Hunkering down beside his friend, Sebastian found himself staring at a young girl, her slim form relatively untouched by the fire. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, her face still full-cheeked and childlike, her cornsilk-fine fair hair fluttering gently in the smoke-tinged breeze. But what drew Sebastian’s attention, and held it, was the ripped and bloodied bodice of her simple muslin gown. “Could that have been done by a falling timber?” he asked.
Paul Gibson shook his head. “No. She was stabbed with a knife. There, in the side”—he pointed—“and several times here, in the chest.”
“Bloody hell,” said Sebastian softly. “She was right.”
“Who was right?” Gibson glanced up at him. “Did someone survive this?”
“So it would seem.” Sebastian nodded toward that long, silent row. “What about the others?”
His lips compressing into a thin line, Paul Gibson turned his head to follow Sebastian’s gaze. The Irishman had spent years as an army surgeon, dealing with all the unspeakable horrors of a battlefield’s carnage. He now taught at St. Thomas’s, in addition to keeping a small surgery near the Tower. But despite it all, Sebastian knew that any premature or violent death still troubled Gibson. It was why, late at night in the small, secluded building at the base of his unkempt garden, he could frequently be found exploring the mysteries of life and death with the help of a series of cadavers culled from the city’s untended church-yards. No one in London could read a dead body better than Paul Gibson.
“The others are much the same,” said Gibson. He lurched to his feet, stumbling slightly as his one remaining good leg took his weight; he’d lost the lower part of his other leg to a French cannonball. “Several are so badly burned it would be impossible to say how they died without a proper postmortem. But I’ve found at least one more that was stabbed, and another who had her throat slit.”
“Could any of them have been shot?”
“Actually, yes. The woman at the far end was definitely shot. How did you know?”
Sebastian stared at that distant blackened form. “Is she identifiable?”
“Maybe by her mother. Although I wouldn’t want her mother to have to remember her looking like this.” Gibson glanced around as a hoarse shout went up from one of the men working through the smoldering ruins. “Looks like they’ve found another one,” said Gibson. “That makes eight.”
Sebastian blew out a long, slow breath. “Jesus.” He watched as two men stumbled out of the ruins, a makeshift stretcher carried between them.
“This un ’ere’s in bad shape,” said one of the men as they eased their burden down on the footpath. “Please God it’s the last.”
Gibson hunkered down beside the charred, blackened form, but said, “This one’s so burned that even with a proper autopsy—”
“Get away from that body!”
Sebastian looked up to find a tall, bearlike gentleman in an exaggerated top hat and red-and-white-striped silk waistcoat descending upon them from a lumbering dray. Sir William Hadley, one of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, came puffing up to them, his jaw jutting forward like a man ready for a fight. “What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t you hear what I said? Get away from that body.”
Gibson pushed slowly to his feet. “I’m a surgeon.”
“A surgeon! Who gave you permission to examine these bodies? I’ve ordered no postmortem. And don’t try to tell me one of the families requested it, because I won’t believe it. Whores don’t have families . . . leastways, none that’ll acknowledge them.”
The Irishman’s dark brows drew together in a frown. “Nevertheless, a postmortem is called for, Sir William. These women were murdered.”
“Murdered?” The Bow Street magistrate let out a harsh laugh. “What are you talking about? This wasn’t murder. These women died in a fire. Someone left a candle too close to a curtain or let a hot ember fall from the hearth.”
“And how do you explain the stab wounds?”
“Stab wounds? What stab wounds?”
“At least two of these women were stabbed, while one had her throat—”
Sir William swiped his massive arm through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Enough of this. I will not have my office’s resources diverted to investigate the death of a bunch of strumpets. You think the good citizens of this city care if there are a half dozen or so fewer trollops walking the streets?”
Sebastian nodded toward the body of the fair-headed girl lying at the end of the row. “I think her mother might care.”
“If she had a mother who cared, she wouldn’t have become cash on the hoof.” Sir William paused a moment, his eyes narrowing as he studied Sebastian. “I know you. You’re Lord Hendon’s son.”
“That’s right.”
Hot color flooded the magistrate’s big, fleshy face. “This is none of your affair—you hear me? I don’t care if your father is Chancellor of the Exchequer. I won’t have you meddling in this investigation.”
Sebastian said, “I didn’t realize there was an investigation for me to meddle in.”
Sir William’s face was so dark now it looked purple. He thrust a meaty finger inches from Sebastian’s nose. “I’m warning you, my lord. Keep out of this or I’ll have you arrested—peer’s son or not.”
The magistrate stomped away to go bark orders at the men searching the ruins. Gibson stared after him. But Sebastian was more interested in the elegant town carriage drawing up at the corner, its liveried footman hastening to open the carriage door.
“Who’s that?” said Gibson, following his friend’s gaze.
