What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

through the dark, moonless night. But Sebastian could see almost too well the scattered gray headstones and looming arches of tombs, the occasional pale glow of a skull or long bone protruding here and there from the muddy earth. The cold night air filled with sounds, the wind rising through the bare branches of the trees, the stealthy, muffled padding of feet on a muddy path and the hushed, strained breathing of nervous men.
    “Here ’tis,” whispered Jumpin’ Jack, his lantern flashing for an instant on a mound of naked, freshly turned soil. Unwrapping their tools, the two men set to digging, shovels scraping softly as they sank deeper and deeper into the earth.
    The stench was stronger here. Lifting his head, Sebastian realized it came from the long, half-filled trench of the poor hole, half-lost in the gloomy shadows of the far corner. In the distance, the dog was still barking. From somewhere nearer at hand came the slow, steady drip, drip of water.
    The thwunk of metal striking wood echoed around the yard. Jumpin’ Jack let out a grunt of satisfaction and said, “Got it.”
    Sebastian forced himself to look down into that dark hole. Theresurrection men were experts at their business. Rather than exhuming the entire coffin, they’d simply dug down to the head. Using one of the shovels as a pry, Jumpin’ Jack levered open the top of the casket. Then the young boy with them—a stocky lad of about sixteen named Ben—jumped down into the hole. Wheezing a string of curses under his breath, he slowly eased what was left of Rachel York from the coffin, the still, white-clad body showing ghostly pale against the darkness of the turned earth.
    Squatting down beside the corpse, Jumpin’ Jack slipped a knife from the sheath at his side and began with swift, practiced strokes to cut away her shroud.
    Sebastian’s hand reached out to grip the man’s arm, stopping him. “What are you doing?”
    Jumpin’ Jack hawked another mouthful of spittle, his pale eyes glittering in the darkness as he spat into the gaping hole beside them. “Ain’t no law agin cartin’ a dead body through the streets. But ye can win yerself seven years in Botany Bay, if’n yer caught with a stiff in graveclothes.”
    Sebastian nodded and took a step back.
    They stripped the body of everything except the band wound lengthwise around her head to hold her jaw closed. Then, leaving the naked body lying in the muddy path, they shoved the grave clothes back into the coffin, closed the lid, and quickly shoveled the earth back onto the empty grave.
    “You there, Ben,” said Jumpin’ Jack, squatting down to grasp the body’s bare white shoulders. “Grab her feet.”
    Sebastian collected the shovels and the lantern, while the other two men lifted the body between them, one bare arm flopping down to drag limply in the mud as they set off toward the gate.
    From somewhere in the distance came the cry of the watch, One o’clock and all is well .

     
    They carried Rachel York’s body into the small stone outbuilding behind Paul Gibson’s surgery and laid her on a flat granite slab with drains cutaround the outer edges in a way that reminded Sebastian, uncomfortably, of an ancient sacrificial altar he’d once seen in the mountains of Anatolia.
    He paid Jumpin’ Jack fifteen pounds, which was the going price for a “half-long” and more than a good housemaid could earn in a year. As the resurrection men’s cart rattled off into the night, Paul Gibson thrust home the bolt on the outside door, then limped over to hang his oil lamp from the chain suspended above the table.
    Golden light flooded the room, throwing the two men’s shadows tall and unnaturally thin across the rough plaster of the wall behind them. “Nasty piece of work, this,” he said after a moment.
    Sebastian had to force himself to look down at what lay on the slab before them. Rachel York had been a beautiful woman, her body long limbed and gracefully made, slim of waist and hip, with full, ripe breasts. Now her soft flesh was deadly pale, and smeared with the mud from her grave. But he could see other marks, bruises left by hard fingers digging into her wrists. More bruises, on her arms, her cheeks. And ugly slashes across her neck so deep that one might almost imagine her attacker’s objective had been to sever her neck. Reaching out, Paul Gibson untied the band around her head and her jaw fell open. Sebastian looked away.
    “It would have been better if I could have