and parks vanished beneath a warren of squalid hovels built of wood and given over to beggars and thieves and costermongers of the meanest sort.
The Pilgrim, on a narrow lane just off Castle Street, was technically licensed to sell beer as well as spirits but appeared to cater mainly to those who preferred their alcohol in the form of cheap gin.
“A go of Cork,” said Sebastian, walking up to the counter.
The gin slinger, a stout, aging woman with a massive bosom swelling out of the bodice of her ragged, dirty dress, looked at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes as she splashed gin into a smudged glass. “Wot ye doin’ ’ere? We don’t need yer kind ’ere. Yer kind is always trouble.”
“I’m looking for Jacques Collot. Know where I might find him?”
“Collot?” She sniffed and shook her head. “Never ’eard o’ ’im.”
Sebastian laid a half crown on the stained countertop. “If you do happen to see him, tell him I have a job he might be interested in, would you?”
“I told ye, I ain’t never ’eard o’ ’im.” But the coin disappeared.
Sebastian went to settle at one of the rickety tables at the rear of the room, the glass of pungent gin twirling back and forth between his fingertips. He even raised it as if to drink a few times, although he was careful not to let it touch his lips.
A sluggish fire burned on the shallow hearth, filling the room with a bitter smoke that didn’t encourage many of the patrons to linger. Sebastian watched a steady stream of men file into the low-ceilinged chamber, throw down a shot of gin at a penny a glass, then leave again. As far as he could tell, the glasses were never washed.
After some five or ten minutes, a stocky, middle-aged man with graying side-whiskers and one strangely wayward eye walked through the door. Bypassing the counter, he came straight to pull out the chair opposite Sebastian and sit.
They say Collot’s got a wandering eye, can’t control which way it looks, Calhoun had told Sebastian before he left Brook Street. He’s maybe forty or forty-five; about my height but carrying more flesh.
“I hear that you search for Collot,” the man with the faulty eye said in a heavy French accent. “I am not he, mais je puis—er, I can perhaps find him for you, if you wish. Yes?”
Sebastian nodded to the slatternly barmaid, who slapped a shot of gin down in front of the Frenchman, exchanged a veiled glance with him, and went away again.
The man downed his gin in one long pull and licked his lips. “You have a job, yes?”
“For Collot.”
“Collot, he is my good friend since many years. You tell me, I tell him.”
“You knew him in Paris, did you?”
“Mais oui. We were the children together. In Montmartre. You know Paris?”
“I heard Collot was a jewel thief in Paris.”
The man leaned back in his seat, his mouth hanging open in a parody of shock. “A thief? Non. Who says such a thing?”
“The same people who say the nob in Newgate didn’t kill Daniel Eisler. They say Collot did it.”
The man shoved up from his chair, ready to run, his wandering eye rolling wildly. “Monsieur!”
“I suggest you sit down,” said Sebastian quietly. “There are two Bow Street runners waiting out the front for you, and two more out the back.” He punctuated the lie with a smile. “You can talk to them if you prefer, but I suspect you might find it more pleasant to deal with me.”
Collot sank back down into his seat, his voice hoarse. “What do you want from me?”
“How did you know Eisler?”
“But I didn’t say I—”
“You knew him. Tell me how.”
Collot licked his lips again, and Sebastian signaled the barmaid for another shot of gin.
“How?” Sebastian repeated after the woman left.
“I knew him years ago.”
“In Paris?”
Collot downed the second gin and shook his head. “Amsterdam.”
“When was this?”
“’Ninety-two.”
“You sold him jewels?”
The Frenchman’s lip curled, his nose wrinkling like that of a man who has just smelled something foul. “He was scum. The worst kind of scum. He’d as soon cheat you as look at you, and then he’d laugh in your face and call you a fool.”
“Did he cheat you?”
As if aware of the pit yawning before him, Collot drew himself up straighter in his chair. “Me? Mais non. Not me.”
Sebastian tilted his gin back and forth between his fingertips, aware of the Frenchman’s eyes upon it. “The jewels you sold to Eisler in Amsterdam in ’ninety-two,