Sebastian gave a wry smile. He remembered noticing the chest when he’d looked around the Yellow Cabinet in the Pavilion. He’d seen the chest, and hadn’t given it a second thought. The Prince was always ordering cartfuls of oddities and trifles for the Pavilion. No one would question or even remember the delivery of yet another Chinese lacquered wood chest, while the ice…
The ice could very well have come from the inn’s own cellars. It wasn’t so uncommon these days. The extra cold would have delayed the onset of rigor mortis enough for Guinevere’s killers to haul her body down to Brighton in the cart, then stuff her into the chest and carry her into the Pavilion.
Yet all those hours in the cart had left their mark in the pattern of lividity Paul Gibson had identified so accurately on Guinevere’s body, just as the passing of the hours had left their own signs, signs that could be read by those who knew how to interpret them. But whoever had killed Guinevere Anglessey and conspired to implicate the Prince Regent in her murder hadn’t known about those signs, hadn’t known that their victim’s very body would betray them.
“Who else came to the inn that afternoon?” Sebastian asked aloud. “Do you remember?”
Amelia shook her head, her face confused as if she couldn’t quite understand where he was going with the question. “The usual crowd. The common room was full.”
“I’m not talking about the common room. I’m interested in anyone who might have gone upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Like I said, we was busy.”
“You didn’t see a young gentleman? A handsome gentleman with dark eyes and light brown hair?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t see nobody!”
The girl was becoming agitated, her back held tight, her eyes wide. Sebastian eased up on her. “Several nights ago, some men unloaded a cargo into the inn’s cellars. One of them was a gentleman, a thin man with longish blond hair. Do you know who he was?”
“No.”
Sebastian pressed his hands flat on the tabletop and leaned into them, his arms straight. “The woman whose murder you helped to conceal was a marchioness. The Marchioness of Anglessey. Did you know that?”
Amelia looked up at him, her chest rising and falling with her quick breathing. “But we didn’t do nothin’!” She scrambled up from the bench and backed away from him. “We only did what we was told.”
“It’s enough to get you hanged. You and your mother both.” Sebastian’s gaze swept the huddled, silent children. “And then what will become of them?”
The woman beside the empty hearth let out a sharp cry. Sebastian didn’t even glance her way.
Amelia covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes squeezing shut. Then her hand slipped away and her eyes opened slowly. “I’ve seen him around the inn a few times,” she said, meeting Sebastian’s compelling gaze. “But I don’t know his name. I swear to God I don’t. He usually comes with his lordship.”
“His lordship?”
“They was both there that day. I thought you knew. He’s the one brought the cart.”
Sebastian searched her face, looking for signs of deceit. “You’re certain this other man was a lord?”
Her head nodded vigorously up and down. “A tall gentleman, with red hair. Lord…I can’t remember it exactly. It’s like that stone they use. You know the one? They use it for all the grand buildings.”
“Portland?”
“Yes. That’s it. Lord Portland.”
Chapter 60
Intent on intercepting the Home Secretary before he left Whitehall for the Regent’s fete, Sebastian directed his coachman toward Westminster.
The shadows were only just beginning to lengthen toward evening; the Regent’s first guests wouldn’t be arriving for hours. But the streets were already packed with crowds surging toward Carlton House in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the exiled French royal family and two thousand noblemen and -women arriving at what was being called the grandest, most extravagant sit-down dinner in the history of the European monarchy. By the time Sebastian’s carriage had passed Temple Bar and swung onto the Strand, the horses were barely moving. They sidled nervously in their traces, the lightly sprung coach rocked from side to side by the jostling crowd.
Sebastian threw open the door. “Get the carriage out of this,” he shouted to his coachman. “I’ll make better time on foot.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Leaving the carriage awash in a sea of ragged humanity, Sebastian threaded his way through a crowd that grew increasingly surly as he neared Somerset House. “They say they’s gonna let us in tomorrow to look at the place,” yelled one man. “Them nobs, they get to eat and drink their fill. All we getta do is look.”
“Hear, hear,” murmured a score of men near him.
Sebastian pushed on, aware of the sullen looks being cast his way. He found himself regretting the exquisitely cut coat of fine blue cloth, the skintight leather breeches and shining top boots that unmistakably marked him as a gentleman. Prinny had planned this fete as a grand celebration of the inauguration of his Regency. But it occurred to Sebastian as he looked into the sweating, bitter faces around him that the Prince had misjudged his populace. People were angry, resentful. Tomorrow, the Prince would again leave London for Brighton. What better time, thought Sebastian, to stage a coup?
Someone up ahead began to sing, “Not a fatter fish than he/Flounders round the polar sea….”
An ugly chorus of jeers swelled through the crowd. A dozen more voices took up the ditty, “See his blubber and his gills/What a world of drink he swills….”
“Oy, who ye think yer shovin’ there?” growled a voice behind Sebastian.
Sebastian threw a glance over his shoulder. A dark-haired man with a craggy face, lips peeled back and jaw set in determination, was pushing his way through the crowd, his gaze fixed on Sebastian.
The mob surged, hemming in Sebastian. Craggy Face lunged, his right hand fisted around a dagger. Sebastian tried to feint to the left, but the crowd was too close. The searing edge of the blade slid across his ribs, slicing through coat, waistcoat, and shirt to nick the flesh beneath.
“Every fish of generous kind,” sang the throng, “scuds aside or shrinks behind….”
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, bringing the edge of his hand chopping down on the man’s wrist. “You’ve ruined another of my coats!”
Craggy Face yelped. His fist reflexively opened to drop the knife into a scuffle of rough-booted feet.
“But about his presence keep,” roared the crowd, “all the monsters of the deep….”
The man grabbed for Sebastian’s arm. Cupping his left hand over his right fist, Sebastian drove his elbow back into Craggy Face’s stomach. The man’s eyes flared wide, the breath gusting out of his pursed lips as he doubled over. He stumbled back, careening into a carpenter’s apprentice in a paper cap.
“’Ey, what the ’ell?” the apprentice swore, his fists coming up.
Twisting around, Sebastian scanned the sweat-sheened, hostile sea of faces around him, lit now by the rich golden light of a fading day. His head swam with the close-packed odors of sunbaked stone and brick, of hot men and foul breath. He saw a clean-shaven man with dark hair and a patrician nose, and recognized him from the alley near the Norfolk Arms. Then Sebastian’s gaze locked with the hard gray stare of a man whose auburn head towered above the ragged crowd.
The Earl of Portland wore the dark, unassuming coat of a man who has dressed with the intent of not calling attention to himself. At his side Sebastian glimpsed a familiar, half-grown lad: Nathan Brennan from Ha’penny Court.