Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(49)
Devlin met her gaze in the mirror. “I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss Charlotte’s observations. When you grow up at court surrounded by toadies, scheming courtiers, and a family as uniformly peculiar as the Hanovers, you learn to read people early—and well.”
“True,” said Hero. “But what does it mean?” She pushed away from the doorframe to go stand at the window overlooking the snow-filled street. “I feel as if we aren’t getting anywhere. We just keep going round and round the same people and incidents, learning perhaps a bit more each time and yet never really discovering what we need to know.”
He glanced over at her, his eyes crinkling with a hint of a smile. “That’s because we’re missing something. Something important.”
“But . . . what?”
He reached for a battered, low-crowned hat with a jaunty red feather in the band and settled it on his head. “I don’t know yet.”
She frowned. “How will you recognize this Archibald Potter?”
“I’ll know him by his cocked hat and green striped waistcoat, and he’ll know me by this decidedly garish red feather—with our identities further confirmed by a prearranged conversation about my supposed recent travels to Jamaica.”
“Sounds decidedly insalubrious. You will be careful.”
Devlin checked the knife he kept sheathed in his boot, then slipped a small double-barreled flintlock into his pocket. “You keep saying that.”
She came to tug at the brim of his hat. “And you never listen.”
Chapter 29
The Cat and Fiddle was a smoke-fouled, ramshackle old half-timbered structure on John Street, not far from the vast warehouses of the East India Company. Sebastian selected a high-backed booth in a quiet corner, ordered a tankard of ale he had no intention of drinking, and settled in to wait.
Archibald Potter, when he appeared, looked more like a comfortable middle-aged shopkeeper than a smuggler. Somewhere in his late forties, he had full, ruddy cheeks, bushy side-whiskers, and a round, knobby nose. The combination could have made him look jovial and soft. It did not. His clothes were typical of an older generation, his waistcoat long and striped with green, his coat square-cut with broad lapels and large pockets. In place of a cravat he wore a stock, and he had a cocked hat perched above a periwig. He stared at the red feather in Sebastian’s hatband, then walked up to stand stiffly with his fingers tapping on the scarred tabletop. He was not smiling.
“I hear you’re just back from Jamaica,” he said in guttural French with a strong Kentish accent.
“The weather’s much better there than here,” replied Sebastian in the same language.
“Huh. Where isn’t it?” With a grunt, the free trader slid into the opposite bench. “Miss Kat says you want to know about smuggling in the Channel—with a particular emphasis on the activities of a certain Frankfurter we all know but few love. Says it’s got something to do with that lady found with her head bashed in up in Clerkenwell.”
“Yes.”
Potter stared at him long and hard. “She swears I can trust you.”
“You have my word.”
The free trader turned to call for a tankard of ale before resting his shoulders against the bench’s high back, his thick, bushy brows drawing together in a frown. “I’ve only ever known one other fellow with yellow eyes, and he wasn’t somebody I’d care to mess with. See well in the dark, do you?”
“Yes.”
Potter nodded. “So did this fellow. I met him in Dunkirk.”
“I take it you spend a fair amount of time in France.”
“I was born there, for all that my parents were from Dover. Still got a sister in Gravelines. She takes care of the French end of the business, while I deal with things over here.”
“Convenient.”
Potter waited while a young barmaid slapped an overflowing tankard of ale on the table before him. “It is that.”
“Gravelines, you say?”
He took a deep swallow of his ale, then wiped the foam from his lips with the back of one hand. “That’s right. It ain’t like in the old days, when we used to have to collect our contraband either in the Low Countries or off neutral ships in the Channel.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Few years ago, Napoléon got clever. He realized that if he worked with us smugglers—made it easy for us to do business with France—he could use us to get French goods into England while at the same time keeping control over what we were bringing into France. So he issued this imperial decree, officially opening up a couple of French ports—first Wimereux and Dunkirk, then Gravelines—to smugglers. He even built special warehouses for us. Keeps them filled with lace, silk, leather gloves, brandy—whatever we want.”
“That was indeed clever. So what do you take to France—besides the usual spies, of course?”
Archibald Potter grinned and leaned forward. “Letters. English newspapers. Escaped prisoners of war. And gold. Lots of gold. They even built a special quarter just for us in Gravelines—they call it the ‘ville des smoglers.’”
“You’re saying the entire operation is officially sanctioned by the French government?”
“It ain’t just sanctioned—it’s controlled. Organized. They got the Ministers of Police, Finance, Interior, War, and What-have-you, all writing reports and procedures and the like. You know the French. Ain’t nobody like ’em for security passes, articles, rules, regulations, and any other kind of government paperwork a body could dream up. They’ve got something like seventy merchants and bankers in Gravelines officially designated to deal with us.”