for. And he said, ‘This is.’”
“But you’ve no idea what he was talking about?”
“No.”
“Did the boy say anything?”
“Nothing about why they were in London.”
“How good is the lad’s English?”
A smile lighted the valet’s eyes. “As good as yours, my lord. Plop him down in Eton or Winchester—or the Court of St. James, for that matter—and he’d sound right at home. Even if he didn’t stand out for anything else, you’d think a ragged lad living on the streets who sounds like a lordling would be remembered.” A clock tower in the distance began to toll the hour, the dull chimes ringing out over the rattle of harness and the clatter of hoofbeats and iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones. Calhoun glanced again toward the yawning darkness of the open window. “I can’t believe we still haven’t found him. Where could he be?”
“Any chance your mother could be hiding him?”
A faint suggestion of color rode high on the valet’s prominent cheekbones. “No. I asked her—when she told me you’d figured out Hayes had been staying with her.” He paused, then added, “I honestly hadn’t known about that, my lord.”
“I never thought that you did.”
Calhoun nodded. “She said the boy went off with Hayes the afternoon of the murder and never came back.”
“Hayes didn’t tell you anything at all about the child?”
“Only that he’d come from Canton with him.”
“Did he tell you much about his life in China?”
“He told me about the Hong merchant he worked with, and how strange he found everything at first. He said their culture was so different, it took him a long time to adjust. He said that in many ways it was more cruel than ours, but there were some ways in which he thought it was better. And the longer he lived there, the more respect he came to have for their religion.”
Sebastian thought about the Buddhist prayer beads left curled up beside the portrait of a smiling Chinese woman. “How much do you think he’d changed from the man you knew before?”
Calhoun was silent for a moment. “It’s hard for me to say for certain. I mean, I’m different, aren’t I? He was older than the man I’d known, obviously. But it wasn’t only that. When I knew him before, there was a kind of coiled restlessness about him, a—a passionate, wild recklessness. That was gone. The man I met in Oxford Market was calm. At peace. There was nothing peaceful about the Nicholas Hayes I knew before. Nothing peaceful at all.”
“Sometimes people who know they’re going to die manage to find within themselves an unusual measure of serenity.”
“Maybe that was it,” said Calhoun.
Although he didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Chapter 29
Monday, 13 June
T he inquest into the death of Nicholas Hayes was held at eight o’clock the next morning at the Swan, a tidy brown brick inn on the edge of Somer’s Town that dated to late in the reign of George II. Because there was no officially designated site for inquests, they were generally held in the nearest inn or public house large enough to accommodate the crowds such affairs typically attracted. But the Swan was relatively modest in size, and the murder of an earl’s notorious son had drawn massive attention. By half past seven, the inn’s public room was filled to overflowing with spectators and prospective jurors and a swarm of ragged, lithe children doubtless taking advantage of the occasion to pick the pockets of the unwary.
“This shouldn’t take long,” said Lovejoy, holding a handkerchief to his nose. The atmosphere in the close room was stifling hot and smelled strongly of spilled beer, sweat, and death, thanks to the presence of Nicholas Hayes’s four-day-old corpse.
Sebastian tried not to breathe any more than he had to. “Hopefully.” He let his gaze drift over the pushing, shoving crowd of gawkers eager for a glimpse of the bloody remains of the infamous murderer-turned–murder victim. “I don’t see the Earl of Seaforth.”
“He may not come. My office contacted him about making arrangements to release the body to him after the inquest, and he said he doesn’t want it.”
“He what?”
Lovejoy nodded. “He says we can dump the remains in the parish’s poor hole for all he cares—which is what it looks like we’ll be doing.”
Sebastian felt a wave of revulsion pass over him. “No. If Seaforth won’t give his cousin a decent burial, then release the body to me. I’ll take care of it.”
Lovejoy’s eyes widened over the white folds of his handkerchief. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.”