Why Mermaids Sing

“That’s interesting.” Devlin glanced down at the paper in his hand and gave a wry smile.

“What is it?” said Kat, watching him.

Devlin handed her the paper. “The ship’s owner. It’s Russell Yates.”

Sir Henry cleared his throat. “You know Mr. Yates?”

“Mr. Yates is a well-known figure around the West End,” said Kat. “The man used to be a pirate.”

“A pirate?”

She smiled. “Well, a privateer. He was the younger son of an East Anglian nobleman, but ran off to sea as a boy and came home a wealthy man. He still wears a gold hoop in one ear and talks like a pirate. Society professes to be scandalized, but they tolerate him because…Well, because he’s Yates, and he was brought up a gentleman, and he is both amusing and very, very wealthy.”

Sir Henry was looking serious. “You think he could have something to do with these savage murders?”

“Yates?” Kat thought about it. “I suspect he could be savage, if driven to it. But to coldly murder four young men for something their fathers might have done? No. I don’t think he could do that.”

“What finally happened to the Harmony?” Devlin asked. “Do you know?”

Sir Henry nodded. “According to what I’ve been able to discover, a partial crew from the HMS Sovereign tried to patch her up and sail her back to London, but she was too far gone. They finally had to abandon her when she floundered in heavy seas off Lisbon.”

“So Mr. Yates suffered a loss, as well.”

“So it would seem. Although the ship might well have been insured. I plan to spend the afternoon in the offices of the city newspapers, reading their back issues for more details on the incident.”

“I thought you were off the case?” said Devlin with a smile.

A rare gleam of amusement lit the magistrate’s serious gray eyes. “I am.”

Chapter 35

Having exchanged the black Arab for his curricle, Sebastian rattled across the worn stones of London Bridge into Southwark. The sun shone warm and golden on the river, but the lanes around the Marshalsea prison were dark and dank, the air heavy with the foul stench of rubbish and rot and despair.

“Wesley Oldfield,” said Devlin, pressing a coin into the shaky hand of an old man he came across within the prison’s high gray brick walls. “Where might I find him?”

“Up the stairs. Last door to your right,” said the man in a surprisingly cultured voice.

“Thank you.”

Holding a handkerchief to his nose, Sebastian climbed the noisome, urine-stained stairs and made his way down a cold passage. The sound of a violin playing a sad, sweetly lilting tune came to him from the far side of the scarred old door at the end of the corridor. The music stopped when Sebastian knocked.

“Who is it?” called a tight, anxious voice.

“Viscount Devlin.”

The door jerked open.

An unkempt man stood on the far side. According to what Sebastian had been able to learn, Wesley Oldfield was in his late thirties. But the man before Sebastian looked a good twenty years older than that, his long, matted hair the color of a winter sky, his face sunken and gray with ill health. He stood hunched over, one hand on the edge of the door as if for support, the other arm cradling a battered violin. He peered at Sebastian through watery, washed-out blue eyes, his jaw slack. “Do I know you?”

“Mr. Wesley Oldfield?” said Sebastian.

The man ran one hand across the stubble on his chin in a self-conscious gesture. “That’s right.”

“May I come in?”

Oldfield hesitated, then took a step back and swept a flourishing bow. “Come in. Do come in. Pray accept my apologies for the less than salubrious nature of my accommodations.”

Sebastian stepped into a small, low-ceilinged room with a meager, empty fireplace and a single, barred window. The room was as unkempt as the man, and smelled foully of stale sweat and excrement and the slowly creeping madness that can come from a once-promising life now hopelessly derailed.

Oldfield moved awkwardly to clear the clutter of papers and books from the threadbare seat of a once grand chair. “Please. Sit down. I get so few visitors these days I fear I’m forgetting my manners. May I offer you brandy?” He reached for a bottle that stood open on a rickety table, then said, “Oh, dear,” and tssked softly to himself, staring down at the empty bottle. “I must have finished it last night.”

“I have no need of refreshment, thank you.” Looking at the broken man before him, Sebastian found it difficult to believe Oldfield could have anything to do with the murders. He wasn’t sure the man was even capable of remembering anything of significance about the Harmony or its last, fatal voyage.

“You’re the Earl of Hendon’s son, are you not?” said Oldfield, turning away to lay the violin in its case with an almost reverent air.

“You know my father?”

“I know of him.” The man swung back to fix Sebastian with an unexpectedly steady stare. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about the Harmony.”

The man’s reaction to this bald statement was utterly unexpected. The Harmony might have led to his ruin, but at the mention of the ship’s name, he came to perch on the edge of his unmade bed, a strange excitement animating his features as he leaned forward. “You’ve noticed it, too, have you?”

“Noticed what?”

“These killings. First the Reverend Thornton’s son—”

“You know about Nicholas Thornton?”

“Oh, yes, I know. First Thornton. Then Carmichael and Stanton. And now Bellamy. Someone is killing their sons.”

Sebastian stared into the man’s tortured, mad eyes. “Do you know why?”

“Why? Not exactly, no. But when you think about the way those young men were butchered, it gives you some ideas, does it not?” He broke off to cast Sebastian a sideways glance. “Is that why you’re here? You think I’m responsible?”

“You’re in prison,” said Sebastian.

An eerie smile played around the other man’s lips. “Yes. But we’re sometimes allowed out, you know.”

“Only during the day,” noted Sebastian. “Carmichael, Stanton, and Bellamy were all killed at night, when you’re locked in.”

Oldfield’s smile slipped. “True.” Then he brightened. “I could have hired someone.”

“You’re bankrupt.”

“There is that.” Oldfield sighed. “And I’ve no motive.”

Sebastian glanced around the cold prison cell. “No?”

Oldfield tssked again and shook his head. “It was the crew who insisted my cargo be thrown overboard. They thought the ship was going to sink.”

Sebastian started to remind him that the ship actually had sunk in the end. Then he changed his mind.

“It’s the crew who ruined me,” Oldfield was saying. His nostrils quivered, his hatred twisting his lips cruelly with each word. “Dirty, ignorant scum. Panicking. Abandoning the ship the way they did. Taking all the food and water. Leaving the others to die. I would gladly butcher every last one of their God-rotted carcasses. But—” He broke off, his voice and features suddenly returning to normal. “They’re already dead.”

“They’re dead?”

“That’s right. Most of them were killed by natives when their boat landed on the west coast of Africa. The few who survived were picked up by His Majesty’s Navy and brought back to London to hang.”

“You attended their trial?”

Oldfield cast him a scornful look. “What do you think? Every minute of it. Their trial and their hangings. One of the crewmen—I think his name was Parker—he made a bad end of it. Struggling and shouting even after they had