Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,79
It’s a sentiment shared by Seaforth and Forbes and, presumably, LaRivière as well.” He’d decided against telling Lovejoy about Hamish McHenry. Forbes’s casual mention of the major had been too pat not to be suspect, and Sebastian wanted to talk to Hamish himself, first. “I’m beginning to think the four men may have made a pact—either explicitly or implicitly—to simply have Hayes quietly killed.”
“But he wasn’t killed quietly,” said Lovejoy.
“No, he wasn’t, which makes it damnably confusing.”
Lovejoy’s face tightened into a pained expression. “The involvement of two prominent men such as Seaforth and LaRivière was bad enough. But now you’re saying Forbes and Brownbeck are implicated as well? Merciful heavens. We’re fortunate the palace is preoccupied at the moment with the visiting Allied Sovereigns. When are they due back from Oxford?”
“Tonight.”
* * *
The Green Man was not a favorite with military men. Located in an ancient, tumbledown part of Westminster, the tavern was a place of dark, low ceiling beams, age-blackened wainscoting, and uneven flagstone floors. The medieval glass in the leaded windows was thick and wavy, the tables and benches were all scarred, and stray dogs regularly ran in and out looking for scraps.
Hamish McHenry sat alone in a darkened corner, a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a glass on the table before him. His head fell back and he blinked when Sebastian slid onto the bench opposite him. “How the blazes did you find me here?”
“Were you hiding from me?”
The major raised his glass to his lips and took a deep drink. “Not exactly.”
Sebastian turned to order a brandy, then waited until it arrived before saying, “You didn’t tell me you were in the Foreign Office with Crispin Hayes—before you bought yourself a pair of colors and went off to do your best to get yourself killed.”
One corner of the man’s lips quirked up into a shadow of a smile. “How did you know?”
“That you went to war hoping to die? I did something similar myself . . . although for a slightly different reason.”
“Ah.” He lifted his glass in a half salute. “Who told you I was with the Foreign Office?”
“That was Forbes.”
“He’s a nasty, sneaky son of a bitch.”
“That he is. I assume he told me in an effort to deflect suspicion from himself onto you.”
“And did it work?”
“Not exactly. Although I’ll admit it helped me see a few things more clearly.”
McHenry leaned back against the old-fashioned bench, his forearms lying limply on the table before him. “Then I suppose he achieved his purpose, didn’t he?”
Sebastian said, “Tell me about Chantal de LaRivière.”
McHenry brought up both hands to scrub them down over his haggard face. “She was so beautiful. She had the smile of an angel, a laugh like the gentle peal of the bells of heaven, and a body that could tempt a man to sell his soul to the devil.”
“And did you? Sell your soul to the devil, I mean.”
McHenry’s bloodshot eyes met Sebastian’s. “Metaphorically speaking, I suppose you could say I did.”
“She seduced you?”
McHenry reached for his glass and drained it. “In every way.”
“Let me guess. And then her suitably outraged husband caught you in flagrante delicto.”
The major splashed more Scotch into his glass. “Not a very original scheme, I’ll admit. But nevertheless highly effective. The Count played the outraged husband to perfection. At first he threatened me with a crim. con. case, of course. I was twenty-three years old and a frightened fool. I told him I had no money.”
“And so he said he was willing to allow you to pay him with what you did have: access to information.”
McHenry wrapped his hands around his glass, but did not drink. And for a moment he seemed to shrink in on himself, becoming less than what he had been a moment before.
Sebastian said, “How long did it go on?”
The major sucked in a deep breath and took a drink. “Not nearly as long as LaRivière hoped, as it turned out. I made a wretchedly unsatisfactory traitor, you see. Took to drinking. Considered killing myself. Showed up to work falling-down pissed and puking on myself. Grenville—he was the Foreign Secretary at the time—was an old friend of my father’s, but even he couldn’t put up with it for long and dismissed me. I suppose in some weak, twisted way it was what I was hoping would happen.”
“And so LaRivière set his wife to seducing Crispin Hayes next?”
McHenry nodded, his jaw clenched. “I was so sunk in my own misery and a useless orgy of