Sedgwick doubted he’d be finished before midnight. It wasn’t a job he’d trust to any of the men; they were fine for keeping the peace, but none of them could use their brains. He’d started south of the river, canvassing the inns to see if Morton had been in any of them the previous night, without any luck. Then he’d crossed back over Leeds Bridge to cast his net wider. The landlord at the Old King’s Head thought he remembered someone in good grey broadcloth, but he wasn’t certain. So far no one else had come up with even an inkling of recognition.
When he was finished he’d return to Queen Charlotte’s Court to question the people he hadn’t seen that morning. It was going be another exhausting day, and he knew that when he finally returned to his room his shrewish wife would accuse him of being out drinking and whoring. She’d been uneasy when he began this job, but in the two years since he’d become deputy it had grown worse; at any excuse she’d begin shouting until her voice was raw. Then things would be fine, at least until the next night, when she’d start all over again.
Even her own father had advised him not to go through with the marriage.
“Her mother were bad enough, God rest her soul,” the man had said miserably as they shared a jug in the Talbot. “But Annie’s ten times bloody worse. Do thisen a favour and steer clear of her, and I say that though she’s me own blood.”
But he had been seventeen, and youth and lust won out over sense; he’d been paying the price ever since. His job meant long hours, some of them spent in taverns with tipsters and criminals. And if he’d been out whoring a couple of times, it was simply because he needed a little warmth. Since the birth of their boy James, two and a half years ago, Annie’s embraces had been cold, her tongue even sharper than before. A man needed something to keep him going, and whatever it was, Sedgwick wasn’t receiving it from his wife.
He slipped into the passageway that led from Briggate to the Ship, hoping they might still have some food he could eat as he asked his questions. Nottingham would be at home by now, sitting with his family, and Sedgwick envied him the calmness of his house. Not only the space, but the serenity that seemed to fill the place, as if the troubles of the world couldn’t touch it.
The food was all gone so he was left hungry, but at least there was a tankard in his hand as he chatted to the landlord, a ramshackle, wiry man in his fifties with muscled arms and wild, dark hair that grew in a bushy mass from his head.
“You heard about the preacher who was killed?” Sedgwick asked.
“Oh aye.” Walter Shipton wiped his hands on his leather apron and spat on the sawdust floor. “Whole town’s heard about that by now, lad. The preacher with his feet of clay and the whore.” He shook his head.
“Was he in here last night?” Sedgwick asked.
“Ee, lad, not that I recall,” he answered slowly. “It were a quiet night, so like as not I’d have noticed him. You found out what he was doing with her, anyway?”
Sedgwick laughed to himself. If the landlord couldn’t imagine what a man did with a whore, it wasn’t his place to educate him.
“Shame about her, though,” Shipton continued, drawing himself a small pot of ale and tasting it appreciatively.
“How do you mean?”
“She were a nice lass,” he said thoughtfully. “Bit strange, but nice, you know.”
“You knew her?” Suddenly Sedgwick was very interested.
“She were in here most nights, did a lot of her business from over there.” He nodded at a corner. “No trouble, mind, she’d just sit, and the men would come to her if they wanted her. They’d go off and, you know, then she’d be back.”
Pleased at finally discovering something useful, Sedgwick drained his mug and pushed it forward for a refill. It wasn’t food, but it was the next best thing.
“How long had she been coming in?”
“A year, mebbe?” Shipton creased his brow, emphasising the drinker’s broken veins in his ruddy cheeks. “Aye, around that, I suppose. Bit less, mebbe.” He leaned forward conspiratorially across the counter and added in a whisper, “She give me a tumble once, in t’back when the wife were gone. Called it my commission.” He chuckled wheezily at the memory. “By Christ, lad, she were a good tup, too, passionate like. I thought she’d be the death of me that day. Made me feel twenty again, she did.”
Sedgwick shared the other man’s smile for a moment before pushing on.
“Was she in last night?”
“Last night? Let me think.” He called over the serving girl, a harried rail of a lass who looked the Constable’s man up and down briefly before giving Shipton her attention. “Was Pamela in last night, do you recall?”
“Early on,” she replied without any hesitation, rolling her eyes when he looked confused. “You remember. You had to throw old George out for shouting the odds like he always does when he’s drunk as a lord. She helped you get him through the door. I didn’t see her later, though.”
“Aye, that’s right.” Shipton brightened. “Must have been about nine. George Carver had had a few too many and he was trying to pick a fight with some ’prentice lads. Always wants a brawl when he’s drunk, does George. I had to get him out for his own safety, else they’d have bloodied up my floor with him. Course, he didn’t want to go, ranting and raving. Pamela started talking to him while I was trying to push him out and he ended up going meek as owt.”
“Did she leave with him?” Sedgwick asked carefully. He was alert now, on the scent.
“’Ee, I don’t know, I weren’t looking by then, once the bother were over.” He glanced at the serving girl who shrugged noncommittally.
“Do you know where she lived?”
“Somewhere close, I reckon, but I couldn’t tell you where. Never asked. It didn’t seem to matter.” He took a long drink and drained the pot. “ ’Appen someone’ll know. I can ask for you, if you like, there’ll be more in later.”
Sedgwick nodded his appreciation.
“Did she have a pimp?” he wondered. The landlord might know.
“Pamela?” Shipton shook his head firmly. “Nay, not one like her. Too old, and not enough business to warrant one bothering with her.”
Sedgwick finished his ale and left, satisfied with the bit of business. He’d found out a little. In the doorway he almost collided with a familiar face trying to slide in for a quiet drink.
Adam Suttler was the most talented forger in Leeds, an educated man with the ability to copy anything faithfully, but no sense of judgement. Twice Nottingham and Sedgwick had stopped him before he became too foolish. Changing a will to favour a younger son could have found him on the gallows. So could his alteration of a merchant’s bill of lading to the continent, allowing thieves to make off with some bales of cloth. On both occasions the paper evidence had handily been destroyed, saving Suttler from capital justice. They’d visited his rooms at the top of a winding stair, surprisingly airy and clean, and put the fear of God into Adam with threats and promises as his wife and daughter had scuttled into the other room.
Sedgwick wasn’t naive enough to think he’d returned to the straight and narrow — apart from working as a clerk or a scrivener, what could Suttler do? — but at least they hadn’t heard much of him in the last year.
“Evening, Adam,” the deputy said breezily. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Of course, Mr Sedgwick,” Suttler answered uneasily. It was a lie, and they both knew it, but for the moment they accepted it as the truth.
“You heard about the murders.”
Suttler shook his head sadly. “A terrible business. I saw him preach on Saturday, very inspiring.”
He might be a criminal, but the forger was also a thoughtful, religious man, in church without fail every Sunday. Still, the deputy supposed, what he did was no worse than some of the merchants, and they were always ready to bow their heads piously.
“A lot of people didn’t like what he said,” Sedgwick pointed out.
“True,” said Suttler, bobbing his head in agreement. “But perhaps they chose not to hear.”
“Did you see him at all after Saturday?”
“I didn’t,” he said with regret. “I’d have liked to talk to him.”
“You go and enjoy your ale,” Sedgwick told him. “And keep out of trouble, Adam. Next time we might not be able to save you.”
With a shy, embarrassed smile, Suttler ducked into the tavern.
Oh well, the deputy thought. Even if there was nothing to be gained from Suttler, the information about Pamela and George Carver was worthwhile. Now all he needed was a little more luck at Queen Charlotte’s Court to make it a good night.
But it seemed as if fortune had just been teasing him. By ten he’d discovered nothing new. His long legs ached from walking and standing, and his knuckles were sore from rapping on doors. At least he’d been able to find many of the dwellers in the court at home. Yet however much he tried to joke and charm information from them, there was little to be had. A couple believed they might have heard something in the middle of the night, but they weren’t certain. Most, it seemed, had been dead to the world. And perhaps they’d earned that, he thought. Working too many hours for too little money, with hardly any food in their bellies, sleep was their only escape from drudgery, the only place where all things and all people could be equal. When simply living was an act of concentration, how could he blame them for not noticing the deaths of people they didn’t even know?
Still, he continued to go methodically around the court, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d done everything possible. In the attic of a building that should have been razed twenty years before, its stairs rickety and rotted beyond danger, he found an impossibly young mother, with her husband and tiny baby. She looked barely thirteen, her eyes not yet lost in desperation, wearing a dress that had likely been fourth- or fifth-hand when she found it two or three years earlier. Her man barely seemed older himself, a walking jumble of rags tied to his body with string.
“We heard summat, didn’t we, Will?” she told Sedgwick. “I were up with the baby — he’s got the croup, I think — and there was this noise.”
Sedgwick smiled down at her.
“What kind of noise, luv?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. Like someone was dragging something heavy. You remember, Will, I woke you?”
The lad nodded.
“What time was that?”
The girl looked confused.
“Time? I couldn’t tell you that, mister. It were dark, and it felt lonely, so it must have been the middle of the night. You know how everything feels far away then? Except him, of course,” she added, rocking the child in her arms.
“Did you look out?” Sedgwick asked. The room’s sole window opened on to the court.
The girl shook her head.
“Not at first. I mean, the noise stopped, so I didn’t think much more of it, and I had to deal with the babbie. But when it started again, I did.”
He looked at her pinched face, alert now.
“Started again? You mean there was more? How much later was that?”
She considered her answer.
“Not long. I don’t know, I’d just got him settled and fed, and I was going to go back to sleep when I heard it.”
“And what did you see?”
“There wasn’t much of a moon, so I couldn’t really make it out proper. But it looked like someone pulling something, I thought it were a sack of rubbish or summat. I thought it was an odd time, but folk are strange, aren’t they?” she asked with an almost childlike sense of wonder at the world.
“They are, yes.” He smiled kindly at her. “Did you see or hear anything else?”
“Not really.” She frowned as she tried to recall. “A bit more noise from down there, and that’s it. I didn’t really see anyone, not enough to make them out or owt. Once it went quiet again, that was it.”
“Was it a man or woman you saw?”
The girl shook her head.
“I didn’t really notice. Just a shape.”
“Thank you.” Sedgwick noticed that the boy she called Will had barely glanced up throughout the conversation, a sullen expression on his face.
“Will Littlefield,” he said, and the youth turned sharply. “You do right by this lass of yours, or I’ll be back.”
“You know him?” the girl asked, taken aback.
“Oh aye,” Sedgwick replied. “Been friends a long time, haven’t we, Will? Just haven’t seen much of him recently, and you might say that’s a good thing for everyone.”
He bowed to the girl and left.
Not a bad night after all, he said to himself as he strolled back down Briggate towards home. It might even make the bollocking he’d get from his wife worthwhile.