What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

Napoleon.”
    “Of course. The villain is always a Frenchman.”
    Sebastian smiled. “Napoleon’s country has been fighting a war against our old mad King for close onto twenty years, so naturally Napoleon takes an interest in these negotiations. He realizes this Regency might be a good thing for France.”
    “And how’s that?”
    “Well, you see, the King has always aligned himself with a group of men in Parliament we’ll call the Tories. Like the old King, the Tories don’t like change. They think the way to keep their country strong is to keep the old institutions such as the monarchy and the church strong. And because they’re making a tidy profit out of the war, the last thing they want is any kind of peace treaty with our villain, Napoleon.”
    “War can be quite lucrative.”
    “For some. But our future Regent, the Prince, has surrounded himself with men who adhere to another party. Let’s call them the Whigs, shallwe? Now these Whigs, they tend to look to the future, rather than the past. They believe that if their country is to prosper and remain strong, there must be changes. They see that while this long, costly war has made some men very, very rich, the common people of the country have suffered. Terribly. So they say, ‘Why are we fighting this war? Napoleon is over there in his country, we’re over here in ours. We’re the ones who declared war on him. Why don’t we simply end this madness and have peace’?”
    “Why not, indeed,” said Pierrepont with a tight smile.
    “Now our villain, Napoleon, he’s not particularly anxious to continue this war, either. He’s looking forward to negotiating a peace treaty with the Whigs when they come to power. But because he’s a clever man, he decides it would be a good idea to increase his bargaining position. It occurs to him that one way to do that would be to have some kind of leverage with the gentleman everyone assumes will become Prime Minister when our Prince forms his new government.” Sebastian paused. “Let’s call this Whiggish gentleman Lord F, shall we?”
    The faintest hint of surprise flickered across the Frenchman’s face. “Go on.”
    “Now Napoleon, he has a secret supporter in Londontown, an individual we’ll call the Lion.”
    Pierrepont huffed a laugh. “Surely you can do better than that, monsieur?”
    “Sorry. Anyway, Napoleon instructs the Lion to discover Lord F’s weakness. All men have weaknesses, and it doesn’t take the Lion long to discover that Lord F has a preference for handsome young men. So the Lion comes up with a plan. He lures Lord F into an affair with a handsome young clerk in a sensitive position—let’s say the Foreign Office, shall we? And he arranges it so that the compromising rendezvous take place at the rooms of one of the Lion’s assistants, a passionate young revolutionary we’ll call . . .” Sebastian hesitated. “Let’s call her Rachel, shall we?”
    “It’s your story.”
    “So it is. The way I see it, the handsome young clerk entices Lord F to write some very compromising love letters, which find their way intothe Lion’s possession. The trap is now set. All our villains need do is wait for Lord F to become Prime Minister.”
    “You are going someplace with this, I trust.”
    “Almost there,” said Sebastian, shifting his weight. “You see, as clever as this plan is, something goes wrong. Something frightens Rachel, and she decides to flee Londontown. She gets the bright idea that if she steals Lord Frederick’s incriminating letters—along with a few other valuable documents which the Lion has collected—and sells them to the interested parties, she can make a tidy sum with which to start a new life. She waits until the Lion is out of town, steals the documents, and sets about selling them.”
    Pierrepont kept his face blank. “Go on.”
    “Unfortunately for Rachel, the Lion has a change of plans. He comes home early from his country house party. He finds the documents missing, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out who has them. He follows Rachel to a meeting she has set up at St. Matthew of the Fields, and he kills her there in a very, very nasty way—as a warning, perhaps, to his other assistants, lest they be inclined to get similar bright ideas in the future.”
    Pierrepont let his arms dangle loosely at his sides. “It’s an entertaining story, monsieur le vicomte. You ought to consider writing for the stage. Or for children. But a story is