Page 85 of Who Cries for the Lost

“I’m not sure. It may mean nothing. Or it could be the key that unlocks this whole bloody tangle.”

Chapter 48

Sebastian was seated at his desk in the library, a blank piece of paper before him, a half-forgotten quill balanced in his hand, when Hero came to stand behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “Do you think Sibil was telling the truth?” she asked.

“When she said she didn’t set Gabriel to kill Sedgewick, you mean?” He tilted back his head to look up at her. “She was dying. I can’t think why she would lie. Can you?”

Hero shook her head. “You think it was Gabriel who shot her?”

“It seems the obvious explanation, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. For one thing, I keep thinking, why would he?”

“Because she was about to turn against him?”

“Perhaps.” He tossed aside the pen. “When Sibil said ‘Gabriel,’ I assumed it was because she thought he’d shot her. But it occurs to me I’d just asked her how she got Fouché’s list, so it’s conceivable that what she meant was she got it from Gabriel.”

Hero considered this. “It’s possible. But she also knew about the Austrian proposals, so she could have been given Fouché’s list by the same source.”

“Yes, I can see it playing out that way, too.”

Standing up, he went to the game table near the front window where a wooden chessboard stood, its well-used pieces neatly aligned, ready for the next match. “If we ignore the Weird Sisters for a moment, there have been four people murdered—six if we include the man and woman Kat says have disappeared and are probably dead.” Reaching out, he picked up one of the white pawns and held it up. “The first was Sedgewick. And while there is much that can be said to the man’s discredit, I don’t see how anyone could convincingly accuse him of working for Napoléon.”

He set the first pawn on the table, just to the right of the chessboard. “Initially I assumed he’d been killed because of his nasty habit of seducing other men’s wives. And if he were the only victim, I’d probably still be inclined to believe that. But he isn’t the only one.”

Sebastian reached for a second white pawn. “Then comes our nameless, headless middle-aged man, who may or may not be the Spaniard Francisco de la Serna. If he’s someone else, I suppose he could have been working for Napoléon, so he’s still a bit of a question mark.” He set the second pawn near the first, although back a bit.

He picked up a third white pawn and put it beside the first. “Next is Hamilton Evans. He didn’t even come down from Cambridge until after Napoléon abdicated last spring, so I seriously doubt his name could have been on Fouché’s list.”

He hesitated a moment, then picked up three black pawns that he set in a row on the other side of the board. “Over here we’ll put André Ternant, plus the two others who have disappeared and whose names are probably on the list. Only Ternant has been found, but he wasn’t mutilated like our three white pawns over there—although obviously we don’t know about the two people who are missing.”

Hero walked over to stand with her arms crossed at her chest, her gaze on the disarrayed chess pieces. “What precisely are you suggesting?”

Sebastian looked up at her. “What if Gabriel killed Sedgewick for his own reasons, perhaps the same reason he also killed Hamilton Evans and No Name here”—he picked up the second white pawn and put it in line with the other two—“but when he was stripping Sedgewick’s body, he found Fouché’s list. He realized what it was and gave it to Sibil.”

“And then, with her blessing, set about killing the people whose names are on the list? Except because those were professional kills rather than driven by whatever the original personal animus was, he simply killed them without mutilating the bodies?”

“That’s the idea, yes.”

“So why kill Sibil—and presumably Astrid, too?” She nodded toward the two rows of pawns. “You’ve left them out of your lineup.”

“I need a third color of pawns.”

“Here.” Hero reached for the two queens, one black, one white, and set them by themselves in front of the board. Then she picked up a black knight and set it in front of Sebastian. “And this is you. Because if you’re right about all this, Gabriel is now trying to kill you, too. And what I don’t understand is, why?”

“That’s easy: because he thinks I’m close to figuring out who he is.”

“But you’re not.”

He turned away from the chessboard and went to pour himself a brandy.

Hero watched him in silence for a moment, then said, “You’re not, are you?”

He paused, carafe in hand, and glanced over at her. “When Sedgewick was forced to sell out because of his damaged arm, he grew so restless and bored with life in London that he started working with Bathurst and Castlereagh.”

She let out a slow, painful breath. “You’re thinking about Monty, aren’t you? You’re thinking he could be Gabriel.”

Sebastian replaced the stopper in the carafe and set it aside. “It fits, doesn’t it?”

“Would he do something like that? Become a cold-blooded killer for hire?”

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