C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

“Had he any enemies that you know of?”

“Rhys? Good heavens, no. You knew him. He could sometimes be quick to judge, but he was never the kind of man who collects enemies. What are you suggesting? Surely you don’t think someone could have. . that someone might have murdered him?”

“I don’t think it, no. But I wanted to be certain.”

They paused again as Emma squatted down to launch her boat in a new, larger puddle that ran along the edge of the path.

Watching her, Annie said quietly, “She remembers Rhys now, but she won’t for long. Soon he’ll just be someone she hears her mother talking about, someone no more real to her than the tortoise and hare in that book of fables you gave her.”

“She might remember him-or at least the warm glow of his love for her, even if it’s only because she grows up hearing you speak of it.”

“But she’ll never actually know him , just as he’ll never have the joy of watching her grow up into the woman she will become. And when I think of it, it’s almost more than I can bear.”

He wanted to say, Then don’t think about it. Dwelling on it now will only twist the pain of his death that much deeper. But he kept the thought to himself because he knew the truth was that no newly bereaved woman could help thinking these things.

As if echoing his thoughts, she said, “How dreadfully maudlin and female I must sound.”

“You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, Annie. It’s all right to give yourself time to grieve.”

She shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed hard. “You know what one of the worst parts of all this is? I find myself thinking that in some ways I lost Rhys-the Rhys I fell in love with-three years ago, when he sailed for that damned, diseased-ridden island. He was never the same afterward. Only, then I feel so small and selfish and contemptible that I can’t stand myself.”

“Annie, I understand.”

She pulled a face that reminded him so much of the girl she’d once been that he found himself smiling. “Listen to me,” she said. “More maudlin pap. And I haven’t even thanked you for coming all the way out here again to see me.”

“I’ll come again tomorrow, if I may. Perhaps next time Emma will let me read her a story.”

“I think she’d like that.”

He was aware of mother and child watching him as he let himself out of the garden and climbed up to his curricle’s high seat. But when he looked back, it was to see Annie hunkering down beside her daughter, the hem of her black mourning gown trailing unheeded in the puddle as she gave the small red boat a powerful push that sent it skimming across the water before an ever-expanding wake.

By the time Sebastian finally tracked Samuel Perlman to Tattersall’s Subscription Rooms, he had learned much about Daniel Eisler’s flamboyant nephew.

Despite Francillon’s use of the term “lad,” Perlman was actually forty-two years old. A patron of the most exclusive establishments in Bond Street and Savile Row, he lived with his new bride in a lavish mansion on the north side of Hanover Square. The source of his wealth was a vast mercantile empire he had inherited from his own father some ten years before and then immediately turned over to competent managers, preferring to devote himself to a life of pleasure and excess. As far as Sebastian could discover, he did not gamble, he kept no mistress, and he was not in debt.

Perlman was looking over the points of a delicate white-stockinged bay mare in Tattersall’s yard when Sebastian walked up to him. The rain might have eased off, but the colonnaded open market still glistened with scattered puddles through which men and horseflesh splashed. For one intense moment, Perlman’s gaze met Sebastian’s over the back of the mare. Then he rolled his eyes, blew out a weary, bored sigh, and said, “Oh, God, you’ve found me.”

“Were you hiding from me?” Sebastian asked pleasantly, propping one shoulder against a nearby column and crossing his arms at his chest.

Perlman huffed an incredulous laugh and returned his attention to the mare. “Hiding? What a fatiguing-not to mention decidedly plebian-activity. Hardly.”

He was tall and gangly, with curly dark hair framing a balding pate, and a sadly receding chin-a defect unfortunately accentuated by the excessively high shirt points and extravagantly tied cravat he affected. His coat was made skintight and nipped in at the waist; his pantaloons were of the palest yellow, his waistcoat of figured silk. Daniel Eisler’s extravagant nephew obviously had pretensions to dandyism.

Sebastian smiled. “If you know I’ve been looking for you, then I assume you also know why.”

“I gather you’ve taken an interest in my uncle’s murder. Although to be frank, I can’t imagine why, given that the brute responsible is already locked up fast in Newgate awaiting execution.”

“You mean awaiting trial.”

Perlman waived one long-fingered, exquisitely gloved hand through the air. “Technicality. The man is clearly guilty. I myself found him standing over my poor uncle’s lifeless body.”

“So I’m told. I was wondering: Why were you there?”

Perlman froze. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why did you choose to visit your uncle that night?”

“Why not? He is-or, I suppose one should say, he was-my only near relative.”

“And he disliked you excessively.”

Perlman gave up inspecting the horse and turned toward him. “I don’t know if I’d go that far, although I won’t deny we weren’t close. Still, one must do one’s duty to one’s elderly relatives, you know.”

“Especially when one has expectations from those elderly relatives.”

“What a decidedly vulgar consideration.”

“The truth frequently is rather vulgar, I’m afraid.” Sebastian reached out to run his hand down the mare’s white-blazed nose. “I’m told your uncle threatened to disinherit you.”

Perlman gave a tight-lipped smile. “Only every other day. He swore if I didn’t mend what he liked to call my ‘extravagant ways’ that he’d leave everything he owned to charity. But it was never going to happen.”

“So certain?”

“My uncle didn’t believe in charity. He’d burn down his house and everything in it before he’d give one penny to the poor and needy.” He drawled the words “poor and needy” the way another man might say “flotsam and jetsam.”

“He could always have decided to leave his fortune to someone else. Someone he liked. . better.”

“He didn’t like anyone better. Yes, my uncle despised me, but then, he despised everyone. The difference is, I am his sister’s son. And when all was said and done, that mattered to him. Not much, mind you. I doubt he’d have walked across the street to save my life. But he believed in keeping money in the family. So if you’re trying to insinuate that I might have had reason to kill my uncle, I’m afraid you’re sadly wide of the mark-in addition to being damned insulting.”

“I would imagine Russell Yates finds your accusation of murder rather insulting, as well.”

Perlman’s nostrils flared, his fashionably pale face now infused with angry color. Every affectation of boredom and insouciance had disappeared, leaving him trembling with fury and something else, something that looked very much like fear. “I walked into my uncle’s house and found Yates standing over the body. How the devil are you imagining I might have been the one who shot him?”

“It’s fairly simple, actually. You shoot him. Yates knocks at the door. You panic, run out the back, and then nip around to come charging in the front and accuse Yates of what you yourself have done.”