A Broken Vessel Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a lady, it’s him she would have wrote to, not one of them others.”
    “What were they like, the other two men?”
    “This here is Bristles.” She held up the russet calico handkerchief, as if introducing the man it came from. “He kept a shop, I could tell by his duds. He was very natty—wore a clean white crumpler, with his gills standing up all straight and neat.” She held up her forefingers, imitating the corners of a turned-up collar. “He had on a plain brown frock coat, and his waistcoat and trousers was buff. He must’ve been about fifty, dark hair going grey, brown eyes, and his chin was stubbly, like his beard growed faster than he had time to shave it.”
    “You’re very observant.”
    “You has to be, if you goes with a lot of coves like I does. You learns to drop down to ’em slap off, so you don’t pick up none of the wrong kind. ’Cept sometimes you guesses wrong.”
    Her lips twisted. She took up the third handkerchief, a square of cheap, nondescript grey silk. “This is Blinkers. I called him that on account of he wears specs. He was young—younger than you, most like—and rigged out in rusty black, like a clerk. Which I expect he was—his forks was stained with ink. He was skinny, his hair was brown, and so was his eyes, but you couldn’t see into ’em very well, on account of his specs. I don’t think he wanted nobody to know what he was thinking: he was muffin-faced, never flashed his ivories, never showed no feelings at all—till we got upstairs, that is. Then he pitched into me. Some coves is like that—it brings ’em on, hurting a gal.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    He was looking at her with that concern in his eyes again. She could not bear it. She leaned toward him, smiling, letting her torn gown gape at the neck. His eyes dropped briefly—so he was human, after all—then returned to her face. “The third man was a gentleman, you say?”
    “Well, he was the second, really. He come in between. He took me into a hack with him. He give me a ride, and I give him one, if you get me drift.”
    “Quite.”
    “He was a dimber cove, he was! Dark gold hair; blue eyes you could dive into and drown, and a figure as could warm up a dead gal. He was rigged out in a blue tailcoat, with white trousers and shiny black stampers, and miles of white frill on his shirt front. He flashed a gold ticker and a bunch of seals, and a ring that was an out-and-out slasher: gold, with a skull in the middle, and a sparkler in every corner.”
    “Good God.” Mr. Kestrel caught up the white cambric handkerchief. “ CFA . Sally, I know who that man was. He was the Honourable Charles Avondale, Lord Carbury’s younger son.”
    “Cor! He really was a nob, then! And you knows him?”
    “Not well, but we cross paths from time to time. The ring you described is a family heirloom—he wears it all the time. The initials fit, and so does your description. I’ll lay you any odds, Avondale is the man you call Blue Eyes.”
    “And it’s him I pinched the letter from, don’cha think? He’s the only one as’d have a real lady in his family—one who’d write a letter like this.”
    He shook his head. “If Blue Eyes is Avondale, it’s very unlikely the letter was written by a relative of his. His father is a peer, and the whole family is prominent in society. A lady couldn’t very well go missing in that family without attracting a good deal of attention. And as far as I know, all the Carbury ladies are accounted for.”
    “All right, you’re such a downy one, you guess which of them three coves she wrote to.”
    “Perhaps none of them. If you think about it, there are all kinds of other explanations. The man you stole the letter from may have been entrusted with it by a friend, or had it sent to him by mistake, or even found it in the street. Or else—”
    “Or else what?”
    “This woman says she’s being spied upon, and she’s afraid someone may take the letter from her before she can post