C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

Hero shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you understand just how frightened of the souls of dead men Eisler was.”

“You think Abigail was deliberately feeding that fear? To torment him?”

“Yes.”

“So why kill him? Why not simply continue to torment him, if she’d chosen that as her means of revenge?”

Sebastian stared out the window at the rolling, misty undulations of Green Park, deserted now in the cold and damp. “Perhaps she learned of another victim, someone she knew and also cared about. Someone who made her decide Eisler needed to be stopped-permanently.”

“What other victim?”

But Sebastian only shook his head, his gaze on a fog-shrouded copse of oaks.

While Devlin settled down in his library with Eisler’s account books, Hero changed into a warmer carriage gown of soft pink wool and went in search of the crossing sweep named Drummer.

She found the boy working to clear a pile of fresh manure from his corner. He was reluctant to pause in his labors, but the promise of a silver coin lured him to the steps of St. Giles, where he sat with his bare hands tucked up beneath his armpits as he rocked back and forth for warmth. Hero noticed he had acquired a sturdy pair of leather boots, only gently worn by their previous owner.

“Ye want to know more about the crossin’ sweeps?” he asked, looking up at her.

“Not today. I was thinking about how you told me that you and your friends often go to the Haymarket in the evening.”

“Y-yes,” he said slowly, obviously confused by this new line of inquiry.

“Have you ever found girls for a gentleman who takes them to an old man living in a ramshackle house just off the Minories in St. Botolph-Aldgate?”

Drummer froze, his skinny little body tense, as if he were about to bolt.

“Don’t worry,” said Hero gently. “You won’t get into trouble for it. I’m trying to find a girl who was taken there last Sunday night. Do you know who she is?”

Drummer cast a quick glance around, as if to reassure himself that no one had overheard her question.

Then he nodded solemnly, his eyes wide and afraid.

Sebastian found the name he was looking for entered under the heading for June 1812.

Major Rhys Wilkinson’s debt was for five hundred pounds and had been partially repaid.

He set aside the ledger and rose to go stand with his palms resting on the windowsill, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the misty street before him. He tried to tell himself that the death of both men on the same night could be a coincidence. That Rhys was not the kind of man to commit cold-blooded murder over a debt of five hundred pounds. But he was haunted by the memory of a young girl with a dusting of cinnamon-colored freckles across her sunburned nose, who’d once shot a Spanish guerrilla point-blank in the face.

He was still standing at the window some minutes later when Hero’s stylish yellow-bodied town carriage drew up before the house. He watched her descend the carriage steps, a ragged, incredibly dirty, gape-mouthed child clasped firmly by one hand.

“We’ll have sandwiches, cakes, and hot chocolate in the library, as soon as possible,” he heard her tell Morey, her footsteps brisk as she crossed the black-and-white-marbled entry hall. The room filled with the scent of coal smoke and fresh manure and grimy boy.

“This is Drummer,” she said, releasing the child’s hand so that she could loosen the ribbons of her bonnet and yank off her gloves. “He’s a crossing sweep at St. Giles, but he also works in the Haymarket in the evenings, helping gentlemen too shy to descend from their carriages to find girls.” She gave the boy a nudge forward. “Make your bow and tell his lordship about Jenny.”

The boy stumbled forward, a grubby wideawake cap clutched in both hands, his skinny chest jerking with his agitated breathing.

“Jenny?” prompted Sebastian when the lad remained mute.

“Jenny Davie,” supplied Hero. “She’s seventeen, and last Sunday evening she was hired by a gentleman in a hackney who was known to procure girls for a nasty old goat living in St. Botolph-Aldgate.”

Sebastian led the boy closer to the fire, where the black cat looked up in slit-eyed annoyance at their intrusion. “What did this gentleman look like?”

Drummer raised a shoulder in the offhand shrug of a lad to whom one member of the nobility was pretty much like the next. “I reckon ’e looks like a nob.”

“My age? Younger? Or older?”

Drummer frowned with the effort of thought. “Younger, I’d say-by a fair bit.”

Sebastian and Hero exchanged glances. So Jenny Davie’s procurer had not been Samuel Perlman.

“Fair?” asked Sebastian. “Or dark haired?”

“’E’s got a mess o’ curls as gold as a guinea. The girls always go with ’im real quick, because ’e’s so good-lookin’. But ’e ain’t never ’ad nothin’ to do with any of ’em. Jist takes ’em to that old codger.”

Blair Beresford, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Tell me about Jenny Davie.”

Again that twitch of the shoulder. Circumstances had obviously taught Drummer long ago to take life-and people-as he met them, with little time for analysis or criticism. “Wot’s there t’ tell? She’s a doxy.”

“Where does she live?”

The boy’s gaze slid away. “She used t’ keep a room at a lodgin’ ’ouse in Rose Court.”

“But she’s not there anymore?”

Drummer shook his head. “There’s been a mess o’ people lookin’ for ’er.”

“Oh? Such as?”

“Well, the curly-’eaded cove what ’ired ’er, fer one.”

Interesting, thought Sebastian. “Who else?”

The boy’s shoulder twitched. “Some Frenchman. “’E’s been lookin’ fer ’er real ’ard. He’s even offered blunt to any o’ the lads what could tell ’im where she’s gone.”

Sebastian saw Hero’s eyes narrow and knew that the boy had not yet told her this part of his tale. “What does he look like?”

“’E looks like a Frenchman.”

“Tall? Short? Old? Young? Dark? Fair?”

Drummer frowned. “Older than you, and shorter-but not real old or real short. I reckon ’e ’as a real bad pockmarked face, but I didn’t pay him a whole lot o’ mind. I mean, I ain’t about to bubble on Jenny, so why would I? She said if anyone was to come lookin’ fer ’er, we was t’ keep mum.”

“So you do know where she is.”

The boy sucked in a quick breath as he realized his mistake. He edged toward the door but was stopped by the entrance of Morey, who came in bearing a heavy tray loaded down with sandwiches, small cakes, and a pitcher of steaming hot chocolate.

Hero said, “Here, let me fix you a plate of sandwiches. Do you prefer ham or roast beef?”

The boy swallowed hard. “Can I ’ave some o’ both?” he asked in a small, hopeful voice.

“You certainly may.” She heaped the plate with a generous selection of dainty sandwiches. “Is Jenny a London girl, born and bred?”

Drummer shoved a sandwich in his mouth and shook his head. “She and Jeremy-that’s ’er brother-grew up Bermondsey, down in Southwark. I remember ’im tellin’ me their family ’ad a room over the gatehouse o’ some old abbey down there. But their folks died o’ the flux some years ago, and they didn’t ’ave no kin, so they come up to the city lookin’ for work.”

“Is that where she’s gone now?” asked Sebastian. “To Southwark?”

Drummer swallowed another bite of sandwich. “Nah. I wouldn’t a told you if it was.”

Hero poured the boy a mug of hot chocolate. “We want to help Jenny, not harm her. She needs help, Drummer. I’m afraid those other men you mentioned who are looking for her might kill her if they find her. And they are determined to find her. You must tell us where she is.”