Page 82 of What Angels Fear

Fairchild’s eyes stared back at him, wide and sightless.

Sebastian sat back on his heels, his hand still gripping the chair’s arm. He became aware, suddenly, of the insistent shrill of a constable’s whistle and the butler’s voice shouting, “There. He’s in there. In the library.”

Sebastian was on his feet, tossing up one of the rear windows, when he heard the sound of running footsteps crossing the marbled hall. He threw one leg over the windowsill.

“You there! Stop! Stop, I say!”

Slipping through the window, Sebastian landed lightly in a bed of wet, freeze-browned foliage and darkly sodden earth, and broke into a run.

Charles, Lord Jarvis, startled his valet by returning to Berkeley Square shortly before four that afternoon. He wasn’t a physically vain man, Jarvis, but the events at Carlton House that evening would be particularly momentous. And in an age that placed inordinate importance upon appearance, a wise man attended to such things.

Donning knee breeches and silk stockings with a swallow-tailed coat, he resisted his valet’s efforts to lighten his florid complexion with a hint of powder, and made his way downstairs to his library. Jarvis might keep chambers in St. James’s Palace and Carlton House, but his most important papers were here, in Berkeley Square.

He had to admit that he’d been mildly worried at one point, that the sensational manner of that girl’s death might create difficulties. But in the end all had gone off essentially as planned. The looming danger of a Whig government had been averted; Perceval and the Tories would remain in power and the war against atheism, republicanism, and the forces of evil would continue.

Pausing at the base of the stairs, Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to his nostrils and breathed in deeply, sighing with satisfaction. There were those, he knew, who couldn’t understand why he resisted the Prince’s strenuous efforts to convince Jarvis himself to form a government. But Jarvis understood what most did not: that men who align themselves openly with one party or policy thereby lose any semblance of objectivity, and that those who seek to exercise their power through office all too often find themselves out of office and therefore out of power. Jarvis’s allegiance was to Britain and her king, not to any party or ideology, and he had no need for the petty flattery and pomp of a premiership. His dominance rested not on some fleeting government position, but on the supremacy of his intellect and the strength of his personality and the selfless wisdom of his unswerving devotion to his country and its monarchy.

Tucking the snuffbox back into his coat pocket, Jarvis opened his library door, surprised to find the heavy drapes at the window still open to the cold, darkening afternoon. A whisper of movement jerked his gaze to his desk, where a young man stood, a roughly-dressed young man with a mud-smeared, rain soaked coat and a neat little Cassaignard pistol.

“Unexpected, but fortuitous,” said Viscount Devlin, his strange amber eyes gleaming as he leveled the pistol at Jarvis’s chest. “Please, do come in.”

Chapter 52

The yellow fog was coming back.

He couldn’t see it yet, but Sir Henry Lovejoy could smell it in the cold, moist air as he paid off the hackney and hurried through the churchyard. A raw bitterness pinched at his nostrils and burned his throat and tore at his lungs. Soon, it would be upon them again, like a thick, stinking blanket of death.

Pausing, he stared up at the squat western towers and plain facade of St. Matthew of the Fields, the golden sandstone blackened by centuries of coal smoke and grime. The yellow fog had been upon them last Tuesday night, he remembered.

He kept thinking about what the Earl of Hendon had told him, how his lordship had come here at ten o’clock that night to meet Rachel York and found the north transept door unlocked, as she had said it would be. At the time Lovejoy had dismissed his lordship’s statements, had thought them the inventions of a father desperate to save his only son and heir from the hangman’s noose. Now Lovejoy wasn’t so certain.

He followed the sound of a spade striking dirt around to the back of the church, where he found the sexton, Jem Cummings, digging a grave.

“Mr. Cummings,” said Lovejoy, being careful not to venture too close to the new grave’s muddy edge. “I was wanting to ask you if there was any way Rachel York could have entered St. Matthew’s church after eight o’clock last Tuesday night?”

The sexton’s rhythm broke, earth sliding back into the grave from his shovel as he faltered. He hesitated, then sank the metal tip deep into the earth with a loud thwunk. “I been lockin’ that north transept door every night since ’ninety-two,” he said, throwing a shovelful of dirt high and wide, “ever since one o’ them heathen Jacobins come in here and—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Lovejoy hastily, cutting him off. “But that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if there’s any way Rachel York—or perhaps someone else—could have unlocked that door after you left. You must understand that your answer could be of vital importance to this case. The life of an innocent man may well depend upon it—and may God have mercy on your soul if you are being anything less than truthful.”

Jem Cummings straightened slowly, his shovel falling idle in his hands, his toothless gums working back and forth on his lower lip. He hesitated, then setting aside the shovel, turned abruptly away to rummage amongst the assorted effects he had piled up at the edge of the grave. When he swung back, it was with something clutched close in his hand. He hesitated again, then held it up. Stepping gingerly, Lovejoy reached down and found himself holding a heavy iron key.

“I found it in the Lady Chapel,” said Jem, not meeting Lovejoy’s gaze. “Last week, when the cleanin’ lady and me was dealing with the blood and all. It was back under one of them fancy little pews, which is why I reckon your lads didn’t see it. It fits the north transept door.”

Lovejoy sucked in a quick breath that hissed loudly between his teeth. “Why did you not come forward with this immediately?”

The sexton wiped a splayed hand back and forth across his unshaven face. “I weren’t exactly truthful when I told you how it was, last Wednesday mornin’. You see, I coulda sworn I’d locked the north transept door the night afore. But then I come here the next day and there it was, open, with them men’s bloody footprints in the transept and that girl left so indecent-like in the Lady Chapel. I thought I musta been misremember-ing, that I’d forgotten to lock the door after all... that it was me own fault, what was done to the church. All that blood...”

The old man reached again for his shovel, then simply stood there, gripping the handle, his gaze on the earth beneath his feet. “When I found that key, I knew I’d been right, that I had locked the door after all. She musta unlocked it herself when she come. Only by that time it was too late to say anythin’ about it, ’cause I’d already told your constable I’d found the door locked that mornin’.”

Lovejoy’s hand tightened around the iron key, the toothed end digging into his palm. “You do realize the implications of this, don’t you? That it completely changes our estimation of Miss York’s time of death?”

Jem Cummings nodded, his head ducking as he thrust his shovel back into the earth.

Lovejoy stepped back. “How many people have a key to this church?”

“I don’t rightly know. You’d haveta talk to the Reverend McDermott about that. He oughta be in the Rectory about now.”

Lovejoy nodded and turned away, only to swing back as another thought struck him. “Just a moment. Did you say you saw men’s footprints in the transept that morning?”

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