Sebastian stared at him. “What?”
“Mmm. Something about a pouch of Eisler’s jewels found on our friend here. They’re saying it’s more than likely that he’s the killer.”
“But . . . I don’t think he is.”
Gibson studied Sebastian’s face through narrowed eyes. “And here I was thinking you’d be over the moon, hearing that Yates might be freed.”
Sebastian shook his head. He was remembering what Kat had told him, about the visit Jarvis had paid to Yates’s cell that first night—and the worry in her eyes when she said it. “Nothing about Yates’s incarceration has felt right from the very beginning,” he said. “Somehow this just seems all a piece with the rest of it.”
“Could be just a rumor.”
Sebastian pushed away from the doorframe. “Only one sure way to find out.”
A supercilious clerk at the Lambeth Street Public Office informed Sebastian that Fridays were not one of Bertram Leigh-Jones’s days of attendance.
“He attends Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays,” said the clerk, casting a sour glance toward the rear of the hall, where a blowsy doxy in a tattered purple satin gown and improbably red hair was haranguing a constable in a high-pitched cockney whine.
“I didn’t do nothin’ o’ the sort,” she screeched. “I’m a good girl, I am.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the clerk’s thin, bony face. “So you’re saying he was not in attendance last Monday?”
“He was not.”
“Then how did he come to be involved in the committal of Russell Yates?”
“As it happens, Mr. Leigh-Jones was in the vicinity of Fountain Lane when the hue and cry was raised. As such, he took charge of the pursuit and capture of the suspect and the interrogation of the witnesses before formally committing the villain to Newgate. He was here until dawn.”
“Commendable.”
The clerk sniffed. He appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties, with greasy dark hair plastered to a prominent skull and a nose to rival that of Wellington himself. “Mr. Leigh-Jones is a most conscientious magistrate.”
“And where might I find him?”
From the depths of the hall came the doxy’s loud, strident complaint: “I tell ye, I never! ’Tis nothin’ but a Banbury Tale, the lot o’ it!”
The clerk was forced to raise his own voice to compete. “Mr. Leigh-Jones does not like to be disturbed on his off days. You may come back on Saturday, if you wish. We open at eleven.”
“I’m afraid this won’t wait.”
The clerk went back to writing in his ledger. “Unfortunate, under the circumstances. You could see Mr. Dixon, the magistrate currently in attendance. Or you can return on Saturday. The choice is yours.”
“And here I thought you just said Mr. Leigh-Jones was a most conscientious magistrate. I don’t think you’ll find him inclined to reward you for your zeal in protecting him from the Palace.”
“The Palace?” The clerk looked up, a wave of conflicting emotions passing over his face, doubt followed by indecision chased by annoyance and chagrin.
Sebastian started to push away from the desk. “I’ll tell His Highness—”
“No! One moment, please.”
Sebastian paused.
The clerk threw a quick look around, then leaned forward to lick his thin lips and whisper, “His house is in the Crescent, off the Minories. Number four.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian, just as the doxy let out a high-pitched, ear-shattering squeal.
“Oooo. Say that again, ye whore’s son, an’ I’ll scratch yer bloomin’ eyes from yer ’ead and feed ’em to the bleedin’ chooks!”
Bertram Leigh-Jones lived in a comfortable eighteenth-century town house built of good sturdy brown brick with white-painted window frames and a shiny green door. Sebastian half expected the magistrate to refuse to see him. But a few minutes after he sent up his card with the thin, mousy-haired young housemaid who’d answered his knock, she reappeared to say meekly, “This way, my lord.”
He found Leigh-Jones in a small chamber overlooking the Crescent. The room had been fitted up as a workspace, with a large, sturdy table in the center and an array of shelves piled high with a jumble of paints, pots, tools, and bins filled with pieces of fine wood; the air was thick with the smell of linseed oil and a pot of hot hide glue. The magistrate himself sat perched on a high stool, a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose as he focused on fitting a minute piece of rigging to a partially constructed model of a Spanish galleon.
He cast a quick glance at Sebastian before returning his gaze to the model. “You have some nerve, coming here,” he said, his big, blunt figures surprisingly nimble at their task.
“I’m told you believe the pouch of diamonds found on Jud Foy’s body came from Daniel Eisler.”
“Oh? Who told you that?”
“Is it true?”
“As it happens, it is, yes.”