What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

maid’s hands in her own and said gently, “There, there, Alice; it will be all right. We’re quite safe.” To Sebastian, she said, “I know who you are.”
    Sebastian nodded toward the quietly sobbing maid. “So, obviously, does she.”
    Miss Jarvis paused in the act of chafing the maid’s trembling hand between her own large, capable ones. “A humorist, I see. I hadn’t expected that.”
    “And what, precisely, were you expecting? To be ravished and left split like a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Zeus?”
    Alice let out a new bleat of terror.
    Miss Jarvis threw Sebastian a frowning glance. “Hush. You’re frightening her again.”
    Sebastian studied the woman beside him. She was somewhere in her early twenties, he supposed, brown of hair and unremarkable of feature, if one discounted the unmistakable gleam of intelligence and ready humor in those calm gray eyes. He tried to recollect what he had heard of Jarvis’s daughter, and could call little to mind.
    “Why did you insist on bringing Alice?” she asked after a moment.
    He glanced out the window. They were bowling up Whitehall now, harnesses jangling, the horses’ hoofbeats reverberating oddly in the damp, heavy fog. Soon the narrow streets of old Westminster would close in around them. It would be an easy thing, then, to lose any would-be rescuers and make his way to the Three Feathers Inn, where he intended to have a little chat with the landlord.
    “Merciful heavens,” said Miss Jarvis, her eyes opening wide as the carriage slowed for a turn. “Is that why she’s here? To safeguard my reputation from the tongues that wag and do love to speculate on all manner of unrighteous things? Do you really think it will help?”
    Sebastian opened the door beside him. “One can only hope,” he said, and slipped out into the damp night.

Chapter 55
     
     
    I t didn’t take him long to locate the Three Feathers, a surprisingly elegant little inn located on a cul-de-sac just off Barton Street. With some persuasion—not all that tactfully applied, for Sebastian was tired—the innkeeper divulged that Hugh Gordon and an unidentified, heavily veiled lady had indeed spent the previous Tuesday night in the inn’s best chamber.
    But the Three Feathers was a busy establishment; the innkeeper had no way of knowing whether or not the actor had stayed at his lady’s side all evening. And Barton Street was just around the corner from Great Peter Street and the ancient church of St. Matthew of the Fields.
    Leaving Westminster, Sebastian caught a hackney to Tower Hill. “Ah. There you are,” said Paul Gibson when he opened the door to Sebastian’s knock half an hour later. “So Tom found you, did he?”
    “No,” said Sebastian, quickly closing the door against the acrid cold of the coming night. “I haven’t seen the boy since this morning. Why? Have you discovered something?”
    “Not as much as I might have wished.” The doctor led the way down the narrow hall to the parlor, where he poured Sebastian a measure of mulled wine from the bowl warming near the fire. “You’re looking decidedly the worse for wear.”
    Sinking into one of the seats beside the fire, Sebastian grasped thecup in both hands. “So everyone keeps saying.” He took a sip of the warm wine, then leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “I feel as if I’ve been chased across London and back again for the past hundred years.”
    Gibson smiled. “Which probably explains why Tom didn’t find you.” He poured himself some of the mulled wine and came to take the other chair. “I tracked down the woman who did Rachel York’s laying out. A horse-faced old battle-ax by the name of Molly O’Hara.”
    Sebastian brought his head forward and opened his eyes. “And?”
    “Rachel York had a man’s fob clutched in her fist. Unfortunately, by the time I found her, our dear Molly had already sold the trinket. She remembered little about it, beyond the fact that its swivel was broken.”
    “Rachel must have torn it from her attacker’s waistcoat, just as he slit her throat.”
    “Yes, that’s the way I figure it. The goldsmith Molly sold the trinket to used the damage to drive a hard bargain with her.” The doctor drew a square of paper from his pocket. “A Mr. Sal Levitz. In Grace Church Street.”
    “You went to see him?”
    “Yes, although I fear I didn’t handle it as well as I should have.”
    “Let me guess. He claims he sold the trinket