Davon sat down, noticing that Mr. Goodwin had not touched his ale. “So you are aware of why I am here and of my urgency?”
“In part,” Mr. Goodwin said, finally turning his gaze upon the man across from him, folding his hands together. “I know you seek Justus Paige, but I am not aware why you wish an audience with that pompous cretin. But I must inquire, Lord Carver, are you not dead? Weren’t you a doormat for a herd of bison? Last I heard, several hundred of them had politely wiped their hooves on your innards so as not to muddy the plain north of Tahbor. A cover for your induction into the Queen’s dungeon? Faking your own death?”
“The latter leading to the former, though it is a private matter, so I would ask you not to inquire further,” Davon answered, feeling uncomfortable.
Mr. Goodwin snorted. “Private matter! You are a fool, Lord Carver, bless your soul. No need to stand on privacy here. I’ve had relationships with women so cold and nagging that I’ve wished for many kinds of deaths, and none of the fake variety. I’ve certainly returned the favor in the other direction, too. Your solution was, I might say, quite brilliant, though overly friendly to the hag you were escaping from.”
Davon gritted his teeth. “And how do you know so much, Mr. Goodwin?”
“Boredom. The mother of invention, dissolution, and idle gossip.”
Davon raised his mug and took a drink, gagging immediately as the vile, acidic liquid scraped down his throat like the claws of a dire wolf. He tried to hide his discomfort from Mr. Goodwin, who regarded him with a sympathetic shake of his head.
“I’m afraid that Mary has yet to learn the difference between the chamber pots and the ale barrels.” He removed a flask from his coat. “This will clear out the taste. In the future, don’t ingest anything from this place unless if comes from a bottle, and only if you are relatively sure the bottle is yet unopened.”
Hastily, Davon downed the proffered spirits, the fiery liquid burning away the foul taste of the ale. He wiped his mouth and returned the flask.
“So you know this Justus Paige then?” Davon asked.
“Of course, of course,” Mr. Goodwin said as he stowed his flask back in an inner coat pocket. “He’s a dirty little man who has built a life on fulfilling the illicit desires of those of wealth and consequence. He is, by necessity, good at keeping secrets. A slip of the tongue and he’ll lose his clientele and likely his life. So, what are we to do to this man, Davon? Since we are called upon to deal with him directly rather than hand him over to our not-so-trusty local sheriff, I assume we are to kill him? Get information?”
Kill him? Davon wondered about the type of men he was to work with. “We are to get information from him pertinent to an investigation of Lady Arianne Hightower’s estate.”
Davon rehearsed the history of the situation while Mr. Goodwin absorbed the information with his cold, dark eyes.
“Ah, it makes much more sense now,” Mr. Goodwin said, leaning back. “The Lady Hightower is a special friend of the Queen. Let’s see. The Lady Hightower lost her husband because…you shot him! That’s right. Yes. Yes! Quite poetic then that you should do this for the Lady, eh? Does she not despise you?”
Reflexively, Davon reached for the mug before memory warned him off. “That is hardly your concern.”
He grinned. “Well, it’s clear you don’t despise her. I doubt any man would. The last I heard, the good Earl of this very town had his aim set upon that Lady and her beautiful estate at Hightower.”
“You feel his affections disingenuous?”
Mr. Goodwin scrunched his eyebrows. “Disingenuous? My goodness, how naive you are! A beautiful woman of large fortune? I daresay his affections are very sincere.”
“I mean that you don’t think he loves her.”
Mr. Goodwin laughed, an oddly sonorous sound from one so thin. “Oh, dear. Love. You see, Lord Carver, before I can answer that question I would need some coherent definition of that feeling. I’ve seen men beat their wives, throw fortunes and caution to the wind, do absolutely nothing and then absolutely everything, all for something they call love.
“When you blasted Lord Cornton into the grave for insulting Miss Emile Ironhorn, was that out of love? When your father, Asper Carver, married a farmer’s daughter with no dowry rather than seeking a more profitable alliance with a nobleman’s daughter, was that love? He certainly thought so, but I think perhaps those blonde locks of your mother’s were just as enchanting to him as Miss Ironhorn’s ones of copper were to you. Given these two examples, it seems love is a bit of a disaster. Perhaps if your father had more of Uticus Longford’s type of affection, you would have scrubbed fewer pots as a youth? Yes?”
Davon’s ire rose and he slammed his hand down on the table. “Who do you think you are, Sir?”
Mr. Goodwin extended his hand pleasantly. “How rude of me. Mister Charles Goodwin, at your service. Now, should we leave this idle speculation about love behind and concentrate on the matter at hand? It seems you were in a dreadful hurry earlier.”
“Yes, let us do that,” Davon replied, biting back his anger and shaking Mr. Goodwin’s hand. “Do you know of Mr. Paige’s whereabouts?”
“Certainly. We had word that he was wanted yesterday when we learned of your imminent arrival. Landon Killcreek has him tied up in a room Mary makes available to us. We can question him at your convenience. Shall we?”
Davon rose. “Of course! At once!”
Mr. Goodwin stood, checking his watch. “Very good. Two warnings. First, I’ve worked with Landon Killcreek before and he is a man who has only used his head to cushion falls. A good enough brute for our purposes, however. Second, as I indicated, Mr. Paige keeps secrets for a living, which means prying them out of him may be a bit difficult. Mary! A bottle of rum!”
“And who will be payin’ for that?” she shot back, face indignant.
“My friend here has just had a drink of your ale, so believe me, he’s paid, Mary dearest.”
A staring contest between Mr. Goodwin and Mary ensued, exhausting Davon’s patience. He pulled out handful of shillings and plopped them down on the table. Keeping her eyes on Mr. Goodwin, Mary reached under the counter and retrieved an opaque green bottle and handed it to Davon. Satisfied, Mr. Goodwin walked away, leading Davon through a kitchen area behind the bar and into storage area at the rear of the building.
Mr. Goodwin pointed to a trapdoor in the floor. “If you wouldn’t mind, Lord Carver, my back would appreciate it if you did the heavy lifting. I’ll hold the rum. Oh, and I’ll call you William. Don’t use your real name or mine or Landon’s. And don’t use your recently exposed fake name, either.”
The long trapdoor led down a steep set of wooden stairs into an ample cellar. Mr. Goodwin descended first, instructing Davon to close the entrance after them. Illumination from a lantern at the far end provided light for their steps. The cellar, deeper than it was wide, was lined with racks of dusty bottles of every hue. Barrels of beer and ale awaited strong backs to carry them upward. The resulting smell of barley and fermenting rot mixed with the mildew clinging to damp stone walls. It took Davon several minutes to accustom himself to the stench, though Mr. Goodwin hardly seemed to notice.
At the far end their quarry awaited. Justus Paige was bound to a chair and gagged. A burly young man in rough boots, leather pants, and a dark brown shirt watched over the prisoner. Landon Killcreek. His full head of bushy hair complimented a round, sanguine face with boyish blue eyes. Like Davon, he was strong and athletically built. The two pistols in his belt, his rough hands, and a rifle leaning nearby proved him a fighting man, despite the youthful innocence of his clean-shaven face.
To Landon’s side, Justus Paige sweat his bonds. Pretentiously expensive and colorful clothing covered a flabby body. The chair on which his ample backside rested squealed in injured protest as its occupant squirmed for the new arrivals. Davon swallowed. This was clearly and literally not above board. He had entered a den of thieves and crooks and wondered if the Queen condo
ned this sort of underhanded behavior. Wouldn’t the Lord High Sheriff do just as well at extracting information from the man? Justus regarded them both, eyes defiant, but his pasty jowls quivered beneath the gag, belying his attempt at confidence.
A round, four-legged table of rough wood sat near the captive, supporting the lantern. Mr. Goodwin put the bottle of rum on the table and opened the cork with a flick of a paring knife he produced from inside his coat. After a long swig, he returned the bottle to the table and scratched three roughly equidistant lines on its side with his knife. Mr. Goodwin sat in a chair in front of Justus, staring at him for a while with an intense, cold gaze. What had Mr. Goodwin been before he began his service in the Queen’s dungeon? Despite his age and apparent frailty, he could project such a powerful sense of malice that Davon’s skin crawled.
After what seemed an age of staring, Mr. Goodwin began. “Mr. Paige, let us be clear. You are a dingleberry on the dirty backside of society, however finely you dress or richly you eat. That is how I regard you. I care not for your life and am well acquainted with your habits and your business. I will remove your gag in a moment so we can converse. If you scream or make a ruckus, the tree trunk of a man behind you will renovate your smile to give it a bit more ventilation. Understood?”
The man nodded. Landon stepped forward and pulled the gag away from Justus’s mouth while Mr. Goodwin checked his pocket watch. As soon as Justus’s mouth was free, he spoke with a guarded fury.
“And you had best understand, Sir whoever-you-are, that I have friends. Important friends. You let me go now, and I’ll be satisfied with your immediate departure. You detain me further, and you’ll regret it.”
Mr. Goodwin replaced his watch in its pouch. “Please, spare us the threats, Mr. Paige. The only friends you have are ones who are scared of you or want to replace you. I’ve seen funerals for hunting dogs that were better attended and more full of sorrow than yours will be. So answer my questions carefully and you might live long enough to endear yourself to someone sufficiently so that his first thought on hearing of your passing won’t be to plunder your house.”
Davon tried to read the effect Mr. Goodwin’s words had on the wretch before him, but Justus steeled himself, confidence from an unknown source rising in his face. Perhaps now that he was sure that his death was not the only outcome of the meeting, he thought he might be able to bargain or bully his way out of what at first must have appeared a dire situation.
“If you want information, why doesn’t a fine gentlemen like you just pay for it like the rest of them?” Justus wheedled.
“I sincerely doubt there is a price I could afford for this information, Mr. Paige,” Mr. Goodwin continued. “My colleague behind me recently told me what you’ve been up to, and I do believe that the information I seek concerns a scheme that I would wager has made you an inordinately wealthy man. You recently built an inn with its proceeds, a convenient little place you can run your nefarious operations from. But in the quantities you’ve been skimming, I suspect you could build yourself a nice castle on a hill somewhere and stuff it full of every depravity you enjoy until the portcullis burst. Do you know the money of which I am speaking, Mr. Paige?”
The interrogated assumed an indignant air. “All the money I have comes from my legitimate business practices.”
Mr. Goodwin shook his head disappointedly and drank deeply from the bottle of rum. “Let me explain these three lines on the bottle, Mr. Paige. By nature, I am not a kind man in the least, and, as it turns out, I am a meaner drunk. So the more I drink, the worse it gets for you.” He removed his paring knife from his pocket and brandished it. “When I get to this first line, I’ll take away that which is most precious to you, your hoarded wealth. When I arrive at the second, little bits and pieces of you will start falling to the floor. When I get to the third, well, let’s just say that it will take a man of learning to be able to tell exactly what kind of carcass he is dealing with. So let’s begin again. You’ve been receiving large payments and socking away some of the cash for yourself. Who were these payments coming from?”
“You’ve got no proof of anything!” Justus growled.
“Does this look like a court?” Mr. Goodwin returned. “We know you’re guilty. Consider this the sentencing. The more time you waste and the more I drink, the worse the sentence gets.”
Justus strained at his bonds. “I’m not telling you imbeciles anything. My lads are like to burst through that door any second and take your heads off!”
Mr. Goodwin took another drink. “You mean the tall lanky fellow and the stocky, tan one? Those two ‘friends’ of yours abandoned you for one hundred pounds each—of your money, I might add.” He tipped the bottle again.
“My money? It’s safe and sound in the bank. You can’t touch it.”
Mr. Goodwin leaned in close. “Your revenues from the inn are safe and sound in the bank, all for appearances. But you wouldn’t put your earnings from your blackmails and dark favors and embezzling in a bank where someone might charge fees or taxes or ask questions. And you obviously wouldn’t put it someplace easy like your room in the inn. It was very nice, by the way, in a tacky kind of way. No, you wanted it nearby, so not so ingeniously you stuffed it in empty ale barrels in a cellar underneath your inn. Thanks for the new golden watch, by the way. I couldn’t have afforded it without you. That is truly a staggering amount of wealth you have down in that basement of yours. Wonder what will happen to it when your inn catches fire tonight?”
Mr. Goodwin had Justus’s attention now, the low-life’s mouth agape. Clearly, Mr. Goodwin had known of Justus Paige for some time. Davon wondered for how long and for what purpose. Killcreek wore a goofy smile on his face, enjoying the proceedings.
Another drink from the bottle and Mr. Goodwin held it up to the light inspecting the level of the liquid against his three marks. “Whoops! Looks like the money’s gone now. Landon, remind me to kick over a lantern in the stables of Mr. Paige’s inn tonight. A questionable design decision to directly attach the stables to the inn proper. Stable boys are notoriously sloppy and clumsy, and you know how they love a fire! I do hate the screaming of burning horses, but what’s to be done?”
Justus’s face drained of blood. “Now you wait a minute!”
Sir Godwin’s hand slammed down onto the table. “I’ve had just about enough of waiting, Mr. Paige. I’m going to relate to you a little story before I ask my question one more time. I tell you this so that in a few minutes you can understand why it is I seem to be having such a delightful time carving you up like a feast-day goose. Are you familiar with Manchester Street?”
“Of course,” Justus answered nervously, eyes shifty.
“There was a flower girl who worked there up until about three weeks ago. Maybe you remember her. She had hair the color of honey and a smile that could wake up even a heart as old and broken as mine. Sweet tempered, but soft-spoken and diffident. Every morning I would stroll up Manchester and see her there with her white apron, basket of flowers, and blue eyes as bright as the sunshine. ‘Good morning, sir,’ she would say with that modest look of hers. Every day I would ask her for a flower for my lapel and she would say, ‘What color, sir?’ I let her choose. Some days it was the yellow of a Black-eyed Susan. Another day it might be a cluster of Blue Bells, or perhaps the passionate red of a Rose. I overpaid her by ten times and she would thank me just as kindly and sincerely as I have ever known. I actually started to feel young again when I saw her.
“Notice, Mr. Paige, that I’ve no flower for my lapel today. I haven’t had one for three weeks. When she wasn’t there at the corner three weeks ago, I thought she might be sick or on holiday, but after missing her for four days, I found out where she lived with her aunt and uncle and inquired after her. Do you know what happened to that sweet little girl, Mr. Paige?”
“She done took her own life! That wasn’t none of my doing!”
“Really?” Mr. Goodwin began scraping the undersides of his fingernails with t
he knife. “I want you to know, Mr. Paige, that I cried when I learned that she was lost forever. Do you know how hard it is to squeeze a tear out of an old piece of leather like me who has seen and done things that would make even you cringe? Of course, I didn’t let the matter of her unexpected disappearance go, Mr. Paige. I had to know it all.
“See if this little tale sounds familiar. A certain son of a Lord fancied my little flower girl, but she rebuffed him as his intentions weren’t honorable. To ease things for your noble client, you hooked the uncle into gambling himself into destitution and told him that if he would sell his little flower girl into your brothel, that his debts and problems would go away. He agreed. She killed herself rather than fall into your clutches. Have you seen the poor girl’s uncle lately, Mr. Paige?”
“I heard he went traveling.”
“And the son of the Lord in question?”
“I heard he went traveling, too.”
Mr. Goodwin took a long drag from the bottle. “You know, the two of them spilled their secrets before I even got to the first line. And they did go traveling, after a fashion. After the pack of dire wolves chewed them up, there were little smelly piles of them all over the countryside. There is such pretty country around Longford this time of year.”
Sweat poured down the fatty creases of Mr. Paige’s face. “You lie!”
“Where was the money coming from, Mr. Paige?” A long silence ensued while an unseen battle of wills was waged. It ended when Mr. Goodwin reached for the bottle again.
“Wait! Wait!” Justus squealed frantically. “If I tell you anything, they’ll know it came from me! I’ll be dead before the week is out!”
“You can be dead before the week is out or dead before today is out,” Mr. Goodwin deadpanned. “Seems an easy choice to me. The faster your answer, the more of a head start you’ll have.”
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