Regardless of who had broken in, that person or persons had intended harm. They’d damaged the business, albeit in a relatively minor way, but there was no reason to believe they would stop there.
By the end of the day, when Kit watched Wayland and Mulligan lock the workshop up tight, heavy chain, padlock, and all, then parted from them and headed for Queen Square and a hackney to ferry him home, he’d come to the conclusion that it was time he met the Stenshaw lads.
* * *
As midnight approached, Kit and Smiggs stood hunched into their coats in the alley that ran down the side of the Cockle and Crake, a seedy dockside watering hole. They were waiting for the Stenshaw lads to decide it was time to stagger home.
Having learned from Ollie that Cedric and James Stenshaw frequently slipped out of their mother’s house late at night—when she thought them safely tucked up in their beds—to visit some tavern, Kit and Smiggs had been lurking in the shadows of Trinity Street when the Stenshaws had slipped out of the house.
They’d tracked the pair here—no respectable tavern but a gathering place for the dregs of the docks. Smiggs had stuck his head through the door and confirmed the pair were there, sitting in a shadowy booth and downing pints of, in Smiggs’s words, “whatever piss this place is serving as ale.”
That had been nearly an hour ago, and the cold had long ago seeped through Kit’s coat. Rather than his usual greatcoat, for the occasion he’d had Gordon find an older, more threadbare jacket, a caution he was now regretting.
He blew on his hands.
Then the door to the Cockle and Crake swung open, and on a gust of warmer air, two slight figures stumbled into the street.
The Stenshaw lads were well away.
Kit smiled wolfishly, then glanced at Smiggs, who nodded. Together, they stepped out of the alley and followed silently in the Stenshaw boys’ weaving wake.
The youths were so drunk, they didn’t notice the larger men trailing them.
As he’d arranged with Smiggs, Kit waited until the boys reached the runnel that ran down the side of their mother’s house.
Then he and Smiggs pounced. They each caught one boy by the collar, hauling him up and back and slapping a gloved hand over his mouth to muffle any cry.
Once he and Smiggs had the boys subdued—simply by twisting their collars until they were in danger of choking—Kit lowered his head and murmured, loud enough for both boys to hear, “You don’t want to rouse the household and have your mother see you like this.”
Both boys froze.
In the dimness, Kit smiled. “Good. Now, if you remain quiet and answer my questions truthfully, my friend and I might let you go without any further damage. Do you understand?”
Above the gloves covering half their faces, both boys’ eyes showed white, and they quickly nodded.
“Right, then.” Kit eased his hand from the face of the boy he held, and the youth sucked in a quick breath. But he made no sound beyond a faint, frightened whimper.
“First,” Kit said, “you can tell me about the fire you set behind the school on Saturday.”
He didn’t have to press; both boys immediately started gabbling about how it had been only a lark, and that they’d just thought to make their mother happy by getting the school to move, and much more in that vein. At no point did either boy think to deny they’d set and lit the fire.
Once they ran down—by which time both were sniveling—Kit said, “Very well. Now, what about the break-in at the workshop on the Grove?”
The boy facing him blinked at him uncomprehendingly, while the boy Ki
t held before him turned his head to frown in puzzlement at Kit. “What?”
They weren’t that good actors; they weren’t acting at all.
“We don’t know about any workshop,” came from the boy Smiggs held, while the boy Kit restrained blurted, “We haven’t been anywhere near the Grove.”
Both boys’ eyes were wide; Kit could sense their welling panic, no doubt occasioned by his sudden switch to events unknown to them.
Kit met Smiggs’s gaze, saw his longtime henchman fractionally shake his head, and inwardly sighed. He thought for a moment, then lightly shook the boy whose collar he held. “Have you been following the lady from the school, thinking to unnerve her?”
All he received were puzzled blinks.
Lips tightening, he persisted, “Someone has been following her. Was it you?”