Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(89)

“So Ambrose killed his wife, the way you originally thought. And then Maxwell killed him in revenge.”

“Perhaps.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Consider this: We suspected Maxwell was in love with Jane, but the only reason we know for certain it’s true is because her brother told me. Why would he do that? What kind of man deliberately casts suspicion on his best friend?”

“Perhaps he didn’t realize what he was doing.”

“Oh, he knew. We’re talking about someone who uses words for a living.”

“So perhaps he suspects Maxwell himself, but felt it was inappropriate to say so.”

“Now, that’s possible.”

“But?” said Hero, watching him.

“This afternoon when I spoke to Lord Wallace at Brooks’s, he mentioned Somerset’s name as someone who would publish the Princess’s letters to Hesse if he had them.”

“Except Christian Somerset no longer has a newspaper,” said Hero.

“No. But he does write for various journals. And I find it interesting that out of the hundreds of journalists and politicians in this city, Wallace named only two: Somerset and Brougham. He even said he and Somerset had discussed various ways of scuttling the Orange alliance.”

“So maybe Wallace was trying to cast suspicion onto Somerset and away from himself.”

“Maybe,” Sebastian acknowledged. “It’s also possible that I’m simply chasing after unnecessary tangents. It’s even conceivable that Maxwell accidently killed Jane in a lover’s quarrel and then murdered Ambrose when the man accused him of it.”

She pushed herself up on her elbow so she could see his face better. “But you don’t think so?”

He thrust the fingers of one hand through the heavy fall of her dark hair, drawing it back from her face. “Jane went to see her brother ten days before she died, on a Monday. He says she was there to bring him some ballads for a collection he’s publishing.”

“Ten days?” She gave a faint smile. “Where is your calendar when we need it?”

“I stared at it enough to know exactly which Monday that was—it’s the same day Princess Charlotte told Jane that the Hesse letters had been stolen from Portsmouth. The next day, Tuesday, Jane went out to ask the Princess of Wales about the letters. And the day after that, Wednesday, she paid a visit to Lord Wallace.”

“You think the real reason she went to see her brother that Monday was to ask if he had the letters?”

“The timing is suggestive, isn’t it? According to Liam Maxwell, Jane was worried that her brother had once overheard her talking about the Hesse letters. Somerset claimed he hadn’t. But she must have had a reason to suspect him, if she went to see him that day.”

“The timing could be a coincidence.”

“It could be,” he agreed.

“It also wouldn’t explain why Christian Somerset would kill her. His own sister? Over a packet of letters?”

“Maybe it wasn’t murder. Maybe it was simply manslaughter. An accident.”

“But why would she suddenly decide on that particular Thursday to walk across London—in a snowstorm—and visit her brother again?”

“That I don’t have an answer to at all.”

Hero said, “I suppose something could have happened as Jane was leaving Warwick House that we don’t know about—either then or shortly afterward.”

It occurred to Sebastian there was another possibility: that Jane Ambrose had never actually left Warwick House alive that day. That after Miss Kinsworth saw her crossing the courtyard, Jane could have turned around and gone back into the house for some unknown reason. But he wasn’t quite ready to voice that suspicion aloud.

Hero folded her arms on his chest and smiled down at him. “You know, sleep might help.”

He hauled her up so that her slim, naked body lay long against his and took her mouth with a whispered “I have a better idea.”





Chapter 50

Saturday, 5 February

The next morning Sebastian went in search of John Fisher, the officious little Bishop who served as Preceptor to Princess Charlotte. As far as they knew, Fisher was the last person—apart from her killer—to have spoken to Jane Ambrose before she died. He claimed they had merely exchanged “pleasantries.” But it struck Sebastian as conceivable that their conversation might have been more important than he’d realized.

It was snowing by the time Sebastian reached Warwick House, big, wet, windblown flakes that melted quickly when they hit his face. As he passed through the old house’s weathered gate, he found himself thinking about the day Jarvis had sent his carriage to collect Jane Ambrose and convey her to his chambers at Carlton House, a distance of—what? Five or six hundred feet? But Sebastian understood only too well the significance of Jarvis’s gesture. By doing so, he had made certain that Jane would never again walk through this gate without remembering the ominous sight of the powerful man’s carriage awaiting her. She could never again have come to Warwick House without being inescapably aware of the palace’s looming presence and the very real threat Jarvis posed to her. And that suggested to Sebastian that when Jane left Warwick House for the last time on the day of her death, she had not lingered in Stone Cutters’ Alley.