Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,31
I think I’d want to take a look at the fellow and see if he really was my cousin.”
Gibson set the second shoe beside its mate. “So would almost anyone, I suspect. So why do you think he hasn’t?”
“The most obvious answer is that he already knew Nicholas Hayes was alive because he’d seen him.”
“And then killed him?” said Gibson, going to work on the woman’s sensible stockings.
“Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“So why bother to ask Sir Henry about the body?”
“Perhaps he thought it was expected of him.” Sebastian circled the room to stare down at the two dead navvies. Both were heartbreakingly young, surely no more than sixteen or seventeen, their faces smooth and beardless, their features relaxed now into a semblance of calm serenity he found oddly disturbing, given the way they’d died. They had managed to slash each other to ribbons before blood loss and shock completely overcame them; their clothes were ripped and soaked a gory red.
“So then, why didn’t he come?” said Gibson, watching him.
“I’ve no idea.” Sebastian wiped the back of one wrist across his damp forehead as he turned away from the dead boys. “Damn this heat.”
* * *
As he drove away from Tower Hill, Sebastian found himself going over and over everything they knew about Irvine Pennington, trying to see if it cast any kind of light on the death of Nicholas Hayes. But the heat made it hard to think. The streets of the City were miserable, the aging, close-packed buildings trapping both the brutal heat and all the noisome smells of too many people and too many horses jammed into too small an area. Even the air wafting up from the river smelled pungent and dead.
“I’m thinkin’ meybe somebody’s followin’ us, gov’nor,” said Tom as Sebastian passed through Temple Bar.
“Bloody hell.” Sebastian resisted the urge to glance back over his shoulder. “Describe him.”
“’E’s just an ordinary-lookin’ cove on a bay. ’E ain’t stayin’ real close, but I seen ’im before, when we was up in Somer’s Town.”
“You’re certain it’s the same man you saw before?”
“Oh, aye. I noticed ’im when ye was talkin’ to Sir ’Enry. The cove was jist standin’ there, ’oldin’ ’is ’orse, when this dog comes nosin’ along, and that cove, ’e went outta ’is way to try to kick that poor old dog.”
“What color coat?”
“The man or the dog?”
Sebastian found himself smiling. “The man.”
“Brown.”
He pulled up outside a chandler’s shop and handed the boy the reins. “Wait here.”
Hopping down, Sebastian got his first look at the cove on the bay. Of medium height and build, he looked to be perhaps thirty or thirty-five, with brown hair and a nondescript face. His brown corduroy coat and round hat were respectable without being fashionable, his horse serviceable but not showy. He was utterly forgettable, and Sebastian suspected Tom would never have noticed him if not for that act of cruelty toward a stray dog.
The man checked for only an instant before riding past the stopped curricle. But as Sebastian turned to go into the chandler’s, Brown Coat reined in farther up the street, his gaze drifting over the surrounding shops as if he were looking for something.
“May I help you, sir?” said the boy behind the chandler’s counter.
“Sorry,” said Sebastian. “Wrong shop.”
Walking back out into the sunshine, Sebastian turned up the street to where the man still sat on his horse, studiously looking at anything and everything except Sebastian.
“Have something you care to say to me?” said Sebastian, walking right up to him.
The man gave a start of surprise that Sebastian suspected was utterly genuine. “Yer honor?”
“I assume you’ve been following me for a reason. If you didn’t have something you wished to say, then I can only conclude that your interest in me is less than benign.”
The man’s eyes widened. “I don’t know nobody named Ben Nigh.”
“Oh? So who set you to following me?”
“I ain’t been followin’ ye!”
“You’d have me believe we’ve simply been coincidentally visiting the same parts of a metropolis of one million people?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I ain’t been followin’ ye.”
“Well, there’s obviously no point in you continuing to do so, because if I see you again, I’ll set the constables on you—”
“But I ain’t done nothin’! Ain’t no crime in a free Englishman ridin’ his horse down the street.”
“—so you may as well tell your employer—whoever he is—that he needs to find a new hireling.”
“I ain’t been followin’ you,” said the man again.
Sebastian took a step back. “What did you say your name was?”