T hey buried Nicholas Hayes that evening in a quiet corner of St. Pancras’s churchyard. Shortly before dusk, the sky took on a peculiar color, like a washed-out cloth tinged with hints of old brass, and a hot wind gusted up that felt gritty and dirty against their faces yet carried no hint of coming rain.
It wasn’t the “done thing” for ladies to attend funerals, but Hero was there, as were Jules Calhoun, Mahmoud Abbasi and his young son, Hamish McHenry—looking half-drunk and half-sick—and Mott Tintwhistle. Sebastian was wondering how the old cracksman-turned–dolly-shop owner had known. Then Grace Calhoun arrived, dressed in unexpectedly severe black and accompanied by her beefy barman. She stood silent and stony-faced through the short graveside service. And then she left.
Afterward, Sebastian and Hero stood alone beside the raw grave, with the gusting wind flattening the rank grass of the churchyard around them. “I wonder how he would feel about lying here,” Hero said suddenly.
“He knew he was dying when he came back to England. I suspect he didn’t much care where his body ended up.”
She stared off across the jumble of moss-covered tombs and headstones, toward the wind-thrashed treetops of Pennington’s Tea Gardens. “I wish Ji could have been here.”
“I know.” Sebastian was silent for a moment, the wind buffeting his face. Then the wind dropped and the air smelled of dust and lichen-covered stone and old, old death. He said, “I should have realized Kate Brownbeck was with child—that only a baby would have precipitated that disastrous, hasty elopement.”
Hero drew a painful breath. “And then they took her baby away and she never had another. The poor woman.”
The sun was sinking lower in the sky, bathing the world in that strange brassy light. He said, “I must admit I can sympathize with Nicholas Hayes for coming back here with murder in his heart. I think about the lot of them—Brownbeck, Forbes, Seaforth, and LaRivière—and it’s hard not to be consumed with vicarious rage.”
“Of the four, I’d say Forbes and LaRivière are by far the strongest and most dangerous characters—and the most likely to kill.”
“Yes. But weak men can also kill, especially out of fear. And a sickle in the back strikes me as the act of a weak man.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” The church bell began to ring, tolling out the hour, and the mournful peal seemed to press down upon them. The air was heavy with the smell of freshly turned earth, the hard sky crisscrossed with birds coming in to settle for the night. Wordlessly, Hero reached out to take his hand. He laced his fingers with hers, and she said, “Is it wrong that I find myself wishing he’d succeeded in doing what he came here for?”
“I don’t think so. Not at all.”
She looked over at him and smiled.