Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,92

him. But one assumes that if you were hired to kill him, you were meant to do so quietly, whereas Hayes’s death was . . . not quiet. A sickle in the back suggests a killer who’s not in the habit of carrying his own weapon, and somehow I suspect that description doesn’t apply to you.”

Poole’s gaze flicked for one telltale instant to the listening youth. “I don’t know what yer talking about.”

“Shall I spell it out more clearly? You admitted you were following Hayes—for days. That suggests you were in a position to overhear when Hayes arranged to meet a friend in Pennington’s Tea Gardens. You could have gone there yourself and killed him, but you didn’t. For some reason, you told your employer about the assignation, and your employer killed him, which means you’re protecting a murderer.” Sebastian paused. “And in case you’ve forgotten, the authorities tend to frown on such activities.”

The threat was not subtle. Sebastian watched the fury leap into the man’s eyes—fury driven by fear and accompanied by the quick calculation that the easiest way to shut Sebastian up was to kill him.

Now.

With an angry roar, Poole seized one of the pitchforks from the nearby array of tools, leveled it at Sebastian’s chest, and charged.

Titus Poole was big and strong, but in the manner of so many big, strong men, he was not overly light and agile on his feet. Sebastian avoided the pitchfork’s ugly iron tines by the simple expedient of sidestepping at the last moment.

Poole’s charge carried him through the open doors and out into the storm. Drawing up, he swung around, the rain coursing over his balding head, his cheeks darkened by a tide of anger augmented by a suspicion of just how ridiculous he looked. “Ye bloody bastard,” he howled, and charged again.

Sebastian glanced toward the towheaded ostler, but the boy stayed where he was, the features of his young face tight and watchful and indicative of someone who was not at all inclined to interfere. “Don’t be a fool,” Sebastian told Poole, pivoting away from the new assault. “A taproom full of men heard me walk in here and ask for you. You stick me with a pitchfork and you’ll hang. Just tell me the name of the man who hired you.”

Poole tightened his hold on his weapon. “Oh, I’ll stick ye, all right. I’m gonna spit ye like a rabbit ready for roasting. I’m gonna gut ye like a fish on its way to market.”

Leaping away from the next wild thrust, Sebastian grabbed a hay rake and brought it up before him. He was worried that if he pulled his knife, the confrontation would only end with Poole dead, and Sebastian really, really needed the man to talk. “Just stop.”

Poole looked at Sebastian and laughed, for the tines of the pitchfork were forged of iron, while the hay rake was a simple implement of wood. “Ye think that’s gonna stop me? It’s only in here ’cause it’s got a crack in the handle that wants fixing.” Shifting his hold on the pitchfork, Poole swung it like a cricket bat so that the heavy iron head crashed against the end of the wooden rake and shattered it.

Sebastian was left holding a four-foot handle that ended in nothing.

“Aw,” sneered Poole, his dark little eyes alive with contempt and lethal purposefulness. “What ye gonna do now, my pretty little lordling?”

With a laugh, he closed in for what he thought would be the kill.

He was still laughing when Sebastian ducked for the fourth and last time, then spun around to drive the jagged broken shaft into the big man’s heart.

* * *

“You’re fortunate the man’s ostler wasn’t too fond of his employer,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, the rain pounding loudly on the stable’s roof as he bent to peer down at the bloody corpse at their feet.

“Stepfather,” said Sebastian.

“Ah.”

The disgraced Bow Street Runner lay flat on his back, legs splayed, arms flung wide in the straw. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth sagging as if in faint surprise. The broken end of the hay rake was still buried in his chest.

“I was trying not to kill him,” said Sebastian, his shoulders propped against a nearby support beam, his arms crossed, the mist blowing in through the open doors wet against his face. “I wanted to talk to him.”

“Yes. It’s a pity,” agreed Lovejoy, straightening with one hand at the small of his back. “No one is going to be getting any