Page 23 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)

D usk was falling by the time Sebastian made it back to Brook Street. At some point in the late afternoon the rain had finally eased off, but the air was still cool and full of a mist that haloed the rows of streetlamps and clung eerily to the chimneys and rooftops of the city. As he paid off the hackney, he was aware of a roughly dressed man with a misshapen hat pulled low over his eyes watching from the shadows of a nearby house’s area steps.

The hackney was still pulling away when Sebastian tightened his fist around the handle of the sword stick he carried and turned to walk straight toward the lurking man. “Who the hell are you?”

To his surprise, the man stood his ground. He was small and wiry, with lively blue eyes, lank, filthy brown hair heavily threaded with gray, and a week’s growth of dark beard shadowing his cheeks. When he spoke, his voice was a harsh, torn whisper. “The name’s McGregor. Henry Otis McGregor. The Third.”

Whatever Sebastian had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You’re Half-Hanged Harry?”

The man sniffed. “That’s what they call me.” He was so short the top of his head barely reached Sebastian’s shoulder. In age he could have been anywhere between forty-five and seventy, his nose crooked, his face dark and weathered by his years of toiling beneath the hot sun of New South Wales. Botany Bay was hard on a man; few convicts survived their fourteen—or even seven—years of transportation. Fewer still ever found a way to return.

“Why are you here?” said Sebastian.

“Why? Why? ” The man’s chin jutted out pugnaciously. “Because I don’t like what I’m hearing, that’s why.”

“Oh? And exactly what are you hearing?”

“That they’re tryin’ t’ pin that bloody nob’s murder on me, that’s what I’m hearin’. As if the nasty bugger weren’t a big enough pain in me arse when he was alive, now he’s dead and he’s still messin’ wit me.”

“You’re saying you didn’t kill him?”

“Of course I didn’t kill him! Think I’d be standin’ here if I’d killed him? I didn’t have nothin’ t’ do wit whatever happened t’ the bleedin’ mutton-shunter—although if ye ask me, the fine people of this here city ought t’ get together and hand whoever did do it a reward, rather than trying to string up an old coffin dodger like me. Because if ever there was a rum character, it was that blotter.”

Sebastian studied the man’s angry, animated features. “If you didn’t kill him, then why were you following him?”

McGregor flashed a wide, largely toothless grin. “Jist wanted t’ rile him up a bit—that and maybe scare him some while I was at it. Make him look over his shoulder and wonder what was gonna happen t’ him. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“Aye. How else is a man like me gonna get back at somebody like him?”

By killing him, thought Sebastian, although all he said was, “So where were you last Saturday evening?”

Half-Hanged Harry’s gaze slid sideways. “I was around.”

“?‘Around’?”

“Aye. Around.”

“That sounds less than conclusive.”

McGregor’s eyes narrowed as if he didn’t quite understand but still suspected he was not being complimented.

“You’re brave,” said Sebastian, “waylaying me outside my own house.”

“I ain’t waylayin’ nobody. Ain’t no law agin talking t’ a man, now, is there?”

“What made you so certain I wouldn’t call the watch on you?”

McGregor tapped the side of his forehead and grinned. “Watch ain’t come on yet. Ye think I don’t know such things?”

It was one of the criticisms frequently leveled by those trying to establish a centralized London police force to replace the traditional parish-based system of night watchmen—that the men were not only too old and too few and far between, but that they slowly walked set rounds, shouting the time and weather, so that any enterprising lawbreaker could easily avoid them.

Sebastian said, “I’m not entirely clear on what you think I can do for you.”

“Y’er in thick wit Bow Street, ain’t ye? Ye can tell ’em I didn’t have nothin’ t’ do wit what happened t’ that bloody duke’s son. Ye hear me? Nothin’!”

“You could always try telling them yourself.”

McGregor’s eyes widened until the whites showed clearly around their dark blue centers. “Think I’m addlepated, do ye?” He began backing away. “Well, I ain’t.”

Sebastian suspected that no man who’d suffered through what this one had experienced in the last fourteen or fifteen years could still be entirely sane, but he kept that opinion to himself. “So who do you think killed Farnsworth?”

Half-Hanged Harry stopped backing. “How would I know?”

“Because you were following him.”

His expression slid from fearful to sly and knowing. “Did I say that?” His eyes danced with silent amusement. “I don’t remember sayin’ that.”

“You do realize that the easiest way to save your neck is to tell Bow Street what you know?”

The amusement fled as Harry’s hand crept up to touch his throat. “I don’t like talkin’ about me neck.”

“You might even be eligible for a reward if your information proves useful.”

“I ain’t no squeaker. Ask anybody, they’ll tell ye: Harry McGregor was never a squeaker. It’s enough t’ make a body wish he’d stayed in Sydney Town, it is—that and this endless infernal rain. I swear, I’m half tempted to go back, I am.”

“Why did you come back to England?”

“I don’t know.” The animation had drained from the man’s face, leaving him looking bleak, sad, and lost. “Seems like I ask myself that all the time, and I jist don’t know the answer anymore.”