The thick gray clouds overhead were pressing low on the city when Sebastian found Sir Henry Lovejoy with several of his constables in a wooded, naturalized area of the park to the south of the Serpentine. More men were fanning out around them, their gazes on the ground as they walked slowly back and forth, searching for something—anything—that might explain what had happened here. As Sebastian approached, he could see the ominously still body of a young woman half hidden by a clump of shrubs, with only her sturdy half boots and the flounce of her simple muslin gown visible. Standing off to one side was Lord Salinger himself, deep in a low-voiced conversation with two more constables. The Viscount wore the ravaged expression of a man who had looked into the yawning jaws of hell, and he had both arms wrapped around his daughter’s slim form, hugging her close. Sebastian could see the girl’s shoulders quivering with her quiet sobs as she buried her face against her father’s chest.
“Lord Devlin,” said Lovejoy as Sebastian walked up to him. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“How the hell did this happen?” asked Sebastian, his stomach clenching as he drew close enough to see the dead abigail. Whoever killed her had then carefully posed the body so that she lay on her back, her feet close together, her arms crossed over her bloody, hacked chest. “What was Arabella doing out here with just her maid?”
Lovejoy looked pained. “I’m told that after Wednesday’s incident, Lord Salinger forbade his children to go for walks—to go anywhere, in fact, without his explicit approval. Unfortunately, young Miss Priestly decided to ignore her father’s prohibition and suborned her abigail into assisting her. It seems they crept out the area door when no one was looking, thinking it was all a great lark to sneak out and go walking in the park by themselves.”
Sebastian glanced over to where Salinger still stood, clutching his daughter close. “I assume Arabella was the intended target, not her maid?”
Lovejoy nodded. “So it would seem. According to Miss Priestly, a man stepped from behind the shrubbery as they were passing and grabbed her by the arm. The abigail attempted to intervene and was stabbed, which enabled Miss Priestly to wrench free and run for help.” He paused, his gaze on the dead woman laid out before them. “When the constables arrived, they found the abigail . . . like this.”
His heart heavy within him, Sebastian crouched down beside the still form of the abigail. Cassy, he remembered Arabella had called her. The maid was young, probably no more than twenty or twenty-two, with honey-colored hair and pleasant features. She looked like a country girl, with sturdy limbs and a fresh complexion; she’d probably grown up on Salinger’s own estate in Leicestershire.
Her chest was a bloody mess of slashed muslin and raw, torn flesh.
“Damn,” he said softly. Damn, damn, damn.
For a moment he rested one forearm on his knee, his hand clenching into a fist in frustration. Then he pushed to his feet and walked over to where Salinger now stood alone with his daughter, his hands on her shoulders, her head bowed as he spoke to her quietly.
“I’d like to ask Arabella a few questions, if I may,” Sebastian said to Salinger. “Just for a moment. Is that all right with you, Arabella?”
Salinger hesitated, then nodded, while Arabella kept her eyes on her feet and whispered, “Yes, sir.”
In mourning for her aunt and cousin, she wore a simple muslin dress dyed black, with small puffed sleeves and a black sash that matched the ribbons on the wide-brimmed black straw hat that now hung crookedly down her back. But the image of youthful innocence was spoiled by a dark stain of what was probably blood across her tucked bodice and the bloody smears on her arms.
Sebastian said, “I won’t ask you to go over it all again, Arabella, but I’d like you to describe for me what the man who attacked you and your abigail looked like. If you can.”
Arabella sniffed, hiccupped, then sucked in a deep, ragged breath. “I can try, sir.” Her voice was a broken whisper. “I think he was young—or at least he was slim and seemed young. He was tall—but not too tall. And he was dressed respectably. But I don’t know what he looked like beyond that because he had a kerchief tied over his face, same as before.”
“You think it was the same man who tried to grab Percy?”
“Maybe. He was very dark.” She looked up, showing him a tear-swollen, wet face. “It all happened so fast. He grabbed my wrist. But then Cassy, she tried to make him let go of me, so he turned on her and kept stabbing and stabbing . . .” Her voice broke. “There was so much blood! So much . . .”
“That’s enough,” said Salinger hoarsely, putting one arm around his daughter’s shoulders to pull her close against his side. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”
Sebastian met his gaze. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am this happened.”
Salinger nodded, his lips pressed together as if he didn’t quite trust himself to speak.
Sebastian stood for a moment, his arms crossed at his chest as he watched them walk away, Salinger’s arm still around his daughter, Arabella leaning into her father, Salinger himself visibly shaken. Less than half an hour ago, after talking to Finch, Sebastian would have said he was a fair way toward understanding what had happened out at Richmond Park on that dreadful sunny day. But it was impossible to reconcile this new attack with the neat explanation he’d been building about a jealous husband and an enraged father deliberately setting out to deflect suspicion by echoing a notorious fourteen-year-old murder.
Turning, Sebastian walked slowly back to where Lovejoy still stood beside the dead abigail, although he was no longer looking at her. He was watching the constables working their way back and forth across the surrounding area. “Have they found anything?” said Sebastian.
The magistrate shook his head. “Nothing. I suspect the killer took whatever knife he used away with him, the same as he did when he killed Gilly Harper in St. James’s churchyard.”
Sebastian nodded, his gaze drawn again to the silent face of the dead abigail beside them. “At least this answers one question for us.”
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “It does? What question?”
Sebastian raised his head to meet the magistrate’s eyes. “We can now be fairly certain that Gilly’s murder is somehow linked to what happened out at Richmond Park. But I’ll be damned if I can fathom how it all fits together.”