Sebastian followed him out of the rank chill of the stairwell into the clean, wholesome warmth of the sunny June day. “I suspect the Archbishop was being diplomatic.”
Lovejoy snuffed out his lantern. “What makes you say that?”
Sebastian stared off down the hill toward the rambling, slate-roofed vicarage, where a middle-aged matron in a starched white cap and a high-necked black bombazine gown was standing on the back stoop, watching them. “Because if the Archbishop genuinely believes the Bishop of London was killed by a simple thief, then why did he come to me?”
Chapter 5
While Lovejoy set about organizing a party of constables to conduct a more thorough search of the crypt, Sebastian walked down the hill to the vicarage, to inquire after the Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw.
“He’s still abed,” said the matron in black bombazine, who proved to be the Reverend’s wife. She was a hatchet-faced woman, her features as plain as her gown and just as no-nonsense. “He’s received a terrible shock. Simply terrible. I’ve had Dr. Bliss in to see him, and he agrees it’s best to keep the Reverend quiet for a time, lest the incident overset his mind.”
She gave Sebastian a fierce, uncompromising scowl and refused to budge. The Reverend’s wife was obviously made of sterner stuff than the Reverend. Sebastian had no choice but to admit defeat and withdraw.
His next stop was the small but graceful eighteenth-century brick manor house that stood on the edge of the village, near the millstream. He found the local magistrate, Douglas Pyle, behind the house, in his kennel.
He was a typical Middlesex squire, booted and spurred, full of jowl and wide of girth, with the ruddy, weathered face and squinting gray eyes of a man who spent his days tending his herds and fields, and riding to hounds. “You’ve no objection to talking to me while I supervise the feeding of the hounds?” said the Squire, his voice deep and rough. Sebastian took him to be somewhere in his early fifties, his brown hair mingled liberally with gray.
“Not at all,” said Sebastian, stooping to tug the ears of a liver-colored bitch that loped up to sniff at him.
“She smells the crypt on you,” said the Squire, watching the dog. “My wife swears she’ll never get the reek of it out of the clothes I had on last night.”
“It’s a fine pack of hounds you’ve got here.”
“They’re Irish,” said the Squire, nodding to the kennel boy.
“And rogues, the lot of ’em. They’ll bring down a cow if you turn your back on ’em. But they can’t be beat on a hunt.”
The two men watched as the kennel boy dumped boiled meat into the trough, the hounds jostling and scrabbling for position.
“I suppose you’re here to talk about the murder,” said the Squire, not looking around.
“Murders,” said Sebastian. “There were two bodies, after all.”
“Oh, aye. Two.” The Squire grunted. “Which is two more than I’ve ever had to deal with. Believe me, I’m more than happy to turn the whole nasty business over to Bow Street. What do I know of murder?”
Sebastian studied the Squire’s pack as they gulped eagerly at the trough. They were smaller than most foxhounds, but strongly built, with broad heads. “I understand the Reverend Earnshaw came to you when he found the Bishop’s body. What time was that?”
“About eight, I suppose. Maybe half past. At first I thought the poor man had gone stark raving mad, babbling on the way he was about crypts and dead bishops and pools of blood. It took a bit of convincing before I finally agreed to go over to the church and have a look at the place. But there was the Bishop, all right. Dead as dead comes.”
“You saw the older body as well, did you?”
“The fright in blue velvet and lace?” The Squire’s ruddy cheeks sagged, and he pursed his lips to blow out a long breath. “I’ll be seeing that face in my dreams for the rest of my life. Or rather, in my nightmares. He looked like a hog left too long in the smokehouse.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
The Squire gave a laugh that jostled his belly up and down. “Never knew anyone looked like a dried hog. Did you?”
Sebastian smiled. “Point taken. Can you think of anyone in these parts who disappeared somewhere around the time of the revolt in the American Colonies?”
“Not off the top of my head. But then, I wasn’t here myself for much of that time.” He squared his shoulders with obvious pride. “The Sixteenth Light Dragoons. Cornet. We spent two years in the Colonies, fighting to put down the rebellion. We could have managed it, too, if the bloody government had been willing to let us do what was necessary. Now look where we find ourselves—dealing with a bunch of upstarts calling themselves the United States of America and threatening to declare war on us!”
“So you were in the Sixteenth, were you?” said Sebastian, encouraging him. “Where else did you see service?”
“India. And then Cape Town. We were headed for the West Indies when my father wrote to say my brother Ted’d died, and I was to sell out and come home.” The trough was almost empty now. Sir Douglas watched as the greedier hounds shifted from place to place, intent on scooping up the last morsels. “What makes you so sure it was someone from around here, anyway?” he asked. “We’re but an hour’s ride from London, after all. It could even have been someone who wandered over from West Wycombe. Thirty or forty years ago, that would’ve been back in the days of Sir Francis Dashwood and his Hellfire Club. I remember once when I was a lad, the priest caught Dashwood himself breaking into the crypt, looking to steal skulls and such for their blasphemous orgies.”
“What about last night?” Sebastian asked. “Any strangers around?”
The Squire shook his head. “I did ask, you know. Before that squeaky-voiced magistrate showed up from Bow Street and took over. No one noticed anything out of the ordin’ry. The Reverend did think he saw the shadow of a man in the churchyard as he was leaving the crypt. But the truth is, Mr. Earnshaw’s as blind as a bat. And the Bishop’s own coachman was sitting right there on the box of his carriage just a few feet from the church door the whole time, and he never saw a thing.” The trough was empty now, the hounds whining to be let out of the feeding yard. “If he’d been a different sort of man, I’d say Prescott probably just fainted and bashed his head on the edge of a coffin or some such thing. The Pyles have always been buried in the churchyard, thank God, but not the Prescotts. Can’t be pleasant, seeing your own kith and kin reduced to grinning horrors. Not that it ever seemed to bother the Prescott brothers.”
“Are you saying the Bishop was from around here?”
“Didn’t you know? He grew up at Prescott Grange, between here and Hounslow. The Prescott brothers used to play in that crypt all the time when they were boys. All five of them.”
“Aye. Five of ’em, God rest their souls. Some cousin or other had the living back then, and they used to steal the key to the gates off his belt when he was dozing in the sacristy.” Turning to the kennel boy, Pyle said, “Open the door and let ’em have a run.”
The kennel boy opened the door and called, “Come, hounds!”
Sebastian stepped back, his gaze on the Squire’s full, weathered face. “You went down there with them, did you?”
A self-conscious grin crinkled the fleshy corners of the Squire’s pale eyes. “Well, of course I did. Even played deer stalker and blindman’s wand down there with them.”
Sir Douglas watched the hounds sweep through the open door, his smile fading as they raced off in joyous, fluid leaps. “But I never liked it,” he said. Then he said it again, as if once weren’t enough. “I never liked it.”
“Learn anything?” Sebastian asked Tom when the tiger brought up the curricle.
“Nobody in the village seen or ’eard a thing last night,” said Tom, scrambling onto his perch as Sebastian gave the horses the office to start. “Not till the Reverend started screeching, at any rate.”
