What Darkness Brings (14 page)

Chapter 29

T
he discovery that Eisler had been engaging in a nasty combination of blackmail and sexual exploitation had the potential to open up a vast array of new suspects, most of them unfortunately both nameless and faceless. If Yates and Tyson were telling the truth—and Sebastian suspected that in this, at least, they were—then London must be so full of men and women who’d nursed a secret but powerful reason to murder the old bastard that it was difficult to know where to start.

Sebastian was seated in the drawing room, the blue satin slipper held thoughtfully in his hands, when Hero came in yanking off her wet bonnet and gloves.

“I’ve been looking for the black cat,” she said. “I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Calling what? ‘Here, cat, cat, cat’? You need to give him a name.”

“He’s not my cat; he’s yours.” She went to stand at the window, her gaze on the rain-washed pavement below. “One of the housemaids saw a man hanging around who sounds like Foy. She said he was trying to coax the cat to come to him with what looked like sardines.”

Sebastian knew a moment of disquiet. But all he said was, “The cat’s probably just taken shelter from the rain someplace. He’ll be back. Where else is he likely to get roast chicken and a bowl of cream?”

She gave him a tight, strained smile and nodded to the slipper in his hand. “What’s this?”

Sebastian held it up. “It’s one of a pair that I found tucked beneath a tattered old horsehair sofa in Daniel Eisler’s parlor.”

She lifted the shoe from his hand. “This is not a lady’s slipper.”

“No, it is not.”

She looked up at him. “You say both shoes were still there?”

“Yes.”

“How odd. I wonder if he gave their owner a new pair and she simply left the old ones.”

“Eisler? I suspect that old bastard never gave anyone anything—excepting perhaps an inclination for suicide.”

“Then I’d say the shoes’ owner must have left the premises precipitously.” She handed the shoe back to him. “Somewhat like Cinderella.”

“Only, I doubt this Cinderella was worried about her coach turning into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.”

Hero said, “Apart from the fact that walking in one’s stocking feet would be decidedly uncomfortable, these shoes—however cheap I might consider them—would nevertheless represent a significant investment for their owner. I doubt she left them behind willingly.”

“I’m thinking she might have been there when Eisler was shot.”

Hero frowned down at the tiny, worn shoe. “And ran away in fear?”

“That’s one possibility.”

“Are you saying you think your Blue Satin Cinderella might have shot him?”

“Perhaps.”

“So who is she?”

“I have no idea. But I know someone who might.”

“Oh, God. Not you again,” exclaimed Samuel Perlman when Sebastian came upon him in the showrooms of Christie’s in Pall Mall.

Sebastian ran his gaze over the framed sepia-colored draw-
ing of a woman’s head that Perlman was examining. “I’d have thought you just inherited enough of this sort of thing from your uncle to satisfy the acquisitive urgings of even the most ardent collector.”

“I like to keep an eye on what’s available,” said Perlman, leaning forward to squint at the drawing’s signature. “Do you think it’s really a Leonardo?”

“You tell me.”

Eisler’s nephew had changed into tight, buff-colored trousers, a claret-and-white-striped waistcoat, and a monstrously wide cravat meticulously arranged in a complicated style known as the Waterfall. He straightened. “After our previous conversation, I’d hoped I’d seen the last of you.”

Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “Let that be a lesson to you: If you don’t care to see me again, you might consider being a bit more forthcoming in your answers to my questions.”

Perlman breathed a resigned sigh. “What now?”

“I’ve been hearing some interesting tales about your uncle and women.”

“Women?” Perlman gave a high-pitched titter. “Don’t be ridiculous. My uncle was an old man.”

“Not that old.”

Perlman moved on to a massive, heavily framed oil that took up a considerable section of one wall, his attention all for the darkly swirling scene before him.

Sebastian said, “I’m told you used to provide your uncle with whores.”

Perlman cast him a quick sideways glance. “And precisely who, one wonders, told you that?”

“Does it matter?”

When Perlman remained silent, Sebastian said, “I think your uncle may have had a woman at his house the night he was shot. Did you send her to him?”

“I did not.”

“But you’re not denying that you did sometimes act as his procurer.”

Perlman kept his gaze on the vast oil. “What an ugly little word.”

“You have one you prefer?”

“I won’t deny I did occasionally perform certain . . . commissions for him.”

“Define ‘occasionally.’”

“Every few weeks . . . or so.”

“Where did the women come from?

“The Haymarket. Covent Garden. Really, Devlin, you know as well as I do where to find women of that sort.”

“Are you saying you supplied him with common women you picked up off the street?”

Perlman swiped the tip of his nose between one pinched thumb and forefinger and sniffed. “That’s the kind he liked.”

“I’ve heard he also liked another kind of women. Pretty young gentlewomen who owed him money—or whose husbands owed him money.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Perlman loftily.

“You wouldn’t?”

“I would not.” He cast a quick glance around, but the auction rooms were nearly deserted in the gloom of the rainy afternoon. “Listen: I am not denying my uncle had an appetite for women. He did. It was . . . unseemly. But to my knowledge he satisfied those needs with whores. Now, if you’ll excuse me? You are distracting me. This is not a leisure activity, you know. Art collecting is serious business.”

“In a moment. So you would have me believe you never heard of him coercing a gentlewoman to share his couch?”

“I have not, no.”

Sebastian smiled. Unlike Tyson, Samuel Perlman was a terrible liar. “Then tell me this: Who owed your uncle money?”

Perlman gave a tsking huff of derision. “That sort of information is privileged. I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew.”

“Are you saying you don’t know?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. The bastard must have written it all down somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I can find his ledgers. He obviously hid them.”

“That’s one possibility,” said Sebastian.

“Are you suggesting there’s another?”

“Whoever shot Eisler could have taken them.”

Perlman gave another of his derisive little laughs. “My uncle was shot by Russell Yates. And everyone in London knows it . . . except you, apparently.”

Sebastian shifted his gaze to the large canvas beside them, a biblical scene complete with plumed Roman soldiers, fainting women, and an angry bearded man with a bare, heavily muscled chest who may or may not have been Samson. “Looks like a Van Dyke.”

Perlman opened his eyes in astonishment. “Impressive.”

“But that doesn’t mean it is.”

Sebastian turned toward the door.

He’d taken two steps when Perlman stopped him by saying, “I do know the name of one man who owed my uncle money. Beresford. Blair Beresford.”

Sebastian paused. “I thought you said you consider that sort of information privileged.”

A gleam of what looked suspiciously like sly triumph flared in the other man’s eyes. “I know I can rely upon you to exercise the utmost discretion with the information I have provided you.”

“Have something against Beresford, do you?”

But Perlman only smiled faintly and returned to his study of the oil.

It took Sebastian a while, but he finally tracked Blair Beresford to Bond Street, where the Irishman waited outside the bow-fronted establishment of one of London’s most fashionable milliners. The rain had finally eased up, the clouds breaking apart to show pale aquamarine streaks of clear sky above. Beresford was leaning against the side of Louisa Hope’s elegant barouche, his arms folded at his chest, his chin sunk in his cravat, his thoughts evidently far, far away.

“Ah, there you are,” said Sebastian, walking up to him.

Beresford straightened with a jerk, his eyes going wide in a way that told Sebastian the young Irishman had obviously at some time in the past several hours had an interesting conversation with his friend Matt Tyson. “Actually, I was just about to go see if Louisa—”

“Not to worry,” said Sebastian, ruthlessly turning the younger man’s steps toward Oxford Street. “I won’t take but a moment of your time. I’m just wondering if you could explain something for me.”

Beresford cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, toward the milliner’s shop. “I can try.”

“Good. You see, I’ve been wondering: Why would someone whose cousin is married to one of the richest men in England need to go to a bloodsucker like Daniel Eisler to borrow money?”

Sebastian watched as all the color drained from the younger man’s face to leave him pale and visibly shaken. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He drew up abruptly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must—”

“Cut line,” said Sebastian, swinging to face him. “You can answer the question, or I can ask it of Louisa Hope. Which do you prefer?”

Beresford met his gaze, then looked away, his lower jaw thrust out as he exhaled a long, painful breath. “Louisa doesn’t know anything about any of this,” he said quietly.

“Why Eisler? Why not go to Hope?”

Beresford continued walking, his soft blue eyes fixed on the wet pavement before them. “I did. The first time.”

“Go on.”

“It all happened one night right after I first came to London. I fell in with some friends from Oxford. They wanted to try a gaming hell near Portland Place, so I went with them. The stakes were . . . high. Almost before I knew it, I’d lost a thousand pounds.” He gave a nearly hysterical laugh. “A thousand pounds! My father only clears twelve hundred pounds in a good year.”

“So you went to Hope?”

Beresford nodded. “He behaved remarkably well, under the circumstances. Read me a lecture, of course, but nothing I didn’t deserve. When he handed me the money, he warned me there would be no second time.”

“Don’t tell me you went back to the same hell again?”

Beresford’s lips crimped into a painfully thin line. “Hope told me I didn’t need to repay him. But . . . it didn’t sit right with me to just take his money. The problem was, I knew the only way I could ever get my hands on that much blunt would be to win it.”

“How much did you lose the second time?”

“Five hundred pounds. I was winning at first—”

“You always do.”

“But then my luck turned. Quite suddenly and rather disastrously. I did have the sense to quit. Only, not soon enough.”

“If you’d had any sense, you wouldn’t have gone back there at all.”

Beresford’s eyes flashed with resentment. “You think I don’t know that now? I came damned close to putting a pistol in my mouth. There was no way I could go to Hope and admit I’d lost another five hundred pounds.”

“So you went to Eisler instead. How the devil did you imagine you would ever repay him? Were you planning to take to the high toby next?”

The rat-a-tat-tat of a drum sounded from the top of the street, accompanied by the tramp of marching feet. Beresford glanced toward the sound, a deep stain of shame spreading across his fair cheeks. “He . . . I . . . That is to say, I agreed to perform certain services for him.”

Sebastian was beginning to understand at least part of Perlman’s motivation in sending him to Beresford. “You mean, you undertook to regularly provide him with whores.”

Beresford’s eyes widened, his throat working painfully as he swallowed. “How did you know?”

“Call it a good guess. Did you provide Eisler with a whore last Sunday?”

“Sunday? No. But I know he had at least one other person doing the same thing I was.”

Sebastian studied the younger man’s handsome, strained face. He struck Sebastian as earnest and basically decent, if dangerously inexperienced and naive. For the most part, he was probably telling the truth.