Sebastian studied Knox’s lean, high-boned face. The likeness between Sebastian and this man was startling. Both had the same deep-set golden eyes beneath straight dark brows, and similarly molded lips. But it was the differences that intrigued Sebastian the most. In Knox’s case, the nose inclined more toward the aquiline, and there was a faint cleft in his chin. Characteristics he inherited from his barmaid mother? Sebastian wondered. Or from the unknown father both men probably shared?
“You still all fired up about Eisler?” asked Knox, stabbing his fork into a potato.
“I’m still looking into his death, yes.”
Knox chewed slowly, then swallowed. “What’s it got to do with Foy?”
“I don’t know that it has anything to do with him. But the man has been menacing my wife.”
A faint gleam of amusement deepened the gold in the other man’s eyes. “I heard about this morning’s incident at Charing Cross.”
“Did you, now?”
Knox reached for his ale. “Foy’s not right in his head.”
“I heard he was kicked by a mule.”
“That’s the official story.”
Sebastian laid his forearms on the tabletop and leaned into them. “Care to elaborate?”
Knox shrugged. “I heard he was found near the stables with his head bashed in. Could’ve been a mule. Could also have been a rifle butt.”
“Why would someone want to cave the man’s head in?”
“They say Foy had just testified at some officer’s court-martial.”
“This was after Talavera?”
Knox shrugged. “Could be. I’ve forgotten the details. The man isn’t exactly one of my boon intimates. You did catch the part about him not being right in the head, didn’t you?”
“Do you know where I could find him?”
Knox cut another slice of mutton, chewed, and swallowed.
Sebastian said, “You do know, don’t you?”
“If I did, why would I tell you?”
“I think Foy might be in danger.”
Knox huffed a soft laugh. “From Lord and Lady Devlin?”
“No. From the man—or men—who killed Daniel Eisler.”
Knox pushed his plate away and reached for his ale. He wrapped both hands around the tankard, then simply sat silently staring at it.
Sebastian waited.
“I’ve heard he keeps a room at the Three Moons, near St. Sepulchre, in Holburn.” Knox drained his tankard and pushed to his feet. “Don’t make me regret telling you.”
Chapter 42
J
ud Foy was coming down the inn’s rickety back steps, his lips pursed in a tuneless whistle, when Sebastian reached out to clench his fist in the man’s foul, tattered coat front and swing him around to slam his back against the near wall.
“Here, here,” bleated Foy, his hat tipping sideways, his watery eyes going wide. “What’d you want to go and do that to me for?”
Sebastian searched the man’s mad, gaunt features for some ghost of the stout, brash sergeant who’d testified for the defense at Matt Tyson’s court-martial three years before. But the man was so changed as to be virtually unrecognizable. “I have a problem with people menacing my wife.”
“Me? I didn’t menace her. If anything, she menaced me. Shoved her little muff gun in my face, she did, and threatened to blow my head off.”
“You were following her. Watching her.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her. I swear I wouldn’t.”
“You threatened her cat.”
“I don’t like black cats. Ask anybody. They’re bad luck.”
“Harm a hair on that cat’s body, and I’ll kill you.”
“Over a cat?”
“Yes.”
“And they say I’m touched in the head.”
“Tell me what happened to you after Talavera.”
Foy’s face went slack with confusion. “What you mean?”
“How did you get hurt?”
“Don’t rightly know. They found me near the stables with my head stove in and bits of my skull poking out. Thought I was a goner, they did. But I fooled ’em, didn’t I?” He closed his eyes and huffed his eerie, soundless laugh.
“You don’t remember what happened to you?”
“I don’t remember much of anything from before then.”
“You’d recently testified at a court-martial. Do you remember the name of the man on trial?”
“Aye. That I do remember. It was Tyson. Lieutenant Matt Tyson.”
Sebastian released his hold on the man’s ragged coat and took a step back. “When you told me you saw me coming out of ‘his house,’ whose house did you mean?”
Foy grabbed his battered hat as it started to slide down the wall. “That diamond merchant what lived in Fountain Lane. Can’t remember his name now.”
“Eisler?”
Foy carefully replaced the hat on his head. “Aye, that was it. Daniel Eisler.”
“Why were you watching his house?”
“He had something that belonged to me.”
“What?”
The man’s thin chest shuddered with his silent laughter. “What you think?” He leaned forward as if whispering a secret, his breath foul. “Diamonds.”
“Eisler had your diamonds?”
“He did.”
“How did he get them?”
“Somebody sold them to him.”
“Define ‘somebody.’”
“Never give me my share, he didn’t.”
“Who? Who never gave you your share?”