friend Bishop Prescott for his assistance in locating a good, loving family. Such arrangements were dangerous, since they could be difficult to keep hidden. But she had found Prescott both supportive and blessedly nonjudgmental.
Now Prescott was dead, and all her plans were in disarray.
At the thought, she felt a new surge of nausea, but suppressed it resolutely. Pushing to her feet, she smoothed her gown, washed her face, and walked down the hall to her mother’s chambers.
She found Lady Jarvis stretched out upon the daybed in her dressing room with the drapes closed. She still wore her wrapper, and the left side of her face drooped in that way it had when she was tired.
“Didn’t you sleep well, Mama?” asked Hero, bending to kiss her mother’s cheek. Her hand dropped to Lady Jarvis’s shoulder, and she felt so thin and frail that Hero experienced a new leap of fear.
Never well, Lady Jarvis had been especially listless lately. She was nearing fifty, a fading shadow of the beautiful, vivacious woman she had once been. Worn-out by an endless series of miscarriages and stillbirths, she had succeeded in presenting her lord with only one sickly son and a hale daughter before suffering a seizure that put an end to her childbearing days and left her weak of mind and body.
Now, she gripped her daughter’s hand and said, “Troublesome dreams. Always troublesome dreams.” Her soft blue eyes came into focus on Hero’s face. “You’ve been looking tired yourself, Hero; is something wrong? Are you ill?”
Hero felt an unexpected lump in her throat. She had no doubt of her mother’s love and devotion. But Lady Jarvis lacked the mental or emotional strength to deal with her own problems, let alone her daughter’s. Hero forced a smile. “You know I’m never ill. It’s such a lovely day; shall we go for a walk around the square?”
“I don’t know if I can, dear.”
“Of course you can. Let me ring for your woman to help you dress.” Disengaging her hand from her mother’s grasp, Hero went to open the curtains and give the bell a sharp tug. “It will do you good. I’ve a quick errand to run, but I should be back by the time you’re ready.”
Lady Jarvis frowned and struggled to sit up. “An errand? What type of errand?”
“Oh, nothing of importance,” said Hero, who was in fact bound on a very important errand, to the official chambers of the late Bishop Francis Prescott, in St. James’s Square.
Chapter 7
Pale and naked, the body of the Bishop of London lay stretched out upon the slab table in Paul Gibson’s secluded outbuilding. Thanks to the thickness of the stone walls, the atmosphere in the low-ceilinged, windowless space was cold and dark and thickly scented with death. Sebastian paused in the open doorway and took one last gulp of fresh air.
“Ah, there you are,” said the surgeon, laying aside a bloody scalpel. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist this one.”
Of medium height, with the dark hair and ready smile of an Irishman, Paul Gibson had known Sebastian for years. Once, they’d worn the King’s colors and fought together from the mountains of Italy and the Peninsula to the West Indies. They might come from different worlds and speak the King’s English with markedly different accents, but theirs was a friendship forged in blood and guts and fear.
“Nice to be predictable,” said Sebastian, eyes blinking at the room’s rank air. After only some fourteen to sixteen hours of death—and most of that during the cool hours of the night—the Bishop’s corpse was still relatively fresh. The sheet-covered form that rested on a stretcher in the room’s far corner was anything but fresh.
Limping over to where a chipped enamel basin and pitcher stood on the wooden shelf that ran across the room’s back wall, the surgeon splashed water into the basin and rinsed his hands. “There’s no denying it’s an interesting puzzle. Two men murdered decades apart in the same place? Not often we see that.”
“Judging from the smell, I’d say that’s fortunate. Have you found anything yet that might link the two?”
“Not yet. But then, I’ve only just started on the Bishop. It’s definitely the blow to his head that killed him . . . not that that’ll come as a surprise to anyone who’s had a good look at him.”
Sebastian studied the corpse before them. The Bishop of London had been a tall man, and thin, with long, sinewy arms and legs. In his late fifties or early sixties, he had a high forehead and a strong nose, his cheekbones prominent and knifelike beneath the flesh of his face. His hair was completely white, worn straight and unusually long. Even in death, something both scholarly and gentle lingered in his expression.
“Did you know him?” said Gibson.
“I met him once or twice.” Sebastian examined the gash that disfigured the left side of the Bishop’s head. “Sir Henry said they found an iron bar near the body. Do you think it was the murder weapon?”
Gibson nodded to a stout bar, one end gently curved and notched, that lay on the nearby bench. “I’d say so, yes. It fits the size and shape of the wound very neatly. The blow shattered his skull, tearing the lining of the brain and leaving it exposed. He probably died almost immediately, although it is possible he lived as much as half an hour after he was hit. I doubt he ever regained consciousness, though.”
Sebastian glanced up in surprise. “So he might still have been alive when Reverend Earnshaw found him?”
“Possibly. Not that it matters. Even if the Reverend had gone for a doctor rather than the magistrate, there’s nothing anyone could have done for him.”
Sebastian studied the Bishop’s long fingers, the nails meticulously manicured and unbroken. “No sign of a struggle?”
“None.” Gibson tossed aside the rough towel he’d been holding. “The papers are saying the Bishop surprised a thief who’d taken advantage of the crypt being opened to rob the burials.”
“I suppose it’s a more reassuring tale than the alternative—that someone deliberately bludgeoned the Bishop of London to death.”
Gibson looked over at him. “Any idea who?”
“Not a clue. Not even a suspect.” Sebastian hunkered down to study the dead man’s bloodied head. “What can you tell me about his murderer?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. Judging from the position of the wound, I’d say the Bishop was hit from the front, by someone who was right-handed. The assailant was either extraordinarily tall, or the Bishop was positioned below him—as if sitting, or at least crouching.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you look closely, you’ll notice that the wound isn’t exactly on the side of his head. It’s up toward the crown. The only way anyone could strike at that angle is if he were standing above the Bishop, or if he were considerably taller than the Bishop—which is unlikely, given that Bishop Prescott was an unusually tall man himself.”
“You think the Bishop could have been crouched down beside
“From the way I understand the two men were found, I’d say that’s highly probable. The Bishop was lying virtually on top of the earlier victim.”
Reluctantly, Sebastian went to draw back the covering from the eighteenth-century corpse, and let out his breath in a sharp hiss. “Good God.”
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” said Gibson, limping over to stand beside him.
“That’s one word for it.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had much of a chance to examine this one yet, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“Really?” Sebastian studied his friend’s rapt expression. “You’d love the crypt of St. Margaret’s, then.”
“I would indeed. What an opportunity!”
Sebastian ducked his head to hide a smile.
Beneath the froth of lace, the once fine blue velvet coat, and the satin waistcoat, the body’s sinew had shriveled and sunk. Yet it was obvious that the corpse had belonged to an unusually large man, robust of frame and full of flesh. Time and the action of the chemicals in the crypt had withered and distorted the features of his face and darkened the skin until he looked like an aged Moor from the mountains of Morocco. Without the chin strap that
