C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

The question obviously took her by surprise, because she hesitated and looked up at him again. “What’s that got t’ do with anythin’?”

“Have you ever heard of a Dullahan?”

“Course I have. Why?”

“Tell me about it.”

She dropped her voice low and waved one small, childlike hand through the air like a storyteller conjuring an image. “Keeps his own head tucked up under one arm, he does. Oh, he’s a fright to look at: little black eyes always dartin’ this way and that, with a grinnin’ mouth as wide as his skull and skin like moldy cheese. Carries a whip made from a dead man’s backbone, and when he calls your name, it’s your turn to die. Ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop him. You can try barring your gate and lockin’ your door, but they’ll just open for him, like magic.”

“He rides a horse?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes he drives a carriage.” She sniffed. “Why you wanna know about the Dullahan? He don’t like bein’ watched, you know. You try watchin’ him, and he’ll pluck out your eyes with his whip. That, or throw a bucket o’ blood on you, markin’ you as the next to die.”

“I hear there’s one thing that will scare him away.”

She gave a breathy laugh, her small eyes practically disappearing in the fat of her face as she fished beneath her shawl and came up with a bored gold coin tied around her neck by a leather thong. “Sure then, ’tis gold. Why you think the rich don’t die as often as the poor?”

“Lots of food. A warm fire. A solid roof over their heads.”

“Meybe,” she said with a sniff. “Though I still don’t see what the Dullahan’s got to do with nothin’.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” said Sebastian, and walked away, leaving her staring after him, the glass figurine held forgotten in one fist and her eyes narrowed with malevolent suspicion.

Chapter 49

T he little girl clutched the rusty tray of nuts against her thin chest. She was a tiny thing, with spindly arms and legs, a pale, wind-chapped face, and lifeless hair the same dull brown as her eyes. She told Hero her name was Sarah Devon. She was nine years old, and she’d already been selling nuts for three years.

“I didn’t start on the streets till after Papa died,” she told Hero. “He was a whitesmith, you know-sold tin and pewter. For a while, Mama tried to keep us on what she makes selling oranges, but it weren’t enough. So she took to sending me out with six ha’pennies’ worth of nuts. I’m supposed to bring back sixpence.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

The little girl’s gaze slid away. “She don’t usually beat me. Only when she’s been drinking. And she don’t drink more’n once a week. Usually.”

Hero’s sympathy for the struggling widow instantly vanished. “You always sell your nuts here, in Piccadilly?”

“Mostly, m’lady. Although sometimes I goes into the public houses. I like the taprooms; it’s warm in there.”

Hero looked up from scribbling her notes. “You sell your nuts in taverns?” She tried to keep the shock off her face, but she must not have entirely succeeded because Sarah took a hesitant step back.

“I usually only goes into the Pied Duck,” said Sarah, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “The barman used to be a friend of Papa’s, and if he’s there, he doesn’t let the men be rude to me.”

“Are the men rude?”

The little girl hung her head. “Sometimes.”

Hero’s fist clenched around her pencil so hard she heard it crack.

“Here,” she said, pressing two shillings into the little girl’s hand. “Only, don’t give it all to your mother at once or she’s liable to drink it up.”

Sarah’s fingers closed around the coins, her eyes going wide. “I thought you said you’d give me a shilling if I talked to you. So why’re you giving me two?”

Because you’re so thin and frail it breaks my heart, thought Hero. Because I don’t want you to have to worry about being beaten when you go home. Because little girls shouldn’t need to sell nuts in taverns to survive.

But all she said was, “Because you’ve been so very helpful.”

Sarah tipped her head to one side. “You really gonna write about us costers in the newspapers?”

“Yes.”

She looked thoughtful. “I don’t mind going out in the street to sell, you know. It’s better’n staying inside without a fire and with nothing to do.”

Which was, Hero decided as she walked back to her carriage with the two footmen Devlin had insisted she bring with her, a consolation of sorts.

But only if she didn’t think too much about it.

“I don’t understand why we keep comin’ ’ere,” said Tom, standing beside the chestnuts’ heads at the edge of the lane while Sebastian walked over to study the narrow, moss-covered arch of Bloody Bridge.

“Because I know I’m missing something.”

“What makes ye think it’s ’ere?”

“It may not be,” said Sebastian, which only served to make Tom look more puzzled.

Sebastian stared off across the rolling green expanse of market gardens still half-hidden by lingering wisps of the morning’s fog. “Think about this: The Friday before he is killed, Stanley Preston has an unpleasant encounter with the former governor of Jamaica. We don’t know exactly where this meeting takes place or what is said, but knowing Oliphant, I suspect it involves some nasty and rather explicit threats against Anne Preston. Whatever it is, it frightens Preston enough that the next day he tells his cousin the Home Secretary that he has given up his determination to see Oliphant ruined.”

“So that means the gov’nor didn’t have no reason to kill him no more. Right?”

“Perhaps,” said Sebastian. “Unless for some reason Preston changed his mind. At any rate, later that same day-Saturday-he charges into Priss Mulligan’s shop in Houndsditch and threatens to turn her over to the authorities, at which point she threatens to have him gutted, strangled, and gelded.”

“Does that scare him?”

“From all I know of Priss Mulligan, it should have. But even if it does, he’s obviously still feeling cantankerous because-”

“Can-what?”

“Cantankerous. It means foul tempered. Testy. Bloody-minded.”

“Oh.”

“Because he then goes storming into the Shepherd’s Rest and threatens to horsewhip the impecunious Captain Wyeth, at which point Wyeth, in turn, threatens to kill him.”

“’E was a right ornery fellow, this Preston. What’d ye call it?”

“Cantankerous,” said Sebastian, his gaze following the course of the narrow rivulet that ran under the bridge. “Now, the next morning-Sunday, the day of the murder-Preston receives a visit from Dr. Douglas Sterling. The doctor claims the visit is for medical reasons, although no one close to Preston seems to know he’s ill in any way. And after the physician leaves, Preston calls for a hackney and drives off to Bucket Lane for reasons that seem to escape everyone. He returns home several hours later and putters about with his collections until shortly before nine, when he looks out his window to see Basil Thistlewood staring at his house. Preston charges out to indulge himself in a decidedly uncouth shouting match in the street. Then, sometime after that, he leaves the house again and walks to the Monster, where he berates Henry Austen for what he sees as the Austen women’s tendency to encourage Anne’s romantic notions.”

“And then ’e comes ’ere?” said Tom.

“He does. Presumably to meet Rowan Toop, who is selling the purloined head and coffin strap of King Charles I. Preston is standing here”-Sebastian stepped onto the grassy verge beside the lane-“with his watch in his hand, undoubtedly gazing back toward Sloane Square in anticipation of Toop’s arrival, when-” Sebastian turned so that he was facing the square, and frowned.