Chapter 8
By the time Sebastian made it back to Tower Hill, a gentle, balmy darkness was falling over the city and the lamplighters were almost finished with their rounds.
He knew it was something he’d been avoiding—coming here again. He’d always felt awkward around Alexi because of what had happened between them in the past, and he wasn’t sure if what he now understood about her would make that better or worse. But to his relief it was Gibson who answered his knock at the old house’s heavy wooden door.
“Ah, there you are,” said the surgeon, opening the door wider. “I was just about to send you a message.” At some point during the day he’d shaved, made an attempt at combing his unruly hair, and tied a clean white cravat around his neck. But his eyes were still bloodshot, his skin sallow, his face sunken and haggard.
“Finished the autopsy, have you?”
“I have indeed. Come see.”
Sebastian followed the Irishman down a narrow passageway to the house’s ancient, smoke-darkened kitchen, where Gibson paused to light a lantern. “Alexi’s gone off to deliver some costermonger’s baby,” he said, thrusting a taper into the coals glowing on the hearth and waiting until it flared.
“Had she told you about Sedgewick before?” Sebastian asked as his friend turned to hold the burning taper to his lantern’s wick.
Gibson shook his head. “No. I only just found out about him this morning, after she saw the scars on the corpse’s torso.” He blew out the taper, then picked up the lantern and turned toward the door. “But I can now tell you what killed the bugger.”
“Oh?”
Gibson led the way along the path that wound through Alexi’s garden, dark now with the shadows of the coming night. “There’s a wee slit in his left side. Doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s there because somebody shoved a dagger up under his ribs, straight into his heart.”
Sebastian drew in his breath in a hiss. Bloody awful, isn’t it? Monty had said. Who’d have thought he’d go through all those years at war only to end up with a knife stuck under his ribs in London?
“What is it?” asked Gibson, glancing back at him.
But Sebastian only shook his head and said, “So whoever killed him got close.”
“About as close as you can get.”
“Any idea where he went into the river?”
“Somebody who knows the Thames might be able to tell you, but not me.” Gibson pushed open the door to the outbuilding and went to hang his lantern on the chain that dangled over the naked corpse that still lay on the high stone table in the center of the room, now bearing a series of incisions that testified to Gibson’s explorations. “But I did find something else interesting. Look here.”
Shifting to the end of the table, he gently cradled the dead man’s left heel in his palm and turned the pale foot to one side. “See the abrasion marks there, and there? Somebody tied a rope around your captain’s ankles—or maybe his own cravat, because I don’t see any sign of rope fibers.”
“Huh.” Sebastian reached for one of the dead man’s cold hands and turned it to the light, but there were no marks on the wrist. “Before he died, do you think?”
Gibson shook his head. “I’m almost certain it was after. It might have been done to keep the legs together while your killer was shifting the corpse. But given that he didn’t bother to also tie the hands together, I’m thinking it’s more likely he fastened something to Sedgewick’s feet to weigh the body down when he tossed it in the river.”
Sebastian shifted his gaze to the singed ruin of Sedgewick’s face. “If true, that means that whoever killed him didn’t intend for the body to be found. So why bother to obscure his identity by obliterating his features?”
“Insurance, perhaps, in case the body somehow turned up after all? Although that wouldn’t account for the sexual mutilation.”
“So, what, then? Rage? Revenge?”
“Maybe.” Gibson turned to the row of wide wooden shelves that stretched across the back wall of the room, where a silent, oddly truncated form lay beneath a bloodstained sheet. “You might want to take a look at this,” he said, and flipped back the covering to reveal the pale, naked shoulders and torso of a stocky male form.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Sebastian. The man’s neck ended abruptly in a jagged, raw mess of pulpy red tissue and torn muscle and gleaming white bone.
There was no head.
“Who the hell is that?”
“Not a clue. And look here,” said Gibson, easing the sheet farther down the dead man’s body to where the wrists ended in two bloody stumps. “He hasn’t been identified, and I’m not sure he ever will be. It’s rather difficult to identify a naked body that’s missing both its head and its hands. And unlike in Sedgewick’s case, there are no prominent scars on the parts of the body that we do have.”
“Where was he found?”
“Washed up on the Isle of Dogs this afternoon. From the looks of things, I’d say he was probably in his late thirties or early forties. Well fed, and with nicely kept feet and toenails, so he’s no pauper. Although he’s muscled enough to suggest he’s probably not something like a merchant or shopkeeper or clerk, either.”
“No one’s been reported missing?”
“No one who fits his description,” said Gibson, reaching to draw the sheet back up over the headless corpse. Then he turned to face Sebastian, his arms crossing at his chest as he leaned back against the shelves. “Maybe we’re coming at this all wrong. Maybe Sedgewick was the victim of some madman who’s simply choosing his victims at random.”
Sebastian met his friend’s troubled eyes and saw there a tumult of disturbing thoughts that mirrored his own.
“Maybe,” said Sebastian. “Or maybe there’s a method to his madness, and we just need to find it.”
Gibson sighed, his hands falling to his sides as he pushed away from the shelves. “Well, if you’re right, then I pray to God you figure out what that method is. Before whoever he is kills again.”
Later that night, Sebastian lay in his wife’s arms, his head nestled at her shoulder, one hand resting lightly on the soft swell of her belly where a new child grew. With the coming of darkness it had turned chilly, and a small fire burned on the hearth, filling the bedroom with its warm glow.
The birth of their first child, Simon, had come so close to killing Hero that the thought of this new child filled Sebastian with both joy and terror.
“I’ll be all right,” she said softly, somehow guessing the drift of his thoughts. “You’ll see. And this one will be your girl.”
“Promise?” He kept his voice light, although inside he was howling with fear. If he lost her . . . Dear God, he couldn’t lose her.
“I promise,” she said. “Have you come up with a name?” They’d made a bargain back in the early days of their marriage: She would name the boys, while he would get to name the girls.
“Not yet. There’s plenty of time.” He shifted to press a kiss against the soft flesh of her stomach. “How did your interview with the wherryman go this afternoon?”
For several years now she’d been writing a series of articles on the poor of the capital. It was an original and profoundly important project that endlessly enraged her powerful father, Lord Jarvis. But Hero simply smiled at his grumblings and went on with her interviews, for she was one of the few people in all of Britain unintimidated by the King’s formidable cousin.
“We had to reschedule for tomorrow morning. Something came up.” She paused, then said, “Given that no one knows the river better than a wherryman, I thought I might see if he has any idea where Miles Sedgewick’s killer is likely to have tipped his body into the river.”
Sebastian lifted his head to look at her. “It’s certainly worth a try.”
She moved her fingers, entwining them in the curls at the nape of his neck. “Are you going to ask Monty how he knew Sedgewick had been stabbed and mutilated when Bow Street has been at pains to keep the latter out of the papers and even you hadn’t learned of the former?”
“I will, but not just yet. I want to look into some of the other things he told me first.”
“I was under the impression you’d always had a favorable opinion of the man.”
“Monty? I do like him. I was always a bit puzzled by his friendship with Sedgewick, but then, they did share that odd, intense interest in folklore. And people like Monty always tend to see the best in others. I assumed he simply thought Sedgewick as pleasant and easygoing as he seemed. It’s a mistake enough people made—even clever, clear-eyed, hardheaded ones like Alexi.”
“You think he could be the killer?”
Sebastian was silent for a moment. “I don’t want to think it, but I also don’t see how I can discount the possibility. At least, not yet.”
“No,” she agreed. “Except why on earth would Monty stick a dagger in his old friend’s side and shoot off his face?”
“I’ve no idea. I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around the fact that I even need to suspect him.”
“War can change people,” she said quietly. “Or even destroy them.”
“God knows that’s true,” said Sebastian. Hadn’t his own experiences in the war come close to destroying him? “But I still have a hard time imagining Monty chopping off someone’s head and hands.”
“We don’t know this new corpse is the work of the same killer.” She paused. “Although the thought of two such killers roaming the city is rather disconcerting.”
“Just a tad,” he said, and saw her smile in the firelight. He shifted until he lay almost on top of her, his breath tickling a curl beside her ear. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
“Mmm.” She reached up to entwine her arms around his neck and pull his lips down to hers. “Or we could not talk at all . . .”