Page 94 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
When she finished, she glanced up at him, frowned, caught his eye, and imperiously waved him away. “Go, sit, and stop looming.”
Gray heard Baines softly gasp, understandable given the man didn’t know who Izzy was.
Drake merely grinned and obeyed, compounding Baines’s confusion. Returning around the desk, Drake focused on Baines. “I suggest we retreat, Inspector.” Drake waved toward the pair of armchairs before the window. “It’s possible our presence might inhibit the tongues of informants, and in the circumstances, we don’t need that.”
Baines obediently trotted after Drake.
The pair had barely settled in the armchairs when Donaldson tapped on the door frame and proceeded to steer Digby into the room ahead of him.
Lipson followed on Donaldson’s heels.
Normally irrepressibly cheerful, Digby looked uncomfortable over being the center of attention and, glancing sidelong at Drake, definitely overawed.
Surreptitiously, Gray signaled Drake and Baines to stay back.
Izzy smiled, simultaneously reassuring, welcoming, and inquiring. “Digby?”
When, wide-eyed, the lad glanced back at Donaldson and Lipson, who had halted just inside the room, Lipson nodded encouragingly and rumbled, “Digby has information we think might prove useful.”
“Excellent!” When Digby turned back to her, still smiling, Izzy waved to the empty chair before the desk. “Sit down, Digby. You can be the first informant so his lordship and I can practice how to ask the right questions.”
The notion of helping with something calmed Digby somewhat, and he came forward and carefully sat, his gaze flicking from Izzy to Gray and back again.
“Now.” Izzy clasped her hands on the sheets with the photographs. “What is it that you noticed, Digby?”
“Well, ma’am, I didn’t really have a chance to look closely at the pictures, not to study them like, until just now, when Mr. Lipson let me sit and read all the articles.”
Izzy nodded. “And what did you see?”
Digby peered at the sheets trapped beneath Izzy’s hands. “It’s that I recognized one of the men in the photograph of the coffeehouse in Fleet Street.”
Izzy rifled through the sheets, located the relevant one, and spread it on top of the others. “Show us.”
Digby half rose, scanned the print, then hovered his fingertip above the image of the tall, well-dressed gentleman standing before the coffeehouse, apparently talking to a shorter, more rotund man. “It’s this man here,” Digby said. The tall man was the most prominent person in the photograph. “Mr. Quimby must’ve taken this photograph on Friday, sometime during the day, and you remember, on Friday, I left a few minutes early and passed Mr. Quimby in the lane?”
When Digby looked questioningly at Izzy and Gray, they nodded.
“Well,” Digby went on, “a few steps later, when I was almost at the corner where the lane meets Great Coram Street, this geezer—gentleman—comes around the corner.” Digby sat and looked at Izzy. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time—he was just a gent walking down the lane—but what are the odds of him being in one of Mr. Quimby’s photographs taken that day and then being just a few yards behind Mr. Q as he made for the back door of the workshop?”
“What odds, indeed.” Gray made his tone admiring. “That’s an excellent piece of information, Digby.”
Drake, trailed by Baines, had silently left the armchairs and drawn closer. Now, Drake crouched beside Digby’s chair, not too close, and in an entirely unthreatening tone, said, “Tell us what happened, step by step. You said you left earlier than the others?”
Digby’s eyes, now huge, flicked assessingly over the terribly elegant gentleman. His tone wary—the lad clearly had excellent instincts—he replied, “Aye. Mr. Lipson said we were done and I could get on home. He knows me ma and sister wait on me for supper every night.”
Drake’s features softened, and he nodded encouragingly. “So you went out of the back door before any of the other staff.”
“Well, the other staff use the front door. It was mostly me and Mr. Q used the rear door, because it’s closer to our homes, see?”
Drake nodded his understanding. “So you closed the door behind you and walked up the lane.”
“And I saw Mr. Q walking down it. We passed and nodded like, and I walked on toward Great Coram Street. I was nearing the corner when the gent turned onto the lane.”
“Tell me,” Drake said, “when the gent turned onto the lane, do you think Mr. Quimby would have reached the workshop door and gone in already, or would he still have been in the lane?”
Digby paused to think, but the answer came quickly and with certainty. “He would’ve still been in the lane. Don’t see how he could’ve reached the door by then, not unless he’d bolted, and I would’ve heard that.”
“Good point.” Drake glanced at the photograph, now lying exposed on the desk. “It was evening—already dark. Are you sure that’s the man you saw?”
