of what we were doing.”

“It certainly does much to explain Preston’s animosity toward you.”

Wyeth tightened his jaw and said nothing.

“Miss Preston is of age now. Yet most women are reluctant to marry without their father’s blessing.” Particularly when there’s a potential inheritance involved, Sebastian thought. “Would she have married you, do you think, if her father continued to withhold his consent?”

“Stanley Preston was never going to change his mind, believe me.”

“So would she have married you anyway?”

Wyeth swung to face him, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “You think I would have done that to her? Married her without his blessing? Preston would never have forgiven her. He swore he’d cut her off without a penny and never speak to her again, and he meant it. Yet you think I would have married her anyway? Taken her away from a life of comfort to make her follow the drum and live in poverty? My God; what kind of man do you take me for?”

“You were certainly ready to elope with her six years ago.”

“I was eighteen! I told you, I’m not proud of what happened six years ago. But I know better now.”

“She wouldn’t have been completely penniless,” said Sebastian. “She’d still have had her mother’s portion.”

“Her mother’s portion amounts to even less than my annual pay. Enough to help buy a few promotions, perhaps, and ease the worst hardships that come with life in the Army. But without her inheritance from Preston, I could never have given her anything like the kind of life she’s always known.”

“Is that so important?”

“You know it is. I’ve seen what poverty can do to a gently reared woman. My grandfather was never as wealthy as Preston, but my mother still grew up surrounded by servants, with a carriage and her own pony and summers spent at the seaside. With five daughters and an estate entailed to the male line, my grandfather couldn’t give her much of a dowry, but she was pretty enough that he hoped she’d attract suitors anyway. And she did-the grandest being a man worth ten thousand pounds a year.”