What Remains of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

“Which is two more than I’ve ever had to deal with. Believe me, I’m more than happy to turn the whole nasty business over to Bow Street. What do I know of murder?”
    Sebastian studied the Squire’s pack as they gulped eagerly at the trough. They were smaller than most foxhounds, but strongly built, with broad heads. “I understand the Reverend Earnshaw came to you when he found the Bishop’s body. What time was that?”
    “About eight, I suppose. Maybe half past. At first I thought the poor man had gone stark raving mad, babbling on the way he was about crypts and dead bishops and pools of blood. It took a bit of convincing before I finally agreed to go over to the church and have a look at the place. But there was the Bishop, all right. Dead as dead comes.”
    “You saw the older body as well, did you?”
    “The fright in blue velvet and lace?” The Squire’s ruddy cheeks sagged, and he pursed his lips to blow out a long breath. “I’ll be seeing that face in my dreams for the rest of my life. Or rather, in my nightmares. He looked like a hog left too long in the smokehouse.”
    “You didn’t recognize him?”
    The Squire gave a laugh that jostled his belly up and down. “Never knew anyone looked like a dried hog. Did you?”
    Sebastian smiled. “Point taken. Can you think of anyone in these parts who disappeared somewhere around the time of the revolt in the American Colonies?”
    “Not off the top of my head. But then, I wasn’t here myself for much of that time.” He squared his shoulders with obvious pride. “The Sixteenth Light Dragoons. Cornet. We spent two years in the Colonies, fighting to put down the rebellion. We could have managed it, too, if the bloody government had been willing to let us do what was necessary. Now look where we find ourselves—dealing with a bunch of upstarts calling themselves the United States of America and threatening to declare war on us!”
    “So you were in the Sixteenth, were you?” said Sebastian, encouraging him. “Where else did you see service?”
    “India. And then Cape Town. We were headed for the West Indies when my father wrote to say my brother Ted’d died, and I was to sell out and come home.” The trough was almost empty now. Sir Douglas watched as the greedier hounds shifted from place to place, intent on scooping up the last morsels. “What makes you so sure it was someone from around here, anyway?” he asked. “We’re but an hour’s ride from London, after all. It could even have been someone who wandered over from West Wycombe. Thirty or forty years ago, that would’ve been back in the days of Sir Francis Dashwood and his Hellfire Club. I remember once when I was a lad, the priest caught Dashwood himself breaking into the crypt, looking to steal skulls and such for their blasphemous orgies.”
    “What about last night?” Sebastian asked. “Any strangers around?”
    The Squire shook his head. “I did ask, you know. Before that squeaky-voiced magistrate showed up from Bow Street and took over. No one noticed anything out of the ordin’ry. The Reverend did think he saw the shadow of a man in the churchyard as he was leaving the crypt. But the truth is, Mr. Earnshaw’s as blind as a bat. And the Bishop’s own coachman was sitting right there on the box of his carriage just a few feet from the church door the whole time, and he never saw a thing.” The trough was empty now, the hounds whining to be let out of the feeding yard. “If he’d been a different sort of man, I’d say Prescott probably just fainted and bashed his head on the edge of a coffin or some such thing. The Pyles have always been buried in the churchyard, thank God, but not the Prescotts. Can’t be pleasant, seeing your own kith and kin reduced to grinning horrors. Not that it ever seemed to bother the Prescott brothers.”
    “Are you saying the Bishop was from around here?”
    “Didn’t you know? He grew up at Prescott Grange, between here and Hounslow. The