Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(67)

“Whatever were they looking for?” said Lovejoy, pausing in the doorway.

Sebastian went right to the Italian’s harp. The instrument’s beautifully worked frame had been hopelessly smashed. “I’ve no idea.”

They searched the room themselves anyway, on the off chance Vescovi’s killer had missed something in his haste.

They found nothing.



Wednesday, 2 February

Dawn was spilling a weak golden light down the snowy canyon of Brook Street when Hero came to stand in the doorway to the library, a cup of tea held in one hand. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked Devlin.

He looked up from where he leaned against his desk, staring at something in his hand. “A bit.”

“Liar.”

He gave a lopsided smile and set aside whatever he’d been holding.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Jane Ambrose’s locket.”

“Ah.” She came to hand him the cup. “Here. This is for you. Drink it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can I talk you into some breakfast?”

He took a sip of the tea and grimaced. “Not hungry.” He pushed away from the desk and went to stand at the window, his gaze on the long icicles that glittered in the cold sunshine. “What in all of this am I missing?” He brought one clenched fist down on the windowsill. “Bloody hell! I still don’t know where she actually died, how or why she burnt her fingers, or even who raped her a day or two before she was killed. Something must tie it all together. And now Vescovi is dead, and it’s damnably hard not to hold myself in some measure responsible.”

“Why? Because you underestimated the importance of the communication between Princess Charlotte and her mother?”

Devlin nodded. “And yet I can’t think of anything that could be in the letters Vescovi carried that would motivate someone to kill over it. What could Charlotte have said? That she regrets allowing her father to trick her into this betrothal? That Caroline is working with her Whig friends to find a way to stop it? None of that is exactly a secret.”

“No,” she agreed. “But why else would someone kill Vescovi?”

Sebastian drained his tea and set it aside. “Damned if I know.”

An hour later, Sebastian received a note from Kat Boleyn telling him she had found Edward Ambrose’s mistress.



“Her name is Emma Carter,” said Kat as she and Sebastian walked along the stalls of Covent Market. The icy, ferocious cold still held the city in its grip, but the roads from the countryside were finally passable enough that some supplies were beginning to trickle in. “She used to be an opera dancer before Ambrose set her up in rooms in Tavistock Street. Almost no one knows about her. He must be extraordinarily discreet in his visits to her.”

“He couldn’t afford to have his wife find out,” said Sebastian, his gaze scanning the shivering, desperate crowd. “Not when she was the one actually writing his operas.”

“Was she really?”

“She was indeed. How long has Ambrose had this woman in keeping?”

“Three years.”

“Three years? He has been discreet.”

Kat put out a hand, stopping him as she lowered her voice. “That’s her there—in the cherry red pelisse.”

Sebastian studied the woman who stood at a stall mounded high with carrots and potatoes. She was a tiny thing, surely no more than nineteen or twenty, with a pretty round face and dusky curls that peeked from beneath a fur-trimmed hat. As she turned away from the stall, her pelisse flared open, exposing a heavily pregnant belly.

“Good God,” he said softly. “She’s with child.”





Chapter 39

Edward Ambrose buried his wife beside her sons in the crypt of their parish church of St. Anne’s, Soho.

He played the part of the grieving widower to perfection, Sebastian thought, watching him. The man’s features were drawn and pallid, his shoulders slumped as if beneath a crushing weight of pain and loss. He accepted the condolences of friends and colleagues with a graciousness that impressed everyone who saw him. But if Sebastian’s suspicions were correct, the show of grief was all for effect, all false.

Sebastian stood beneath the church’s west gallery and watched the funeral service. Built by Wren or one of his associates in the aftermath of the Great Fire, St. Anne’s was a classic basilica—broad and spacious and plain, although cluttered with the high, ornate box pews of the parish’s wealthier families. He noticed that Jane’s brother, Christian Somerset, came in just before the beginning of the service and left immediately afterward, slipping quietly away without attempting to join those who stayed to console his brother-in-law.

Women did not typically attend funerals. But it occurred to Sebastian as he watched Ambrose shake hands and speak quietly to the somber files of men who had come to pay their respects to Jane’s husband just how sad and lonely her life must have been. All the members of her family except for Christian Somerset were dead. The real genius behind the operas of “Edward Ambrose” was hers, yet with the exception of the social philosopher William Godwin, all those attending her funeral were her husband’s friends, associates, and admirers.

Sebastian waited while the church emptied of mourners and Ambrose paused to speak in low-voiced consultation with the rector. After a moment, Ambrose nodded to the vicar and walked over to Sebastian to say bluntly, “I take it you wish to speak to me?”