Page 64 of What Angels Fear

She’d thought she could hold her heart aloof. She’d meant to hold her heart aloof. But an unexpected, unwanted flood of tender emotions and deep, unacknowledged wants brought the sting of tears to her eyes and lent an urgency to the hunger with which her body rose up to meet his.

The next morning, Sebastian received a message from Paul Gibson, to the effect that a certain gentleman of their acquaintance had some information Sebastian might find interesting. This gentleman had agreed to meet Sebastian in Green Park at ten that morning, at the southeast corner.

Wary of a possible trap, Sebastian arrived at the rendezvous early, only to find the park’s open fields populated by nothing more than a dozen dairy cows and their attendants. Not until half past ten did the tall, cadaverously thin man appear, wearing striped trousers and a jaunty red kerchief, and bringing with him a faint, indefinable odor of decay that seemed to emanate from him with each step.

Jumpin’ Jack Cochran hawked up a mouthful of phlegm, spat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I ’ear tell you’s lookin’ for some nonmedical gent what’s interested in buyin’ half-longs.”

“That’s right,” said Sebastian. He counted out five pounds, folded them into a roll, and handed it over.

Jumpin’ Jack licked his lips, jammed the money deep into his coat pocket, and rubbed his mouth again. “I had me just such a request about a month or so ago, from a feller claimin’ he was an artist, although I thought at the time he was a queer ’un.”

“Do you remember his name?”

Jumpin’ Jack let out a laugh that turned, quickly, into a cough. “You don’t go askin’ folks’ names in this business. But I’d know the feller agin if’n I was to see him. Young, he was, with a head o’ dark curly hair, just like a girl’s. My Sarah, she was moonin’ about the place for days after she saw him. Said he was like the angels in them paintings hangin’ over the side altars in Trinity Church.” Cochran spat again. “You’d think the girl’d have more discretion, her being a proper Englishwoman and him some heathen foreigner.”

Sebastian felt his pulse quicken in anticipation. “He was a foreigner?

“Aye. From Italy or some such place. Or so he said. They all sound pretty much the same to me.”

“Where did you deliver the goods? Do you remember?”

“Aye. Almonry Terrace, it was. In Westminster.”

Chapter 39

Donatelli was in his studio when Sebastian came through the door.

The artist half turned, his slack mouth agape with shock, the breath whooshing out of him when Sebastian’s shoulder caught him in the gut and brought him down.

“What are you doing? What do you want from me?” the Italian managed to gasp, before Sebastian shoved his forearm up beneath the man’s chin, cutting off his air.

“I understand you’ve been buying yourself some half-longs,” said Sebastian through gritted teeth. “Is that the way you like your women, hmm? You like it when they don’t move, don’t talk back, don’t even breathe?”

Donatelli’s angelic brown eyes went wide. He tried to speak, but all he could get out was a gurgle.

Sebastian eased the pressure on the man’s throat just enough to let him gasp, “No! It’s nothing like that. I do medical illustrations.”

Sebastian made as if to increase his pressure on the man’s throat again. “Gammon.”

“No! I swear it’s true. My last commission was for the female torso.” He made as if to push up from the floor, then went limp again, his features twitching with fear, when Sebastian brought up the small flintlock and laid the muzzle against the man’s temple.

Donatelli licked his lips, his eyes rolling sideways in an effort to watch Sebastian’s finger on that trigger. “If you let me go, I’ll show you. They’re in the back room.”

Sebastian hesitated, then let the man up.

Donatelli’s hand crept to his throat. “Mother of God, you could have killed me.”

Sebastian leveled the flintlock at the artist’s chest. “The illustrations.”

Donatelli nodded. “They’re back here.” He staggered toward the other room. “See?” They were a series of perhaps a dozen, rendering in meticulous detail the torso of a woman in various stages of dismemberment, from a variety of angles.

“I work with a medical student from St. Thomas’s,” said Donatelli, his voice still hoarse, strained. “He does the dissections while I sketch.”

“Now why would a painter who’s suddenly become Society’s newest discovery need to be hawking anatomy sketches to medical journals?”

Donatelli twitched one shoulder in a very Mediterranean shrug. “I began doing it for extra money when I was painting scenes at the theater. I keep it up because it improves my ability to realistically render the human form. I’m not the only painter who studies cadavers. Look at Fragonard.”

Sebastian turned away from the bloody renderings. “Where were you the night Rachel York was killed?” The illustrations might provide the artist with a plausible excuse for buying female human cadavers, but that was all.

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