A Death in Norfolk by Ashley Gardner

Author:Ashley Gardner [Gardner, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Murder, Mystery, England, london, Regency, art theft, Norfolk, Historical mystery, Cambridge, rubens, windmills, North Sea
Publisher: Ashley Gardner
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Fourteen

James Denis hired men of a type--most of them former fighters, all of them large and strong. Many, but not all, had criminal pasts. Six had accompanied Cooper to Norfolk to search for the lost artwork, which still had not turned up. Denis had brought three more with him. All nine filed in, one after the other, sat opposite me, and answered my questions.

I'd been used to thinking of them collectively--Denis's men--but as each came in and either stood or sat in front of me, they solidified into individuals, men with separate pasts, characters, ambitions.

One man told me he had a son he was raising on his own, his wife having passed six years before. He worked for Denis because Denis paid so much, and if a man kept his head down and got on, he had a place for life. He'd tucked his son away in a school in Scotland, far from Denis's exploits.

Another, younger man, who called himself Tom and gave no surname, had been thought slow in the Yorkshire village where he'd grown up. At age fourteen, his father had more or less turned him out to fend for himself. He'd become an exhibition fighter for trainers who also thought him slow, but had been tossed out when he hurt other, more valuable fighters.

Tom had then worked his way south toward London, doing odd jobs, usually being paid only in a meal and a place to sleep. People feared him and did not like him lingering, so he'd never stayed anywhere more than a day or two. When he'd reached London, street toughs had lit into him, and Cooper had happened by during the fight. Liking how Tom had held his own against four men, Cooper had broken up the fight and brought the young man to Denis. Tom had been working for Denis ever since.

He related all this in short sentences with long pauses between. Not so much slow, I saw, as careful. Tom was happy in his employment now, with no ambition to go anywhere else. He was grateful to Cooper, but he did not know where Cooper was, nor did he know what had happened to Ferguson. He'd been searching Easton's attics for the art when the cry had gone up at the windmill, and he'd run out to see what was the matter.

I believed him. The way he spoke, leaving out no detail but not embellishing, told me that here was a man not comfortable with lying.

The next person to speak to me was the man who'd beaten me on the boat a year ago, the same one who'd stood behind me in the dining room when Denis had explained that he owned me.

He sprawled in a chair, folded his arms, and grinned at me. "What am I supposed to tell you, Captain?"

I shrugged. "Where you think Cooper is, who you think killed Ferguson. Anything unusual you've seen these last few days."

"Besides you poking your nose into our business? Not a damned thing.

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