When Maidens Mourn (39 page)

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.”

Jarvis closed his snuffbox. “Of course it was I.”

“And you had Philippe Arceneaux shot?”

“I won’t deny I took advantage of his death to shut down the inconvenient investigation into the Tennysons’ murders. But did I order him killed? No.”

“The
inconvenient investigation
? Bloody hell. Inconvenient for whom?”

“The Crown, obviously.”

“Not to mention you and this bloody Glastonbury Cross scheme of yours.”

When Jarvis remained silent, Devlin said, “How the devil did you convince Childe to lend his credibility to such a trick?”

“Mr. Childe has certain somewhat aberrant tastes that he would prefer others not know about.”

“How aberrant?”

Jarvis tucked his snuffbox back into his pocket. “Nothing he can’t indulge at the Lambs’ Pen.”

“And did Gabrielle Tennyson know about Childe’s aberrations?”

“Possibly.”

“So how do you know Childe didn’t kill the Tennysons?”

“I don’t. Hence the decision to shut down the investigation. It wouldn’t do to have this murder be seen as linked in any way to the Palace.” Jarvis straightened his cuffs. “It’s over, Devlin; a murderer has been identified and punished with his own death.”

Devlin nodded to the dead man before them. “Doesn’t exactly look over to me.”

“You don’t know this attack was in any way related to the Tennyson case. The authorities are satisfied. The populace has already breathed a collective sigh of relief. Let it rest.”

Devlin’s lip curled. “And allow the real murderer to go free? Let those boys’ parents up in Lincolnshire live the rest of their lives without ever knowing what happened to their children? Let Arceneaux’s grieving parents in Saint-Malo believe their son a child killer?”

“Life is seldom tidy.”

“This isn’t untidy. This is an abomination.” He swung toward the door.

Jarvis said, “You’re forgetting your body.”

“Someone from Bow Street should be here for it soon.” Devlin paused to look back at him. “I’m curious. What exactly made Hero think you killed Gabrielle Tennyson?”

Jarvis gave the Viscount a slow, nasty smile. “Ask her.”

R
ather than return directly to Brook Street, Sebastian first went in search of Mr. Bevin Childe.

The Cheese, in a small cul-de-sac known as Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street, was a venerable old eating establishment popular with antiquaries and barristers from the nearby Temple. A low-voiced conversation with a stout waiter sent Sebastian up a narrow set of stairs to a smoky room with a low, planked ceiling, where he found Childe eating a Rotherham steak in solitary splendor at a table near the bank of heavy-timbered windows.

The antiquary had a slice of beef halfway to his open mouth when he looked up, saw Sebastian coming toward him, and dropped his fork with a clatter.

“Good evening,” said Sebastian, slipping into the opposite high-backed settee. “I was surprised when your man told me I might find you here. It’s my understanding you typically spend Fridays at Gough Hall.”

The antiquary closed his mouth. “My schedule this week has been…upset.”

“How distressing for you.”

“It is, yes. You’ve no notion.” Very slowly, the antiquary retrieved his fork, took a bite of steak, and swallowed, hard. “I…” He choked, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I had hoped I’d explained everything to your wife’s satisfaction yesterday at the museum.”

Sebastian kept his face quietly composed, although in truth he didn’t know what the bloody hell the man was talking about. “You’re quite certain you left nothing out?”

“No, no; nothing.”

Sebastian signaled the waiter for a tankard of bitter. “Tell me again how Miss Tennyson discovered the cross was a forgery.”

Childe threw a quick, nervous glance around, then leaned forward, his voice dropping. “It was the merest chance, actually. She had made arrangements to drive out to Gough Hall on Friday to see the cross. I’d been expecting her early in the day, but as time wore on and she never arrived, I’d quite given up looking for her. Then the craftsman who’d manufactured the cross showed up.” Childe’s plump face flushed with indignation. “The scoundrel had the unmitigated gall to come offering to make
other
artifacts. I was in the stables telling him precisely what I thought of his suggestion when I turned and saw her standing there. She…I’m afraid she heard quite enough to grasp the truth of the situation.”

“How did she know Jarvis was involved?”

Childe’s tongue flicked out nervously to wet his lips. “I told her. She was threatening to expose the entire scheme, you see. So I warned her that she had no idea who or what she was dealing with.”

“The knowledge didn’t intimidate her?”

“Unfortunately, no. If anything, it only enraged her all the more.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the stout man’s sweat-sheened face. “Who do you think killed her?”

Childe tittered.

“You find the question amusing?”

Childe cut another bite of his steak. “Under the circumstances? Yes.”

“It’s a sincere question.”

He paused in his cutting to hunch forward and lower his voice. “In truth?”

“Yes.”

The antiquary threw another of his quick looks around. “Jarvis. I think Lord Jarvis killed her—or rather, had her killed.”

“That’s interesting. Because you see, he rather thinks you might have done it.”

Childe’s eyes bulged. “You can’t be serious. I could never have killed her. I loved her! I’ve loved her from the moment I first saw her. Good God, I was willing to marry her despite knowing only too well about the family’s fits.”

Sebastian stared at him. “About the what?”

Childe pressed his napkin to his lips. “It’s not something they like to talk about, I know. And while it’s true I’ve never seen any indication that either Hildeyard or Gabrielle suffered from the affliction, there’s no doubt it’s rife in the rest of the family. Their great-grandfather had it, you know. And I understand the little boys’ father—that Reverend up in Lincolnshire—suffers from it dreadfully.”

Sebastian stared at the man across the table from him. “What the devil are you talking about? What kind of fits?”

Childe blinked at him owlishly. “Why, the falling sickness, of course. It’s why Miss Tennyson always insisted she would never marry. Even though she showed no sign of it herself, she feared that she could somehow pass it on to any children she might have. She called it the family ‘curse.’ It quite enraged d’Eyncourt, I can tell you.”

“D’Eyncourt? Why?”

“Because while he’ll deny it until he’s blue in the face, the truth is that he suffers from it himself—although nothing to the extent of his brother. When we were up at Cambridge, he half killed some sizar who said he had it.” Childe paused, then said it again, as if the implications had only just occurred to him. “He half killed him.”

S
ebastian found Hero at the library table, one of Gabrielle Tennyson’s notebooks spread open before her.