What Remains of Heaven

“The problem with having Sir Nigel killed in the crypt is that it then begs the question, What the devil was a forty-year-old baronet doing down in the crypt of the village church in the middle of the night?”

Gibson took a drink of ale. “What if someone he loved had recently died? Someone who was buried in the crypt? He could have been grief-stricken enough to want to be near them.”

“From what I’ve heard of Sir Nigel’s character, it seems unlikely. Although I suppose it could be possible.” Sebastian thought about those moldering stacks of coffins, the dark-stained bones and grinning skulls. “Ghoulish, but possible.”

“You did say he was a member of the Hellfire Club, did you not? Black magic rituals and all that.”

“Yes. Except . . .”

“Except what?”

“It occurs to me that the gate at the top of the stairs would have been kept padlocked. If he broke the lock, it would have been remarked upon. So he must have had a key.”

“The living was in his patronage, right?” said Gibson. “He may well have had a key. If he left the gate to the crypt open behind him, his killer could have followed him down, killed him, then taken the key from his body and secured the padlock again when he left, with none being the wiser.”

Sebastian sat for a time, drinking his ale in thoughtful silence. “There is one other aspect to all this we’ve yet to consider.”

Gibson looked up questioningly.

“There were originally five Prescott brothers, with Sir Nigel the eldest and the Bishop the youngest. The three middle brothers all chose to make the Army their career. By 1782, all three were dead, leaving Francis Prescott as his brother’s heir presumptive.”

“What are you suggesting? That the Bishop killed his older brother for the inheritance?”

“It does happen. Although I must admit, it sounds decidedly out of character in this case.”

Gibson finished picking the ribs clean and shoved his plate away. “If it is true, it must have been something of a shock to the Bishop when Lady Prescott gave birth to a posthumous heir some months later.”

Sebastian drained his tankard. “And none of it explains who killed the Bishop himself, or why.”

“Could have been the son, Sir Peter. He discovered his uncle killed his father for the inheritance, so he killed his uncle in revenge.”

“I don’t think so. I know Sir Peter.”

“You knew him as a boy. People change.” Gibson watched Sebastian push to his feet. “What do you plan to do next?”

“Drive out to the Grange in the morning and talk to Lady Prescott.”

“What do you think she can tell you?”

“I’m not sure. What her husband was doing down in that crypt would be a nice place to start.”

That evening, Sebastian took a copy of Aeschylus’s The Libation Bearers from his shelves and settled down to read with a brace of candles and a glass of port at his elbow.

The second in the famous Athenian playwright’s bloody trilogy on the curse of the House of Atreus, The Libation Bearers told an agonizing tale of murder and vengeance and hints of madness. But Sebastian could find nothing in that ancient Greek myth that seemed of any relevance to the death of the Bishop of London. He was halfway through the third act when Kat came to him.

Ushered into the drawing room by Morey, she brought with her the scent of beeswax and oranges and the cool air of the night. She paused just inside the door, one hand pushing back the hood of her cherry velvet cloak while she waited for the majordomo to discreetly bow himself from the room. The light from the candles gleamed over her pale cheeks and the shiny dark fall of her hair, and she was so beautiful she took his breath.

“I have an answer to your question,” she said.

The book slid to the floor as he rose to his feet. He did not step toward her. “And?”

“There has been speculation for some time that the Bishop of London hid a secret of some sort from his past. But none of the attempts by various agents to discover the nature of that secret were successful.”

Sebastian met the brilliant blue intensity of her gaze. “You’re certain?”

“Yes.” She turned to go.

He stopped her. “May I offer you something? A cup of tea? A glass of wine?” What he was really saying was, Stay.

She hesitated, a sad smile playing about her lips. “No, thank you.” You know that would not be wise.

He stared at her from across the room. Yes, you’re right. But he still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “How are you, Kat? In truth? Does Yates treat you well?”

She gave a faint shrug. “He is never anything but a gentleman. We go our own ways.”

As hard as it was for Sebastian to imagine her with another man, it was even harder for him to think of her trapped in a loveless marriage. He said, “It doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”

“It’s the kind of marriage I want. We are friends.”

“I would like to see you happy, and in love.”

She gave a sad smile. “And you, Sebastian? Hendon is desperate for an heir.”

“I will take no woman to wife unless I can give her a whole heart.” Or unless I must, he thought, to preserve her honor.

She nodded, and drew her hood back up over her hair.

“Thank you,” he said with a painful formality that hurt him almost as much as anything else.

“I spoke to Gibson,” she said, her hand on the door, as if she knew she should leave but could not quite bring herself to go. Through all that had happened in the past ten months, she and the Irish surgeon had remained friends. “He told me about Obadiah Slade.” She hesitated. “Please be careful, Sebastian.”

Somehow, he managed to give her a jaunty smile. “I’m always careful.”

“No. You’re not. You’re never careful. That’s what worries me.”

After she had gone, he retrieved his book from the floor. But the words swam before his eyes and he imagined the scent of her lingered still in the room, like a sweet memory just beyond his grasp.

The Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw sank before the high altar of St. Margaret’s, his hands clasped in supplication before him as he let out a low moan.

Beneath his aching knees, the worn stone paving of the aisle felt cold and cruelly hard, but he welcomed the pain as a kind of penance. The jewel-toned stained glass of the soaring windows of the apse before him showed only black against black, while the distant recesses of the church were lost in the gloom of the night. He let his head fall back, his throat working to swallow as he stared up at the intricately carved groins of the ancient vaults above him, alive now with strange, ghostly shadows cast by the flickering flames of the two heavy candles flanking the altar.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving in a soundless prayer. Oh, Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my lying down and my rising up; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. . . .

It was so difficult to know what to do in such a situation. One shrank from accidentally implicating the innocent, but what if . . . What if the innocent were not truly innocent? How was one to know? Never had Earnshaw felt more in need of guidance and wisdom.

“ ’Thou compassest my path and my lying down,’ ” he whispered, finding solace in speaking the words aloud. “ ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ ”

At some point, the rain had started up again. He could hear it beating on the slate roof above him, and he shivered with the cold and the damp and a quick leap of unaccountable fear.

“ ‘Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God,’ ” he said, his voice rising shrilly. “ ‘Depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.’ ”

From somewhere startlingly near came a soft thump.