The cabinetmaker straightened slowly. He stood half a head taller than Sebastian and must have weighed nearly twenty stone, with a heavily muscled body and broad, solid chest. He was one of those men whose neck was so thick that it appeared even wider than his head. His dark eyes were unnaturally small and set close over a small nose, so that when one looked at him, the overall impression was of black hair, bulging muscles, and a red, weal-like scar that disfigured one cheek.
His eyes narrowed with obvious suspicion as he took in Sebastian’s inimitably tailored dark blue coat, the snowy crispness of his cravat, the suppleness of his doeskin breeches. Then he returned to his work, the curls of wood shavings blooming beneath the plane. “We’re closed. It’s the Lord’s day; didn’t ye know?”
“It looks to me like you’re working.”
“Wot ye want from me? Yer kind don’t buy furniture from the likes of me.”
“I understand you know Alexandrie Sauvage.”
Bullock tossed aside his plane. “That’s wot ye’re here for, is it? I heard wot happened to her—her and that French doctor.” He raised one hand to point a meaty finger at Sebastian. “Think yer gonna lay the blame for that on me, do ye? Well, I ain’t been near St. Katharine’s. Nowhere near it.”
“So where were you last Thursday night?”
“I was home in me bed, asleep. Where else would a good, God-fearin’ workin’man be on a Thursday night?”
Sebastian studied the cabinetmaker’s mulish, set features and watched his eyes slide away.
Sebastian said, “I understand you had a dispute of sorts with Madame Sauvage.”
“Dispute? That wot ye want to call it? The bloody bitch killed me brother.”
“How?”
“Wot do you mean, how?”
“Are you suggesting she poisoned him?”
“I ain’t never said no such thing.”
“It’s my understanding he died of gaol fever, in Newgate. Was she treating him?”
“Of course she weren’t physicking him! It were because o’ that interfering little strumpet that Abel was in Newgate in the first place.”
“Oh? What was he accused of having done?”
Bullock’s small eyes grew dark and hard. “I ain’t got nothing t’ say t’ ye,” he muttered, and reached for his plane.
Sebastian said, “You do realize you’ve been seen hanging around Golden Square. Following her. Threatening her.”
Bullock thrust out his heavy jaw, the puckered flesh of his scar darkening from red to an angry purple. “I got nothin’ t’ hide. I ain’t denying I spoke me mind t’ her—and why the hell shouldn’t I? But I ain’t never threatened her, and anyone tells ye I did is a bloody liar.”
“You didn’t threaten to make her pay?”
“Who told ye that? Her?”
“No.”
Bullock curled his lip in a sneer. “Me, I think ye got the wrong idea about the bitch. T’ hear people talk, she’s some bloody angel of mercy or some such thing. But she’s no angel, not by a long shot. She’s got a temper on her, that one. Why, I’ve heard her threaten t’ gut a man with a fish knife, I have, jist because she didn’t like the way he were lookin’ at his own wife.”
Sebastian thought about the fiercely passionate woman he had known in Portugal and had no difficulty imagining such a scene.
“I can tell ye plenty o’ things about that woman I bet ye don’t know,” Bullock was saying. “There’s a fair number o’ Frogs live about here, ye see. I’ve heard ’em talking about her—about how she was with Boney’s army in Spain, and about how her lover was a French lieutenant. Not her lawful husband, mind you. Her lover.”
“I know about the Peninsula,” said Sebastian simply.
Bullock grunted, the sound reverberating deeply in his massive chest.
Sebastian let his gaze drift around the workshop, with its carcasses of half-finished cabinets, its piles of lumber, its rows of tools kept well oiled and carefully honed. “I’m still not exactly clear on the reason behind your animosity toward Madame Sauvage.”
“I told ye! It was because o’ her that me brother Abel was in Newgate.”
“What had he done?”
“He didn’t do a bleedin’ thing.”
“So what did she accuse him of doing?”
“Why don’t ye ask her?” snarled Bullock. Then he turned pointedly back to his board, the muscles in his strong shoulders and arms bunching and flexing as he ran the plane over its surface, again and again.
Sebastian watched the curls of wood shavings scatter in fragrant drifts. If Alexandrie Sauvage had been found with her head brutally beaten to a pulp, Bullock would have seemed the obvious suspect. But she was not the main target of Thursday night’s attack, and there was nothing to tie this brutish cabinetmaker to Damion Pelletan.