“You didn’t quarrel with Preston because of it?”
“Well. . we may’ve had words when we met by chance in Sloane Square one day. But nothing serious. No, no; I’m a humble man; can’t expect to compete with those blessed with deep pockets.”
“What is the going price for a head?”
“Depends on who the head originally belonged to, I suppose. But I couldn’t really say. Virtually everything here was given to me-or my father or grandfather-to be put on display for all to see.”
“I take it Preston bought many of the objects he collected?”
“He did, yes. But then, he could afford to, couldn’t he?”
“And you’re saying the sexton who found Suffolk’s head took it to Preston?”
Thistlewood’s enormous nose quivered with a renewed rush of indignation. “The very day I identified it!”
“Did he actually take the head to Alford House and offer it to Preston himself?”
“I suppose. I mean, he must’ve, right?”
Rather than answer, Sebastian let his gaze wander, again, around that extraordinary collection. “Who would one contact, if he were interested in trafficking in rare objects of an historical nature?”
“Well, there’s Christie’s, of course.”
“What if one were interested in something a little more. . illicit?”
Thistlewood gave a quick look around, as if to make certain no one was listening, then leaned in close to whisper, “There’s a shop in Houndsditch, kept by an Irishwoman name of Priss Mulligan. She carries all sorts of things. Some of her stock comes from émigrés and others down on their luck, but not all. Or so I’m told.”
“Provides a market for stolen goods, does she?”
Thistlewood nodded solemnly. “Works with smugglers bringing items in from the Continent too. Only, you didn’t hear that from me, if you get my drift. She’s not someone you want to get riled at you. Folks who cross Priss Mulligan have a nasty habit of disappearing-or turning up dead in horrible ways.” He closed his eyes and gave a little shudder. “Horrible ways.”
“Do you think Stanley Preston could have run afoul of her?”
“Could’ve. Hadn’t thought about it, but there’s no denying he definitely could’ve. Heard he bought a Spanish reliquary from her a month or so ago. Some saint’s foot, although I can’t recall precisely whose, at the moment. Thing is, Preston had a temper-hot enough to override his sense, when he was in a passion. And anyone who deals with Priss Mulligan had best keep their wits about them at all times.” Thistlewood paused, his tongue flicking out to lick his dry lips. “You. . you won’t be telling her where you heard any of this, will you?”
“I can be very discreet,” said Sebastian. “Tell me this: What do you think Preston was doing at Bloody Bridge that night?”
Thistlewood’s eyes went wide. “Don’t know. Does seem a queer place for him to be, don’t it?”
“Any chance he might have been taking possession of some new object for his collection?”
“At Bloody Bridge? In the middle of the night? Whatever for?”
“Perhaps the object-or objects-were illicitly acquired by the seller.”
“But. . why Bloody Bridge?”
Sebastian had no answer for that.
He studied the curiosity collector’s slack, seemingly innocent face. “Where were you Sunday night?”
“Me?” Thistlewood’s gaze faltered beneath Sebastian’s scrutiny and drifted away. “Same place I am every night: here.”
“Never left?”
“Not for a moment, from noon till past midnight.” He cleared his throat. “Now; shall we move on to the next room?”
“Please.”
Sebastian continued to listen with only half his attention while Thistlewood droned on about Roman pitchers and Pacific dart guns. He figured it was at most a mile-probably less-from the coffeehouse to Bloody Bridge. It would have been easy enough for Thistlewood to walk there, whack off Preston’s head with one of the many swords in his collection, and hurry back, all within half an hour.
It was certainly a possibility; from the sound of things, Thistlewood was angry enough about Preston’s purchase of Suffolk’s head to have decided to exact such a ghoulish revenge.
Except, how would Thistlewood have known to seek his victim that night at Bloody Bridge?
Chapter 20
“Ni-ew mackerel, six a shilling!”
Sebastian pushed his way through the ragged crowd of rough men, desperate-looking women, and sharp-faced, grimy urchins clogging the narrow lane known as Houndsditch. The decaying, centuries-old buildings rising from the pavement cast the lane in deep shadow, their upper stories leaning precariously toward one another until it seemed they might almost touch overhead.
“Wi-ild Hampshire rabbits, two a shilling.”
“Buy my trap, my rat trap!”
Once, Houndsditch had been nothing more than a defensive trench dug along the western edge of London’s city walls. Running southeast from Bishopsgate to Aldgate, it eventually grew so foul with refuse and offal and the bloated carcasses of dead dogs that city officials ordered it filled in. Never a fashionable area, it was occupied today mainly by immigrants and their descendants, particularly Huguenots from France, Jews from the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland, and, increasingly, the Irish. The poverty of the residents made it a center for rag fairs and secondhand shops. Crude stalls piled with everything from battered tin saucepans and worn-out boots to cheap tallow candles lined the street, while bellowing vendors dispensed hot tea from cans and guarded piles of sliced bread and butter from the hordes of ragged, starving children. The air was thick with the smells of herring, smoke, effluvia, and despair.
Priss Mulligan’s establishment stood on the corner of Houndsditch and a dark, narrow alley that curled toward Devonshire Square. Only two stories tall, with filthy, small-paned windows and sagging lintels, the structure looked to be in the final stages of dilapidation, its walls so darkened by grime as to appear almost black. Sebastian had to lean hard against the battered, warped door; a small brass bell jangled as it swung open.
He’d been expecting something similar to Basil Thistlewood’s eclectic collection of rare treasures mixed indiscriminately with the curious or merely odd. But this was more like a thieves’ den from a child’s fable, with exquisitely painted porcelain vases, snuffboxes with intricate filigreed lids, willowy Chinese maidens carved from ivory, gilded saints’ images, even a life-sized winged horse of glistening white marble.
He turned in a slow circle, trying to take it all in. When he came back around, he found himself being studied by a pair of beady black eyes.
“Who might you be, then?” demanded Priss Mulligan.
She couldn’t have stood more than four foot ten and was nearly as broad as she was tall, with thick dark hair and creamy white skin and puffy round arms that ended in incredibly small, childlike hands.
“A potential customer?” Sebastian suggested.
She gave a disbelieving grunt. “’Tis possible, I’m supposing. But is it likely?” She pursed her lips and shot a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby can. “Nah.”
In age, she could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, her massive hips churning beneath her high-waisted, brown bombazine gown as she came forward, her gaze never leaving his face. “You ain’t a beak; that I can tell, just looking at you.”
“No,” agreed Sebastian.
She sniffed and wiped her lips with the back of one hand.
Sebastian said, “I understand you recently sold a Spanish reliquary to a friend of mine.”
“Oh? And who might your friend be?”
“Stanley Preston.”
“Him as just got his head cut off?”
“So you did know him?”