with dirt and soot, his hair matted. With a gasp, the ragged youngster bolted for the open doorway, bare feet kicking up little tufts of ash as he ran.
“Wait,” called Sebastian, but the boy had already bolted off the back stoop and up the alley.
Sebastian followed him into a narrow, shadowed alleyway reeking of garbage and urine. To his left, the cobbled lane ended in a soaring brick wall. He turned right, retracing the steps Miss Jarvis must have taken the night before. The jumble of footprints in the muck could have belonged to anyone. But there, near the mouth of the alley, he found what he was looking for: a pool of dried blood smeared over the cobbles as if by a body being dragged.
He crouched down, alert for anything out of place amidst the rotting cabbage leaves and offal. He found nothing.
His head falling back, he stared up at the buildings around him. Surely someone had seen something—or heard something.
Pushing to his feet, he started with the tea dealer who occupied the premises on the corner. The proprietor turned out to be a stout middle-aged widow with heavy jowls and an uncompromising gray stare who flapped her apron and blustered at the first mention of the Magdalene House.
“Good riddance, I say,” she grumbled. “This is a respectable street, it is. We didn’t need those tarts here. It’s the judgment of God, if you ask me, what happened.”
“You didn’t see anything suspicious? Before the fire, I mean. Some men watching the house, perhaps?”
The tea dealer swung away to lift a massive crate and shift it to one side with as much effort as if it had been a small sewing basket. “There were always men hanging around that place. It stands to reason, don’t it? I mean, considering what those women were.”
“Did you hear any gunshots last night?”
She swung to regard him with hard, unfriendly gray eyes. She had a large mole on the side of her nose from which protruded three hairs. The hairs quivered as she looked him up and down suspiciously, taking in the glory of Calhoun’s painstakingly polished boots, the flawless fit of Sebastian’s coat and the crisp white linen of his shirt and cravat. “What’s it to you, anyway? A fine gentleman like yourself?”
“I’m making inquiries for a friend. There are suggestions the fire wasn’t accidental. That it was murder.”
“Suggestions?” The woman’s meaty fists landed on her ample hips. “And who’s making these suggestions, hmm? Them Quakers, I suppose. A lot of heathens, if you ask me, with their strange ways and outlandish ideas. Impugning the integrity of God-fearing Christians.” She leaned forward. “It was a fire. Houses burn in London all the time. Especially the houses of the wicked.”
“God’s judgment?”
“Exactly.”
Leaving the musty, redolent atmosphere of the tea dealer, Sebastian ranged up and down the street, talking to a chandler’s apprentice and a haberdasher, a coal merchant and a woolen draper. It wasn’t until he stepped into the cheesemonger’s shop directly opposite the burned-out house that he found someone willing to admit to having seen or heard anything out of the ordinary the evening before.
The slim, brown-haired girl behind the simple wooden counter was young, no more than fourteen or fifteen, with the rosy cheeks and clear eyes of a country lass. “What you mean when you say did I notice anything out o’ the ordinary before the fire last night?” she asked as she wrapped up the slice of blue cheese he had selected.
The dim light of the dreary day filtered in through aged windows that distorted the vision of a passing carriage. Standing here, Sebastian realized he had an unobstructed view of the blackened brick walls and broken chimneys across the street. “Someone who might have seemed out of place in the neighborhood, perhaps?” he suggested.
She glanced up, an impish smile curving her lips. “You mean, like you?”
Sebastian laughed. “Am I so out of place?”
“Well, we don’t get the likes o’ you in here often—that’s for sure.” She paused to lean forward, her elbows propped on the wooden counter, her smile fading as she dipped her voice. “But, yeah, I did see something struck me as kinda queer. I mentioned it to me da, but he told me to mind me own business. Said we don’t need no more trouble.”
The earthy odor of aged Cheddars and fresh farmers’ cheeses rose up to scent the air around them. Sebastian found himself wondering what kind of trouble the cheesemonger and his family had already encountered. But all he said was, “What did you see?”
She threw a quick glance at the curtained alcove behind her, as if to make certain her da wasn’t lurking there. “Men. Gentlemen. They was hanging around here for hours—wanderin’ up and down the street, goin’ in and outta shops but not buyin’ nothin’.”
“How many men?”
“I dunno exactly. Three. Maybe four. A couple of ’em come in here. They pretended like they was looking around, but mainly they was just keeping an eye on the house across the street.”
“Were they dark haired? Or fair?”
She thought about it for a moment. “The two that come in here was dark. They was maybe a bit older than you, but not by much.”
“Do you remember anything else about them?”
“We-ell . . .” She dragged out the syllable, screwing up her face with the effort of recollection. “They reminded me a bit of Mr. Nash.”
“Mr. Nash?”
“The Nabob what used to buy all his cheese from me da. He died last year.”
“In what way did the gentlemen remind you of Mr. Nash?”
