Anderley, curious what he’d made of this turn in the conversation. I’d learned only weeks earlier that he’d been an Italian Boy—one of those sympathetic beggar lads working the streets of London, either performing, exhibiting animals, or selling wax images and busts. What I, and most of London, hadn’t realized, was that the Italian Boys were largely brought to England by padroni, who bought their services from their parents back in the economically devastated regions of Italy, promising to teach them a trade, but who actually treated them as little more than slaves. Anderley had run away from his master, and found himself in Cambridge, where he had fortuitously fallen in with Gage during a time when he’d most needed a loyal manservant. He’d quickly learned to valet, and Gage had discovered his other useful skills in the course of his investigations.
What Anderley’s thoughts were on his family, who had essentially sold him into slavery, albeit unwittingly, I didn’t know. But Gage said he maintained a regular correspondence with them back in Italy, and had even visited them on Gage’s grand tour of the continent following university. His face now was a mask of indifference, though his eyes did seem to balk at meeting mine.
“As to your proof, I think I may be able to help as well,” Gage continued, his eyes narrowed on something across the room.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I want to get a better look at his clothing.”
I remembered then his reaction in the tunnel. “The boot.”
He turned to me in confirmation.
“I thought there was something telling in your reaction to it. And Lord Edward’s as well.”
His face was grim. “If I’m not very much mistaken, I believe there was some sort of marking inside it.”
Which might have explained why Lord Edward had so swiftly identified the corpse. Helmswick was already on his mind. But was the boot truly confirmation, or had it merely planted the seed of suggestion?
Probably both. For why would another man be wearing Helmswick’s boots? There was nothing to suggest someone had deliberately set out to obscure the identity of the body. That had all been done naturally. Even the fact that we had stumbled across the body before it resembled the skeletons surrounding it had been pure chance. Given that, such a ploy didn’t make sense.
“What of the chip in his tooth?” Gage asked, tapping at the shell of his hardboiled egg. “Was Lady Helmswick aware of it?”
“I forgot to ask her,” I admitted, cradling my cup—the tea having grown tepid. “Truthfully, I suspect it was done at the time of death or just before or after, but I shall ask her anyway. It can’t rule him out, but it could urge the matter toward confirmation.”
“What is the staff saying belowstairs?” he asked our servants.
Bree and Anderley exchanged a speaking glance across the expanse of the counterpane, their first that was not filled with tension, but rather weary resignation.
“They don’t say much,” Anderley said. “Not around us and the other guests’ servants. But I overheard two of the footmen talking about how no one goes down to the cellars. Did you know they call it the doom?” he interjected in disbelief.
We nodded.
“Well, they said no one goes down there except the coal heavers.” He paused. “And the duke’s sons.”
“Yes, I gather it was a great lark when they were boys, as it would be for any rowdy, inquisitive group of young lads.” Gage glanced up from his food. “Or were they implying they spend time down there even now?”
Anderley shrugged his shoulders. “The footmen ended their conversation rather swiftly when Tait entered the room, so I can’t say.”
“Then what was that look the two of you shared just now?” I gestured between them with my free hand as I took a sip of tea. “What else are they saying?”
They shared another glance, but Bree was the one to answer. “Some think it’s the ghost o’ that monk.”
“Friar Thatch?”
She nodded.
This time it was Gage and I who shared a speaking look, rife with cynicism.
“They think he killed the man and left his body in the crypt as some sort o’ sacrifice or offerin’.”
“In that case, it would have made much more sense for the good friar to have left him on the remains of the altar in the ruins of the abbey,” Gage muttered dryly.
Bree frowned. “I’m only repeatin’ what the maids were whisperin’. I didna say it made sense.”
“We know,” I assured her. Bree might be more superstitious than some, but