Page 15 of Who Cries for the Lost

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...”

Chapter 9

Wednesday, 14 June

Sebastian spent the next morning visiting a string of coffeehouses from Brompton to Piccadilly, places like the Scarlet Man on Cockspur Street and Yellow Dog near the Hyde Park Barracks that were the known haunts of military men. He was looking for veterans of the Peninsula, men who’d served with Sedgewick and might know what the former captain had been up to since his return to London.

The coffee shops were relatively thin of company, for many of the men typically to be found there were now in Belgium preparing for the coming attack on Napoléon. But he finally came upon Captain Martin Roche, a onetime exploring officer still suffering from a year-old wound to his side that was probably going to kill him. A tall, painfully thin man with lifeless brown hair and a drawn, haggard face, he talked about getting well enough to rejoin his regiment in Belgium and fight the “bloody Frenchies” again. But in the meantime he was subsisting on half pay and what he could scrape together by teaching Latin to small boys.

“Can’t say it surprises me,” said Roche when Sebastian bought the man something to eat and casually steered the conversation around to the murder of their former comrade. “Him getting himself killed, I mean. You know what Sedgewick was like; the more dangerous an assignment, the happier he was. He was always looking for trouble.”

“Any idea what he’d been up to lately?”

“Not exactly, but I reckon you can guess as easily as me. Three trips to Switzerland, two to Italy, and another to Holland, all in the last few years? Hear tell he just got back from the Continent a day or so before he was killed, and it isn’t likely he was taking a belated grand tour, now, is it?” He threw a quick glance over one shoulder and leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Is it true what they’re saying? That someone chopped off his balls and doodle?”

“That’s what I’m hearing,” said Sebastian. News of the mutilation of Sedgewick’s body had obviously spread far, far wider than Bow Street realized. He added casually, “But I haven’t heard exactly how he was killed. Have you?”

“Nah, no one seems to know. All I heard was the bit about him being castrated.”

“Any idea who might want to do something like that?”

Roche gave a throaty laugh that turned into a cough. “Some cuckolded husband, maybe? What do you think?”

“Are you referring to anyone in particular?”

“Nah. I just knew Sedgewick. It was like it was a game with him, wasn’t it? Taking another man’s woman, I mean. Just to show he could do it.” He coughed again and this time brought up blood. “ ’Scuse me,” he said, and turned his face away to wipe his lips with his handkerchief.

“You say Sedgewick just got back from the Continent,” said Sebastian. “Do you know where he’d been this time?”

“Never heard.” Roche paused. “You’re thinking maybe that’s why he was killed? Huh. Bloody hell; never thought of that.”

“Do you have any idea who he might have been working with here in London?”

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