C Harris - When maidens mourn

`Good afternoon, Grisham,' said Sebastian, pushing past him into the elegant entrance hall.

`Good gracious, Lord Devlin; is that... is that man dead?'

`Decidedly. Is his lordship home?'

Grisham stared in awful fascination at the dead man's flopping arms and blue-tinged hands. Then he seemed to recollect himself, swallowed hard, and cleared his throat. `I fear Lord Jarvis is not at present...'

A burst of male laughter filtered down from the floor above.

`In the drawing room, is he?' Sebastian headed for the delicately curving staircase that wound toward the upper floors, then paused on the first step to look back at Grisham. `I trust there are no ladies present?'

`No, my lord. But... but... My lord! You can't mean to take that that corpse into his lordship's drawing room?'

`Don't worry; I suspect Bow Street will want to come collect it. Perhaps you could dispatch someone to advise them of the need to do so?'

Grisham gave a dignified bow. `I will send someone right away, my lord.'

Charles, Lord Jarvis stood with his back to the empty hearth, a glass of sherry in one hand. `The Americans have shown themselves to be an abomination,' he was telling the gentlemen assembled before him. `What they have done will go down in history as an insult not only to civilization but to God himself. To attack Britain at a time when all our resources are directed to the critical defense against the spread of atheism and republican fervor...'

He broke off as Viscount Devlin strode into the room with a man's bloody body slung over his shoulders.

Every head in the room turned toward the door. A stunned silence fell over the company.

`What the devil?' demanded Jarvis.

Devlin leaned forward and shrugged his shoulder to send the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed corpse sprawling across Jarvis's exquisite Turkey carpet. `We need to talk.'

Jarvis felt a rare surge of raw, primitive rage, brought quickly under control. `Is this your version of a brace of partridges?'

`The kill isn't mine. He was shot by an elegant little muff pistol with a burnished walnut handle and engraved brass fittings. I believe you're familiar with it?'

Jarvis met Devlin's glittering gaze for one intense moment. Then he turned to his gawking guests. `My apologies, gentlemen, for the disturbance. If you will please excuse us?'

The assemblage of men - which Sebastian now noticed included the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and three other cabinet members - exchanged veiled glances, and then, murmuring amongst themselves, filed from the room.

Sebastian found himself oddly relieved to notice that Hendon was not one of them.

Jarvis went to close the door behind them with a snap. `I trust you have a damned good explanation for this?'

`Actually, that's what I'm here to ask you. I want to know why the hell my wife and I were attacked by...'

`Hero? Is she all right? My God. If my daughter has been harmed in any way...'

`She has not with no thanks to you.'

`I fail to understand why you assume this has anything to do with me. The world must be full of people only too eager to put paid to your existence.'

`He's not one of your men?'

`He is not.'

Devlin's gaze narrowed as he studied Jarvis's face. `And would you have me believe you didn't set someone to follow me earlier this week?'

Jarvis took another sip of his sherry. `The incompetent bumbling idiot you chased through the Adelphi was indeed in my employ although he is no longer. But I had nothing to do with...' he gestured with his glass toward the dead man on the carpet this. `Who is he?'

`If I knew, I wouldn't be here.'

Jarvis went to peer down at the dead man. `Something of a ruffian, I'd say, from the looks of him.' He shifted his gaze to the dead man's torn, bloody shirt. `Hero did this?'

`She did.'

Jarvis looked up, his jaw tightening. `Believe it or not, until my daughter had the misfortune of becoming involved with you, she had never killed anyone. And now...'

`Don't,' said Devlin, one hand raised as if in warning. `Don't even think of laying the blame for this on me. If Hero was in any danger this afternoon, it was because of you, not me.'

`Me?'

`Two days before she died, Gabrielle Tennyson stumbled upon a forgery that involved someone so ruthless and powerful that she feared for her life. I think the man she feared was you.'

Jarvis drained his wineglass, then stood regarding it thoughtfully for a moment before walking over to remove a crumpled broadsheet from a nearby bureau and hold it out. `Have you seen these?'

Devlin glanced down at the broadsheet without making any move to take it. `I have. They seem to keep going up around town faster than the authorities can tear them down.'

`They do indeed, thanks to certain agents in the employ of the French. The aim is to appeal to and promote disaffection with the House of Hanover. I suspect they've succeeded far better than Napoléon ever dreamt.'

`Actually, I 'd have said Prinny does a bang-up job of doing that all by himself.'

Jarvis pressed his lips into a flat line and tossed the broadsheet aside. `Dislike of a monarch is one thing. The suggestion that he sits on his throne as a usurper is something else again. The Plantagenets faced similar nonsense back in the twelfth century. You might think people today wouldn't be as credulous as their ancestors of six hundred years ago, but the idea of a messianic return has proved surprisingly appealing.'

`It's a familiar concept.'

`There is that,' said Jarvis.

`I take it that like the Plantagenets before you, you've decided to deal with the situation by convincing the credulous that King Arthur is not, in fact, the once and future king, but just another pile of moldering old bones?'

`Something like that, yes.'

`So you what? Approached a scholar well-known for his skepticism with regards to the Arthurian legend - Bevin Childe, to be precise - and somehow convinced him to come forward with the astonishing claim of having found the Glastonbury Cross and a box of ancient bones amongst Richard Gough's collections? I suppose a competent craftsman could simply manufacture a copy of the cross from Camden's illustrations, while the bones could be acquired from any old churchyard. Of course, history tells us the cross was separated from the relevant bones long ago, but why allow details to interfere with legend?'

`Why, indeed?'

`There's just one thing I'm curious about: How did Miss Tennyson realize that it was a forgery?'

Jarvis reached into his pocket for his snuffbox. `I'm not certain that's relevant.'

`But she did quarrel with Childe and throw the forgery into the lake.'

`Yes. A most choleric, impetuous woman, Miss Tennyson.'

`And determined too, I gather. Which means that as long as she was alive, your plan to convince the credulous that you had King Arthur's bones was not going to succeed.'

Jarvis opened his snuffbox with the flick of one finger. `I am not generally in the habit of murdering innocent gentlewomen and their young cousins however troublesome they may make themselves.'

`But you would do it, if you thought it necessary.'

`There is little I would not do to preserve the future of the monarchy and the stability of the realm. But in the general scheme of things, this really wasn't all that important. There would have been other ways of dealing with the situation besides murdering my daughter's troublesome friend.'

`Such as?'

Jarvis lifted a small pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed.

`You don't seriously expect me to answer that, do you?'

Devlin's lips flattened into a thin, hard line. `Last night, someone shot and killed a paroled French officer named Philippe Arceneaux. Then, this morning, one of Arceneaux's fellow officers supposedly stepped forward with the information that before his death, Arceneaux had confessed to the killings. As a reward, our conveniently community-minded French officer was immediately spirited out of the country. The only person I can think of with the power and the motive to release a French prisoner that quickly is you.'