Chapter 44
“How long do you think he’s been dead?” asked Lovejoy sometime later as he crouched beside the dead man.
Sebastian stood with one hand braced against the nearby mantelpiece. “Quite a while, from the looks of things. Much of the blood has dried, and the fire has burnt itself down to ashes. According to the housemaid, he shut himself in here shortly after breakfast, and no one in the household had seen him since.”
“Not even to bring him a cup of tea?”
“She said he didn’t like to be disturbed.”
“Someone obviously disturbed him.” Lovejoy pushed to his feet with a stifled grunt as his knees creaked. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the room’s gently worn furnishings and scattered musical instruments. Jane Ambrose’s basket of mending still rested beside her chair. “There doesn’t appear to be any sign of either an altercation or a search.”
“No.”
Lovejoy sighed. “I’ll set some of the lads to going over the house. We might find something.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Sebastian, although he doubted it.
Lovejoy brought his gaze back to the dagger protruding from the dead man’s chest. It was an exotic weapon, the nephrite handle gently curved to fit comfortably in the palm and set with pearls and semiprecious stones. “An unusual piece.”
“It looks Indian to me—probably Mughal,” said Sebastian, and left it at that.
Dusk was falling by the time Sebastian made it back to St. Anne’s, Soho.
Liam Maxwell was not there.
He checked the journalist’s printing shop, then his booth at the Frost Fair, and drew a blank both places. Frustrated, he turned his steps toward Tower Hill. As he crossed Gibson’s snowy yard, he could see the glow of a lantern shining through the high windows of the surgeon’s stone outbuilding to cast a warm pool of golden light into the night. But when Sebastian pushed open the door, the Irishman was just tugging off Ambrose’s boots.
“Bloody hell,” said Gibson, looking up. “I hope you aren’t already expecting me to know anything about this latest corpse you’ve sent. Lovejoy’s men just delivered him.”
Sebastian grunted. “Let me see the dagger, at least.”
Gibson shifted to carefully ease the weapon from the dead man’s chest, his eyes narrowing as he studied the inlaid handle. “Looks Mughal.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“It also looks like a woman’s weapon.”
Sebastian took the knife in his hand and frowned. “Yes.” It was an exquisite piece of work, the blade curved with a central ridge and damascene floral decoration near the hilt and a floral motif of inlaid pearls and red and green stones on the pommel.
Gibson was watching him carefully. “Do I take it that means something to you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Well,” said Gibson, exaggerating his brogue, “it’s a relief, it is, knowing you’ve narrowed things down a bit.” He tugged off the second boot. “Since you’re here, you might as well help me strip the fellow. Your eyes are better in this light than mine anyway.”
Whoever killed Edward Ambrose had stabbed him three times.
“Doesn’t look like this killer knew what he was doing,” said Sebastian, staring at the three jagged gashes in the dead man’s now naked torso.
“Doesn’t, does it?” Gibson unhooked the lantern from the chain over the stone slab and held it closer. “I’d say this was the first wound,” he said, pointing to the lowest slit. “That one got his stomach. Then this one”—he prodded the tip of one finger into the next cut—“hit a rib. Got it right the third time, though: straight into the heart. Unless of course Edward Ambrose’s heart isn’t where it’s supposed to be, which sometimes happens.”
Sebastian took a step back as Gibson reached for his scalpel. “Do you still need me?”
Gibson looked up with a grin. “Why? Don’t you want to stay and observe?”
The stone outbuilding was cold enough that when Sebastian blew out a quick, harsh breath, the exhalation billowed around him in a white cloud. “Thank you, but no.”
A light snow began to fall as Sebastian searched the dark frozen city for Liam Maxwell. Without a wind, it hurtled straight down, big flakes that looked like shadows against the rows of dimly glowing streetlamps on Fleet Street and the Strand. He trailed through a score of taverns and coffeehouses, then worked his way down toward the riverfront again. The night became a blur of smoky bursts of firelight gleaming on strange upturned faces, of warmth and laughter punctuated by stretches of darkness and bitter cold.
He finally ran the printer to ground in a Frost Fair drinking tent that some wag had christened THE MUSCOVITE, the letters spelled out crudely on a weathered board. A rough shelter concocted of old sails and crossed galley oars, it was crowded with tradesmen, watermen, and fairgoers, all drinking Mum and Old Tom as if there were no tomorrow.
Liam Maxwell sat on a bench at one end of the rough trestle table, hunched over and alone, his somber mood effectively isolating him from his gay surroundings. His cravat was rumpled and askew, his cheeks unshaven, his collar torn. From the looks of things, the man hadn’t been to bed in days.
Sebastian walked up to press his hands flat onto the table’s boards and lean into it. “Did you kill Edward Ambrose?”
Maxwell’s head fell back, his eyes widening and mouth going slack with a credible expression of shock that shifted ever so subtly into fear. “He’s dead?”
“Stabbed.”
“When?”
“Probably sometime this morning.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Can you prove it?”
The journalist pressed his lips together and shook his head.
Sebastian said, “Then why the devil should I believe you?”
Maxwell’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy. “Why would I kill him?”
“You know why.”
He swallowed. “Are you saying he did it—Ambrose killed Jane?”
“Possibly. Maybe even probably. And I can’t conceive of anyone besides you who had a reason to kill him.”
“I didn’t do it,” he said again.
“So where have you been all day? As far as I can tell, no one has seen you.”
“I’ve been . . . around.”
“Where?”
“No place for any length of time. I wanted to be alone.”
Sebastian reached into his greatcoat and tossed the Mughal knife onto the table between them with a flick of his wrist. The jeweled dagger spun around once, then lay still. “Recognize this? It was found in Ambrose’s heart.”
Maxwell leaned back on his bench, hands braced against the table’s edge, his breath coming quick and shallow.
Sebastian said, “You were raised in India, weren’t you? As was your mother before you.”
Maxwell brought up tented hands to cover his nose and mouth as he nodded. Slowly he raised his gaze to meet Sebastian’s. “That’s not my knife. I swear to God, I’ve never seen it before.”
“One of two things,” said Sebastian. “Either you’re lying, or—”
“I’m not!”
“Or someone is trying to frame you.”
A burst of laughter from a nearby table momentarily jerked Liam Maxwell’s attention away. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “There’s something I haven’t told you about. Something that might explain all of this.”
“Such as?”
Maxwell threw another quick look around the crowded tent and pushed to his feet. “Not here.”