you had better be very cooperative if we are to realize these hopes.”
He rubbed at his good eye until I began to fear he should pluck it out. “I knew you was trouble,” he mumbled.
“You are a keen observer,” I said. “Let’s start with a simple question. Why were you at Kent’s Coffeehouse when I came in response to my advertisement?”
“I was just having a dish o’ coffee,” he said meekly.
I would have to be creative if he did not become more forthcoming, but for the time being, a good stomp upon his injured hand proved the fastest way of assuring him I would have no nonsense. The bandage was now covered with fresh blood and a kind of brownish liquid I did not care to consider at length. “You will lose that hand I think,” I said, “and perhaps your life if you don’t have that looked at. But you may not live long enough for the rot to advance. So perhaps you will tell me what it was you were doing at Kent’s?”
“Let me go,” he said with a whimper. “This is me last chance. Wild, ’e used to trust me. Now ’e’s got that Jew Mendes doing me work. I need to make things right.” His face turned a sickly shade, and I feared he would lose consciousness.
“What were you doing there?” I repeated.
“Wild sent me,” he told me at last. Then he vomited, making no effort to avoid soiling himself.
I felt no surprise to learn that Wild was behind it, but I still needed to understand Wild’s interest in my inquiry. “Why?” I continued. “What did Wild tell you to do?”
“To watch you, ’e said.” He was gasping for breath as he spoke. “To let ’im know if anyone bothered you.”
It was not an answer I had anticipated. “What? Are you telling me that Wild sent you to tell him if I was attacked?”
Arnold attempted to move farther away from me. He crawled toward the corner. “Aye, I swear it. ’E wanted to know if you was bothered. And ’e wanted to see who it was what showed up to see you. He said I should see if I recognized ’em, and if not, to let ’im know what they looked like. But ’e said not to let you see me, and so when you did, I got scared and run off.”
“Who did he expect to show up?” I barked.
“I don’t know. ’E didn’t say.”
“Who killed Michael Balfour and Samuel Lienzo?”
I thought a direct approach worked best for a man in Arnold’s state. At first he only groaned and said “Oh, Christ,” again, but I moved toward his hand, and he came around. “It was Rochester,” he said at last. “Martin Rochester done it.”
I fought the swell of frustration. “And who is Martin Rochester?”
He looked up at me with an equal mixture of supplication and incredulousness. “Rochester is Rochester. What kind of question is that?”
“Does he have another name?”
He shook his head. “Not what I know.”
“I find it hard to believe that this man broke into Michael Balfour’s home and staged a false hanging himself. Who helped him?”
I knew he didn’t want to tell me, and he stared at me in such a way as to implore that I did not force him, but my look told him I cared nothing for him and I would as soon kill him myself as wait for Rochester to do it in revenge. “ ’E’s got ’is boys. Bertie Fenn, who I reckon you know about what with your killing ’im and all. Then ’e’s got three more—Kit Mann, Fat Billy, who ain’t fat, so don’t let the name fool you, and a third cove whose name I don’t know, but ’e’s got red hair. I keep my distance from all of ’em, except as what I see ’em once in a while, but I don’t have no truck with them, and I ain’t got nothin’ to do with these killings.”
“Where can I find these men?”
Arnold let out a string of public houses, taverns, and gin houses where they might be, but because he didn’t know the men well, he said he was only guessing.
I looked down at him—broken, beaten, and miserable. It was the second time I had left him so. I suppose, I thought to myself, he deserves no better. He is Wild’s man, and he plays his part in this villainy, yet I could not but feel some sympathy for a man so totally shattered.
I threw a few shillings on the floor before him and bade him come see me if he ever wished to serve a better master than Wild. I had no expectation that he would abandon the Thief-Taker General, and he never did do so, but I believed that by making the offer I would appear a greater man than I was.
I FOUND THE MEN before nightfall in a disreputable tavern near Covent Garden Market. They sat together, drinking and shouting incomprehensibly at one another in a language that was half impenetrable country accent and half drunken slur. I suppose I must have been fatigued, for I let them see me first. I had gone around the back to look at the various tables, when I heard a commotion of chairs overturning and saw three men running toward the door. I had looked at them when I first walked in and thought them only drinking men of the lower orders. Only once they had seen me and scrambled to their feet did I know them. I recognized one of them quite clearly, for he was the man who had denounced me outside the masquerade in the Haymarket.
Two of them got away, but one was slow, and I managed to tackle him, though I felt my age when I did so, for the old wound in my leg sent a pain shooting up to my hip. Nevertheless, I had a grip on the fellow, whose head knocked hard upon the dirt floor as I threw him down.
I had been in enough of these places to expect a crowd to gather around me, which it did, but to believe myself immune from interference—and indeed I was. I thus felt free to go about my business. Having banged his head sufficiently to obtain his full attention, I thought it time to begin. “What’s your name?”
“Billy, sir,” he gasped in the pathetic way of a begging street urchin. Indeed, he looked young, perhaps not more than seventeen, but his youthful appearance might have been owing to his extremely light and small form.
“Fat Billy?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Fat Billy,” I said, “you will answer my questions or your new nickname is going to be ‘Breathing Billy,’ and I assure you your new name will be every bit as ironic as the old.” My threat only confounded him, so I placed a hand hard over his throat and squeezed just a little—not enough to prevent him from speaking, but enough that he would understand my meaning. “What is Martin Rochester’s real name?”
“I don’t know, sir, I swear,” he rasped. His eyes bugged, and he looked to me like a fish, but I knew not if he feared me or the consequence of answering my question.
“What does he look like?” I tightened the pressure just a little.
“We never seen ’im. We get messages from ’im. Kit does. And ’e sends us money, but we ain’t never seen ’im. Maybe Kit ’as. I don’t know. We ain’t supposed to talk about ’im at all.”
I eased my grip a bit. “Did you kill Michael Balfour?”
He said nothing. He only stared up at me, terrified. A thin stream of blood trickled from his nose. I suppose my more delicate readers may grow weary of these descriptions of violence, but I know they will understand that these means were unavoidable in dealing with this species of man. Thus, let us suffice to say that there were cracking noises and a bit of screaming as well, and Fat Billy then felt comfortable telling me that, yes, he had indeed taken Michael Balfour’s life with the help of his three friends. They arranged to get the servants drunk and, with the potential witnesses off drinking or pursuing other pleasures, they had dragged Balfour into the stable, where they forced him into a noose and hanged him. The servants, I could only guess, feared the discovery of the unwitting role they had played and chose to remain silent.
What I wished more than anything else, as I sat atop him with my hand upon his throat, was to ask him if he had played any role in the murder of my father. Fenn was dead, but how did I know that Fat Billy had not participated? I tightened my grasp even as I thought on the question, but I knew I had not the time to indulge that particular revenge. Fat Billy’s friends might return, perhaps with help, and there was much I needed to know before they did.
“Did you steal anything?” I demanded.
“Nothing!” he exclaimed indignantly, as though outraged that I would ask so insulting a question. He would drag a man from his home and hang him, but he would not steal from him.
“You were not to search for anything. Stock issues?”
