Page 86 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

Dawson took up the notebook and started to skim the pages. "I'll start with the publicans. A man with a face like that is remembered, whether he wishes it or not."

"You'll start this morning."

"I assumed as much, my lord."

"I can help." Will’s voice. From the doorway.

I glanced toward the eager face. “No."

“I know pubs,” Will said, striding into the room. He already knew that my refusals were the opening of a negotiation rather than the close of one.

"You are ten."

"I was younger than that when I started helping Mam at the Hare and Hound.”

"That may be so. But you are still ten now."

He scrunched his mouth. “And I still know pubs."

Dawson had arranged his features into a careful, ornamental blankness.

Will folded his arms across his narrow chest. “I swept the floors. I collected mugs." A pause, weighted with the dignity of a man laying down his credentials. "I listened."

That, I confess, made me pause.

Will saw it. Children possess an almost supernatural faculty for identifying the precise instant an argument develops a flaw.

"I know who talks to who," he pressed on, sensing blood. "I know who drinks too much. I know who starts the fights. I know who owes money to who."

"You are describing half the men in England."

"I'm describing pubs."

Dawson coughed into his hand with elaborate discretion.

I turned upon him a look that had, in its time, silenced colonels.

"Dawson."

"My lord."

"Do not encourage him."

"Wouldn't dream of it, my lord." He busied himself among the chafing dishes. But then after a moment, he said, “The lad isn't entirely wrong."

Traitor.

I returned my attention to Will, who was watching me with the bright, unblinking patience of a terrier at a rat-hole.

"You are supposed to be studying."

The grin arrived in full. "School doesn't start until ten."

There was, regrettably, no answering that.

"Sit," I said, "and eat your breakfast."

He needed no second invitation. He heaped his plate with eggs and kidneys and bacon and sausages and potatoes in quantities that no boy his size could possibly eat. And then he took the chair beside mine. Ajax, scenting opportunity, relocated from the hearth to a position of careful neutrality between us.