Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,94
he’s dead. And if I knew who’d hired him, I’d tell you.”
It was an old story, of a man pretending to be something he wasn’t to lure a woman into marriage or into his bed. But Sebastian’s sympathy for this woman was tempered by the fact that she’d surely known the sordid history of Poole’s activities as a Runner. She might have been a widow with three children, but she was also the owner of a tidy inn; she hadn’t married Poole out of any pressing financial need, but because his attentions had flattered her. She hadn’t been bothered by the fact he’d once sent innocent, impoverished men, women, and children to their deaths. She simply hadn’t expected him to hurt her.
Aloud, Sebastian said, “Can you remember anything—anything at all—that he might have said about the man who hired him?”
She was silent for a moment as if with the effort of thought. “Well, I know he was a nob, because that’s what Titus called him—‘that stupid nob.’ Titus was right proud of himself because after Hayes was found dead over in Somer’s Town, Titus went to the nob what’d hired him and claimed to have killed Hayes himself. That nob, he wasn’t exactly happy—you see, Titus was supposed to kill the fellow quiet-like and then dump the body someplace it’d never be found. That way no one would ever know the fellow had even been here.”
She paused, obviously feeling compelled to explain how she’d come to know so much. “Titus didn’t usually tell me about his work in any detail. But he was bragging about this, you see. Said that nob weren’t happy with the way everyone was talking about Hayes being murdered—said it made folks remember all that’d happened in the past. So he only gave Titus half of what he was to pay him if the job was done right. Normally Titus would’ve been more than a bit miffed about something like that, but he thought it was a great joke because he hadn’t really killed the fellow himself. He didn’t know who’d actually done it, only that he’d been smart enough to get himself paid for it.”
Chapter 53
L ate that night, a new wave of storms swept in from the North Sea, bringing with it an even fiercer wind and great pulses of lightning that split the sky.
Sebastian lay awake, watching the quick electric flashes light up the room and listening to the rumble of the thunder and the patter of raindrops hitting the window glass. He kept going over what he knew about the day Nicholas Hayes died and trying to tease out how what they’d learned from Kate Forbes and Mrs. Poole should alter their perception of the critical hours surrounding the murder. Then he became aware of a subtle change in the room’s energy and looked over to find Hero lying awake beside him, watching him. “Maybe if you got some sleep,” she said, “it would all make more sense.”
He gave a smothered laugh and drew her close. “You’re always saying that.”
“Because it’s true . . . even if it is impossible.”
She fell silent, her head on his chest, one hand resting on his stomach, and he knew that she too was running through the day’s revelations and what they meant. She said, “It’s somehow the height of irony that whoever hired Poole to murder Nicholas Hayes now thinks that Poole actually did kill him, when he didn’t. Someone else did.”
Sebastian ran his hand up and down her bare arm. “I suppose it’s possible ‘the nob’ killed Hayes himself and simply paid Poole to make the ex-Runner go away and shut up. But I doubt it.”
“So of the four men who had reason to worry that Hayes came back to London to kill them, one tried to have him murdered and another actually did kill him. Nicholas Hayes had a collection of ugly enemies.”
“That he did. It’s also rather ironic that whoever hired Poole is the one person we can be fairly certain didn’t actually kill Hayes. He only thinks he’s responsible.”
“Is it possible that Seaforth hired Poole, and then Poole killed him?”
“It’s possible, although I can’t imagine why Poole would have killed him.”
“Perhaps because Seaforth only paid half of what he’d promised,” suggested Hero.
“According to Mrs. Poole, Titus was laughing about how he’d suckered ‘the stupid nob’ into paying him. So while Poole only received half of what he’d been promised, he knew he hadn’t actually done anything to earn it.” Sebastian paused