Where Shadows Dance

“And certain subsidies,” she said.

“Ah. Define subsidies.”

“Gold. Transferred from the British Treasury to the Swedish Embassy here in London.”

“So that’s how it all comes together,” said Sebastian softly. He stared out over the shadowy shrubbery below. “Tell me, how are these transfers usually effected? I find myself woefully ignorant in the niceties of such details.”

“It isn’t as if you can simply appropriate the payments from the Treasury, drive a wagon up to the Swedish Embassy, and offload trunks of gold. That sort of activity would be bound to attract unwanted attention and speculation. Generally, deliveries are made in incremental amounts—”

“Say, twenty-pound bags of gold sovereigns, delivered every few days?” He was remembering the list of numbers he’d found in Ross’s copy of Marcus Aurelius. He thought he knew now what they meant: They were the dates of Ross’s deliveries of gold to Lindquist.

“Something like that. The gold is typically passed by someone attached to the Foreign Office—”

“Meaning Alexander Ross?”

“Evidently. The gold is delivered to an agent of the recipient government.”

“Carl Lindquist,” said Sebastian.

“Has Mr. Lindquist been discovered in possession of an inexplicably large number of gold sovereigns?”

“Mr. Lindquist is, unfortunately, dead.”

“Good heavens. When did this happen?”

“This afternoon.”

She looked thoughtful a moment. Then she said, “Did you kill him?”

“I did not. But he most certainly had a large trunk of gold in his possession.”

“How was he killed? In the same method as Ross?”

“Nothing anywhere near so tidy. Someone bashed in his head.”

She fixed him with a steady stare. “You say Alexander Ross died from a dagger thrust at the base of his skull. Yet you have not told me how you came to know that.”

One of the tall French doors from the drawing room burst open behind them, disgorging a tangle of laughing young women bedecked in white muslin, satin ribbons, and pearls, and trailed by a clutch of clucking mothers. In the distance, the church towers began to strike the hour.

Two o’clock.

Sebastian cast the chattering women a significant glance. “Now is perhaps not the time. May I call upon you tomorrow? There are a number of things we really must discuss—and I don’t mean simply about the death of Alexander Ross.”

She got that harried look on her face, the one that stole over her every time he attempted to bring the conversation around to their looming marriage. “Not tomorrow,” she said vaguely. “I already have several previous engagements.”

“Tuesday morning, then.”

He thought for a moment she meant to refuse him. Then she said, “Very well. Tuesday. At half past eleven?”

“Half past eleven,” he said, just as the first drops of rain splattered the stone flagging of the terrace.

Chapter 36

A fine, misty rain was falling by the time Calhoun reined in his mother’s mule on South Audley Street. Sebastian was waiting for them on the footpath. There’d been no time to return to Brook Street or to change out of his evening dress into something more appropriate for digging up graves.

“Ah, there you are, my lord,” said Calhoun, handing the reins to Tom. “I was thinking we were going to have to do this without you.”

The Church of St. George, Hanover, famous as the scene of so many fashionable Mayfair weddings, stood in a narrow triangle of land formed by the confluence of George and Conduit streets. As a result, the parish’s two burial grounds had to be located farther afield. The largest lay to the north of Hyde Park, beyond Edgeware Road. The older and more crowded was situated here, just off Mount Street and South Audley, its side entrance a narrow cobbled passage that ran beside the South Audley Chapel and what was known as the Mount Street dead house.

“Seems a dead giveaway, so to speak,” said Tom in a loud whisper, “t’ave the wagon sittin’ right outside the churchyard gate. I mean, what’s the watch t’think, if’n ’e ’appens to see me’ere? This t’aint exactly a gentleman’s carriage.”

“Good point,” said Sebastian, unloading the shovels and coils of stout rope. Between them, he and Calhoun eased the heavy sack containing Alexander Ross off the back of the wagon. Then he nodded to the tiger, who wore a simple dark coat and trousers in place of his usual, distinctive striped waistcoat and livery. “Wait for us in Grosvenor Square. We’ll catch up with you there.”

“Aye, gov’nor,” said Tom, spanking the reins against the mule’s back. The wagon moved off noiselessly, the axles well greased.

“Ready?” said Sebastian, shifting his grip on the burlap bag.

Gibson shouldered the shovels, their ends wrapped in burlap so they wouldn’t clatter when they knocked against each another. “Fine lot of sack-’em-up boys we make—a one-legged Irishman, a lord dressed like he’s going to the opera, and a gentleman’s gentleman.”

Calhoun laughed.

They plunged between the high walls of the narrow passageway. The wind gusted up, driving the cool rain against their faces and rustling the leaves of the half-dead trees in the graveyard. “Devilish dark back here,” said Calhoun, nearly dropping his end of the burlap sack as he stumbled over the uneven cobbles. “How the blazes are we supposed to see what we’re doing?”

“A lantern would be asking for trouble,” said Sebastian. “Too many houses with windows nearby.”

“Easy for you to say,” grunted Gibson, bringing up the rear. “You’ve got the eyes of a bloody owl.”

The burial ground opened up before them, a vast enclosed square filled with moss-covered gravestones and rusty iron railings overrun with tangled vines and weeds. “It’s here,” said Sebastian, leading the way to a mound of sodden dark earth in the lea of the dead house.

“Lord save us,” said Calhoun, burying his nose in the crook of his arm. “What’s that smell?”

“It’s coming from the dead house,” answered Gibson. “A couple of watermen fished a body out of the river yesterday. I understand it was pretty ripe.” Despite the exclusivity of its neighborhood, the Mount Street mortuary was the destination of all unidentified bodies pulled from the Thames between the bridge and Chelsea.

Calhoun gazed up at the elegant row of houses that backed onto the burial ground. “Imagine being a fine lord, living in one of those great big places, and having to smell that every time they pulled somebody out of the river.”

“Maybe they get used to it,” suggested Sebastian, easing Alexander Ross down onto the wet grass beside his empty grave.

Calhoun studied the dark mound of recently turned earth before them. “You don’t think the sexton will notice the grave’s been disturbed when he comes to dig it up in the morning?”

Sebastian spread a tarp to catch the soft dirt. “It hasn’t been that long since he was buried, and the rain will help cover any traces we leave.”

They went to work with the shovels, the rain pattering softly as they threw aside a growing mound of sodden earth. The resurrection men had refined their technique so that they typically dug down only at the head of a coffin, then broke the lid with a pry bar and pulled the body out of its grave with ropes. But since their aim now was to put Alexander Ross back into his grave, they would need to expose the entire casket.

The shovels bit into the wet earth quietly. They were made of wood rather than metal in order to avoid the telltale, ringing clang that could come from a metal spade unexpectedly striking a rock or hitting wood. They were just scraping the dirt off the top of Ross’s smashed coffin lid when Sebastian raised his head, his acute hearing