C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

But now it was happening all over again.

Tom shook his head. “So why ye goin’ there?”

“Because if I don’t, Juba and her son will die.”

Lit only by the occasional glimmer of a tallow candle showing through a grimy window, Bucket Lane lay dark and wet and deserted beneath the stormy sky.

“What we gonna do?” whispered Tom as they slipped down the lane to draw up in a shadowy doorway.

Centuries old, Juba’s house had only two stories and was built so that the upper floor jutted out over the lower. It contained just two rooms per floor, with a different family living in each room. The front room of the upper story was dark. But the flickering, smoky light of a tallow candle showed through the thin, ragged curtain of the ground-floor room.

“I want you to go inside, slowly count to ten, and then knock on the first door to your left. Just be certain to flatten yourself against the wall before you reach over to knock, and jerk your hand back quickly. I wouldn’t put it past Knightly to shoot through the door rather than open it.”

“And then what?”

“And then I want you to run into the street and keep running, no matter what happens.”

“But. . gov’nor!”

“You heard me.”

The boy hung his head. “Aye, gov’nor.”

Sebastian watched the tiger let himself in the house’s battered street door, and began to count.

One, two. .

A single large shadow seated at the trestle table near the door showed through the worn cloth of the curtain. Knightly? Probably. But if so, then where were Juba and Banjo?

Three, four. .

He told himself the woman and boy couldn’t already be dead. Surely Knightly would leave them alive until he had Sebastian?

Five, six. .

Leaping up, Sebastian caught hold of one of the beams supporting the cantilevered upper story where it jutted out above the window.

Seven, eight. .

Kicking his legs, he began to swing back and forth, gathering momentum.

Nine, ten.

He heard the tiger’s knock, heard the sound of a bench being pushed back, saw the shadow rise to its feet. Then he kicked back hard with his legs and let go of the beam as he swung forward again toward the house.

He crashed through the window feetfirst in a shower of broken glass and shattered framing. Coming down hard on his feet, he lost his balance and fell to his knees. He saw Juba crouched on the pallet near the hearth, her son clutched in her arms. Saw Knightly spin toward him, the barrel of a flintlock pistol wavering as he brought up his other hand to steady it.

Sebastian threw himself sideways, jerked his own pistol free as he fell, and fired.

In the confined space of the small room, the pistol’s report was deafening, an explosion of smoke and flame and blood. Juba screamed. Knightly staggered back, slammed into the table, and crumpled slowly to the floor.

The door from the hall burst open and Tom catapulted into the room.

“Bloody hell; I told you to run,” swore Sebastian.

Tom drew up short, his eyes wide, his breath coming hard and fast. Swiping one sleeve across his nose, he edged closer to Knightly’s now still body. “Gor. Ye plugged ’im right through the eye, ye did. Is ’e dead?”

Sebastian pushed to his feet, brushing broken glass from his clothes as he walked over to stare down at the Baronet’s slack face. “Yes.”

He bent to pick up the dead man’s pistol, then went to hunker down beside Juba and Banjo, still pressed up against the corner by the hearth. “You both all right?”

She nodded, her face slack, her pupils wide with terror. “I didn’t want to send you that note. But he said he’d kill Banjo if I didn’t.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who inadvertently put you at risk.”

She gazed beyond him, to where Sir Galen Knightly lay sprawled with one carefully manicured hand flung out so that it lay curled against the worn paving stones of her house.

She said, “Is he really my half brother?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

Wednesday, 31 March

“None of this can be allowed to get out, naturally,” said Jarvis, his hands clasped behind his back as he stood before the drawing room’s bowed front window. Jarvis seldom came to Brook Street, but he had arrived that morning shortly after dawn.

“Of course not,” said Sebastian. “Wouldn’t do to have the lower orders start thinking us their equals in depravity and violence.”

Jarvis glanced over at him. “I take it you are being facetious.” He reached for his snuffbox. “The morning papers will carry the shocking news that Sir Galen Knightly has fallen victim to footpads whilst venturing unwisely into one of the more insalubrious areas of the city. A Bethnal Green navvy who killed and dismembered his wife several days ago has confessed to also murdering Stanley Preston and Dr. Douglas Sterling. Unfortunately, he has since succumbed to some sort of fatal seizure, so there will be no trial.”

“Unfortunate for him, certainly. But no great loss to society, from the sounds of things.”

“More levity,” said Jarvis, lifting a pinch of snuff to one nostril.

Sebastian smiled. “Any luck yet finding King Charles’s head?”

Jarvis inhaled so sharply he sneezed.

“Bless you,” said Sebastian as his father-in-law sneezed again and reached for his handkerchief. “When is the Regent’s formal opening of the vault to be?”

Jarvis glared at him over the folds of his handkerchief. “Tomorrow.”

“Not much time left.”

“I take it you’ve no idea what’s happened to it?”

“Sorry.”

Jarvis tucked away his handkerchief. “I assume my daughter and grandson are in the nursery?”

“Yes.”

“Hero tells me you encourage her in this barbaric nonsense of refusing to hire a wet nurse.”

“I support her, yes. But the decision is hers and hers alone.”

“What drivel.” Jarvis turned toward the door. Then he paused to look back and say, “Oh, by the way; Lord Oliphant has inexplicably disappeared. Speculation of an accident or foul play will likely appear in tomorrow’s papers, but I’m told the body shouldn’t surface for another four or five days, depending upon the weather. At that point it will be concluded he must have slipped and fallen into the river during Tuesday night’s storm. And if he had succeeded in harming either my daughter or my grandson, you would be dead by now as well.”

The two men’s gazes met and held.

Then Jarvis nodded and walked out of the room.

After the previous night’s storm, the day had dawned clear and sunny, with the streets washed clean by the rain.

Driving himself in his curricle, Sebastian curved along the southern edge of Hyde Park toward Knightsbridge and Hans Town. His first stop was Sloane Street, where he found Miss Jane Austen walking in the gardens of Cadogan Square. She wore an old-fashioned round bonnet and her sensible brown pelisse, and her cheeks were ruddy with the cool, fresh air.

“Lord Devlin,” she said when she saw him coming toward her. “You’ve read the news in this morning’s papers?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed as her intense gaze searched his face. “And none of it’s true, is it?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. But that can only mean. . The killer was Knightly ? Why?”

“Because he feared Preston and Sterling were in possession of information he was desperate to keep from becoming known.”

“And so he killed them? And cut off their heads in his rage? Who could have believed him capable of such viciousness?”