“I beg your pardon,” I said. “Did you know Warrilow at all in Antigua?”
“Never met the man until he stepped aboard ship,” Laybourne snapped. “A bad day when that happened. He was a menace.”
“Yes, I have heard he was unpleasant.”
“Sneering, small-minded, pompous idiot who pointed out the supposed shortcomings of others to cover up his own.” Laybourne shoved his spoon into his mouth, stopping his words.
The anger in his eyes struck me. He boiled with it.
“You quarreled with him,” I ventured.
“Everyone did.” Unlike Fitzgerald, Laybourne didn’t bother to swallow before he talked, spitting pieces of oats onto the table. “If you think I climbed the garden wall and then in through his window to—how was it done? Stab him, cosh him, strangle him?—you are mistaken. I am not a well man. Bloody malarial islands nearly killed me. I can barely walk up a flight of stairs and am reduced to eating this mush.”
He slammed his spoon into the porridge, spattering the sticky mess. He shoved the bowl away from him.
“I am terribly sorry. I know what it is to be laid up.” I hefted my walking stick then tapped my left knee with it. “Took me almost a year to be up on this leg again, and even now it pains me in this sort of weather.”
“You were an army man. Injuries are to be expected. I went to the islands to make a bloody fortune. Huh. All I got for my troubles was the ague.”
And he was enraged. Had that rage enabled him to march to Warrilow’s—using the conventional means of the street and the front door—and kill him? I wondered who all Mrs. Beadle’s grandson had seen that night.
“I suppose not everyone can grow rich there.” Eden hadn’t been able to find a way to make his life in the islands profitable. Warrilow had been a small farmer only able to afford rooms in this end of London.
“I never said—” Laybourne broke off. He coughed heavily, lifted his teacup, and gulped. The brandy from my flask must have soothed him, for he quieted.
“What exactly did you do there?” I asked when he’d recovered.
His suspicion returned. “Why do you want to know?”
I shrugged. “I might make a go of it myself. Eden said Antigua was beautiful, despite its mugginess.”
“Major Eden is a dreamer. Not a very practical bloke, you might have noticed. The only way a man survives in the Indies is through hard work and luck. You need both. I don’t think you’d have the luck, Captain. You’re already a cripple.”
I hardly thought of myself as such, but I nodded as though not offended. “I suppose one needs both to survive in London as well,” I said diplomatically.
Laybourne huffed in mocking amusement. “One does. I’ll be quit of this place soon enough.” He glanced around the room. “Sooner would be better.”
“Not all of London is this dingy,” I said.
“Yes, it is. Fog so thick you can cut it. Rain and wind when fog’s not present. In the summer the river stinks of all the dung washed into it. That is, even more than it does in the winter. No, I’m finished with London.”
I had the feeling that if I asked outright where he planned to go, he’d not answer. I tried a more oblique approach. “I too will be heading for the country soon. Oxfordshire.”
“Not far enough, in my opinion. Me, I’m for the north. The open green of the Yorkshire Dales.”
“Ah.” I pretended to lean back comfortably, which was impossible in this chair. “I have heard of its beauty. One of the soldiers in my regiment came from York itself.”
“I’m off to High Harrogate. Right against the Dales.” The angry light in Laybourne’s eyes faded, and he took on a fond expression. “Cool and green. I think I’ll grow well there.”
“You don’t sound like a Yorkshireman. My soldier spoke in speech so thick I could barely understand him at first.”
“I lost my accent in my twenty years in Antigua. Deliberately. A Yorkshireman is considered thick, the judgement rendered as soon as he opens his mouth. Those like yourself couldn’t, as you say, understand a word.” He shifted his voice to the soft vowels of a northern Englishman. “But no more a’ that for me.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I wish you well. Now, if you can tell me no more about Warrilow, I’ll leave you in peace. Do you have any idea who might have killed him?”
Laybourne sent me an impatient look and reverted to his neutral accent. “Anyone who met the man. Who knows? A needle in a haystack, you’re looking for. He infuriated the captain of the ship, the quartermaster, the first mate, many of the sailors, all of the passengers, and the customs and excise men who boarded us when we landed. I saw him railing at them, trying to teach them their job. I imagine he angered every person he passed between the docks and his house, including his landlady. She did it, I wager.”
That was always possible, though Mrs. Beadle seemed too easygoing to lose her temper at a bad boarder. I rather thought she’d be more likely to put up with him for the rent money.
I rose. “So has everyone I have spoken to about him has stated. I am understanding that Warrilow was a foul person.”
“He was. Trust me.” Laybourne retrieved his bowl and began stabbing at the porridge, which must be ice-cold by now.
“Again, thank you for your time, and best wishes for your travels to High Harrogate.”
“Aye,” Laybourne said, the Yorkshireman back.
I paused at the door. “By the bye, do you have any idea why Warrilow should have an army carbine? Did he ever speak of such a thing?”
I turned back casually, rewarded with an unguarded expression from Laybourne. His eyes widened, absolute fear flashing in them, before his face resumed a careful blank.
“He never said nowt about a gun.” Laybourne scooped up more porridge. “Talked a lot of rot, but never about that.” He shoved in the mouthful, wincing as though he regretted it.
I expected him to ask why I’d posed the question, but Laybourne only chewed and glared at me, finished with the conversation. I gave him a polite bow and left him to it.
I MET BREWSTER OUTSIDE, he a few steps down the kitchen stairs, leaning against the wall. He pushed himself off and leapt up the final steps to join me.
“Couldn’t stick it below stairs,” he said by way of greeting. “Bad-tempered cook and maids, filthy place. Stingy too. Wouldn’t part with a pint of bitter or even a drop of coffee.” His frown was formidable.
“Did they have any information about Laybourne?”
“Oh, yes.” He fell into step with me as we moved down Cable Street toward Wells Street. “They don’t like him. He complains about everything imaginable. Hates the food, hates the lodgings, hates London, hates everyone he meets. Which presumably includes you now.”
“Possibly. Any chance that he could have slipped through the gardens and murdered Warrilow?”
“Good-sized wall between them and the square behind. I looked. Garden choked with junk. You couldn’t swing a cat there. No gates. ’Sides, Mr. Laybourne was abed at seven in the evening the day he arrived, which is the night Mr. Warrilow was done.”
“Can they be certain he stayed there?”