`Only to those who feel threatened by it.' Winthrop took a step back. `Good day, my lord.'
Sebastian waited until they were bowling away up the drive toward the park's gateway before glancing over at his tiger and saying, `Well? Anything?'
`It's a queer estate, this Trent Place,' said Tom, who possessed a knack for inspiring other servants to gossip. `Seems like it changes owners nearly every other year.'
`Not quite, but almost,' said Sebastian. It was typical of new estates. Ancient manors could stay in the same family for centuries, but the new wealth of merchants and bankers frequently went as easily and quickly as it came. `And what is the servants' general opinion of the current owners?'
`There was some mutterin' and queer looks, but nobody was willin' to come out and say much o' anything. If ye ask me, they're afraid.'
`Of Sir Stanley? Or his wife?'
`Maybe both.'
`Interesting,' said Sebastian. `And what do they think of the excavations at Camlet Moat?'
`That's a bit queer too. Some think it's excitin', but there's others see it as a sacra sacra...' Tom struggled with the word.
`A sacrilege?'
`Aye, that's it.'
`Interesting.'
Sebastian guided the chestnuts through the park's massive new gateway, then dropped his hands; the horses leapt forward to eat up the miles back to London. He could see the heat haze roiling up from the hard-packed road, feel the sun blazing down hot on his shoulders. He was intensely aware of the fierce green of the chestnut trees shading a nearby brook, of the clear-noted poignancy of a lark's song floating on the warm breeze. And he found himself unable to stop thinking of the vibrant, intelligent young woman whose pallid corpse awaited him on Paul Gibson's cold granite slab, and to whom all the beauties of that morning or any other morning were forever lost.
By the time Sebastian drew up before Paul Gibson's surgery on Tower Hill, the chestnuts coats were wet and dark with sweat.
`Take 'em home and baby 'em,' he said, handing Tom the reins.
`Aye, go' nor.' Tom scrambled into the seat as Sebastian hopped down to the narrow footpath. `You want I should come back with the grays?'
Sebastian shook his head. `I'll send for you if I need you.'
He stood for a moment, watching the lad expertly wind his way westward through the press of carts and coal wagons. Near the base of the hill, a ragged boy with a drum tapped a steady beat to attract customers to the street seller who stood beside him hawking fried fish. Nearby, a woman with a cart peddled eel jelly, while a thin man in a buff-colored coat watered a nondescript roan at an old fountain built against the wall of the corner house. Then, realizing he was only delaying the inevitable, Sebastian turned to cut through the noisome, high-walled passage that led to the unkempt yard behind Gibson's surgery.
At the base of the yard lay a small stone outbuilding used by the surgeon both for his official postmortems and for a series of surreptitious dissections performed on cadavers snatched from the city's graveyards under the cover of darkness by stealthy, dangerous men. As Sebastian neared the open door of the building, he could see the remains of a woman lying on the cold, hard granite slab in the center of the single, high-windowed room.
Even in death, Miss Gabrielle Tennyson was a handsome woman, her features gracefully molded, her mouth generous, her upper lip short and gently cleft, her chestnut hair thick and luxuriously wavy. He paused in the doorway, his gaze on her face.
`Ah, there you are,' said Gibson, looking up. He set aside his scalpel with a clatter and reached for a rag to wipe his hands. `I thought I might be seeing you.'
A slim man of medium height in his early thirties, Paul Gibson had dark hair and green eyes bright with an irrepressible glint of mischief that almost but not quite hid the dull ache of chronic pain lurking in their nuanced depths. Irish by birth, he had honed his craft on the battlefields of Europe, learning the secrets of life and death from an endless parade of bodies slashed open and torn asunder. Then a French cannonball had shattered his own lower left leg, leaving him with a painful stump and a weakness for the sweet relief to be found in an elixir of poppies. He now divided his time between teaching anatomy to the medical students at St. Thomas's Hospital and consulting with patients at his own private surgery here in the shadows of the Tower of London.
`Can you tell me anything yet?' asked Sebastian, looking pointedly away from what Gibson had been doing to the cadaver. Like Gibson, Sebastian had worn the King's colors, fighting for God and country from Italy to the West Indies to the Peninsula. But he had never become inured to the sight or smell of death.
`Not much, I'm afraid, although I'm only just getting started. I might have more for you in a wee bit.' Gibson limped from behind the table, his peg leg tap-tapping on the uneven flagged flooring. He pointed to a jagged purple slit that marred the milky flesh of the body's left breast. `You can see where she was stabbed. The blade was perhaps eight or ten inches long and an inch wide. Either her killer knew what he was doing or he got lucky. He hit her heart with just one thrust.'
`She died right away?'
`Almost instantly.'
Sebastian dropped his gaze to the long, tapered fingers that lay curled beside the body's hips. The nails were carefully manicured and unbroken.
`No sign of a struggle?'
`None that I've found.'
`So she may have known her attacker?'
`Perhaps.' Gibson tossed the rag aside. `Lovejoy's constable said she was found drifting in a dinghy outside London?'
Sebastian nodded. `On an old moat near Enfield. Any idea how long she's been dead?'
`Roughly twenty-four hours, I'd say, perhaps a few hours more or a little less. But beyond that it's difficult to determine.'
Sebastian studied the reddish purple discoloration along the visible portions of the body's flanks and back. He knew from his own experience on the battlefield that blood tended to pool in the lower portions of a cadaver. `Any chance she could have been killed someplace else and then put in that boat?'
`I haven't found anything to suggest it, no. The livor mortis is consistent with the position in which I'm told she was found.'
Sebastian's gaze shifted to the half boots of peach-colored suede, the delicate stockings, the froth of white muslin neatly folded on a nearby shelf. `These are hers?'
`Yes.'
He reached out to finger the dark reddish brown stain that stiffened the delicate lace edging of the bodice. Suddenly the dank, death-tinged air of the place seemed to reach out and wrap itself around him, smothering him. He dropped his hand to his side and went to stand outside in the yard, the buzz of insects loud in the rank grass of the neglected garden as he drew in a deep breath of fresh air.
He was aware of his friend coming to stand beside him. Gibson said, `Lovejoy tells me Miss Jar... I mean, Lady Devlin was acquainted with the victim.'
`They were quite close, yes.'
Sebastian stared up at the hot, brittle blue sky overhead. When the messenger from Bow Street arrived in Brook Street that morning, Sebastian thought he had never seen Hero more devastated. Yet she hadn't wept, and she had turned down his suggestion that she drive up to Camlet Moat with him. He did not understand why. But then, how much did he really know about the woman he had married?
Hero and this dead woman had shared so much in common, an enthusiasm for scholarship and research, a willingness to challenge societal expectations and prejudices, and a rejection of marriage and motherhood as the only acceptable choice for a woman. He could understand Hero's grief and anger at the loss of her friend. But he couldn't shake the uncomfortable sense that something else was going on with her, something he couldn't even begin to guess at.
Gibson said, `This must be difficult for her. Any leads yet on the two lads?'
Sebastian glanced over at him, not understanding. `What lads?'
