from his head.
“You heard about the preacher who was killed?” Sedgwick asked.
“Oh aye.” Walter Shipton wiped his hands on his leather apron and spat on the sawdust floor. “Whole town’s heard about that by now, lad. The preacher with his feet of clay and the whore.” He shook his head.
“Was he in here last night?” Sedgwick asked.
“Ee, lad, not that I recall,” he answered slowly. “It were a quiet night, so like as not I’d have noticed him. You found out what he was doing with her, anyway?”
Sedgwick laughed to himself. If the landlord couldn’t imagine what a man did with a whore, it wasn’t his place to educate him.
“Shame about her, though,” Shipton continued, drawing himself a small pot of ale and tasting it appreciatively.
“How do you mean?”
“She were a nice lass,” he said thoughtfully. “Bit strange, but nice, you know.”
“You knew her?” Suddenly Sedgwick was very interested.
“She were in here most nights, did a lot of her business from over there.” He nodded at a corner. “No trouble, mind, she’d just sit, and the men would come to her if they wanted her. They’d go off and, you know, then she’d be back.”
Pleased at finally discovering something useful, Sedgwick drained his mug and pushed it forward for a refill. It wasn’t food, but it was the next best thing.
“How long had she been coming in?”
“A year, mebbe?” Shipton creased his brow, emphasising the drinker’s broken veins in his ruddy cheeks. “Aye, around that, I suppose. Bit less, mebbe.” He leaned forward conspiratorially across the counter and added in a whisper, “She give me a tumble once, in t’back when the wife were gone. Called it my commission.” He chuckled wheezily at the memory. “By Christ, lad, she were a good tup, too, passionate like. I thought she’d be the death of me that day. Made me feel twenty again, she did.”
Sedgwick shared the other man’s smile for a moment before pushing on.
“Was she in last night?”
“Last night? Let me think.” He called over the serving girl, a harried rail of a lass who looked the Constable’s man up and down briefly before giving Shipton her attention. “Was Pamela in last night, do you recall?”
“Early on,” she replied without any hesitation, rolling her eyes when he looked confused. “You remember. You had to throw old George out for shouting the odds like he always does when he’s drunk as a lord. She helped you get him through the door. I didn’t see her later, though.”
“Aye, that’s right.” Shipton brightened. “Must have been about nine. George Carver had had a few too many and he was trying to pick a fight with some ’prentice lads. Always wants a brawl when he’s drunk, does George. I had to get him out for his own safety, else they’d have bloodied up my floor with him. Course, he didn’t want to go, ranting and raving. Pamela started talking to him while I was trying to push him out and he ended up going meek as owt.”
“Did she leave with him?” Sedgwick asked carefully. He was alert now, on the scent.
“’Ee, I don’t know, I weren’t looking by then, once the bother were over.” He glanced at the serving girl who shrugged noncommittally.
“Do you know where she lived?”
“Somewhere close, I reckon, but I couldn’t tell you where. Never asked. It didn’t seem to matter.” He took a long drink and drained the pot. “ ’Appen someone’ll know. I can ask for you, if you like, there’ll be more in later.”
Sedgwick nodded his appreciation.
“Did she have a pimp?” he wondered. The landlord might know.
“Pamela?” Shipton shook his head firmly. “Nay, not one like her. Too old, and not enough business to warrant one bothering with her.”
Sedgwick finished his ale and left, satisfied with the bit of business. He’d found out a little. In the doorway he almost collided with a familiar face trying to slide in for a quiet drink.
Adam Suttler was the most talented forger in Leeds, an educated man with the ability to copy anything faithfully, but no sense of judgement. Twice Nottingham and Sedgwick had stopped him before he became too foolish. Changing a will to favour a younger son could have found him on the gallows. So could his alteration of a merchant’s bill of lading to the continent, allowing thieves to make off with some bales of cloth. On both occasions the paper evidence had handily been destroyed, saving Suttler from capital justice. They’d visited his rooms at the top of a winding stair, surprisingly airy and clean, and put the fear of God into Adam with threats and promises as his wife and daughter had scuttled into the other room.
Sedgwick wasn’t naive enough to think he’d returned to the straight and narrow — apart from working as a clerk or a scrivener, what could Suttler do? — but at least they hadn’t heard much of him in the last year.
“Evening, Adam,” the deputy said breezily. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Of course, Mr Sedgwick,” Suttler answered uneasily. It was a lie, and they both knew it, but for the moment they accepted it as the truth.
“You heard about the murders.”
Suttler shook his head sadly. “A terrible business. I saw him preach on Saturday, very inspiring.”
He might be a criminal, but the forger was also a thoughtful, religious man, in church without fail every Sunday. Still, the deputy supposed, what he did was no worse than some of the merchants, and they were always ready to bow their heads piously.
“A lot of people didn’t like what he said,” Sedgwick pointed out.
“True,” said Suttler, bobbing his head in agreement. “But perhaps they chose not to hear.”
“Did you see him at all after Saturday?”
“I didn’t,” he said with regret. “I’d have liked to talk to him.”
“You go and enjoy your ale,” Sedgwick told him. “And keep out of trouble, Adam. Next time we might not be able to save you.”
With a shy, embarrassed smile, Suttler ducked into the tavern.
Oh well, the deputy thought. Even if there was nothing to be gained from Suttler, the information about Pamela and George Carver was worthwhile. Now all he needed was a little more luck at Queen Charlotte’s Court to make it a good night.
But it seemed as if fortune had just been teasing him. By ten he’d discovered nothing new. His long legs ached from walking and standing, and his knuckles were sore from rapping on doors. At least he’d been able to find many of the dwellers in the court at home. Yet however much he tried to joke and charm information from them, there was little to be had. A couple believed they might have heard something in the middle of the night, but they weren’t certain. Most, it seemed, had been dead to the world. And perhaps they’d earned that, he thought. Working too many hours for too little money, with hardly any food in their bellies, sleep was their only escape from drudgery, the only place where all things and all people could be equal. When simply living was an act of concentration, how could he blame them for not noticing the deaths of people they didn’t even know?
Still, he continued to go methodically around the court, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d done everything possible. In the attic of a building that should have been razed twenty years before, its stairs rickety and rotted beyond danger, he found an impossibly young mother, with her husband and tiny baby. She looked barely thirteen, her eyes not yet lost in desperation, wearing a dress that had likely been fourth- or fifth-hand when she found it two or three years earlier. Her man barely seemed older himself, a walking jumble of rags tied to his body with string.
“We heard summat, didn’t we, Will?” she told Sedgwick. “I were up with the baby — he’s got the croup, I think — and there was this noise.”
Sedgwick smiled down at her.
“What kind of noise, luv?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. Like someone was dragging something heavy. You remember, Will, I woke you?”
The lad nodded.
“What time was that?”
The girl looked confused.
