What Angels Fear

“Ah. Not so common. Is he capable of such a thing, do you think?”

“I never liked him as a child. He could be cruel. Vicious even . . .” Sebastian let his voice trail off. “Yet it doesn’t seem possible that he could have done it, given that he spent the evening in a very public display of riotous excess before passing out in front of Cribb’s Parlor. His own father took him home.”

Gibson sat silent for a moment, lost in thought. “No, it doesn’t seem possible, does it? And there’s that other woman, Mary Grant. Why would Bayard track her down and kill her?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No reason I can think of. Although for that matter, the same could be said of Hugh Gordon. Rachel owed him money, and he’s badly dipped enough that he might well have killed her in a fit of temper if she refused to pay. But why the maid? It doesn’t make any sense. Unless—” Sebastian broke off suddenly.

“Unless . . . what?”

Sebastian sat forward suddenly. “Unless Gordon hunted Mary Grant down because he was looking for the papers Rachel had taken. Think about it: Gordon knew Rachel was involved with Pierrepont and the French. What if he also knew she’d stolen the documents and was planning to sell them? He might well have decided to get his hands on them and sell them himself.”

“And where does Mr. Gordon say he was last Tuesday night?

Sebastian pushed away from the stool. “He says he was at home, studying his lines. But according to a cranky old Irishman named Paddy O’Neal, Gordon went off in a hackney just before nine o’clock.”

“Any idea where he went?”

Sebastian smiled. “Westminster.”

Sebastian found Hugh Gordon in a cloth warehouse in the Haymarket, where the actor was inspecting an array of Bath superfine on a shelf against the side wall.

“Oh, God. It’s you again,” he said, when Sebastian came to stand beside him. “What the devil do you want now?”

“How about the truth for a change?” Sebastian leaned against the nearby dark-paneled wall and smiled. “You followed Rachel to St. Matthew’s last Tuesday night. Didn’t you?”

“What?” Gordon glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Of course not. I told you, I was home last Tuesday night, studying lines.”

“That’s not what Paddy O’Neal says.”

“Paddy? What the hell has that dotty old Irishman to do with this?”

“He says you pinched the hackney he’d called that night. And took it to Westminster.”

“He’s lying.”

“Is he? You needed money—lots of money, more even than Rachel owed you. I think you found out about the documents Rachel took from Pierrepont and came up with the bright idea of scaring her into giving them to you. Only, she refused.” Sebastian leaned in close and lowered his voice. “That’s when you grabbed her, wasn’t it? Maybe even gave her a shake, just like you used to do. Only, this time Rachel fought back. Tried to claw your eyes out. So you backhanded her—”

“This is crazy,” Gordon began.

”—across the face,” continued Sebastian without pause. “And when she came at you again, you pulled the blade from your walking stick and slit her throat. And then, because fighting with women always makes you hard, you raped her—”

“What?” The word came out in a low-voiced explosion of shock. “What are you saying? That Rachel was raped after she was killed?”

“That’s right,” said Sebastian. “I suppose it takes something out of a man, giving in to that kind of bloodlust and passion. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t until the next day that you finally made it around to Rachel’s rooms, hoping to find the papers there. Only, her maid had cleaned the place out by then, hadn’t she? So you had to track her down. And when you found her, you killed her, too. Why, I wonder. Because she didn’t want to let you take the papers? Or was it because by then you’d realized you’d acquired a taste for dead women?”

Gordon’s Adam’s apple moved painfully up and down as he swallowed, hard. “I swear to God, it’s not what you think.”

Sebastian pushed away from the wall, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

Gordon took a quick step back and licked dry lips with a nervous dart of his tongue. “You’re right. I did go to Westminster that night. But I wasn’t anywhere near St. Matthew’s.” He hesitated, then said in a rush. “There’s this woman. Her . . . her family wouldn’t approve, if they knew she was seeing me, so we meet at an inn. A place near the Abbey. The Three Feathers, it’s called. We were there half the night. You can check with the innkeeper if you want.”

Sebastian nodded. It would be easy enough, as the man said, to check. A flicker of movement in the street drew Sebastian’s attention to the shop’s bowed front window. It had begun to rain, a fine mist slowly turning the pavement dark and wet. He glanced back at the actor. Hugh Gordon, too, was watching the street.

Sebastian studied the man’s suddenly heightened color. It occurred to him that while Gordon had expressed shock at the idea that Rachel had been raped after death, he had shown no surprise when Sebastian mentioned the documents taken from Pierrepont. “And yet you did know about the papers Rachel took from Pierrepont.”

Gordon jerked. “All right. Yes. I did know. Rachel let it slip when I was pressing her for the money. But I swear to God, I didn’t kill her.”

Sebastian shifted so that the actor was between him and the shop’s front door. “Who else knew Rachel had those papers?”

“I don’t know. How could I? Why don’t you ask her lover?” The actor’s lower lip protruded in a pronounced sneer. “He ought to know. After all, he helped her steal them.”

A man hovered just outside the shop door. He had his head turned so that Sebastian could see little of his face. But there was something familiar about the set of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw. “Her lover?” said Sebastian sharply. “Who? What’s the man’s name?”

“Donatelli. Giorgio Donatelli,” said the actor just as Edward Maitland, followed by another constable, came hurtling through the shop’s front door.

Chapter 48

Sebastian sprinted toward the back of the shop, the leather soles of his Hessians slipping on the highly polished wooden floorboards.

“Halt!” shouted Edward Maitland from behind him. “Halt in the King’s name!”

A trestle table piled high with bolts of silks and satins reared up before them. Sebastian careened into it, the board flying from its trestles to knock both constables off their feet behind him.

“Stop him!” shouted Maitland, scrambling up onto his hands and knees in a shimmering sea of unfurling cloth.

Someone grabbed a handful of Sebastian’s coat. Twisting around, Sebastian heaved a small case of notions into the ponderous gut of a middle-aged, red-faced man whose mouth opened, bleating air. He let go Sebastian’s coat.

He could see the rear door through a workshop at the back. Praying the damn thing was unlocked, Sebastian raced toward it and smiled as he felt the latch give beneath his hand.

He cleared the small back stoop in one leap to land in a narrow alleyway, his boots sending up sprays of muddy water as he fled past a pile of smashed wooden crates and barrels rimmed with rusting iron. He rounded the corner onto Panton Street just as Edward Maitland erupted out of the shop’s back door with a shout lost in a sudden, thundering downpour of rain.

Sebastian fled west through Leicester Square, dodging between a high-perch phaeton and a scarlet-bodied barouche. The thong of a whip 4snapped close; wood splintered as horses drew up to a snorting, head-tossing stand. A woman screamed.