She looked up then, her gaze meeting his. “You think there are so many ex-riflemen in London that they don’t know each other?”
Jamie Knox was seated at a rear table in an eating house off Houndsditch when Sebastian drew out the chair opposite him and sat down.
“Please, do have a seat,” said the tavern owner, cutting a slice of roast mutton.
“I’m looking for an ex-rifleman named Jud Foy.”
Knox waved his fork in an expansive gesture that took in the simple wainscoted room with its closely crowded tables and chairs, its cheerfully glowing fire. “Don’t see him here, do you?”
“But you do know him.”
“I know lots of people. It’s one of the hazards of running a tavern.”
Sebastian studied Knox’s lean, high-boned face. The likeness between Sebastian and this man was startling. Both had the same deep-set golden eyes beneath straight dark brows, and similarly molded lips. But it was the differences that intrigued Sebastian the most. In Knox’s case, the nose inclined more toward the aquiline, and there was a faint cleft in his chin. Characteristics he inherited from his barmaid mother? Sebastian wondered. Or from the unknown father both men probably shared?
“You still all fired up about Eisler?” asked Knox, stabbing his fork into a potato.
“I’m still looking into his death, yes.”
Knox chewed slowly, then swallowed. “What’s it got to do with Foy?”
“I don’t know that it has anything to do with him. But the man has been menacing my wife.”
A faint gleam of amusement deepened the gold in the other man’s eyes. “I heard about this morning’s incident at Charing Cross.”
“Did you, now?”
Knox reached for his ale. “Foy’s not right in his head.”
“I heard he was kicked by a mule.”
“That’s the official story.”
Sebastian laid his forearms on the tabletop and leaned into them. “Care to elaborate?”
Knox shrugged. “I heard he was found near the stables with his head bashed in. Could’ve been a mule. Could also have been a rifle butt.”
“Why would someone want to cave the man’s head in?”
“They say Foy had just testified at some officer’s court-martial.”
“This was after Talavera?”
Knox shrugged. “Could be. I’ve forgotten the details. The man isn’t exactly one of my boon intimates. You did catch the part about him not being right in the head, didn’t you?”
“Do you know where I could find him?”
Knox cut another slice of mutton, chewed, and swallowed.
Sebastian said, “You do know, don’t you?”
“If I did, why would I tell you?”
“I think Foy might be in danger.”
Knox huffed a soft laugh. “From Lord and Lady Devlin?”
“No. From the man—or men—who killed Daniel Eisler.”
Knox pushed his plate away and reached for his ale. He wrapped both hands around the tankard, then simply sat silently staring at it.
Sebastian waited.
“I’ve heard he keeps a room at the Three Moons, near St. Sepulchre, in Holburn.” Knox drained his tankard and pushed to his feet. “Don’t make me regret telling you.”
Chapter 42
J
ud Foy was coming down the inn’s rickety back steps, his lips pursed in a tuneless whistle, when Sebastian reached out to clench his fist in the man’s foul, tattered coat front and swing him around to slam his back against the near wall.
“Here, here,” bleated Foy, his hat tipping sideways, his watery eyes going wide. “What’d you want to go and do that to me for?”
Sebastian searched the man’s mad, gaunt features for some ghost of the stout, brash sergeant who’d testified for the defense at Matt Tyson’s court-martial three years before. But the man was so changed as to be virtually unrecognizable. “I have a problem with people menacing my wife.”
“Me? I didn’t menace her. If anything, she menaced me. Shoved her little muff gun in my face, she did, and threatened to blow my head off.”
“You were following her. Watching her.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her. I swear I wouldn’t.”
“You threatened her cat.”
“I don’t like black cats. Ask anybody. They’re bad luck.”
“Harm a hair on that cat’s body, and I’ll kill you.”
“Over a cat?”
“Yes.”
“And they say I’m touched in the head.”
“Tell me what happened to you after Talavera.”
Foy’s face went slack with confusion. “What you mean?”
“How did you get hurt?”
“Don’t rightly know. They found me near the stables with my head stove in and bits of my skull poking out. Thought I was a goner, they did. But I fooled ’em, didn’t I?” He closed his eyes and huffed his eerie, soundless laugh.
“You don’t remember what happened to you?”
“I don’t remember much of anything from before then.”
“You’d recently testified at a court-martial. Do you remember the name of the