“Yes. Why?”
“Did he ever quarrel with Sir Nigel?”
“Jarvis? Not within my hearing, no.”
Sebastian had to keep reminding himself that thirty years ago, Lord Jarvis would have been a young man in his twenties, while Hendon wouldn’t have been much older than Sebastian himself. Would they have been any different, then? he wondered. Somehow, Sebastian doubted it.
He said, “Your ship docked . . . where? Portsmouth?”
“London. Thirty years ago this month.” Franklin dropped the snuffbox back into the pocket of his frock coat. He was silent for a moment, gnawing thoughtfully on the flesh of his inner cheek. At last, he glanced over at Sebastian and said, “You do know about the papers Sir Nigel was bringing back with him?”
Sebastian shook his head. “What kind of papers are we talking about?”
“Letters, actually. Letters from London, written to a member of the Confederation Congress. They were passed to Sir Nigel by a Loyalist from Philadelphia. A woman.”
“What woman?”
“Her name isn’t important. She’s long dead. It was my understanding she stole the letters from their original recipient.”
“Who wrote the letters?”
“I never knew. They were simply signed ‘Alcibiades.’ But from their contents, it was obvious they were written by someone either in the Foreign Office, or else very close to the King.”
“Someone passing on sensitive information to the rebels?”
“Yes.”
The pigeons on the roof of the dilapidated church began to coo. Sebastian squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing against the glare of the late-afternoon sun. “Why did Sir Nigel tell you about the letters?”
Franklin gave a wry smile. “To my knowledge, he didn’t tell anyone. I only knew of the letters’ existence due to my acquaintance with the woman who gave them to him.”
“But someone else could have known about them?”
“I suppose so. Sir Nigel and I were hardly intimates, now, were we?”
Sebastian studied the old man’s aged, paper-thin skin, the watery, nearly lashless eyes. “When Sir Nigel disappeared, it didn’t occur to you that it might have something to do with the letters he brought back from America?”
“Of course it occurred to me. Which is why I’m telling you about it now. Did I mention it to anyone at the time? No. Sir Nigel called me a traitor’s spawn and spat in my face. As far as I’m concerned, whoever killed him did the world a favor.”
“That seems to have been a common sentiment.”
Franklin grunted. “So why waste a perfectly fine July day sitting in a churchyard talking to an old man about long-ago events now best forgotten?”
“Because four nights ago, someone killed the Bishop of London in the exact same spot where his brother died thirty years ago. Unlike his brother, the Bishop was a man who accomplished much that was good in his life and would doubtless have accomplished more, had he lived. I don’t think the man who killed him did the world a favor.”
Franklin tightened his grip on the knobbed handle of his walking stick and pushed to his feet. “Yes, well . . . You know my opinion of the good Bishop.”
“We all have our faults.”
The aged, watery eyes blinked. “So we do. Perhaps when you know all the good Bishop’s faults, you’ll know who killed him.”
Sebastian watched the American walk away through the tumble of gray, moldering tombstones, his back still surprisingly straight, his gait solid and steady, despite his age. Then Sebastian’s gaze fell to the tombstone nearest the bench. Newer than all the others, its inscription was still crisp and easy to read:
HERE LYETH YE BODY OF
MARY FRANKLIN
BELOVED WIFE OF WILLIAM
DEPARTED THIS LIFE
SEPTEMBER 1811
Sebastian looked up. But the old man had gone.
Hendon sat with his chin propped on one fist, the scowl on his face deepening as he studied the chessboard before him.
“There is a way,” said Sebastian.
Hendon raised his brilliant blue eyes to his son’s face. “Don’t tell me that.”
Sebastian settled deeper into his seat and crossed his outstretched boots at the ankles. “It’s what you used to tell me.”
They were in the library of the vast St. Cyr townhouse on Grosvenor Square. It had become their habit of late to meet in the afternoons when both were free for a game of chess, as they had done so often when Sebastian was a boy. A warm breeze billowed the curtain at the open window, bringing them the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the laughter of children at play in the square.
“I used to tell you that when you were four. By the time you were five, you were wiping the board with what was left of my pride.”
Sebastian smiled, but said nothing.
Hendon leaned forward to nudge his queen. “Take that.”
“There was a way,” said Sebastian, carefully relocating his knight. “But that wasn’t it. Checkmate.”
“Hell and the devil confound it,” said Hendon, but softly, as a man acknowledging the inevitable.
A knock sounded at the front door. A moment later, a footman appeared with a note on a tray.
“Message for Viscount Devlin, my lord. From Bow Street.”
Hendon let out a disapproving huff. Like Kat, he disliked his son’s involvement in cases of murder, only for a different reason. He simply found such activities sordid and unseemly. But since Sebastian’s involvement in this particular case had come about on the intervention of Hendon’s own sister, he really couldn’t say anything.
“Good God,” said Hendon, watching Sebastian’s face as he broke the seal and glanced through the magistrate’s hurried scrawl. “Not another murder?”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “I’m afraid so.”
Chapter 25
“The Squire discovered the corpse himself,” said Lovejoy as they drove in Sebastian’s curricle toward the village, with Tom clinging to his perch at the rear. “Seems someone stuffed the Reverend’s remains in a cupboard in the vestry. One wonders how the searchers failed to find him sooner.”
“Not a likely place to look for a missing priest, I suppose,” observed Sebastian.
“There is that.”
The setting sun had sent the temperature dropping, and Lovejoy had wrapped himself in a greatcoat for the drive. As they crested a ridge, a brisk wind buffeted the carriage, and the magistrate settled deeper into his coat. “It makes one wonder if perhaps our investigation into the Bishop’s death has veered off in a faulty direction. Perhaps Bishop Prescott’s murder has less to do with events in the Bishop’s own life than with the ecclesiastical affairs of St. Margaret’s.”
“Perhaps,” said Sebastian, steadying his horses for the curve ahead.
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “What other explanation is there?”
Rounding the bend, Sebastian dropped his hands, giving the chestnuts their heads as they raced across the heath. Thick bands of clouds obscured the moon and cast the road into deep shadow. But Sebastian had the night vision of a cat or a wolf; even without the moon he could see quite clearly for miles.
He said, “Perhaps Reverend Earnshaw knew something he failed to disclose to us. Something that could have led us to Prescott’s killer.”
Lovejoy frowned. “But why would the man keep such information back?”
“He may not have realized the significance of what he knew. At least, not until it was too late.”
Sebastian stood just inside the door to the vestry, his arms crossed at his chest, and watched Sir Henry peer into the gloom, eyes narrowed to a squint, his candlestick held high.