Chapter Eleven
During the next two days, Sebastian only got a few hours of sleep. He’d been called to meetings with more people than he could count, gone over the evidence with Blackstone and O’Brien until he thought he’d go mad, and interviewed dozens of people. The reporters had learned who The Viper’s latest victim was, and the reverberations from that had traveled through the city like a lightning bolt. Reporters clustered around police headquarters like a flock of crows, hungry for any tidbit of new information.
People were afraid. They were demanding the killer be caught.
He didn’t blame them, but it disgusted him that no one had been this incensed when it was just a couple of dead prostitutes. Why was one human life considered so much more valuable than another?
Through it all, his mind drifted repeatedly to Jocelyn.
He wanted to know if she was all right. He also wanted to know if she’d added anyone else to the list he’d asked for, of all the men in Evelyn’s life who had an initial of M.
Blackstone had apparently gone to see her, but he claimed she’d been overcome by emotion, and he hadn’t been able to question her at all. Perhaps that was true, but she might be the key to the information that would help him find her sister’s killer. He didn’t know her that well, but he somehow doubted that now, two days later, she was still incapable of answering a few questions or completing the list. In fact, he’d lay odds that she wanted more than anything to help them.
So, even though he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to return to his rented rooms in Bethnal Green and finally get some sleep, he found himself on her doorstep two days after the last time he’d been there. To his dismay, he had to push past several reporters to get to her door while they shouted questions he had no intention of answering.
Damned vultures. Jocelyn was dealing with enough. She didn’t need to look out her windows and see these bastards lying in wait.
The butler no longer looked surprised to see him. He ushered him inside and slammed the door in the reporters’ faces, then escorted him into the parlor while he went to get his mistress.
With a sigh, Sebastian sank down on the comfortable blue sofa in front of the fire, stretching his long legs out toward the warmth and letting his head fall back against the soft fabric as he waited for her.
He didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep until he woke up. The room was dark, lit only by the bright flames of the fire, and he was warmer than he’d been in days, covered from chin to toes by a heavy quilted blanket. He blinked and scrambled to sit up fully, only to realize that Jocelyn sat beside him, her head against his shoulder.
Her own owlish look as they stared at each other made him realize that she must have fallen asleep as well. Embarrassment filled him. He’d come here to check in on her and then ask her some questions, not fall asleep on her sofa. But as the blanket fell away from his arms, he realized that she must have been the one to cover him up, and that was the most thoughtful thing anyone had done for him in ages. In fact, had anyone ever taken care of him in such a manner? Marina certainly hadn’t, and he wasn’t even certain his own mother, who’d always seemed to think of him as a terrible nuisance, had.
“You looked so tired,” she said softly, and even in the dim light, he could tell she was blushing. “I didn’t think you’d been getting much sleep, and I didn’t want to wake you. I didn’t mean to lean against you, but I haven’t been sleeping much either.”
“It’s all right.” He cleared his throat, wishing he wouldn’t have startled her awake. “I just came by to see how you were doing.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “Some moments I’m fine, others I feel numb, and sometimes I’m a complete watering pot.”
“I imagine it will be like that for some time,” he said, wanting nothing more than to pull her back into his arms and hold her until her beautiful smile returned.
She nodded, blinking back a sudden rush of tears. “Have you found the man who did this yet?”
He shook his head, feeling like an utter failure. “I’m afraid he didn’t leave any clues to his identity. I was hoping that you’d been thinking about who ‘M’ could be.”
“I have.” She scrambled to her feet and crossed the room, turning on a gas lamp as she did so and flooding the room with its glaring white light.
He put his hand over his eyes, blinded for a moment, and when he lowered it, she stood before him with a sheet of paper in her hands. “Here’s everyone I could think of who has the initial M.” She sat back down beside him and pointed to the neatly organized page, which held far more names than her first scribbled list had. “This column is those with the first name M, these are the ones whose last names start with M, and the last row of those whose title starts with M.”
Sebastian groaned inwardly. There were nearly as many names on this list as there were members of The Viper Club. And once again, nearly all of them were aristocrats who would be very hard to question, including his boss, his boss’s brother, and O’Brien’s brother-in-law, Morgan Strathmore. But there had to be some names that were on both lists, and that would be the best place to start.
“Thank you.” He tried to summon a smile. “This is very helpful.”
“I can’t believe anyone on that list could do such a thing, could be The Viper! But Evelyn obviously knew him well enough to agree to meet him alone at the park, so I can only assume that it’s someone I knew as well.” Her eyes were liquid green pools of sadness. “I just still can’t believe she’s gone.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and he lost his battle to keep from taking her in his arms. Lifting the side of the blanket closest to her, he scooted toward her, pulled her against his side, and wrapped the blanket around them both. “It will be all right,” he whispered, placing a tender kiss against her lovely auburn hair. “Everything will be all right.”
“No, it won’t,” she sobbed, stiffening for just a moment before turning her face against his chest and wrapping one arm around his waist. “I’m all alone in the world now except for Oliver. Nothing will ever be all right again.”
There was nothing he could say to that because he was all alone in the world too, and it was the worst feeling, even though he should be used to it. Instead, he just held her while she cried once again, wishing he could do something more.
After a few minutes, her sobs abated, and he could tell she was valiantly trying to regain control of herself. He wanted to tell her not to bother, but she was a prideful little thing, and he knew she probably hated herself for once again breaking down in front of him.
“I want to do whatever I can to help you find this bastard,” she finally said, her use of profanity shocking him a bit. If he knew one thing about Jocelyn Layton, it was that she strove to be a perfect lady at all times. But perhaps when said bastard had killed your sister, it was acceptable to be a little crass. “Do you need to ask me any more questions?”
He’d asked her so many questions the day they’d been searching for Evelyn, but when he’d been asking them, he’d never really thought anything bad had happened to the poor woman. Now everything looked different, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to ask her some of them again.