What Angels Fear

Paris is not precisely as I would have people believe it to be.”

Kat pushed away from her writing desk and stood up. “As long as it’s only a suspicion—”

“He also knows about the missing documents.”

Kat stood perfectly still. “What missing documents, Leo?”

His thin nostrils flared on a suddenly indrawn breath. “Last week while I was in Hampshire someone took some papers from the hidden compartment in my library’s mantel. A man and a woman, working together.”

“Who do you suspect? Me?”

Leo shook his head. “This was the work of amateurs.” He hesitated, then said, “I think it was probably Rachel.”

Kat felt a shiver of apprehension run up her spine. “What sort of documents are we talking about here, Leo?

One of his shoulders twitched in a typically Gallic gesture. “Love letters from Lord Frederick to a handsome young clerk in the Foreign Office. The birth certificate of a child born on the Continent some years ago to Princess Caroline. That sort of thing.”

“What else?”

Amusement suddenly lightened his intense gray eyes. “You don’t really expect me to tell you, now do you, mon amie?”

Kat did not smile. “Anything that implicates me?”

He shook his head. “No. You should be safe enough—unless you do something foolish. I, on the other hand, might find it prudent to leave London precipitously. If so, I’ll try to send you word. You know where to go?”

“Yes.” It had all been arranged before, including the name of the out-of-the way inn south of town where she would try to meet with him, if possible, should he be forced to flee England.

Kat watched him reach for his hat. This theft of what must have been a valuable cache of documents cast Rachel’s death in a new, sinister light. “Tell me something, Leo. Why did you return early from Lord Edgeworth’s country house party last Tuesday?”

He swung to look back at her. “I received word that an emissary from Paris would be contacting me. Why?”

“So you were meeting with him during the hour or so that you neglected your guests?”

“Yes. He arrived earlier than I expected.” Leo cocked his head, his assessing gaze studying her face. “Are you back to thinking that I killed Rachel, hmm?”

“It would appear you had reason.”

Pierrepont settled his hat on his head. “So did your young viscount.”

“Did he? And how’s that?”

The Frenchman smiled. “Ask him.”

Sebastian was just leaving the Rose and Crown and heading toward Covent Garden when a scruffy boy of about eight came running after him with a note from Paul Gibson.

Come see me when you get the chance, the Irishman had written in a hasty scrawl. I’ll be at the Chalks Street Almshouse until noon.

Tossing the boy a penny, Sebastian hesitated, then turned his steps toward the East End.

Housed in a soot-blackened cluster of ancient stone buildings that had once been a Franciscan monastery, the Chalks Street Almshouse lay on the edge of Spitalfields, not far from Shepherds’ Place. Run by a private benevolent society as a humane alternative to the city’s public workhouses and poorhouses, the almshouse provided clothing and food and limited shelter to the area’s poor. Paul Gibson could often be found there at odd hours, bandaging workingmen’s wounds, examining infants that refused to thrive, and surreptitiously dispensing preventatives to the district’s growing population of prostitutes.

“They get younger and younger every year,” said Gibson with a sigh, as he drew Sebastian into the small, unheated alcove allotted to him by the almshouse directors. “I don’t think I’ve seen one over the age of sixteen today.”

Through the room’s single, grime-incrusted leaded window, Sebastian watched the doctor’s last patient dart furtively across the street. The girl looked all of twelve. “It’s not a vocation conducive to longevity.”

“Unfortunately, no,” said Gibson, his eyes blessedly clear and bright this morning. “It occurred to me the area’s filles de joie might be a good source of information about gentlemen with certain vile tastes, but I haven’t turned up anything of use in that respect so far.” Gibson wiped his hands on a towel and went to close the door to the cabinet where he kept a few meager supplies. “There is one thing I thought you should know about, though. I’ve had this nagging feeling ever since I finished Rachel York’s autopsy—this feeling that I was overlooking something. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then last night when I was giving my lecture at St. Thomas’s on musculature, it came to me.”

Sebastian swung away from the window, his gaze searching his friend’s face. “What’s that?”

“One of the first things I noticed when I was bathing Rachel York’s body was that her hand had been broken. From the nature of the break, it was obvious it had occurred after rigor mortis had set in, which is why I didn’t attach much importance to it at first. I simply assumed it was done by the woman hired to lay out the body—it’s often necessary, you know. But last night, I got to thinking . . .”

“Yes?”

“If the laying-out woman had to break Rachel’s hand to get it open, then it must have been clenched. Like this.” Gibson held up his fist. “But we know Rachel was scratching at her attacker.” He uncurled his fingers into a clawing position. “Like this.” He relaxed his hand. “If she’d been raped before death, then I’d say perhaps she clenched her fists at the end, the way a person tends to do when they’re trying to endure something painful. But we know that’s not the case.”

“So what are you saying? That she died clasping something in her hand?”

Gibson nodded. “I suspect so. Of course it could have been something as innocuous as a clump of hair she’d torn from her attacker.”

“Or it could have been something considerably more significant. There’s no way we’ll ever know now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m trying to locate the woman who laid out the body. If I can convince her I don’t mean to prosecute her for theft, she might tell me.”

Sebastian went to stand again beside the window overlooking the narrow, refuse-filled street. Dark gray clouds hung low over the city, promising rain. After a moment, the Irishman came to stand beside him, his gaze, like Sebastian’s, on the lowering sky. “Have you given any more thought to taking a little vacation in America?”

Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “I’m not likely to have much luck finding Rachel York’s killer in some place like Baltimore or Philadelphia, now am I?”

“It’s not Rachel York I’m thinking about. She’s dead. It’s Sebastian St. Cyr who’s worrying me.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I can’t leave, Paul. There’s more involved in this than I realized at first. Far more.”

Paul Gibson perched on a nearby stool while Sebastian outlined Rachel’s involvement with Leo Pierrepont. “So what do you think?” said the Irishman when Sebastian had finished. “That Pierrepont found out she’d taken the papers from him and killed her?”

“Either him, or one of the men against whom the French were collecting damaging information. I doubt Lord Frederick and my father are the only men Rachel approached. Any one of them could have killed her.”

The doctor nodded. “She was involved in dark doings, that girl. Dark doings with dangerous men.”

“I suspect the pages torn from her appointment book are linked to Lord Frederick and Pierrepont, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to know for sure.” He blew out a harsh breath. “It’s even possible Pierrepont’s documents have nothing to do with her death at all, beyond explaining why she was at that church so late at night.”

Gibson studied him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve found something else, have you?”

Sebastian met his friend’s gaze, and nodded. “My nephew, Bayard. He seems to have been infatuated with the woman. Followed her everywhere.”

“A common enough occurrence, surely, when one is dealing with beautiful actresses and opera dancers, and callow young men newly on the town?”

“Perhaps. Except that the Saturday before Rachel died, Bayard flew into a rage at Steven’s and threatened to kill her. Said he was going to rip her head off.”