When Gods Die

Gibson paused with his pint raised halfway to his lips. “Princess Charlotte stands next in line before York.”

“Yes. But Princess Charlotte’s own father regularly calls her mother a whore. Charlotte might well be put aside. It’s happened before.”

Gibson took a long, thoughtful swallow of his ale. “Have you considered the possibility that the person who killed Guinevere Anglessey might not be the same person or persons as set up that nasty little charade in the Pavilion?”

“Yes.” Sebastian shifted his weight to thrust his legs out straight. “I keep thinking that if I could just understand why she went to the Norfolk Arms in Smithfield, then it would all begin to make sense.”

“It does seem an unlikely place for a lover’s assignation,” said Gibson.

Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t think it was a lover’s assignation.”

The tramp of marching feet filled the air as part of the garrison from the Tower paraded past. His face solemn, Gibson turned his head to watch the men filling the street, the sun gleaming on their musket barrels. “I’ve been hearing a lot of grumbling about this fete the Prince has set for Thursday. Not just about the cost—which I gather is considerable. But it is rather unseemly, is it not, for a prince to celebrate his accession to the Regency when that elevation was necessitated by his father’s madness? I hear his mother and sisters are refusing to go.”

Sebastian, too, watched the soldiers. They looked so young, some little more than boys. “I doubt they’ll be missed. It’s been announced that no woman lower in rank than an Earl’s daughter will be allowed to attend, which has naturally set every excluded but ambitious lady in London scrambling to be made an exception. They’ll never keep the guest list down to two thousand.”

“When does the Prince return to Brighton?”

“The day after the fete.” Sebastian stared thoughtfully at the passing ranks of red-coated soldiers. “Think about this: if you were to organize a coup, when would you plan to stage it?”

Gibson’s gaze met Sebastian’s. “For a time when the Prince was out of London.”

“Exactly,” said Sebastian, and drained his ale.

Chapter 40

“Lady Addison Peebles?” said Devlin, staring at Kat. They were in the drawing room of her house on Harwich Street. He could hear the distant shouts of children playing a counting game on the footpath outside, their laughter mingling with the birds’ evening song as the shadows lengthened. “What the devil could Lady Addled and Feeble possibly have to do with any of this?”

Kat gave a soft laugh. “Nothing. It seems the modiste tried to talk her out of this particular shade of green satin, but she was so taken with it that in the end the woman could only let her have her way. I understand she was excessively pleased with it—until her mama-in-law, the Duchess, told her it made her look like a sick frog.”

Devlin walked over to pour out two glasses of wine. “So what did she do?”

“She gave the gown to her abigail, who sold it to a secondhand clothes dealer. The woman claims she can’t remember which one, probably because she actually sold it to her regular fence out of force of habit.”

Devlin looked up, one eyebrow raised in incredulity. “The gown came from a secondhand dealer?”

Kat came to lift her glass from his outstretched hand. “Evidently.”

He took a long, thoughtful sip of his own wine. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Someone kills Guinevere Anglessey by poisoning her with cyanide. The death is violent. So violent that the murderer finds it necessary to bathe the body and dress it in a fresh gown—a gown he buys from a secondhand dealer in someplace like Rosemary Lane. Only, our killer is so unfamiliar with his victim that he buys the wrong size so that it won’t close properly around her. Nor does he bother to assemble the underclothing, shoes, or stockings a lady would normally have been wearing. He loads her body in a—what? A cart or a carriage, we’ve no way of knowing which—and hauls her down to Brighton, where he somehow manages to sneak her body into the Pavilion. He sends his accomplice—wearing a similar green gown and a veil—into the Prince’s music room, where she hands a note to the Home Secretary, Lord Portland, and disappears. A note which for unspecified reasons no one wants me to see. Oh yes, and did I mention that after he has carefully arranged Guinevere’s body in the Yellow Cabinet, our killer stabs her with a Highland dirk which once belonged to James the Second, but now forms part of a collection owned by the Prince Regent himself that is normally kept in London?”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got it all figured out.”

He went to stand at the windows overlooking the street below. The children had gone. “All except for the who and the why part.”

She came up behind him, her eyes on his face. “What is it? You keep going to the window.”

“I’m worried about Tom. I left instructions with Morey to send the boy here as soon as he gets back.”

“It’s not even dusk yet.”