Read Online Who Buries the Dead by C. S. Harris - Free Book Online Page A

ostentatious than her surroundings. Somewhere in her mid- to late thirties, she had an attractive, pixie face framed by short dark hair that curled from beneath a spinster’s crisp white cap. Her cheeks were abnormally ruddy, her dress neat but not particularly fashionable, her dark eyes calm and assessing in a way that told him this was a woman accustomed to observing and analyzing her fellow men.
    “I’m sorry my brother isn’t here to meet with you,” she said, “but he left for Alton this morning and isn’t expected back until tomorrow evening.”
    “I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me instead,” said Sebastian, settling in the chair she indicated. “I understand your brother was acquainted with Stanley Preston.”
    She sank onto the edge of a nearby settee, her hands nestled together in her lap. “Yes. My sister-in-law was great friends with the late Mrs. Preston, you see.”
    “She died in childbirth?”
    “She did, yes. It was quite tragic. Their daughter, Anne, was only fifteen at the time. It’s a difficult age for a young girl to be without a mother, and my cousin has attempted in the years since to stand in her friend’s stead.”
    “Your cousin?”
    “I beg your pardon; I should have explained. My sister-in-law, Eliza, is also my cousin. Her mother and my father were sister and brother.”
    Sebastian studied Miss Jane Austen’s small, expressive face. It was difficult to think of this quiet, provincial vicar’s daughter as someone whose first cousin had been married to a French count guillotined in the Revolution. He said, “You’ve met Mr. Preston yourself?”
    “At various times over the years, yes.”
    “What manner of man was he?”
    “Mr. Preston?” She reached for a nearby embroidery frame, using the movement, he suspected, to give herself time to consider her response. “I would say his character was very much that of a devout and honest man. In truth, he had many admirable qualities. He was utterly devoted to his children and the memory of his dead wife. He was extraordinarily well-read on a number of subjects, particularly history. And he was responsible and moderate in most things—with one notable exception, of course.”
    “You mean, his passion for collecting?”
    Her eyes crinkled in quiet amusement. “Yes; that is what I was referring to.”
    Sebastian found himself smiling. “Now that you’ve satisfied the proprieties by listing his admirable qualities, perhaps you could tell me some of his less admirable traits.”
    She took up her needle. “We all have our imperfections and idiosyncrasies, Lord Devlin. But I hope I am neither so unjust as to fault a man for falling short of perfection, nor so uncharitable as to catalogue his minor failings after his death.”
    “Yet if everyone persists in painting Stanley Preston as a saint, I am unlikely to ever discover who killed him.”
    She focused her attention on the neat stitches she was laying in her embroidery. “Well . . . I suppose you could say he had a tendency to be quarrelsome. He was also proud and socially ambitious. But in that I suspect he was not so different from most other men of his station.”
    “A lowering reflection, but sadly true, I fear.”
    He saw, again, that answering gleam of amusement in her eyes. She said, “The truth is, he was still a likeable man, for all that. There was no real malice in him.”
    Sebastian wondered if the slaves on Preston’s Jamaican plantations would agree with that assessment. But all he said was, “Have you seen his collection of heads?” He could not imagine someone as prosaic and sensible as Miss Jane Austen fainting at such a sight.
    “I have, yes. I’ve often pondered why he kept them. At first, I assumed he was driven by philosophical motives—that he derived some sort of salutary lesson from the contemplation of such tangible evidence that even the world’s most powerful men are eventually reduced to nothing but shriveled flesh and bone.