What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

quiet kind of desperation that he noted, even if he could not understand it.
    Sometime before dawn he awoke to the gentle patter of her footsteps on the worn floorboards, the rustle of cloth as she moved about, dressing. He could have said something, could have reached for her, stopped her.
    He let her go, the door easing closed behind her on a breath of cold air.
    Then he simply lay there, staring into nothingness and waiting for the coming of dawn.

     
    By the next morning the snow had turned into a dirty brown slush that dripped off eaves and ran in wide rivulets down the center of unpaved streets.
    Avoiding the steady rush of water sluicing from broken gutters and sagging awnings, Sebastian made his way to St. Jude’s Foundling Home, on the south bank of the Thames, near Lambeth. The Home turned out to be a large, gloomy structure built some two centuries before of the same red Tudor brick and in the same forbidding, fortresslike style as Hampton Court. Except that the Foundling Home was, of course, considerably less well kept than Hampton Court.
    “I don’t know how much I can help you,” said the prune-faced matron when Sebastian presented himself to her in the guise of Cousin Simon Taylor from Worcestershire. “Miss York always came in on Mondays, which is my day off.”
    The pursing of the mouth with which Matron Snyder spat out the name Miss York said much about the nature of the two women’s dealings with one another. She was a hard-faced woman, Matron Snyder, with a solid build and a massive, shelflike bosom. If she had ever been young orpretty, her disposition had long ago stamped out all traces of such earlier failings.
    “Had it been up to me, of course,” said the matron, “ her kind would never have been allowed through the Home’s doors.”
    Sebastian pursed his own lips and nodded in sympathetic agreement.
    “I suppose the Reverend Finley might be able to tell you something,” said Matron Snyder, unbending a shade. “Miss York was quite a favorite of his.”
    “Reverend Finley?” Sebastian felt a quickening of interest. Until now, he’d found no trace of the mysterious “F” who appeared twice in the pages of Rachel’s appointment book. But if Rachel had developed a romantic interest in the Home’s young spiritual counselor, it did much to explain her continued visits to the place.
    Mrs. Snyder’s mouth pursed again. Obviously, she didn’t approve of Reverend Finley, either. “If you hurry, you might find him in the courtyard. He often visits with the children there on Sunday mornings, before services.”
    The courtyard was a cheerless, windswept place of cracked walks and patchy grass showing brown beneath the dirty remnants of last night’s snow. Turning up his collar against the cold, Sebastian walked across the neglected quadrangle, toward the group of pinch-faced children he could see clustered at the far end in a rare slice of thin winter sunshine. As he neared the group, he realized they were gathered around a man who was telling them a story about a lion and a rabbit; a thin, stoop-shouldered old man, his balding pink pate fringed with white hair, a pair of thick spectacles perched on the end of his long, thin nose.
    Sebastian hung back, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his cheap greatcoat, a smile tugging at his lips as he watched the old reverend hold that band of ragged charity children enthralled with the simple power of his words. Whatever had been the nature of Rachel’s relationship with this man, it obviously wasn’t romantic.
    “Terrible business, what happened to Rachel,” said Reverend Finley when, his story ended, he hurried the children toward the chapel and turned to listen to Sebastian’s introduction. “Such a tragedy.”
    “Had she volunteered here for long?” Sebastian asked as the two men turned to walk together.
    The old reverend peeled the wire-rimmed glasses off his face and rubbed his reddened eyes. “Nearly three years. Which is more than most women can take around here. They always start out full of such determination and good intentions, but it gets to them after a while. So many of the wee ones die, you see. I’ve never quite been able to understand it myself. But Rachel, she had this theory, that they died from a lack of love. And so she’d come every Monday afternoon and spend time holding each of the poor babes in turn. Just hold them. Sing to them.”
    Sebastian stared off across the snowy courtyard to where the