Priss Mulligan was winding the key of a mechanical nightingale when Sebastian pushed open the battered door and walked into her shop.
Despite the brightness of the afternoon, the interior was gloomy, the small panes of the front windows thick with the accumulated grime, cobwebs, and entombed dead insects of centuries. Rather than look up, Priss simply kept winding the gilded, jewel-encrusted trinket, and he realized she must keep lookouts posted on the street outside, because she’d obviously known he was coming.
“Back again, are you?” she said, setting the trinket on the counter between them. The nightingale began to sing melodiously, its delicate, gilded wings beating slowly up and down, its tiny beak opening and closing, the jeweled collar around its neck glittering with simulated fire.
“Interesting,” said Sebastian, watching it.
“Ain’t it just? And the jewels are real rubies and sapphires too—no paste.”
“Of course they are,” said Sebastian.
Rather than take offense, she laughed out loud, her small beady eyes practically disappearing into her fat face.
He nodded to the mechanical bird between them. “Where does it come from?”
“Persia. Or maybe China. Does it matter? Sings as sweet and sunny as an angel of the good Lord, it does.”
The clear notes began to slow down, the key cleverly concealed in the bird’s tail feathers turning slower and slower, the wings seeming to grow heavier and heavier with each flutter.
He said, “I’ve discovered you’ve been less than honest with me.”
She gave him a look of shocked innocence. “You don’t say?”
“Last Saturday, Stanley Preston came charging into your shop and accused you of cheating him. He threatened to turn you in to the authorities as a fence, whereupon you threatened to strangle him with his own intestines and feed what was left of him to the dogs.”
“Nah, that weren’t it. Don’t know who you been talking to, but I said I was gonna strangle him with his own guts and feed his privates to the dogs.”
Sebastian studied her broad, still smiling face. “Yet you told me you hadn’t seen the man in a month or more.”
She shrugged. “Reckon I forgot.”
“You forgot.”
“Got a terrible memory, I do.”
“You do realize, of course, that his threat to turn you over to the authorities gives you a powerful motive for murder?”
“It might—if I’d thought he meant it. Only, he didn’t.”
“So certain?”
“Course I’m certain. Everybody cheats each other in this business—when they can. And the buyers is as guilty as the sellers. You such a flat as t’ think Preston cared whether the stuff he bought here was stolen or not? He couldn’t expose me without exposing himself, now, could he?”
“He could claim not to know the origins of your merchandise.”
“To be sure, he could. But then, so could I, now, couldn’t I?” She poked one short, fat finger toward him. “If he’d been strung up by his own innards and gelded, you might be able to pin this on me. But he weren’t. So get out of me shop.”
Sebastian nodded to the now silent bird on the counter between them. “How much is the nightingale?”
She snatched it up and cradled it against her massive bosom as if it were something rare and precious to her. “’Tain’t for sale. Not to you.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on her face. “Ever have dealings with anyone from Windsor Castle?”
Her unexpected, slow smile betrayed not a hint of either recognition or alarm. “I told you, I only deal in human heads if they’re gilded and studded with jewels.”
“I don’t recall saying anything about a head,” said Sebastian, and walked out of her shop.
The sun was sinking low in the sky when Sebastian joined Gibson for a pint at an ancient, half-timbered tavern near the Tower. The Irishman’s eyes were hollow and bruised-looking, and there was a decidedly green tinge to his face.
“You think it was a trap?” said Gibson, wrapping his unsteady hands around his tankard. “That Priss Mulligan used the King’s head as bait to lure Preston to Bloody Bridge and then kill him?”
Sebastian leaned his shoulders against the worn, high back of the old-fashioned settle. “I think it’s a strong possibility, yes.”
Gibson drained the rest of his ale and set aside the empty tankard. “How do you know your unknown thief himself isn’t the killer? Maybe he decided to kill Preston, steal whatever money he’d brought, and then sell the head to Priss Mulligan.”
“That’s also a possibility.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“Why would a simple thief go to all the trouble of cutting off Preston’s head and setting it up on the bridge?”
“Why would anyone who wasn’t more than a wee bit crazy?”
“True.” Sebastian signaled the barmaid for two more pints. “There is a third possibility.”