evening. But he’d been in search of a man by the name of Fredrick Davis, a former magistrate who’d been involved in the inquest into the death of Mademoiselle Veronique Delaine.
“Montgomery?” the man asked as Winn approached the table in the back where he’d been told the man would be waiting.
“Yes,” Winn answered. “You’re Davis?”
The man grinned, showing several missing teeth. “Aye. One and only. Have a seat… a guinea per question.”
He’d come prepared for just that. Winn removed one coin from his pocket and slid it across the table. “How did Veronique Delaine die?”
“Maybe I don’t remember her?”
“Then I’ll go now and take the rest of my coin with me,” Winn stated. “I’ve got enough questions for you to earn a tidy sum without playing any games.”
The man’s gapped-tooth grin grew broader as he tapped the table. When a coin was placed at his fingertips, he slid it deftly across the table’s pocked surface where it disappeared into the pocket of a tattered waistcoat stretched over his rather rotund middle. “The actress… hard to forget that one. Looked like a broken doll laying in the road, she did. Pretty thing, but someone had done her up right before tossing her out there.”
“Then she wasn’t struck by a carriage?” Winn asked, placing another coin on the table.
“Oh, aye. But she was dead before that happened,” the man replied.
Another coin. “How?”
“The wheel cut her deep,” Davis said, gesturing to his abdomen. “But weren’t much blood. Smeared a bit but not gushing out the way it ought to have if she’d been alive when it happened. Seen enough corpses in my day to know that. No, Guv, she was dead before she hit the bricks, I’d say. Back of her head all smashed in though she was face down on the street. Shouldn’t have injuries to both the front and back sides of her, should she?”
“Couldn’t that have happened when the carriage struck her? Perhaps she was caught up under the wheels?” Another coin slid across the table to vanish.
Davis shook his head. “The carriage didn’t do naught but clip her. Driver saw her laying there and tried to stop. Swerved around her and damn near upended the whole thing. Anyways, wounds on the back of her head had bled something fierce. Back of her clothes was covered in the stuff and it was almost dry… but the front? A bit of mud and some smears of blood. Still wet.”
“I don’t suppose you’d know who did it and how, would you?”
Davis shook his head. “No, and you don’t have to pay if’n I don’t give an answer. I ain’t for robbing people. I reckoned at first it was a lover’s quarrel. Went to the theater and they said see the duke. So I did. Thought it’d be a quick thing to pin it on him, though I knew he’d never serve a day for it much less see the noose. Men like him—and you—don’t have to follow the law, now do they?”
Winn slid another coin across anyway. “You said at first. But you didn’t think it was a lover’s quarrel after meeting him?”
Davis took a drink from the tankard before him. “No. Telling that man she was dead near broke him. Never seen a man take on so. I ain’t much for having sympathy for no man, but it was clear he was torn up about it. Kept asking for the babe. First any of us heard about it. Told him there was no babe to be found near her and she must have left it with someone.”
“Did you see anyone else when you went to speak with the duke?”
“His mother was there… won’t forget that old bitch,” Davis said, his expression shifting into one of distaste. “She’d raise gooseflesh on the dead.”
“How did she react to the news?”
Davis shook his head. “Said it was good riddance… told him to stop taking on so, that he needed to find himself a worthy bride and produce an heir that wouldn’t bring shame to the family.”
Winn suppressed a shiver. “You didn’t much care for her, did you, Davis?”
Davis looked at him levelly. “I’ve seen a lot of killers in my time, my lord. Arrested men who’d taken lives as casual as taken off their hats in greeting. I’ve even seen some that enjoyed it. But I’ve never seen any person, man or woman, who could make my blood run cold the way that old bitch did. I knew… I couldn’t prove it. But I