“I’ve heard he was a member of the Hellfire Club.”
“That, too.” The magistrate peered thoughtfully at a mound of dried mint on the table before them. “He seems to have had a talent for arousing the passions of his enemies.”
“Somewhat like his brother,” observed Sebastian. “Although not, obviously, for the same reasons.”
“How true.” Lovejoy paid for a measure of the mint, and slipped the packet into his pocket. “I understand that, at first, suspicion focused on the son of a former tenant who was nursing a powerful grudge against the Baronet. But the lad possessed a solid alibi for the evening in question.”
“What sort of alibi?”
They turned back toward Bow Street. “He was locked up in a roundhouse here in London.”
Sebastian thought about the Renaissance dagger that had been found in Sir Nigel’s corpse. He could see a disgruntled farmer taking a sickle to the Baronet’s back. But an antique Italian dagger? Aloud, he said, “What was the nature of the lad’s grudge?”
“Seems his father had quarreled with Sir Nigel over some trifle. Sir Nigel retaliated by having the family evicted from their cottage. It was in the midst of a dreadful snowstorm and the entire family froze to death on the heath trying to make it into London. Mother, father, two young girls. The only reason the lad survived was because some uncle had arranged for him to be apprenticed to a butcher in London, so he wasn’t with them.”
Sebastian drew up short, the tumult of the busy square swirling around him. “You say the lad was a
Lovejoy looked over at him in surprise. “That’s right. Why?”
“Do you know his name?”
“Slade. Jack Slade.”
Something of Sebastian’s reaction must have shown in his face, because Lovejoy said, “You know him?”
“I know him,” said Sebastian.
Chapter 20
Finding the butcher shop on Monkwell Street closed, Se bastian tracked Jack Slade to the nearby vast livestock market of Smithfield.
Once, these death-haunted acres had echoed with the crackle of burning faggots, the jeers of angry mobs, the shrieks of dying martyrs as Protestant monarchs burned Papists, and Catholic monarchs burned heretics. Now the open ground was crowded with pens of bleating sheep separated by foul lanes where long lines of cattle stood, their heads tied to the rails.
Working his way down a narrow pathway, Sebastian found Jack Slade with his foot propped up on the nearest low rail, a drover’s boy beside him as they inspected a long-horned Spanish cow tied up outside the sprawling bulk of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The air was heavy with the smell of manure and wet hides and unwashed men.
At a nod from Sebastian, the drover’s boy drew back, his jaw slack with wonder. This time, Sebastian had made no effort to disguise who or what he was.
“You didn’t tell me you grew up on Prescott Grange,” said Sebastian.
His foot sliding off the rail, Slade straightened slowly, his eyes narrowing as he took in Sebastian’s blue coat of superfine, the exquisitely tailored doeskin breeches, and gleaming Hessians. But all he said was, “Ye dinna ask.”
Sebastian hooked one elbow over the top rail of the fence beside him, his gaze drifting over the sheep milling in the pen. “You still maintain you went to see Bishop Prescott on Monday afternoon to take him some pork chops?”
Slade sucked on the plug of tobacco distending his lower lip. “Why else would I go see him?”
“I’m told you threatened to kill his brother thirty years ago.”
Slade pursed his lips and spat a thick stream of tobacco juice that hit the cobbles in a yellowish brown splat. “That were no threat. That were a promise. And I’d o’ done it, too, if somebody hadna beat me to it.”
Beside them, the cattle shifted restlessly, steam rising from their hides. A roar of voices from a nearby public house mingled with the barking of dogs and the whistling of the drovers and the frightened chorus of bellowing and bleats coming from the doomed animals.
Slade spat again. “What ye thinkin’? That I done for Sir Nigel thirty years ago, then went after the Bishop on Tuesday night? I had no quarrel with the Bishop. He was a good, God fearin’ man. Unlike his hell’s spawn o’ a brother.”
“Where were you Tuesday night?”
“With me mates at the local. Why?”
“What time did you get there?”
Slade smiled, revealing two rows of rotten, tobacco-stained teeth. “What time did the good Bishop get hisself killed? Because whene’er it was, I’ve a dozen mates who’ll swear I was at the public house the whole night.”
Sebastian watched a hawker working the crowd, his tray piled high with sausages. “I hear you were locked up in a watch house the night Sir Nigel disappeared.”
“Yeah. On the Strand. What of it?”
“Convenient.”
“Weren’t it just?”
Sebastian studied the butcher’s creased, sun-darkened face. “Who do you think killed him?”
“You mean Sir Nigel?” Slade sniffed. “I don’t know. But if I did, I’d buy the bastard a bloody drink.”
“That seems to be a common sentiment.”
“Yeah? Well, that tells ye somethin’, don’t it?”
“I assume you’ve heard by now that Sir Nigel’s body has been found?”
A muscle bunched along the butcher’s prominent jaw. “No. Where?”
“In the crypt of St. Margaret’s. It seems he was murdered down there, not long before the crypt was sealed.”
To Sebastian’s surprise, Jack Slade threw back his head and laughed.
Sebastian said, “That’s amusing?”
“Course it’s amusin’.” He glanced sideways at Sebastian. “Ye don’t find it amusin’?”
“I’m obviously missing something.”
Slade laid a forefinger beside his nose and winked. “Seems our good Bishop had more’n his fair share o’ secrets, hmm?”
“Did he?”
“Kinda makes ye wonder, don’t it, why he ordered that crypt bricked up all them years ago?”
“The Bishop?” Sebastian frowned. “What did the Bishop of London have to do with the decision to seal the crypt of St. Margaret’s?”
Amusement danced in the other man’s small, dark eyes. “Ye don’t know, do ye?”
“Evidently not,” said Sebastian dryly.
Slade used his tongue to shift his plug of tobacco to his cheek. “Who ye think was the priest in residence at St. Margaret’s thirty years ago?”
Sebastian said, “The Bishop began his ecclesiastical career as a doctor of classics at Oxford.”
“Maybe.” Slade leaned toward him, his breath heavy with the odors of rotten teeth and half-masticated tobacco. “But I knows what I knows. Ye look into it. Ye’ll see.” He paused, his small eyes practically disappearing into the folds of flesh as he smiled. “
“You’ve been talking to your son,” said Sebastian, his gaze drifting over the lowing cows, the pens of milling, bleating, terrified sheep. “I don’t see him around today.”
“Nope. But that don’t mean he ain’t here, watching ye.” Slade ran his hand down the Spanish cow’s flank. The cow shied away, bellowing, its hooves churning the mud and muck of the passage. “Ye think about that,” he said, and walked off into the noisy, pushing throng of men and beasts.
