Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,9
“He told me how he’d escaped from Botany Bay. How he’d been living in Canton.”
“Interesting place to take refuge.”
“He said he left Botany Bay on an American whaler and spent a season working with them. But then they ran into a storm and had to put into Canton for repairs. Right before they were to leave, he came down with a fever. The monsoons were about to hit, so they left him. Everyone thought he was going to die, but he didn’t.”
“And he’s been in Canton ever since?”
Calhoun nodded. “He was working with one of the Hong merchants. Seems the fellow was happy to have someone who not only spoke perfect English and French—along with a smattering of other languages—but could understand European ways of thinking as well.”
Merchants from Britain, Europe, and the United States were all eager to trade with China, the ancient source of silks and porcelains and the increasingly popular tea. After having been rigidly closed off for centuries, the country was finally beginning to open up. But the Qing emperors insisted on tightly controlling their subjects’ contact with the barbaric West. By Imperial decree, all trade was funneled through the city of Canton and the nearby island of Macau, with foreigners forced to do business through specially licensed middlemen known as Hong merchants.
“Did you ask him why the hell he threw it all over to risk his life by coming back here?”
“I did. But all he’d say was he had his reasons. And then he said he might need my help, and asked if he could count on me.”
And you said yes, Sebastian thought, no questions asked. It revealed much about the strength of the bond between the two men.
Aloud, Sebastian said, “Tell me about the child. What is he to Hayes?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Is he a servant, do you think?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“Any chance the boy could be Hayes’s son?”
“I wondered that myself. He does look half-European. But he didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”
Sebastian studied his valet’s fine-boned, tensely held face. He’d known Calhoun for years now. In general, he was an affable man, calm and easygoing. But Sebastian had always suspected that there was another side to the valet, a hidden side that was the legacy of all those growing-up years spent in the dangerous back alleys of places like Seven Dials and Hockley-in-the-Hole. “Tell me about when you knew Hayes before—those months when he was staying at your mother’s flash house. Did any of his friends or relatives come to see him while he was there?”
Calhoun looked thoughtful. “There was an Irish fellow who’d been up at Cambridge with him and came a few times, but I’m afraid I don’t recall his name. It’s been nearly twenty years, and I didn’t pay that much attention anyway.”
“No one else?”
“Everyone else pretty much cut him off after his father disowned him—all except for his brother, of course.”
“I thought he had several brothers.”
“He had two. But it was only Crispin, the middle son, who came to see him. They were quite close, so his death hit Nicholas hard.”
“Crispin Hayes died while Nicholas was in prison? Or when he was staying at the Red Lion?”
“It was right before the Frenchwoman’s murder.”
“How did he die?”
“He drowned.”
Jesus. What a tragic family, thought Sebastian. “Tell me about Nicholas Hayes himself—what manner of man he was.”
Calhoun drew a deep, pained breath. “I know what they said about him in the papers this morning, how they made him out to be some ne’er-do-well, depraved reprobate. But he wasn’t like that. I mean, yes, he was wild and maybe a bit reckless and hotheaded. But he was a good man—honorable and trustworthy and true.”
“Most people would consider abducting an heiress fairly depraved.”
Calhoun set his jaw and said nothing.
“So, why did he kill Chantal de LaRivière?” asked Sebastian.
“He said he didn’t.”
“Did you believe him?”
Calhoun met Sebastian’s gaze. “Yes—then and now.”
“Did you attend the trial?”
“No. Nicholas said he didn’t want me to.”
Interesting, thought Sebastian. Because Hayes wanted to spare the lad pain? Or because he didn’t want Calhoun to realize he really was guilty of murder?
Aloud, Sebastian said, “Who do you think killed him?”
Calhoun drew his lower lip between his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t know. But whoever it was, Nicholas must not have seen him as a threat. I mean, he turned his back on the fellow, didn’t he? You wouldn’t do that with someone you thought might kill you. Would you?”