What Remains of Heaven by C. S. Harris Read Free Book Online

crouched down beside him ?” said Sebastian, nodding toward the shrouded form on the stretcher behind them.
    “From the way I understand the two men were found, I’d say that’s highly probable. The Bishop was lying virtually on top of the earlier victim.”
    Reluctantly, Sebastian went to draw back the covering from the eighteenth-century corpse, and let out his breath in a sharp hiss. “Good God.”
    “Fascinating, isn’t it?” said Gibson, limping over to stand beside him.
    “That’s one word for it.”
    “I’m afraid I haven’t had much of a chance to examine this one yet, but I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Really?” Sebastian studied his friend’s rapt expression. “You’d love the crypt of St. Margaret’s, then.”
    “I would indeed. What an opportunity!”
    Sebastian ducked his head to hide a smile.
    Beneath the froth of lace, the once fine blue velvet coat, and the satin waistcoat, the body’s sinew had shriveled and sunk. Yet it was obvious that the corpse had belonged to an unusually large man, robust of frame and full of flesh. Time and the action of the chemicals in the crypt had withered and distorted the features of his face and darkened the skin until he looked like an aged Moor from the mountains of Morocco. Without the chin strap that normally held a burial’s jaw closed, his mouth had fallen open in a gaping, hideous yowl, but where once had been eyes were now strange, paperlike wisps.
    “Old fly pupae,” said Gibson, when Sebastian looked up in question.
    Sebastian cleared his throat and overcame the urge to draw the covering back up over that horror. “I understand this one was stabbed in the back with a dagger?”
    “That’s right.” Gibson limped over to retrieve an object from the bench and held it out. “This.”
    The blacked blade was long and thin, cast in one piece with the handle, then hammer-forged to produce a diamond blade cross-sectioned without any sharpened edges. A stabbing weapon, it was designed not to cut, but to penetrate deeply.
    “A fine weapon,” said Sebastian, running his thumb along the delicate floral scroll of acanthus leaves and flowers that decorated the handle. “Renaissance, perhaps?”
    “I’d say so, yes. Italian.”
    Sebastian brought his gaze back to the withered cadaver at their feet. “What I want to know is, what the hell was our gentleman in velvet and lace doing down in that crypt in the first place?”
    “I don’t know. But whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t alone.”

Chapter 8
     
    After allowing his awed tiger a suitable amount of time to gape at the mummified corpse in Gibson’s dissection room, Sebastian drove to St. James’s Square, where a vast mansion known as London House served as both the London residence and the official chambers of the Bishop of London. A thick layer of straw had already been laid on the street outside of Number 32; the blinds were drawn at all the windows, and every opening had been hung with black crepe. When Sebastian rang the heavy iron bell, a sepulchral-looking servant ushered him into a darkened entry.
    A hushed voice behind him said, “Lord Devlin, I take it?”
    Sebastian turned to find a lean, flaxen-haired cleric regarding him from the doorway of the small chapel that lay just to the right of the entrance. “Yes.”
    The cleric stepped forward in a waft of incense. “I am Dr. Simon Ashley, the Bishop’s chaplain. The Archbishop has asked me to render you whatever assistance is necessary to expedite your endeavors to make sense of this dreadful tragedy.”
    “Thank you,” said Sebastian.
    The Chaplain laced his fingers together and bowed. Somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, he had a fine-boned, delicate face and the pale complexion of a man whose life was lived indoors. To the uninitiated, the position of chaplain might seem a lowly office. It was not. Bishop Prescott had once served as chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester, while the current Archbishop of