Chapter 49
Sebastian was in the mews, handing the tired mare over to his groom, Giles, when Tom came skittering into the stables.
“Gov’nor! Yer back! I been talkin’ to some more of Rhodes’s servants, like ye asked.”
Sebastian patted the mare’s neck, then turned. “And did you learn anything?” he said as Giles led the Arabian away, muttering something under his breath.
Tom shook his head. “Not a blessed thing, gov’nor. None o’ the ones who’ve been willin’ t’ talk t’ me ’as seen ’im meetin’ with any young coves in the past week or so. And nobody seems t’ know where ’e took ’isself off to last Sunday. Fact is, they’re in a bit of a puzzle about that themselves. You want I should keep tryin’?”
“No, never mind that for now. There’s something else I need you to do.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Hero some time later when she and Sebastian took the boys for a walk along the Thames at Millbank, the low-lying rural area to the southwest of Westminster where a new iron bridge was going up that would someday join these open fields to Vauxhall on the far bank. Out here away from the city, the air was fresh and clean, with a soft breeze that lifted the green leaves of a nearby stand of chestnuts against the clearing sky. “I simply can’t believe it. Percy and Arabella are children. It isn’t only a matter of how could they do such a thing; it’s also why. Why would they want to kill anyone, let alone their own aunt and cousin—not to mention all the others?”
They paused as Simon squatted down beside Patrick to see what the older boy had spotted in the shallows where the river lapped against a sandy stretch of the bank. Watching them, Sebastian himself found it hard to believe he was suggesting that a child barely ten years older than these two boys could have done something so monstrous. “I can’t begin to explain why. And the truth is, I haven’t figured out all the hows, either. But the inconsistencies and coincidences have mounted to the point that I can no longer ignore it as a possibility.”
“You can’t think that boy broke into Major Finch’s room and stole his pistol.”
“I know it sounds unbelievable.”
“It sounds unbelievable because it is! You also don’t know that the ‘nob’s get’ asking Cato Coldfield about the murders was Percy.”
“No. Although Percy told me himself he’s fascinated by murders and murderers.”
“That doesn’t mean he is one himself!”
“No. But it might suggest why he would kill someone: to see what it feels like. And to see if he could get away with it.”
“Surely a little boy couldn’t be so . . . evil.”
Sebastian looked over at her. “At what age do you think it starts? That lack of caring for others, I mean.”
“I don’t know. But not at thirteen! Surely?”
“Actually, I suspect that fundamental lack of human feeling only makes sense if it’s never there—unless it’s destroyed by the kind of brutal hardships a pampered viscount’s son is unlikely to have experienced.”
She turned her head away, one hand coming up to hold back her windblown hair as she stared out over the choppy, sun-sparkled expanse of the river beside them. She was silent for a long moment, then said, “Even if we should somehow discover that the boy who spoke to Coldfield that day was Percy, it could still be a coincidence.”
“It could be.”
“And Arabella could have bloodied her gloves by cutting herself on something, and decided to hide them rather than risk a scolding. Or perhaps she shoved the gloves into the hollow of that tree intending to go back for them, then forgot. Given what happened that day, it would be totally understandable.”
“Yes.”
She drew a deep breath, her features composed in troubled lines as she watched Simon pick up a rock and throw it awkwardly into the water. “What about the attack on Percy in the park? If the children are the killers, then how do you explain that?”
“The only witnesses to the first supposed attack were Arabella and her abigail, remember? And the abigail is now dead.”
“You’re seriously suggesting the children—what? Tricked their governess into eating something that would make her so ill she wouldn’t be able to accompany them on their morning walk in the park? And then fabricated the entire incident? And that’s why the abigail was killed? Because she was threatening to tell someone the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how unbelievable that sounds?”
“Yes.”
“And Gilly Harper? Why kill her?”
“I’ve no idea. I never have been able to understand how Gilly’s death fits into any of this.”
Hero resolutely shook her head. “No. It can’t be. They’re children!”
“Think about this,” said Sebastian. “Who sent us after first Pitcairn and then Finch? The children. And when I was careful not to tell Lovejoy about Pitcairn, Percy made sure he knew.”
“You’re suggesting they were deliberately trying to throw suspicion onto Finch and Pitcairn?”
“I am. And then, when those misdirections didn’t seem to be producing an arrest, Percy evaded his father’s restrictions in order to come to Brook Street and tell me about the chimney sweep Hiram Dobbs.”
“Surely you don’t see that as suspicious?”
“At the time I didn’t, no. But now, in retrospect? I do.”
“But Percy couldn’t possibly have traveled all the way out to Richmond Thursday night to kill Cato Coldfield.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he turned to look back at the grim walls of the new penitentiary being built farther downriver, in a low marshy area that critics warned would surely turn the prison into a death trap. “That’s the one part of this that makes me think I’m seeing a pattern where nothing exists except happenstance.”
“That’s the only thing that makes you suspect you might be wrong? Seriously?”
Sebastian gave her a crooked smile and reached out to take her hand. “Think about this: Thisbe was supposed to go on that picnic, but her mother made her stay home as punishment for something the girl says she didn’t do. I’d like to know what that something was.”
Hero watched as the two boys crouched down, laughing, with their hands tucked up under their armpits and waddled along the riverbank, quacking in imitation of a trio of ducks that had come in to land farther up the bank. “I was thinking about going for a walk in Grosvenor Square tomorrow morning in the hopes I might run into her again. I can’t stop thinking about what the poor child must be going through, losing both her mother and her sister at the same time—and in such a horrible way. But . . .”
“But?” prompted Sebastian when she paused.
She swung to face him. “To be deliberately pumping an innocent, grieving child for information about her cousins under the guise of offering her my sympathy and friendship strikes me as vile.”
He took both her hands in his. “Except that, as you said, you were planning on trying to see her again anyway.”
“Well, that’s a pathetic sop to my conscience if ever I heard one.”
“Perhaps. The thing is, if there were a way to be more honest and direct with Thisbe without risking increasing her distress, then I’d take it. But there isn’t. And there is still so much about that day we don’t know but she very well might. Hell, I’m not entirely certain who came up with the idea for the picnic in the first place.”
“I thought Arabella told you the picnic was her aunt Laura’s idea—or Emma’s.”
“She did. But at this point I’m not inclined to take anything either of those two children tells us as the unquestioned truth. Are you?”
She met his gaze and held it. And he saw in her stricken gray eyes all the pain this was causing her, and all her doubts, along with the unwanted realization that there was too much sense in what he was saying for it to be easily dismissed. She drew a deep, ragged breath and let it out slowly. “No. No, I’m not.”
Monday, 31 July
“I was hoping I’d see you again,” said Thisbe the next morning as she walked with Hero along one of the gravel paths that wound through Grosvenor Square’s naturalized plantings. The sun had come up bright and hot that morning, so that the wet gardens around them seemed to steam in the rising heat.
Hero tamped down an unpleasant twinge of guilt. Reaching out, she took the child’s hand in her own, gave it a squeeze, and said lightly, “It’s lovely to have the sun out again, isn’t it?”
Thisbe nodded, although her features remained pinched and wan. “Malcolm made it home last night, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. That is good news. I know you’ve been missing him.”
Thisbe kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, but Hero saw a quiver pass over her small features. “They’re going to bury Mama and Emma the day after tomorrow, on Wednesday.”
Thank God, thought Hero. But all she said was, “I am so, so sorry, Thisbe.”
Thisbe blinked and dashed a gloved fist across her eyes. “I keep having dreams about that picnic,” she said softly. “Even though I don’t want to, even though I wasn’t even there, I still see it in my dreams. Miss Braithwaite says it’s because I keep thinking about it.”
“I don’t believe anyone can control their dreams, Thisbe.”
“That’s what I told Miss Braithwaite. It’s not like I want to dream about it. I never want to go on a picnic again.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed before saying quietly, “Oh, how I wish Mama had never given in to Arabella and agreed to do it!”
Hero felt her breath catch. “The picnic was Arabella’s idea?”
Thisbe wiped her eyes again and sniffed. “She started talking about it weeks ago. Mama wasn’t particularly keen on it, but Arabella was so excited about the thought of it and kept pushing for it so hard that in the end Mama gave in. She was always telling us about how we needed to be extra kind to Arabella and Percy on account of Aunt Georgina. Whenever one or the other of them would do something nasty, Mama would sigh and say how we had to make allowances for them because they were so sad and lonely, growing up without a mother and with only governesses and nursemaids to take care of them. She said they needed to know we loved them, and so she was always pushing Emma to spend more time with Arabella—as if it weren’t obvious to everyone that Arabella absolutely hated Emma.”
Hero felt an unpleasant sensation crawl up her spine. “She did?”
“Malcolm always said it was because Arabella was jealous of Emma.”
“Jealous? Why?”
Thisbe wrinkled her nose. “It’s kinda weird. Arabella is always bragging about how her papa is a viscount, while our papa is only a baronet, and how the Priestlys go way back, all the way to the Conqueror. Except the McInnises are almost as old, and our mama was a Priestly, too, whereas Arabella’s Grandpa Bain started out as a clerk.” Thisbe colored faintly. “Mama always used to say it’s shallow and ill-bred to talk like that. But the thing is, it’s Arabella who’s always going on and on about how grand the Priestlys are. It’s like it eats at her, knowing that both sides of her family aren’t as wellborn as she wishes they were. Not that the Priestlys don’t have what Malcolm calls a few skeletons in their closet. Grandpapa Priestly was a horrid gambler, you know. Malcolm says that by the time he was fifty, Grandpapa Priestly had lost so much money that he almost lost the Priory, too. That’s why Uncle Miles had to marry ‘beneath him,’ as my great-aunt Honoria is always saying. Except then, even though Uncle Miles married Arabella’s mama because her papa was so rich, before he died old Mr. Bain lost most of his money on account of what Malcolm calls ‘bad investments.’ So while the Priory is no longer encumbered, it isn’t as though Uncle Miles is exactly flush, as Malcolm would say.”
Hero stared at the child beside her. “Malcolm told you all this?”
“No. No one ever tells me anything. But I heard him talking to Emma about it. He said it was one of the things that drives Arabella crazy.”
“Emma talked to Malcolm about your cousin?”
Thisbe nodded again. “It was after Arabella got so mad at Emma that she tried to scratch her eyes out.”
“When did that happen?”
“A week or two after Waterloo. It was horrible. Malcolm had to pull Arabella off Emma, and Emma, she was so mad at Arabella that she was screaming at her, saying she was as crazy as her mother.” Thisbe threw a quick glance back at her governess, then lowered her voice. “She’s not really dead, you know—Aunt Georgina, I mean. She’s locked up in a madhouse. No one ever talks about it because it’s supposed to be this big dark secret. But Malcolm found out about it and told Emma. So then Mama got mad at Malcolm and Emma, which wasn’t fair, because Arabella started it all—and was saying how she hated Emma and wished she was dead, on top of that.”
Hero had assumed the children all believed the polite fiction given to the ton, that Lady Salinger had died. What would it do to a child like Percy, she wondered, who’d grown up believing his mother was dead, only to suddenly learn such a horrible truth?
What must it have done to Arabella, who could surely remember her mother?
Hero chose her next words carefully. “What did Arabella do after Emma said that about her mother?”
“It was really eerie. I mean, she’d been acting so wild, trying to scratch Emma’s face and screaming, ‘I hate you.’ But then, after Emma said that about Aunt Georgina, Arabella went all still and cold-like, and said in this strange, high-pitched voice, ‘I could kill you.’ ” Thisbe gave a little shiver, her head falling back as she watched a red squirrel scamper up the trunk of a nearby oak. “To tell the truth, in some ways I didn’t mind too much being told I couldn’t go on the picnic—I mean, not with Arabella going, too. I don’t like being around her. She’s . . . She can be scary.”
Hero found she had to clear her throat before she trusted her voice enough to say, “You told me you had to stay home because you were being punished for something you didn’t do?”
Thisbe set her jaw hard. “That was on account of Arabella. She wrote my name all over one of her books and then told Mama I had done it. But I didn’t! I promise I didn’t. Why would I? I mean, if I wanted to ruin her stupid book, why not just spill ink over it? Why write my own name so everyone would know it was me?”
Hero was aware of Laura’s daughter looking up at her with tear-filled, hurting eyes. “Oh, Thisbe,” she said, drawing the child into her arms and holding her close. She didn’t want to believe a fifteen-year-old girl and her thirteen-year-old brother were capable of plotting and executing such a diabolical series of murders.
But she didn’t like the way the facts were beginning to line up.