TITLES BY C. S. HARRIS
What Angels Fear
When Gods Die
Why Mermaids Sing
Where Serpents Sleep
What Remains of Heaven
Where Shadows Dance
When Maidens Mourn
What Darkness Brings
Why Kings Confess
Who Buries the Dead
When Falcons Fall
Where the Dead Lie
Why Kill the Innocent
BERKLEY
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Copyright © 2018 by The Two Talers, LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harris, C. S., author.
Title: Why kill the innocent: a Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery/C. S. Harris.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037791 | ISBN 9780399585623 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399585630 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain—History—George III, 1760–1820—Fiction. | Saint Cyr, Sebastian (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Mystery & Detective / Historical. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Regency fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3566.R5877 W4786 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037791
First Edition: April 2018
Jacket photo © Christine Goodwin/Arcangel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_2
For Angel,
1998–2017
Contents
Titles by C. S. Harris
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Author’s Note
So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.
—DEUTERONOMY 21:9
Chapter 1
Clerkenwell, London: Thursday, 27 January 1814
A howling wind flung icy snow crystals into Hero Devlin’s face, stinging her cold cheeks and stealing her breath. She kept her head bowed, her fists clenched in the fine cloth of her merino carriage gown as she struggled to drag its sodden weight through the knee-deep drifts clogging the ancient winding lane. A footman with a lantern staggered ahead of her to light the darkness, for Clerkenwell was a wretched, dangerous area on the outskirts of the City, and night had fallen long ago.
She was here, alone except for the footman and a petite French midwife who floundered through the snow in her wake, because of an article she was writing on the hardships faced by the families of men snatched off the streets by the Royal Navy’s infamous press gangs. The midwife, Alexi Sauvage, had offered to introduce Hero to the desperate eight-months-pregnant wife of a recently impressed cooper. No one had expected the woman to go into labor just as a fierce snowstorm swept in to render the narrow lanes of the district impassable to a gentlewoman’s carriage. Thanks to their presence, mother and child both survived the long, hard birth. But the snow just kept getting deeper.
“Do you see it yet?” Alexi called, peering through the whirl of white toward where Hero’s carriage awaited them at the base of Shepherds’ Lane.
Hero brought up a cold-numbed hand to shield her eyes. “It should be j—”
She broke off as her foot caught on something half-buried in the snow and she pitched forward to land in a deep drift on quickly outflung hands. She started to push up again, then froze as she realized she was staring at the tousled dark hair of a body that lay facedown beside her.
The footman swung about in alarm, the light from his lantern swaying wildly. “My lady!”
“Mon Dieu,” whispered Alexi, coming to crouch next to her. “It’s a woman. Help me turn her, quickly.”
Together they heaved the stiffening woman onto her back. The winter had been so wretchedly cold, with endless weeks of freezing temperatures and soaring food and coal prices, that more and more of the city’s poor were being found dead in the streets. But this was no ragged pauper woman. Her fine black pelisse was lined with fur, and the dusky curls framing her pale face were fashionably cut. Hero stared into those open sightless eyes and had no need to see the bloody gash on the side of the woman’s head to know that she was dead.
“She must have slipped and hit something,” said Hero.
“I don’t think so.” Alexi Sauvage studied the ugly wound with professional interest. As a female, she could be licensed in England to practice only as a midwife. But Alexi had trained as a physician in Italy, where such things were allowed. “She couldn’t have died here. A wound like this bleeds profusely—look at all the blood in her hair and on her pelisse. Yet there’s hardly any blood in the snow around her.” With tender hands, she brushed away the rapidly falling flakes that half obscured the dead woman’s face. “I wonder who she is.”
Hero watched the snow fall away from those still features and felt her chest give an odd lurch. “I know her. She’s a musician named Jane Ambrose. She teaches piano to”—she paused as Alexi swung her head to stare at her—“to Princess Charlotte. The Regent’s daughter.”
Chapter 2
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, stood at the river steps below Westminster Bridge, his worried gaze on the turgid ice-filled expanse of the Thames before him.
Never in anyone’s memory had London seen a winter such as this. Beginning in December and lasting for more than a week, a great killing fog had smothered the city with a darkness so heavy it could be felt. After that came days of endless snow that buried the entire Kingdom beneath vast drifts said
