It was not a life their mother would have recognized.
The cellar was low-ceilinged and lamp-lit, the air thick with tobacco smoke and the sound of fists meeting flesh. A ring had been roped off in the center, where two men stripped to the waist circled each other while a crowd pressed against the ropes and shouted odds. Money changed hands in the shadows. A man with a broken nose collected bets at a table near the door.
Evander crossed to the far wall, where a narrow corridor led to a back room. A heavy-set man with a ledger open on his lap sat behind a desk cluttered with coins and scrawled receipts.
Goss. The bookkeeper who ran the money behind the fights.
Goss looked up. His eyes moved from Evander’s face to his coat to his boots, performing the calculation men in his profession performed out of habit. Quality of fabric. Cost of leather. Worth.
“You again.” Goss closed the ledger. “I told you last time, I don’t know nothing about your brother.”
Evander pulled a chair from the wall and sat without invitation. “You know what he owed. You know who he bet with. You know every man who walked through that door with money in his pocket, because that ledger on your lap is the reason you are still breathing.” He leaned forward. “Where is Richard Brightshaw?”
Goss ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’m a bookkeeper, not a nursemaid. Men come, they bet, they leave. I don’t follow them home.”
Evander reached into his coat and withdrew a leather wallet. He opened it on the desk, revealing a stack of banknotes thick enough to make Goss’s eyes widen before the man could stop them.
“Two hundred pounds,” Evander said. “For the name of every establishment my brother frequented and the last place anyone saw him.”
Goss stared at the money. His fingers twitched on the ledger. Then he shook his head. “Can’t help you. Even if I wanted to, and I don’t. There are men who come through here that don’t appreciate being talked about. Men who are worse than your brother.” He met Evander’s eyes. “Men who are worse than you.”
Evander stood. The chair scraped. He placed both hands flat on the desk and leaned over the ledger until his face was inches from the bookkeeper’s. Goss pressed himself back into his chair.
“You misunderstand the nature of this conversation,” Evander said. His voice did not rise. It dropped. “I am not asking. I am telling you that my brother walked through that door, and you watched him lose money he did not have, and you let him sink, because men like you profit from men like him. And now he is gone, and a child is sleeping in a crib in my house because of decisions made in rooms like this one.” He picked up the ledger and held it over the lamp flame. “So, you will tell me what you know, or I will start with this book and work my way through everything else in this room that burns.”
Goss’s eyes locked on the ledger. His jaw worked. The noise from the ring outside swelled and ebbed.
“All right.” The word came out strangled. “All right. Your brother came. He bet. Lost more than he won, same as most. Favored the bare-knuckle fights, liked to bet heavy on the underdog.” Goss held up his hands. “But I haven’t seen him in months. He stopped coming, and I didn’t ask why, because I don’t ask why.”
Evander set the ledger back on the desk. “Where else did he go?”
Goss rubbed his face. “There’s a house. Out past Hampstead. Used to be a gentleman’s estate, now it’s—” He glanced at the door. “It’s a pleasure house. High-end. Discreet. Your brother went there regularly. Madame Fontaine’s, they call it. Past the Heath, off the Finchley Road. Big iron gate. You can’t miss it.”
Evander straightened. He picked up the wallet and tossed it onto the desk. “Two hundred. As promised.”
Goss took the money with the speed of a man who expected it to be taken back. Evander turned and walked out of the back room, through the corridor, past the ring where the crowd roared as one fighter dropped, and up the stone steps into the night air.
The alley behind the warehouse was narrow and unlit. Evander’s carriage waited at the far end, the driver hunched on the box, the horses shifting in the cold. His boots splashed through something he chose not to identify. The night smelled of the river and rotting wood.
He heard them before he saw them. Three sets of footsteps falling into rhythm behind him.
Heavy boots. No attempt at stealth.
They wanted him to know they were there.
Evander stopped. He turned.
Three men stood at the alley’s mouth. Broad, blunt-featured men with shoulders that came from loading cargo or hitting people for a living. The one in the middle cracked his knuckles.
“Goss says you need a lesson in manners,” the middle one said. “Something about threatening his livelihood.”
Evander removed his gloves. He folded them and placed them in his coat pocket. “You should have asked for more money.”
The first man rushed him. He was fast for his size, but he led with his right, telegraphing the punch from three feet away. Evander sidestepped, caught the man’s wrist, and used his momentum to drive him face-first into the warehouse wall. The crack of bone against brick echoed down the alley. The man slid to the ground and did not get up.
The second came from the left. Evander pivoted, drove his fist into the man’s stomach, and followed with an elbow to the jaw when the man doubled over. The sound was sharp and wet. The second man hit the cobblestones and stayed there, his mouth working, his eyes glazed.
The third man held back. He was smaller than the other two, with narrow eyes and quick hands, and he reached into his coat and drew a blade. Short. Thin. The type of knife men carried when they expected to use it.