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The bench sitters shook their heads. “A gang, they were,” Will added. “Spoke some gibberish.”

“Coulda been gypsies,” suggested another bench sitter.

Harry ventured a glance at the blind man. It was a rare moment when Lucy Holbrook left the old man alone. Adam Pickersgill had been Harry’s objective for weeks, but finding him had only deepened the mystery. Adam was tall and gaunt with a shock of white hair above a linen band that circled his head, covering his sightless eyes. Harry guessed his age to be near eighty and credited Lucy with keeping the old man clean and combed and neatly dressed.

Most days Adam sat on his bench with his brushes and blacking or a pile of silver and a pot of polish. The bench sitters knew little about him and cared less. Most of them simply considered the old man a fixture at the inn. He’d been there next to Lucy Holbrook as long as anyone remembered. Sheepishly, John Simkins, a merchant who sold water flasks, had confessed that as boys they had teased Adam and tried to provoke him whenever Lucy led him out of the inn for a bit of sun and air. How the girl had come to be responsible for the old man no one knew.

Harry turned back to the bench sitters, who were talking about roads and robberies and boasting that any one of them would have been a better match for the highwaymen than the coachman had been. It was pot-valiant talk, the kind Harry had heard from raw recruits on the night before battle. As the talk grew louder and bolder, the bench sitters glanced often at the door of the inn’s private dining room. Harry suspected that at least three of them were working up the courage to solicit Lucy’s hand in marriage.

“Where’s Miss Holbrook?” he asked when talk of the robbery lapsed.

All the heads nodded at the door on the other side of the entry, and Will spoke for the group. “At luncheon with her lady friends.”

Will wiped the foam from his lip. “Here’s a puzzle for you, Captain,” he said. “Why did Sir Geoffrey send his gold to Hell?”

Will, a fair-haired giant of man, was the wit of the group, and his companions waited for the punch line.

Harry shrugged.

“So he’ll have some when he gets there,” Will said. The bench sitters laughed and slapped their thighs.

“Geoffrey ran away.” Adam Pickersgill’s deep voice boomed out from his corner, stilling the laughter.

The men drew on their pipes. Harry nodded to them and turned to the old man.

“Geoffrey ran away,” the old man repeated. His body shook the bench under him.

Harry crossed the room and put a steadying hand on the old man’s shoulder, motioning Frank at the tap for a pint of small beer. When it arrived, Harry lifted the old man’s big square hand and closed it around the pewter cup as he’d seen Lucy do.

Adam drank his beer in long drafts that left a foam moustache above his upper lip. He banged his cup down on the table, spilling ale. “Adam must not go. Adam must stay.”

Queenie shifted her position in the old man’s lap and jumped down to arch against Harry’s booted calf. He leaned down to stroke the creature’s head.

Adam stilled and cocked his head to the side. “You like cats very much.”

“I do,” Harry agreed.

The old man might be blind, but he was good at detecting a person’s presence and recognizing people even before they spoke. If Harry could get Adam talking, he might eventually say something useful about the case. Harry suspected that Adam’s odd declarations were part of a coherent story, fragments of a narrative in which one man ran away while another stood his ground, perhaps in the face of murder.

“Geoffrey ran away,” Adam repeated, this time in the volume of ordinary conversation.

Harry gave Adam’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “How’s the ale today, Adam?”

Adam’s face crinkled into dozens of lines around the strip of unbleached linen. He reached out his hand for Harry’s and gave it two long energetic pumps, like a man working a tap handle. “Tooth and Nail ale very good. You like yer ale very dark, like coffee.”

“That I do, Adam.”

From the benches came another mention of the robbery of Sir Geoffrey’s Rocket passenger coach. Adam stirred, his gnarled hands pulling at the cloth over his knees. Harry sat down beside him, and Queenie leapt up into Harry’s lap. He stroked the cat’s fur and considered how to get the truth out of the old man’s muddled brain.

* * * *

The scrape of spoons against dishes sounded loud in Lucy’s ears, and she realized that the conversation had died and her friends were looking at her. She had no idea what they had been speaking of the past half hour.

“Lucy, child,” Margaret broke the silence. “We really can’t bear to think of you here alone, so far from friends.”

Lucy held her tongue. Alone? She wanted to laugh at the notion. When was an innkeeper ever alone?

“A suitable place must be found to be sure, and we will help you.” Cassandra spoke as if the matter had been decided over plates of pudding. “But you must quit the inn as soon as possible. Within a fortnight, at the latest.”