Page 73 of What Cannot Be Said

Lovejoy raised his head and glanced around. “Where’s the man’s dog?”

“The keeper’s wife is taking him.”

“Ah.” The magistrate blew out a long breath. “Before Gilly Harper was found, I’d come to the conclusion that Coldfield must be our killer—that Daniel O’Toole was hanged by mistake and that Coldfield must have killed Julia and Madeline the same way he’d killed Lady McInnis and her daughter. But then, after Gilly, I thought I must be wrong, that I was perhaps allowing my personal emotions to sway my thinking. And now...” His voice trailed away, and he swallowed hard before saying, “Now I don’t know what to think.”

“You said your constable discovered that Coldfield was out and about last Sunday. Perhaps he saw something, and that’s why the killer decided he had to be silenced.”

“Perhaps. Although if he did, then why didn’t he say something?”

“Perhaps he was planning to.”

Lovejoy looked over at him. “Let me see that message again.” He took the crumpled, dirty sheet of paper Sebastian held out to him, his forehead creasing with thought as he studied the misspelled, crudely formed words. “Do you think Coldfield actually wrote this?”

“Do we know if he could even write?” said Sebastian.

“I’ve no idea.”

Sebastian stared down at the dead man’s pale, slack features. “That message was delivered to my house this morning. And while I could be wrong, it looks to me as if Coldfield here has been dead for at least twenty-four hours—if not longer.”

Lovejoy pursed his lips. “So unless the messenger boy was shockingly tardy in delivering his note, Coldfield couldn’t have sent it. Which begs the question: Who did?”

“The killer?”

Lovejoy met his gaze, his face drawn. “But why?”

“That I can’t begin to explain.”

?It was some time later, when Sebastian and Lovejoy were watching a couple of men load the thatcher’s body onto the bed of a cart that was to carry him to Paul Gibson’s surgery in London, that one of the constables beating his way through the long wet grass beside the lane gave a shout.

Turning, Sebastian watched the man bend down to pick up something, then straighten.

“Sir Henry!” cried the man, turning to trot back toward them. “Look at this, Sir Henry! Found it lying there beside the road like somebody tossed it aside—or maybe dropped it as he was running away.”

Cradling his find in both hands, the man held out a wet pistol.

Carefully wrapping one hand around the handle, Lovejoy raised the muzzle to his nostrils and sniffed. He looked over at Sebastian. “It’s been fired recently.”

“Let me see it.”

It was a fine piece, thought Sebastian, taking it in hand; a Stanton flintlock pistol with a late eighteenth century–style mechanism with no bridle on the flash pan. The barrel was of polished brass, as were the butt cap, escutcheon, trigger guard, and side plate; a carefully wrought, decorative silver wire inlay formed a delicate design around the barrel tang. Suddenly conscious of his pounding heart, Sebastian turned the pistol to stare down at the engraving on the butt cap.

Lieut. Z. Finch, 45TH Regt.

Chapter 45

By the time Sebastian reached Middle Temple, the sun was sinking low on the horizon and the heavy, ominous clouds that had made the last few days so dark and wet were beginning to break up.

The Middle Temple was home to one of England’s Inns of Court, which were basically medieval-style guilds of law. It was in this area of centuries-old stone buildings between the Strand and the river Thames that many of the Inn’s barristers lived; here that they kept chambers and trained those aspiring to the bar; here that they dined in their great medieval hall and consulted the learned tomes preserved in their ancient library.

Threading his way through clusters of barristers in old-fashioned wigs and flowing black robes, Sebastian finally located an earnest, scholarly-looking man named Michael Finch. A brief conversation with that pleasant but vaguely puzzled barrister sent Sebastian first to search the quiet old gardens that stretched along the riverbank and then, when that proved futile, to the Temple Church.

The Temple Church, like the precincts of the Middle and Inner Temples that surrounded it, had belonged to the Knights Templar until their growing wealth and power led to their violent abolition in the fourteenth century. Like so many of the Templars’ chapels, the original twelfth-century part of the structure that now served as the nave was round, with the thirteenth-century rectangular section to the east forming the chancel. As he quietly closed the weathered old door behind him, Sebastian felt the ancient church’s chill atmosphere of incense, beeswax, and dank stone envelop him.

In the waning light of the overcast day, the rows of soaring Gothic arches loomed dark and deserted before him. But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see Major Zacchary Finch standing in the shadows of the round nave, his shoulders slumped, his hands grasping the iron railings that protected a row of crumbling stone effigies of long-dead medieval knights.

At the sound of Sebastian’s approaching footsteps, the Major’s head jerked around, his face so haggard and drawn by grief that Sebastian knew a twinge of regret for having intruded on what should have been a private, vulnerable moment of despair.

Finch turned his face away again, his chest jerking as he sucked in a ragged breath. “I’ve been standing here thinking about soldiers,” he said hoarsely. “About honor and glory, pain and death. About what we sacrifice for king and country.”

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