A Seditious Affair(26)

“Course I didn’t know. You think he gave me his card?”

“Oh, dear me.” Will was making a very poor fist of concealing his amusement. “All that time, and you didn’t know you were birching a high Tory. Oh, that’s glorious.”

“Ah, Silas,” said Jon. “Just think how much harder you could have hit him.”

Will cackled. “Talk about a missed opportunity. For Frey, I mean—”

“Shut your mouths!” It came out as a shout, unintentionally, but Silas glowered at the pair of them as though he’d meant to bellow. He’d laughed along enough times with their mockery of the pampered peacocks they served, he could take ribbing himself, but he couldn’t laugh at this. His fists were clenched.

They were both giving him sideways looks. “Touchy, Silas?” Will asked.

“Just give me his direction,” Silas said. “Or I promise you, there’ll be trouble coming to Lord Richard’s door, and your Foxy David will have something to say then.”

All the amusement dropped from Will’s face. Their club was a fashionable resort, a gambling hell, and a place of safety for Lord Richard’s set of men who preferred men. It was also, not incidentally, the only club in London where a black man ruled, although in public he appeared subordinate rather than equal to Will. Wouldn’t want to upset anyone, after all. Jon had authority, Will passed among men unchallenged, and it was Lord Richard’s imprimatur that gave them their freedom. The thought stuck in Silas’s craw.

“Tell me this,” Jon said. “Are you out to cause trouble, any sort? Because Foxy’s given his views on this. Lord Richard won’t have Mr. Frey hurt—you know, outside his wants—and you’d be ill advised to cross him.”

“I don’t mean trouble, and Frey’s wants aren’t my business. That’s done with.” The other two men exchanged glances. “But if I don’t talk to him, there’s going to be the devil to pay.”

They wouldn’t give him Frey’s direction, evidently fearing that he might be free with his fists again, but they agreed to send a note by urgent messenger. That was hard enough to write. For one thing, Silas didn’t want to create incriminating evidence; for another, he couldn’t but feel that everything he wrote sounded like an appeal to a lover. Please come. I need to see you.

He bent his mind to pale, bloodstained George and scrawled out a few blunt words, too abrupt because courtesy threatened to undo him, and anyway, he could imagine how contemptuously Frey would regard his ugly, uneducated hand. That done, he bade Will and Jon farewell and headed back to Ludgate, and Martha Charkin’s grief.

He was alone in the shop just after dusk, sitting vigil with the body, when there was a tap at the door.

“Good evening.” Frey’s face was impassive, his voice neutral, his bruised eye a lurid shade of purple, edged with green. “You asked me to call.”

Silas stepped back to let him in, giving him a view of the table on which George lay.

“Dear heaven. Who’s this?”

“My assistant, George Charkin. Killed Friday night in Leicester Square.”

“I’m sorry.” Frey took off his hat. “My condolences. What happened?”

“Stabbed. Don’t know why, or who. But he was found wearing this.” Silas fished the puce coat out from the burlap bag that concealed it and held it up.

Frey frowned, then his dark eyes went wide with shocked recognition. “What th— Your assistant was wearing it?”

“Aye. I was hoping you’d say this was a popular sort of coat.”

“No, it is not, and I’d normally be relieved by that.” He put a hand through his hair. “You know whose coat that is, don’t you?”

“Harry Vane’s.”

“Why would your assistant have Harry’s coat?”

“He needed one. Your men tore his off his back. If Harry met him, maybe he gave it over? And George had twenty guineas on him too, when he shouldn’t have had more than a shilling to his name. I don’t know why Harry would have given him money—”

“I suspect to keep him sweet,” Frey said, frowning. “I believe he was a little dubious of your assistant’s, uh, steadfastness in the face of questioning.”

“Paying George to go away, was he?”

Their eyes met. Frey didn’t reply.

“That investigation,” Silas said after a moment. “That horseshit about the fire. Still going on?”

“Indeed. Around the time we last met—possibly while you were punching me in the face—Skelton went after Harry. He threatened Harry with this story of the fire and the old prosecution for riot, tried to get him to inform on you. Harry denied everything. Told him on his word as a gentleman that you were not Jack Cade and not engaged in lawbreaking. He lied through his teeth for you, and embroiled Richard in it as well.”