Chapter 46
Sunday, 30 July
You’re up early,” said Gibson the next morning, a stray lock of gray-threaded dark hair falling into his battered, still-swollen eyes as he looked up from the pallid cadaver laid out on the granite slab before him.
Sebastian paused in the open doorway. “I couldn’t sleep.” The morning air was cold and damp, the light still so pale and gray that Gibson had lit the lantern that hung from a chain over his slab. Its golden glow played over the naked, bloated body of Cato Coldfield, and the smell rising from the days-old corpse was so ripe, Sebastian was careful to breathe through his mouth. “Can you tell me anything yet?”
Gibson set aside his knife and reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “Probably not much you don’t already know. He was shot once, from fairly close.” He tossed aside the rag and pointed to a dark, round, puckered wound in Coldfield’s chest. “That’s what this is, obviously. As you can see, it’s high enough that it wouldn’t have killed him right away, although it probably knocked him over. So then your killer stabbed him.” He pointed to a series of slashing wounds. “Here, and here, and here.”
“Any idea what kind of knife we’re talking about?”
Gibson jerked his chin toward a shelf on the far side of the door, where a blood-encrusted butcher’s knife rested on a chipped enameled plate. “Bow Street sent that over this morning. I’m told they found it in the overgrown garden around the cottage, and it looks right to me.”
Sebastian shifted to get a better look at the knife. It was old and worn and caked with dried blood. But beneath the blood the blade was carefully honed and polished in a way that reminded Sebastian of the diligently tended thatching tools he’d noticed stacked beside the dead man’s cottage. He suspected the knife was Coldfield’s own—probably seized by his panicking killer from the cluttered tabletop when that single pistol shot didn’t prove fatal.
“When?” said Sebastian, bringing his gaze back to the thatcher’s pallid, beard-stubbled face. “When did he die?”
“Could have been early Friday morning, but I suspect Thursday evening or night is more likely.”
Sebastian nodded. “That’s what I figured.”
He became aware of Gibson staring at him. “Do you have any idea who’s doing this?”
Sebastian met his friend’s narrowed, bloodshot eyes. “Hopefully not.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the dead man’s ravaged chest. “You think he was down on the floor when he was stabbed?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“What about the angle of the shot? Can you tell me anything about that?”
Gibson looked vaguely puzzled. “Can’t say I’ve checked. Why? You thinking this killer might be unusually tall or short?”
“Maybe. Just check, will you?”
Sebastian’s next stop was Park Lane. This time there was no trace of a smile on the butler’s face when he opened the Duchess of Claiborne’s front door.
Humphrey groaned. “My lord. You can’t. It’s barely nine o’clock.”
“Oh, good, so she hasn’t gone out yet,” said Sebastian, and headed for the stairs.
Aunt Henrietta was sitting up in bed, sipping a cup of hot chocolate and reading the Times, when Sebastian knocked on her door.
“I heard you talking to Humphrey, so you may as well come in, Devlin,” she called out.
“Good heavens,” he said when he saw her. “What are you doing awake at nine o’clock in the morning?”
She set aside her chocolate cup. “As it happens, I was reading about the hordes of idiots who are streaming down to Plymouth to hire every yacht, fishing vessel, and rowboat available. It’s said they’re clustering around the ship by the thousands, with everyone desperate to catch a glimpse of Napoléon. Did you know the sailors on the Bellerophon have gone so far as to set up notice boards on which they post the times when the Emperor is expected to take his walks on deck?”
“No, I didn’t know. But surely you didn’t wake up this early to read the latest news about Bonaparte?”
She leaned back against her pillows and gave a disgruntled huff. “I’m awake at this ungodly hour because every single one of last night’s events was so wretchedly dull that I was in bed by one o’clock. If this keeps up I may be tempted to go to Bath or some such equally horrid place.”
“Bath?” said Sebastian. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s either that or Brighton.”
“Isn’t Claiborne down at the Hall?”
“He is. But so is that ridiculous idiot he married, and how anyone can abide being around her for more than two hours at a stretch is beyond my imagination.” She thrust aside her paper. “Enough of this. What do you want from me now?”
He went to stand at one of the velvet-hung windows, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze on the wet, flawlessly manicured gardens below. He had a feeling he didn’t want to hear what he was about to learn. “Lady Salinger, the current Viscount’s wife—when did she die?”
“Oh, dear.”
Sebastian turned to look at the Duchess. “So it’s true, then, is it? She’s not dead?”
“I suppose she may as well be.”
Sebastian studied her pinched features. “Why? What happened?”
The Duchess sighed. “She was an attractive woman, you know; quite small and delicately built, with lovely pale blond hair, soft blue eyes, and a heart-shaped face. Her daughter—Arabella—looks a fair bit like her, but Georgina was much prettier.”
Sebastian nodded. It sounded as if Lady Salinger had looked much like her younger son, Percy.
“Old Septimus Bain was a hopelessly crass, pushing mushroom,” Aunt Henrietta was saying, “but he was wise enough to have hired a succession of superbly educated and well-bred governesses to bring up his daughter. Her manners were flawless. She had quite charming ways, as well. She was one of those people who has a knack for making almost everyone like them. Except . . .”
“Except?” prompted Sebastian when she paused.
Henrietta let out a long, pained breath. “The whispers started perhaps six months after she married Salinger. At first it was all servants’ talk—you know the dreadful way they can gossip from one house to the next.”
“What were they saying?”
“That Georgina had a vicious temper. That she hated to be crossed or made to feel embarrassed or slighted in any way. That she could be sweet and laughing one minute and then turn into a raging vixen. She was with child at the time, so at first her moodiness was attributed to that—and even for a while after Duncan was born because . . . well, you know how some women can become quite cast down after the birth of a child. But eventually Salinger took her off to the Priory and began spending more and more of his time there. When he did come up to London, he frequently came alone.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“Who knows? I’ve no doubt we’ve all known women—and men—like that at some point: quick to anger, impulsive. Her moods would swing unpredictably from excitement and joy to something dark and reckless. At one point she had a high perch phaeton she used to drive in the park so fast and with such wild abandon that it was a miracle she didn’t kill someone—or herself. There were whispers of excessive gambling, too, and crazy spending sprees. I suspect she ran through a significant chunk of her father’s money before he was even dead. And then there were the rumors that she used to cut herself.”
“Cut herself?”
“Yes, with a knife or pieces of broken glass. Not anywhere it showed, but on her . . .” Henrietta paused. “On her legs. Then one day her abigail found her cutting herself with one of Salinger’s razors. The woman tried to stop her, and Georgina flew into one of her rages and killed her. Slashed her throat.”
“Good God,” said Sebastian. “How did they ever keep that quiet?”
Henrietta’s lips flattened into a thin line. “Septimus Bain was an extraordinarily wealthy man, and as we all know, wealth brings power. He used it.”
“I thought Bain was dead by then.” Just one more thing, thought Sebastian, that Rhodes had obviously been lying about.
“Oh, no; he didn’t have his fatal apoplexy until a year or two later, after he lost a great deal of his fortune in some bad investments. The abigail’s death was declared a suicide—”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I wish I weren’t. In exchange for the verdict, Georgina was quietly committed to a private lunatic asylum out in Bethnal Green. At first everyone was told she had retired to the countryside to recover from the distress of finding her woman with her throat slit. But after a few years, when she became worse instead of better, Salinger let it out that she had died.”
Sebastian felt a heavy burden of sadness pressing down on his chest. He didn’t ask how the Dowager had come to know all this, but he didn’t doubt it for a moment. “Which one?” he asked hoarsely. “Which asylum?”
“Chester House. But you can’t mean to go there?”