C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

“Do you think he would have carried through on his threat?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. He was always flying off the handle and saying wild things, only to later calm down and reconsider.”

“And Douglas Sterling? Would he have followed his old friend’s lead and also removed his funds from your bank?”

Austen looked genuinely surprised. “Sterling? Of course not. Why would he?”

“Because of the friendship between them?”

Austen shook his head. “They knew each other, of course-had known each other for years. But I’d characterize them more as acquaintances than what you might call friends. Apart from the difference in their ages, Sterling was a physician from a relatively humble background, whereas Preston had grand ambitions of taking his place in Society. He was always talking about his late wife the Baron’s daughter, or his cousin the Home Secretary. Another man might have ignored the disparity in their rank and wealth. But not Preston.”

“Was Preston ill, do you think?” Sebastian asked, guiding his horses around an empty farm wagon.

“Not to my knowledge. But then, as I said, Preston and I weren’t exactly great friends either.”

“From the sound of things, he wasn’t intimate with many people.”

“In my experience, people who view others as social or financial assets rarely do accumulate close friends.”

“True,” said Sebastian. “You wouldn’t by chance happen to know what took Preston to Fish Street Hill last Sunday, would you?”

“Fish Street Hill? Good heavens; no.”

“Ever know Preston to keep a mistress?”

Austen’s eyes widened at the question. “No. He was genuinely, madly in love with his wife and never got over her death.”

“What about when he was a very young man? Say thirty or thirty-five years ago, when he was in Jamaica?”

Rather than answer immediately, Austen studied Sebastian from beneath half-lowered lids. “What are you suggesting?”

“Any possibility Preston could have had a child by one of the slave women on his plantations?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Is it so improbable?”

“Let’s just say that if you’d known Preston, you’d understand just how improbable it is. His belief in the superiority of the English was intense and unshakable. I mean, the man could never forgive my wife for once having married a Frenchman . And while I wasn’t acquainted with him thirty years ago, the mind frankly boggles at the thought of him raping one of his slave women-if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Those who rail the loudest against ‘racial impurity’ are often those who feel they have something to hide. Something that violates their own twisted moral code.”

Austen thought about it a moment, then blew out a long breath. “I suppose it’s possible, but. . Whatever gave you such an idea?”

“I have a very active imagination.”

Austen gave a startled laugh. “You must. I’m not convinced even my sister Jane could have come up with that one.” The banker stared off across a sunlit pasture dotted with grazing brown cows. His eyes narrowed, as if he were struggling to come to some sort of decision. Then he said, “Jane told me something the other day that might interest you, by the way.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You know that fellow who keeps a curiosity shop in Chelsea?”

“Basil Thistlewood?”

“That’s him. Well, it seems that when she arrived at Alford House to take Anne up in my carriage, Preston and Thistlewood were standing in the middle of the street, shouting at each other. She didn’t think too much of it at the time-Preston was always squabbling with someone, you know. But while she has no desire to say something that might throw suspicion on an innocent man, she’s begun to wonder if perhaps you shouldn’t know about it.”

“This happened last Sunday evening?”

“Yes; around nine,” said Austen. “That surprises you; why?”

Sebastian swung his horses in a wide loop at the crossroads and headed back toward Brompton Row. “Because Thistlewood claims he never left his coffeehouse that day at all.”

Basil Thistlewood was standing beneath the elms lining the Thames at Cheyne Walk and throwing chunks of bread to a gathering of some half a dozen ducks when Sebastian walked up to him. The spring sunlight glimmered on the wide stretch of river beside them, and the limbs of the budding trees overhead throbbed with birdsong.

The curiosity collector cast a quick, sideways glance at Sebastian, then went back to pitching bread. “Didn’t expect to see you again.”

“You should have,” said Sebastian, watching the ducks dart after the bread, their feathers iridescent in the sunlight. “When you stand in the middle of the street shouting at someone who turns up dead later that very evening, you have to expect that sooner or later someone is going to remember it.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“Does it matter?”

“S’pose not.” Thistlewood tore off another chunk of bread and pitched it at the ducks.

“Care to tell me about it?”

Thistlewood twitched one shoulder. “Not much to tell. Friend of mine’s got a shop in Knightsbridge. I was walking back from visiting him and just minding my own business when Preston comes barging out of his house and chases after me, accusing me of all sorts of outlandish stuff.”

“What sort of outlandish stuff?”

“Watching his house.”

“Were you watching his house?”

“Well, I may’ve stopped and looked at it. But I weren’t watching it. I was coming back from having a game of chess with Rory. You can check; he’ll tell you-Rory Lemar, lives over his tobacco shop in Knightsbridge. You ask him, and he’ll tell you I was there.”

“You told me you never left your coffee shop that Sunday.”

Thistlewood sniffed. “What you think? That I’m gonna step forward and volunteer the information that Preston and me had words an hour or two before he got himself killed?”

“It does rather make it look as if you have something to hide.”

“Just ’cause I hid the fact I saw him that day don’t mean I killed him!”

“Some might interpret it that way.”

The curiosity collector pressed his lips together and thrust them out in a way that made him look somewhat like a disgruntled turtle.

Sebastian said, “It was Rowan Toop who showed you the lead-wrapped bodies of the woman and child you told me about; wasn’t it?”

Thistlewood’s eyes widened. “I read about what happened to him in the papers. What are you saying? That I maybe killed him too? I didn’t.”

“But you did know him.”

“I knew him. Never bought nothin’ from him, though. I told you before-I can’t afford to pay for the things I put on display.”

“And Toop wanted to be paid?”

“He did indeed.”

“Did Toop ever sell items to Stanley Preston?”

“I can’t say for certain, but I ’spect so.” The curiosity collector shot Sebastian another one of his sideways glances. “You think whoever lopped off Preston’s head also done for Toop?”

“I think it more than likely.”

“Well, all I know is, it weren’t me. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you: I’m not a violent man.”

“Despite your fascination with swords and headsmen’s axes and executioners’ blocks?”

“You don’t find ’em fascinating?”

“In a macabre sort of way, I suppose I do. But they also repel me.”

Thistlewood tore off another piece of bread and chucked it at the ducks. “I reckon we’re all afraid of death. We know we’re gonna die, but none of us wants to.” He gave a strange, watery chuckle. “Some folks, they’ve got this notion that if they think about death, they’re inviting it closer. So they don’t want to be reminded of it in any way. But then there’s others who think that by gettin’ close to death-by staring it in the face, so to speak-we make it less scary.”