What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

passing carriages.
    He hadn’t cared, before, whether Devlin was responsible for the death of that actress or not. He still didn’t care. All that mattered was that official inquiries into Rachel York’s murder be ended as quickly as possible and that the young Viscount’s notoriety be prevented from damaging the government at such a critical juncture. If necessary, the Viscount’s father, the Earl of Hendon, could be eased out of the government.
    In fact, the more he considered it, the more Jarvis thought that some good might come of this tangle after all. While his staunch Tory sentiments made Hendon more palatable to Jarvis than a man of, say, Fairchild’s stripe, the fact remained that Hendon had never been one of Jarvis’s supporters. The old fool actually believed that politics could be conducted by the same rules of sportsmanship and fair play as a cricket match on the fields of Eton. If Jarvis could finally get rid of Hendon, managing the Prince would be that much easier.
    Besides, Devlin’s precipitous flight from justice and his presumably fatal attack upon an officer of the law certainly suggested an unexpected degree of guilt. The young man needed to be caught soon. Or killed. Jarvis flicked open his snuffbox, lifted a pinch to one nostril, and inhaled deeply. Yes, he rather thought it would be better if Devlin were killed.

Chapter 9
     
     
    T he sounds of pursuit had long since faded into the distance.
    Sebastian slowed the gray to a walk. Darkness was falling fast, the rain easing to a fine mist as the wind rose. Turning up the collar of his greatcoat against the cold and the wet, Sebastian had time to regret the loss of his hat and to consider his future course of action.
    Even here, away from the more fashionable neighborhoods of Mayfair, heads swiveled to follow his passing, and fingers pointed. Sebastian was acutely aware of his missing neckcloth, his mud-splattered boots, the bloodstains on his greatcoat and gloves. His immediate need, he decided, was to remove himself to an area in which his disheveled appearance would occasion less remark. In the back alleys and byways of someplace like Covent Garden or St. Giles, no one would look twice at a hatless man with a torn greatcoat and blood on his gloves.
    Beneath the folds of his greatcoat Sebastian felt the weight of his pocketbook and knew a moment of thankfulness for the forethought that had led him to slip the purse into his pocket before leaving the house. He would find an inn, he decided; someplace humble, but warm and dry. And then he would set about contacting those who could—
    Sebastian’s head came up, his attention caught by a faint sound, barely discernable above the racket of wooden wheels rattling over ruts and the interminable patter of the rain.
    He was in a poorer quarter now, a neighborhood of narrow streets with aging houses and small shops, their dirty windows protected by iron grates. There were no fine carriages here, only heavy lumbering wagons and dogcarts winding their way through a growing throng of sturdy working folk, coopers and ferriers, laundresses and piemen, their voices raised in a singsong chorus of Pies. Rare hot pies. But he could hear it now, quite plainly: the steady thunder of hooves coming up fast and a boy’s voice, shouting, “If’n yer lookin’ for that rum cove on a gray, he went that way!”
    “Bloody hell,” whispered Sebastian, and urged his purloined mount forward into the night.

     
    He abandoned the gray in a warm stall on the edges of St. Giles. It was a notorious district, St. Giles, into which pursuing constables had been known simply to disappear forever. London’s authorities avoided it.
    The Black Hart Inn lay at the end of a mean little lane known as Pudding Row, in an area of crooked streets and rickety old medieval buildings that seemed to lean against one another for support, their upper floors jutting out over unpaved passages running foul with open gutters. A low, half-timbered relic, the inn had leaded front windows through which only a faint glow of light spilled out into the night. Sebastian paused in the shadow of the doorway, his head turning as he listened.
    The rain had stopped, but with the coming of darkness the temperature had plummeted, sending most of London’s residents scurrying indoors. He could hear the distant screech of iron-rimmed wheels and the dull monotony of a church bell sounding someone’s death knell, and nothing more. Pushing open the