“That’s right. Unfortunately, the Bishop had an important appointment scheduled for six that evening. Rather than return with me immediately to St. Margaret’s, he arranged to drive out to Tanfield Hill afterward. It was my intention to meet him at the church, but . . .” The Reverend’s voice faded away.
“But?” prompted Sebastian.
“One of my parishioners. Mrs. Cummings. She was ill. By the time I returned, the Bishop had already arrived. And it was too late.”
The small, protuberant eyes blinked rapidly several times in succession. “I just keep thinking that if only Bishop Prescott could have returned with me to St. Margaret’s right away, none of this would have happened!”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “Did the Bishop happen to mention the nature of the appointment he had that evening?”
“No. Only that he didn’t feel he could cancel it. Something about an old friend in need of counseling.”
Sebastian’s fist tightened around his glass. “Really?” What had Miss Jarvis said? The Bishop asked for my assistance in preparing the speech he was to give before the House of Lords this Thursday.
The Reverend nodded again, his head moving up and down in a way that reminded Sebastian of a pigeon pecking at seed.
Sebastian took another sip of his wine. “It seems a strange thing to have done—rushing off to the Bishop simply because some workmen had stumbled upon an old crypt. I mean, why the Bishop?”
“Because of the body, of course.”
“You were concerned about . . . what? A scandal? Over a decades-old murder victim?”
Mr. Earnshaw’s eyes bulged alarmingly. “Good heavens. Can it be that you do not know?”
“Don’t know what?”
“About the ring!”
“What ring?”
“Sir Nigel’s ring! I recognized it.”
Sebastian set aside his drink with a click. “You’re saying you recognized a ring on the body in the crypt?”
“Yes, yes. An ancient Roman profile, carved in black onyx and mounted in a setting of filigreed silver. Sir Nigel wore it always on his right little finger.”
“Who is Sir Nigel?”
The Reverend stared at him. “Why, Sir Nigel Prescott. Bishop Prescott’s eldest brother!”
Chapter 15
“The imbecile never mentioned the ring to anyone,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy.
They were in Hyde Park, walking along the banks of the Serpentine. The magistrate had brought a loaf of stale bread and was crumbling it up to feed the ducks. Sebastian said, “But you have heard of Sir Nigel?”
“Oh, yes. We’ve had constables fanning out across the entire area, asking about men who disappeared thirty to forty years ago. His name came up right away.”
Sebastian watched as a plump drake, its feathers iridescent in the sunlight, waddled out of the reeds toward them. “Sir Nigel was the Bishop’s eldest brother?”
Lovejoy nodded. “By some thirteen years. He went missing in July of 1782. His horse was found wandering on Hounslow Heath, so it was generally believed he must have fallen victim to highwaymen. But his body was never found.”
“How long was this before the crypt of St. Margaret’s was bricked up?”
“Unfortunately, there was a fire in the sacristy some years ago that destroyed many of the church’s records. We’re still trying to ascertain the exact date of the closure.” Lovejoy threw a chunk of bread to the drake, who caught the morsel out of the air. “Sir Nigel’s widow, Lady Prescott, still lives at Prescott Grange. A son inherited the estate.”
“Sir Peter Prescott,” said Sebastian.
Lovejoy kept his gaze on the task at hand. “You know him?”
“We were at Eton together.”
The magistrate tossed the drake another handful of crumbs. “I understand he was a posthumous child, born some months after his father’s disappearance.”
Sebastian nodded. “He suffered a fair amount of grief over it at school—you know what boys can be like. But he always took it well.” Sebastian watched the drake waddle away, tail feathers flashing in the sun. “I’m told there were originally five Prescott brothers. The middle three were all killed in the wars of the last century.”
“Good heavens. I hadn’t heard that. A most unfortunate family, indeed.” Lovejoy emptied the rest of his bread on the grass. “If Bishop Prescott learned that his brother’s body had been discovered, it would certainly explain why those who saw him after Earnshaw’s visit described him as agitated.”
“True. Except that William Franklin also described the Bishop as troubled. And he saw Prescott on Monday.”
“It’s my intention to take the victim’s clothing, watch, and fob out to Lady Prescott this afternoon. Hopefully she’ll be able to make some sort of identification without actually viewing the remains.”
“What I want to know is, what happened to the ring?”
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “It wasn’t on the body?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Earnshaw says he brought the ring up to London, to show the Bishop.”
Lovejoy’s lips flattened into a disapproving line. “Seems a ghoulish thing to have done—tugging a ring off a corpse’s finger.”
“Given the state of the body, I imagine it came off easily enough.”
Lovejoy cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Yes, well . . .”
“According to the Reverend, he gave the ring to Bishop Prescott. But I checked with London House, and no such ring has been found in the Bishop’s chambers. Gibson says it wasn’t in the Bishop’s pockets, or in his hand, when the bodies were delivered to him.”
“I suppose the Bishop may have dropped it in the crypt,” said Sir Henry, dusting the last crumbs of bread from his hands. “I’ll send some of the lads to give the place another going-over.”
“There is one other possibility.”
Lovejoy raised an eyebrow in inquiry.
Sebastian said, “The killer could have taken it.”
Later that afternoon, after she’d coaxed her mother out on a visit to one of Lady Jarvis’s oldest friends, Hero settled on the window seat in her bedchamber and withdrew the Bishop’s schedule from her reticule.
She ran through it quickly, relieved to see that there was nothing in the Bishop’s calendar—except, of course, for his frequent meetings with Hero herself—that might betray her to Devlin. Satisfied of that, she went back to the beginning.
There, indeed, was the visit from Lord Quillian, just as she had suspected, on the afternoon of the Monday before the Bishop’s death. “Ha. You see?” she said aloud, as if Devlin himself were actually in the room with her. Then she frowned as she studied several other curious names on the schedule.
She might be nine-tenths convinced of Quillian’s guilt in the Bishop’s murder, but Hero liked to consider herself an open-minded person, which meant she had to remain receptive to other possibilities.
Pushing up from her window seat, she went in search of paper and pen. At the top of the page, she wrote, Lord Quillian, and below that, William Franklin. For a moment, she reconsidered and started to cross out his name, for the man was aged and infirm. But she reasoned that it did not require excessive strength or agility to hit someone over the head with an iron bar, so she left the American’s name in place.
She glanced through the Bishop’s schedule again, but came up with only one other interesting item: Sir Peter Prescott. Why, she wondered, would Sir Peter make an appointment to see his own uncle? She wrote his name on the list, then circled it in frustration.