Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,30

wife’s eye and something passed between them, a silent exchange that Hero couldn’t begin to decipher. Then he said, “Has Kate been showing you our selection of teas? We have samples from nearly all the tea-growing regions of China. One of these days the company is going to get its hands on the secret process the Chinese use to make the stuff, along with some seedlings of their precious Camellia sinensis, and then we’ll be able to grow and produce tea ourselves in India. No more having to deal with these ridiculous Qing emperors and their grasping Cantonese Hong merchants. It’s either that, or send in the British Navy and force them to be more reasonable in their trade with us.”

Hero looked at him with interest. “Have you been to Canton?”

“A few times, when I was in Bombay. They’re impossible people to deal with, you know—the Chinese, I mean. They insist we pay for their silks, porcelains, and tea with silver because they have no interest in anything Europe produces. And the one thing we could use to trade with them, opium, they refuse to allow into the country.”

“Rather understandable, is it not?”

“It’s outrageous—that’s what it is. They can’t deny the market is there. The Chinese people can’t get enough of it, and we could produce tons of the stuff in India. But we have to smuggle it in, which the emperors have made shockingly risky.”

“Shocking, indeed,” said Hero with a tight smile. To Lady Forbes, she said, “It was good seeing you again. No need to ring for a footman; I can show myself out.”

She thought Sir Lindsey might offer to walk with her to the door, but he did not. Instead he stood at the entrance to the tea-blending room and watched her walk away with such intensity, she fancied that she could feel his gaze boring into her back.

Chapter 19

A fter Hero left to pay a visit to St. James’s Square, Sebastian drove east to Tower Hill, where he found Paul Gibson easing the sturdy shoes off the still-dressed cadaver of a small older woman laid out on his stone slab. Four other corpses rested on the shelves behind him: Nicholas Hayes’s, Irvine Pennington’s, and two blood-drenched corpses in workingmen’s clothes unknown to Sebastian.

“What is all this?” asked Sebastian, pausing in the open doorway. Despite the thick stone walls, the heat in the room was intense, the smell of death even more acute than usual.

Gibson swiped at a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. “The woman’s a former milliner, found near Soho Square, while the two navvies appear to have killed each other in a knife fight in an alley over by Ratcliffe Highway. I presume you know about the tea gardens’ owner. If you ask me, this heat is making everyone cranky and short-tempered.”

Sebastian studied the distorted features of the woman on Gibson’s table. Her gray-streaked dark hair was wildly untidy, her face swollen and discolored, her eyes projecting grotesquely. A wide purple bruise such as might have been left by a strap showed just above the high neck of her modest black stuff gown. “Who’d want to strangle an aging milliner?”

“Footpads, I’m afraid. Her earrings are missing.” Gibson nodded to her bloody left hand. “And her knuckles are so swollen from arthritis, they had to cut off her finger to get her wedding ring.”

“Good God.” Footpads were still a dangerous menace on the streets of London; it was the reason they so often served as a ready excuse whenever the palace wanted to deflect public attention from a delicate death. Sebastian shifted his gaze to the shelves running along the back wall. “I take it you haven’t finished Hayes yet?”

Gibson shook his head and blew up a hard breath that ruffled the tousled graying dark hair on his damp forehead. “I wanted to take a preliminary look at the rest of this lot before going back to him. His inquest isn’t till Monday morning, so there’s time.”

“Did the Earl of Seaforth come to view his cousin’s body yet?”

Gibson set aside the woman’s first shoe and went to work on the other. “No. No one’s come. Why? Were you expecting him to?”

“I thought he might. He asked Sir Henry where the body was.” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “If someone were to suddenly show up claiming to be my long-dead cousin and the rightful heir to the titles and estates I’d been calling my own for years,