“Chance would be a fine thing.” Brewster growled.
We continued walking, though I now regretted not seeking a hackney. I heard no footsteps behind us—our followers were too skilled—but I knew they were there from flickers in the shadows.
I chose Clarges Street to take us to Piccadilly. All routes there were narrow, prime places for an ambush. I picked Clarges Street because it had a number of large houses on it—Grenville had leased one here for Marianne before they’d married. As I’d suspected, this lane was tight with carriages taking ladies and gentlemen to and from outings, and one house was hosting a gathering of some kind.
Brewster and I slipped among the coaches and their passengers. Servants and coachmen would be on the lookout for pickpockets and other thieves, so our pursuers would have to lie low or find another way around.
We reached Piccadilly without further mishap, hopefully losing our followers in the crush behind us.
I feared the gentleman who’d taken me aside would be long gone, but no, he lingered in the street near the Fox Run. Frowning with impatience, he led us into a narrow lane not far from Burlington House and its new Arcade and through a battered wooden door.
Brewster and I went up a rickety flight of stairs and entered a smoky room, with a fire in a tiny fireplace feebly trying to warm it.
A glance around at the faces watching me enter—many of them indulging in pipes, hence the miasma—showed only a few from the meeting I’d recently left. I also recognized Mr. Cudgeon.
Cudgeon laid aside his pipe and creaked to his feet as we entered. “This is Captain Lacey,” he announced in the same cheerful tone with which he’d spoken to Grenville and me the night before. “He is trying to find out who did for Mr. Pickett.”
The inhabitants of the room nodded at me, as though this was a perfectly sound introduction.
“Good evening, Mr. Cudgeon,” I said, bowing to him. “From our conversation, I thought you indifferent to Mr. Pickett’s fate.”
“The Fox Run was not the place to discuss it,” Cudgeon said. “I am quite unhappy about his death for various reasons.”
The man who’d brought us here spoke. “Pickett was a good man. When Mr. Cudgeon told us you were asking about him, I thought we should speak to you. We need to know what happened to him.”
“We do indeed, Mr. Dunwood.” Cudgeon waved me to a polished wooden tavern chair. “Sit down, Captain. Tell us what you’ve discovered.”
The furnishings here were mismatched as well as battered, as though tables and chairs had been taken from taverns as they discarded them. I sat, the seat creaking beneath my weight, while Brewster faded into a corner.
A servant thunked a dented pewter tankard on the table before me, lifted a keg, popped its cork, and streamed pale, foaming liquid into the vessel.
I took a swallow once the servant had gone and found the same weak ale that the Fox Run served. Possibly these fellows had procured it for their meetings. “My first thought was that one of you lot had done it.”
My light comment brought a chuckle from some, but Mr. Dunwood eyed me severely. “That could be. They had better hope not.”
A few men shuffled feet, uneasy, but I could not tell if their discomfiture came from guilt or fear of Mr. Dunwood’s temper.
“Why did Pickett buy the guns from you, Mr. Cudgeon?” I asked.
Cudgeon regarded me without worry. “I don’t know any more than what I’ve already told you. He said for fowling in Bedfordshire. Seemed reasonable to me.”
I scanned the room. There were a dozen in attendance, ranging from well-dressed gentlemen in tailored suits to working men in homespun coats and thick boots. I hadn’t met a one of them, apart from Cudgeon, before tonight.
“Did Pickett order them for any of you?” I asked the others.
All shook their heads. I noted that Cudgeon and Dunwood watched their reactions closely.
“He said he’d joined a gentleman’s hunting club in Bedfordshire,” a man in the very back of the room said. “Wanted to impress them with Cudgeon’s shooters.”
“Eh?” Cudgeon sat up straight. “You never let on about a hunting club, Mr. Saxton.”
Mr. Saxton, who was as large and rough-looking as Brewster, shrugged broad shoulders. “No one asked.”
“Did he mention the names of the gentlemen in this hunting club?” I asked, trying to be patient.
“Not to me,” Saxton answered. “He was proud to know such gents. Said some of them humbled themselves to visit him in his rooms here in London. Weren’t they kind to treat him like he was one of them?”
Saxton’s disparaging tone told me he didn’t think much of Pickett’s new friends.
