Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,48
Lovejoy’s gaze shifted to the door, where a debonair, exquisitely dressed older Frenchman was quietly slipping in through the crowd. “Ah. The Count de Compans has arrived.”
“And Brownbeck,” said Sebastian as the short, self-important merchant pushed his way in behind the Count.
Lovejoy shifted his handkerchief to pat at the perspiration on his brow. “Theo Brownbeck? What has he to do with this?”
“He and Hayes quarreled long ago,” said Sebastian, mindful of his promise to his aunt Henrietta. “Before Hayes was transported.”
“Interesting. There’s talk of the man becoming the next Lord Mayor, you know. People like his no-nonsense attitude toward crime and the lower orders, although I must admit I question the validity of some of his statistics.”
“With good reason,” said Sebastian as the crowds near the door made way for another aristocratic latecomer: a slight, rusty-haired nobleman with vague inclinations toward dandyism and an exaggerated sense of his own importance.
The Earl of Seaforth might not be willing to take possession of his cousin’s body, but he was obviously curious enough about the findings of the inquest to want to see it for himself. Drawing up just inside the door, he threw one long, contemptuous glance at Nicholas Hayes’s bloody corpse, then walked over to a silver-haired gentleman who stood near the bar and leaned in to say something close to the man’s ear.
“Who’s that he’s talking to?” asked Lovejoy, watching him.
“Forbes,” said Sebastian as the man turned to glance their way. “Sir Lindsey Forbes, of the East India Company.”
* * *
The coroner was a stout, middle-aged man named Norquist Gaffney, with full lips, a loud, gravelly voice, and a pugnacious, brusque manner. Dressed in a long powdered wig and a dirty black robe dusted liberally with snuff, he arrived ten minutes late, threw himself into the padded chair reserved specifically for him, and complained loudly about the heat and the crowd. Then he scratched beneath his wig and bellowed, “Right, then. Let’s get this over with.”
Called to testify first, Sebastian described his discovery of Nicholas Hayes’s body in the blandest terms possible. He’d been careful from the beginning to characterize Calhoun’s role as that of a simple servant, with the result that the valet hadn’t even received a summons. Lovejoy likewise delivered his responses in a dry, forthright manner. The only vaguely sensational testimony in the entire inquest came from a rawboned, nervous gardener named Bernie Aikens, who haltingly admitted to having forgotten his sickle in the clearing on the day of the murder.
“What time did you leave the clearing?” snapped Gaffney.
“Around midday, yer honor,” said the gardener in a small voice.
“What’s that? Speak up, man.”
“Midday, yer honor.”
“And when did you realize you’d left your sickle there?”
“N-not till the next morning, yer honor,” stammered Aikens, a bead of sweat rolling down his sun-darkened cheek. “It wasn’t until I discovered me sickle wasn’t with me other tools and heard that the fellow’d been killed in the clearing where I’d been working that I realized I musta left it there.”
The coroner glowered at the gardener as if he were the most careless, forgetful, loathsome creature imaginable. “And yet you failed to inform the authorities of this fact?”
Aikens was sweating so badly now that his entire face glistened. “I told Mr. Pennington.”
“When?”
“That morning, yer honor. Almost as soon as I knowed fer sure.”
A constable standing beside the coroner leaned down to whisper in Mr. Gaffney’s ear. The coroner’s lips thinned, his frown deepening as his eyebrows drew together. But he nodded, then said to Aikens, “I’m told Mr. Pennington’s daughter has confirmed your story. You’re fortunate your carelessness hasn’t earned you a murder charge.”
Beneath his sunburn, Aikens’s face had gone sickly white, and he was visibly trembling.
The coroner waved a dismissive hand at the gardener. “Just go away. Right, then,” he bellowed. “Who’s next?”
“Paul Gibson, yer honor,” said the constable. “The surgeon what did the post mortem.”
Slipping quietly from the room, Sebastian went in search of an undertaker.
* * *
They called it the “death trade,” the lucrative business of taking care of London’s copious supply of the dead. At the high end of the trade were the “funeral furnishers,” a pretentious and rapacious set of professionals who had been known to bankrupt bereaved families by flattering and shaming them into signing up for elaborate funerals that included hiring a small army of mutes and professional mourners and draping their homes and churches in endless yards of black crepe. At the lower end of the business were simple carpenters and cabinetmakers who did a