Unless she had found the Hesse letters and burned her fingers in the process of lighting a fire to destroy them. Was that why she had chosen to come here, to her brother’s office, rather than to his house? Because she knew instinctively that if he had Charlotte’s letters he would hide them here, in this messy, dusty room that no one ever cleaned, rather than in his house?
Had she found them? Sebastian wondered. Had she been trying to destroy the letters in the stove when her brother came in and saw her? What would he have done? Hit her and pushed her away from the stove? Tried to rescue the flaming letters? Had she picked them up again, burning her fingers as she thrust them back into the fire? Had he pushed her away again, knocking her down so that she struck her head? On what?
Sebastian started looking.
If the room had been cleaner, he never would have found it. But it was quite obvious, really, once he realized what he was seeing: a noticeably clean section on the side of the dirty old stove and another on the floorboards below, where Christian Somerset had carefully wiped up his dead sister’s blood.
Sebastian stood for a moment, staring at the spot where Jane Ambrose had died. Then he turned and quickly searched the office. He hoped he might find something—Jane’s hat, gloves, and reticule, perhaps, or even the half-burned letters themselves. But there was nothing. And as the minutes ticked away, he realized with a rising sense of frustration that he had no evidence that Christian Somerset had accidently killed his sister. And nothing at all to prove he’d then deliberately murdered her husband in the hopes of throwing suspicion onto his childhood friend.
Yes, Somerset’s young apprentice had seen Jane enter the workshop the day of her death. But Somerset himself hadn’t been there at the time, and the printer could easily claim that she’d been gone before he returned home. Given that afternoon’s worsening snowstorm, it was doubtful anyone had seen him. And the cause of the siblings’ argument—the missing Hesse letters—could never, ever be mentioned. Hell, he couldn’t even tell Lovejoy about them.
Sebastian went to stare out the dirty window, his hands on his hips. The small courtyard was sloppy and wet now with the rising temperatures. But the handcart he’d noticed before was still there, parked just to the left of the workshop door.
That’s how he did it, thought Sebastian. He loaded his sister’s body on the cart and pushed it through the snow to Clerkenwell. It wouldn’t have been easy, and the printer must have been beyond exhausted by the time he finished. But fear could drive men to do incredible things. Fear and the instinct for self-preservation. The problem was, how to prove it? Especially without involving the Princess and her stolen letters.
How?
Chapter 51
It was almost dark by the time Sebastian reached the banks of the frozen Thames. The now-bedraggled strings of gaily colored flags and lanterns danced fitfully in the warming wind, but hundreds of fairgoers still thronged the ice, their shouts and laughter mingling with the cries of roving hawkers. The smell of ale and roasting mutton and hot spice cakes hung heavy on the damp air.
“Ye think it’s ’er brother what killed ’er, don’t ye?” said Tom when Sebastian drew up at the foot of Queen Street to hand him the reins.
Sebastian turned to give the boy a long, steady look. “I do. Although I’m afraid I can’t explain my reasoning to you.”
Tom nodded, his face flat. He might not know the exact train of Sebastian’s thoughts, but he was clever enough to grasp the implications of their movements that day. “‘Ow they ever gonna put ’im on trial if it’s got somethin’ to do with the Princess and they don’t want nobody t’ know about it?”
Sebastian dropped lightly to the slushy ground. “I don’t think they will.”
A heavy, wet snow was falling again, big clumpy flakes that hovered perilously close to rain. Sebastian could see gaps here and there in the double lines of tents, booths, and stalls, where some of the more prudent tradesmen had obviously begun to mistrust the ice and withdrawn. But the crowds were still thick. Half-grown boys with dogs at their heels mingled with tradesmen and apprentices, stout matrons and merchants in high-crowned hats, clusters of giggling serving girls and roving bands of seamen from the ships frozen fast at the docks. There was a raucous, almost frantic note to the noisy merrymaking, as if most sensed this would be the Frost Fair’s last night and were determined to make the most of it.
He found a couple of apprentices working Somerset’s old wooden press, turning out souvenir cards while Somerset himself guarded the piles of books and stationery from possible thieves. “Still doing a good business, I see,” said Sebastian, walking up to him.
Somerset’s eyes crinkled with his soft, sad smile. “Can’t complain.”
“May I speak with you for a moment?”
Somerset nodded to one of the apprentices to take his place. “Of course.”
“I know what happened to your sister,” said Sebastian as the two men turned to push their way down the crowded promenade.
Something shifted behind the printer’s eyes, something swift and calculating and quickly hidden by half-lowered lids. “You do? Well, that’s encouraging. Was it her husband, then?”
“Actually, no.”
“Oh?”
“It was you.”
Somerset drew up and swung to face him, the light from the torches flanking a nearby dance tent falling golden across his features. A burst of shouts and laughter and the high-pitched, urgent screech of a fiddle filled the night. “Is this some sort of sick jest?”
“Hot pies!” shouted a passing boy selling mutton pies from a tray slung by a strap around his
