Sebastian kept his voice steady. “You can’t fix this, Father. A woman is dead.”
“An inconsequential whore?” Hendon swiped at the air between them. “Her death I could have dealt with. What I want to know is what the hell you thought you were about, stabbing a constable and leading the authorities on a chase across London?”
“The man slipped and fell against another constable. It wasn’t even my knife.”
“That’s not what they’re saying.”
“They’re lying.”
Sebastian met his father’s gaze and held it. Hendon let out a long sigh. “The constable’s not dead yet, but from what I hear it’s only a matter of time. You’ll need to leave the country until I can sort all this out.”
Sebastian smiled. “And Jarvis? You can’t tell me the King’s very busy cousin isn’t behind the authorities’ haste to see me arrested.”
Sebastian knew from the way his father’s jaw worked that he was right. United the two men might be in their hatred of the French, republicanism, and Catholics, but Hendon was far too much a stickler for the preeminence of rules and propriety to ever find favor with a Machiavellian schemer like Jarvis. “I can take care of Jarvis.”
Sebastian pressed his lips together and said nothing.
“I’ve made arrangements,” Hendon said, pushing up from the table. “With the captain of a ship—”
“I’m not running.”
Hendon went to jerk open a small drawer in the bureau on the far side of the bed. “There is no shame in temporarily removing yourself from harm’s way.”
The big old house seemed to stretch out around them, painfully familiar and suddenly, unexpectedly dear in the hushed stillness of the night. “I’m not running,” Sebastian said again. “I’m going to stay here and find out who killed that woman. And why.”
Hendon turned, a flash of what might have been fear flaring in his eyes. He hesitated, then thrust out his hand. “Here. At least take this.”
Sebastian glanced down at the banknotes in his father’s big, blunt-fingered, outstretched hand. “I don’t need money.”
“Don’t be a bloody ass. Of course you need money.”
It was true. His various purchases at the Rag Fair and in Haymarket had seriously depleted his funds, and he would need more in the days to come.
He took the money and turned toward the window, only to pause as a thought occurred to him. “Leo Pierrepont claims he was hosting a dinner party the night Rachel York was killed. Can you find out if it’s true?”
“Pierrepont? The French emigre? What the hell’s he to do with this?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Can you find out?”
That expression Sebastian could never quite read was back on his father’s face. “For God’s sake, Sebastian. This is madness. If you won’t leave the country, then at least lie low until it all blows over. I’ll hire the best Bow Street has to offer. They’ll track down the real killer. Just concentrate on keeping yourself safe.”
Sebastian gave a soft laugh and turned to fling up the sash. “I’m afraid you’ll find that the best of Bow Street is already busy.” He threw one leg over the sill, then paused to glance back at his father’s tense, troubled face. “They’re all out there right now. Looking for me.”
The next morning the clouds hung low and heavy, and there was a bite to the air that spoke of snow before nightfall.
Turning up the collar of his greatcoat against the cold, Sebastian set off on foot toward the City, walking briskly to keep warm. At the base of Tower Hill he bought a bag of roasted chestnuts from an old woman, then ended up giving most of them away to the small knot of ragged children who huddled nearby, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands in the bitter cold. He knew they had always been there, these bands of half-starved urchins, just like the desperate mothers clutching their wailing, dying infants, and the homeless, helpless old men and women. Yet it seemed to Sebastian as if he had, somehow, never really noticed them before. Or perhaps it was simply that he had never before walked among them, alone and vulnerable and sharing their fear.
“You don’t look as if you went to bed last night,” said Paul Gibson, when the surgeon’s young maidservant led Sebastian back to the kitchen where the Irishman was just finishing what looked like a quick breakfast of oatmeal and ale.
Sebastian rasped one hand across his unshaven cheek. “I didn’t.”
Gibson grinned. “Neither did I.” He swung his wooden leg awkwardly over the bench and stood up. “Come see. I’ve a few things that might interest you.”
Following his friend along the weedy path, Sebastian took a last, deep breath of cold air and ducked his head to enter the small stone outbuilding that served Gibson as a dissection room. There was a dampness to the room that he didn’t remember from before, the dankness accentuating the pungent stench of death and decay.
“I spent a good hour simply washing the mud off her,” said Gibson, limping to the body that lay white and cold on the altarlike slab. Sebastian was glad to see the surgeon hadn’t actually started cutting yet. “The slices on her neck were made by a two-edged knife, probably a sword stick, such as a gentleman might carry hidden in his cane or walking stick.”
Sebastian nodded. He had such a walking stick himself. As did Hendon.
“It was done like this—” Gibson demonstrated by slashing his arm through the air, first one direction, then the other. “Your killer cut back and forth, over and over again.” He let his arm fall. “There must have been a fair amount of blood splattered around that chapel.”
“So I hear.” Sebastian studied the savagely hacked flesh of Rachel York’s neck, and remembered what his father had said, about being so covered in blood he’d had to throw away his greatcoat. Whoever had done this must have walked away from that church drenched in blood. As Leo Pierrepont had said, the attack had half severed the head from the neck. And Sebastian was left thinking, How had the Frenchman known that?
“Because of the way it was done,” Gibson was saying, “there are slashes running from both the left and the right. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the cuts made from left to right are longer and deeper, which tells us that the man you’re looking for is right-handed.”
“And fairly strong?”
Gibson shrugged. “She was a small woman. Any reasonably-sized man could have overpowered her, although she did fight him. She wanted desperately to live, this woman.” With remarkable gentleness, he picked up one of the hands lying so pale and still against the granite slab. “Look at how the nails are broken and torn here—and there,” he said, pointing. “Not only that, but I found traces of skin embedded beneath two of the remaining nails on her right hand.”
Sebastian glanced up in surprise. “You mean, she scratched him?”
“I’d say so, yes. But I suspect it was before he pulled the knife on her. There are no cuts on her hands.”
Sebastian ran his thoughts back over the men he had spoken to; none had borne signs of having been scratched—at least, not in any place that was visible. “So she probably scratched him while he was raping her.”
“I’m afraid not.” Paul Gibson laid Rachel’s hand back down on the cold stone. “She was raped after she died. Not before.”
“
The Irishman leaned over the body. “Look at the bruising around her wrists and on her forearms. You can see where she struggled against him. But there’s no sign of bruising on her thighs. There would be, if he’d been forcing her legs apart, holding her down. Nor is there any bruising on her feminine parts; only a slight inner abrasion that could have come after death.”
He swung away to pick up a shallow, enameled basin from the long, low table that stood beneath the small paned front window. “But this is the most telling piece of evidence,” he said, and Sebastian found himself staring at a torn piece of satin, now so stained with blood it was impossible to guess at its original color.
“Presumably, it’s from her dress. I found it
The damp cold of the room was starting to penetrate through the cheap wool of Sebastian’s coat. He brought his cupped hands up to his mouth and blew on them, his gaze drifting back to the still form lying on that slab. He was remembering what his father had said, about seeing the bloody fingerprints on her bare white thighs. And it
