What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

that pale, blood-streaked face. “Know who she is?”
    The question was addressed to the only other person in the chapel, a tall, well-built man in his mid-thirties, with fair, fashionably disheveled hair and an intricately tied cravat. As Queen Square’s senior constable, Edward Maitland had been the first authority of any consequence called to the scene and had been the one handling the investigation to this point. “An actress,” he said now, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his weight rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as if to contain his impatience with Sir Henry’s slow, methodical ways. “A Miss Rachel York.”
    “Ah. I thought she looked familiar.” Swallowing hard, Lovejoy eased the cloth from the rest of the girl’s body, and forced himself to look.
    Her throat had been repeatedly, viciously slashed in long, savage gashes. Which explained the sprays of blood on the walls, he supposed. So much blood, everywhere. Yet Rachel York’s death had not been quick, or easy. Her fists were clenched as if in endurance, and bruises showed dark and ugly against the pale, bare flesh of her wrists and forearms. The skin high on her left cheek had been split by a harsh blow. The torn, disarrayed emerald satin gown and ripped velvet pelisse told their own story.
    “He had his way with her, I take it?” said Lovejoy.
    Maitland shifted his weight back onto the heels of his expensive boots and balanced there, his gaze not on the girl but on the high, blue and red stained glass of the eastern window. “Yes, sir. No doubt about that.”
    No doubt indeed, thought Lovejoy. The inescapable tang of semen still hung in the air, mingling with the heavy metallic odor of blood and the pious sweetness of incense and beeswax. He let his gaze travel over the girl’s carefully composed limbs, and frowned. “She was lying like this, when you found her?”
    “No, sir. She was there, before the altar. Weren’t proper to leave her that way. This being a church and all.”
    Lovejoy straightened, his gaze drifting back to those blood-smeared marble steps. Every candle on the altar had guttered down and gone out.She must have lit them all, he thought, before she died. Why? In piety? Or because she was afraid of the dark?
    Aloud, he said, “What was she doing here, do you suppose?”
    Maitland’s brows twitched together in a swift, betraying movement instantly stilled. It was obviously a question that hadn’t occurred to him. “That I can’t say, sir. The sexton found her when he came to open the church this morning.” He pulled a notebook from the pocket of his greatcoat and flipped it open with the ostentatious display of attention to detail that sometimes grated on Lovejoy’s nerves. “A Mr. Jem Cummings. Neither he nor the Reverend”—there was a brief ruffling of pages—“Reverend James McDermott say they’ve ever seen her before.”
    “They lock the church every night, do they?”
    “Yes, sir.” Again Maitland consulted his notebook. “At eight sharp.”
    Reaching down, Lovejoy carefully replaced the cloth over what was left of Rachel York, only pausing at the last moment to study, once again, that pale, beautiful face. She had a French look about her, with the fair curls and widely spaced brown eyes and short upper lip often found in Normandy. He’d seen her just last week, with Kat Boleyn in the Covent Garden Theater’s production of As You Like it . Seen her and admired her, not simply for her beauty but for her talent. He had a clear image of her upon the stage, her hands held high in the clasp of her fellow cast members as they took their final bow, her eyes bright and shining, her smile wide and triumphantly joyous.
    He jerked the cloth back over those still, bloodstained features and turned away, his gaze narrowing as he took in the layout of the old church, the aisled nave and wide transepts, the choir and broad apse. “This Mr. Cummings . . . does he say he came back here, to the Lady Chapel, before locking up last night?”
    Maitland shook his head. “The sexton says he glanced back here from the retrochoir and gave a loud halloo, warning that he was about to lock up. But he didn’t actually venture into the chapel itself, sir. And he wouldn’t have seen her from the retrochoir. I checked myself.”
    Lovejoy nodded. In the damp coolness of the church, some of the pools of blood had yet to dry. Glossy and thick, they shimmered darkly in the lamplight, and he took