The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery by L.C. Sharp (i have read the book .TXT) 📗

Moll had died last year, but her son, Charlie, continued the tradition, for how long Ash wasn’t sure because Charlie didn’t have the ebullience or the native cunning of his parents. Ash would bet his earnings for this year against King’s surviving the century. It might even become a quaint place that visitors pointed out to each other, like the remains of Whitehall Palace or Westminster Abbey. A place of historical interest. He chuckled at the thought. The stink of unwashed humanity, tobacco, beer and coffee infused the place with character.

The men that thronged King’s varied from the highest in the land to the lowest. He recognized a duke known for levels of debauchery that were so extreme that Ash wondered how much was real and how much was legend.

The man in the corner nursing a pewter mug of beer was one of the most skillful cutpurses in the city. Ash exchanged nods with both men, wondering which one would produce the best information today.

The cutpurse. The duke could wait.

He strolled over to the corner, taking a circuitous route to avoid drawing attention. Of course Cutty Jack noticed him. The skinny man’s sharp gaze traced Ash’s progress until he was near enough to nod a casual greeting.

“You’re well?” Ash asked, taking a cautious sip from the white china coffee cup he’d acquired. Probably coffee.

Cutty Jack took a noisy slurp of beer. “Aye. Still got all your fams and dasies?”

Ash snorted. “As if I’d wear diamonds in this place! I don’t have many, in any case. How’s business?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m ’ere, not in Bilby’s Ball. That’s enough.”

Jack was teasing him. He had the gift of speaking anything from unintelligible flash talk to imitating the highest in the land, a gift he used to gull the unsuspecting.

Since he’d brought up Tyburn, Ash could bring the conversation over to what he wanted to talk about. “Funny you should say that. That mob the other day—were you there?”

“The one in the West End?” Jack drank more beer. “Good chance to get a few pickin’s. Lyin’ in the street, they were.”

“Lucky.” A good pickpocket never lost the chance to mingle in a mob. Likely Jack had picked up more than a few shillings that day, and they wouldn’t have been lying around for anyone to collect. He wouldn’t ask, or he’d be forced to take his enquiries further. But the beauty of their communications was that both knew that. They went to the edge, but no further. His friendship with Jack was one reason he could walk through a crowd and walk out the other side with his belongings intact. Not the only reason, though. Jack wasn’t his only friend on the other side of the divide.

“Was it a paid mob?”

He’d suspected when he’d seen a few ruffians he recognized from Newgate. They might have been there on their own, but he knew at least three of them were adept at raising mobs—for a price. He’d put the possibility to the back of his mind, because he’d found no proof of it, and the ruffians he’d recognized would immediately go to that kind of scene.

“Rumor is,” Jack continued, “The Raven ordered it.”

Ash froze. His mind went back to the crude pin he’d taken off the man in the street, the pin with the bird on it. How could he have let that slip his mind? He forced his reaction down. “Why would he do that?”

Jack grinned, his gap-toothed smile, vaguely alarming. “‘Ow would I know? People blame everything on ’im these days. Mebbe ’e was a few slats short an’ ’e needed to fill ’is coffers.”

“Maybe.” Ash shrugged and took another sip of the execrable coffee.

Maybe. The Raven was the best underground boss since Jonathan Wild. His activities were driving the magistrates hard. Taking charge of the ragtag scum of the city meant murders and extortion increased, a heavy hand to control the uncontrollable. He’d spread his name using symbols and black feathers, leaving them at the scene of crimes he wished to claim. Men with their throats cut, women raped and sliced to pieces, all in the service of this man’s ambitions. And untold bodies dumped in the Thames, victims of more subtle crimes, the ones he didn’t want to advertise. He took commissions, too, murdering for money. Or rather, his minions did.

Yes, he’d send a mob to distract and disrupt if he wanted something else. It could be as simple as the looting of Hawksworth’s house. Or it might have more sinister undertones. What if this man wanted something else, like, for instance, covering a crime he’d been paid to commit? What if Uppingham’s unpleasant personal preferences had led him to the Raven? That would put an entirely different complexion on the case. The Raven could send someone to kill Uppingham, would know people who could do it. Perhaps Juliana had been more unconscious than asleep. But why?

Extortion? Possibly.

He added the information to his mental store.

“Is the man interested in the Uppingham case?”

Jack shot him a sharp-eyed stare. “Are you?”

People would know sooner or later, and Ash did not have the gift of time. He needed the most available information as quickly as he could get it, in order to defer Juliana’s trial. Any doubt he could put on the accusation of murder would help. So he gave that snippet. Jack wouldn’t talk, not if he didn’t want people to know that he dropped snippets of information in Ash’s ear occasionally. “I’m looking at it.”

Jack nodded. “You don’t ask questions for no reason. That journalist, Ransom, is interested in your bird, ain’t ’e?” Neither of them used the name of the Raven, because walls had ears. Especially here.

Ash scowled. “Ransom can go to hell.” The man was a nuisance.

“’E might know somefing. ’E was ’ere an hour ago, arskin’ around.”

Dammit.

Ransom was turning the Raven into a damned hero, treating him like a kind of Robin Hood instead of the ruffian he was and selling his papers on the back of