“That you, Magpie?” A pudgy face appeared an instant later, the eyes two beady black dots nearly swallowed by the doughy folds of flesh.
Woe to anyone who assumed they didn’t see much.Charlotte was of the opinion that Billy could count the hairs on a flea’s arse from ten paces away.
A lamp, held aloft by a meaty hand, shifted slightly, illuminating the figure’s near-bald pate streaked with a few greasy strands of black hair.
“Aye,” answered Charlotte, quickly pulling a purse from her pocket. She had come prepared.
Broad Billy’s hearing was just as acute as his vision. He must have heard the faint chink of gold against gold for he quickly humped his massive bulk closer to the ladder. “Whacha need?”
“Whatever you might know about the murder that happened in the Palace gardens several nights ago.”
“Nasty business, that,” remarked Billy, though a low chucklepunctuated his words. “Say what they will, but the highborn swells are far more savage than us unwashed.”
Her ears pricked up. “You have reason to think it was a swell who did it, and not the madman they call the Bloody Butcher?”
A leer slowly stretched across his broad face. “Who’s saying the Butcher ain’t an aristocrat?”
Charlotte shook the purse. “Tell me what you know.”
Billy eyed the chamois bag, as if judging just how much information it would buy.
“Only that my ears and eyes on the street saw naught but the fancy gennelmun coming outta the gardens that night. The Duke o’ Sussex wuz having one of his parties. But I daresay you know that.”
Fear drove a spike through Charlotte’s chest, but she kept her reaction well hidden. “Were any of those ears and eyes close enough to Queen Anne’s Alcove to see what happened?”
“Alas, no.” Another leer. “Otherwise I’d likely have the victim’s gold pocket watch and assorted fobs and rings te add te my wares.” Billy gave a mournful exhale and shook his head. “A pity to think all those valuables were jest sitting there fer the taking.”
Scavenging was fair game in the underworld, but the thought of Cedric’s corpse being stripped of its valuables made her skin crawl.
She dropped the purse into the waiting upturned palm. “Ask around again. If you hear anything different, tell Lilly, the flower girl, and she’ll get word to me. There’ll be another purse for the efforts.”
Billy patted his protruding belly. “Oiy will. But my gut tells me ye should be looking high, not low, fer the Butcher.”
Is Nicky lying?Charlotte wondered as she quit the shop and headed north, to a tiny hole in the wall near the Kensington gravel pits. She hated to consider it, but the alternative was equally unsettling.
The Bloody Butcher an aristocrat? It seemed unthinkable. However, her work had exposed her to the underbelly of Polite Society.Scandal and betrayal. Greed and jealousy.She had good reason to know that Billy’s assessment was right. Beneath the thin veneer of civility, there lurked dark-hearted Blue Bloods whose depravity would put wild savages to blush.
O’Malley, a rag-and-bone picker who worked out of a cramped stable on Blackman Lane, often wheeled his barrow through Kensington Gardens late at night. At this hour, he would likely be sleeping. But for a few extra shillings he would gladly have it interrupted.
As she had hoped, the man was curled up on a pile of dirty straw, snoring with a shuddering volume that belied his scrawny body. The jingle of coins brought him instantly awake.
He blinked and rubbed a hand over his bristly jaw. “What sins be ye looking fer today, me fine feathered friend?”
“The sin of murder.”
O’Malley grunted. “The Palace gardens?”
“Aye. Did you see anything?”
He let out a regretful sigh, knowing “yes” would earn him more than “no.” But Charlotte never did business again with anyone who told her lies, and her informants knew it.
“Wish I could help ye, Magpie. But when I rolled me way home that night, I saw nuffink save fer a solitary mort sitting in the Alcove. Thought he was sleeping or foxed, so didn’t think anything of it.”
“When was that?” She didn’t expect the exact hour, but knew O’Malley would have a natural sense of the night, and whether it was closer to midnight or dawn.
“Business was good down by the river, so I didn’t return until mebbe an hour before the sun rose.”
So, just a short while before the gardener had found Cedric and sent word to Bow Street. It wasn’t any help, but still, she placed a generous payment in his lap.
