The butcher, whose name, Mr. Cleaver, always made me grin foolishly, had a well-sized goose in his stores of freshly butchered and cleaned poultry. When I showed the package to Jess, she scowled.
“That’s bigger than the one we got from the baker,” she said, “and it’s been cleaned for ‘im. I’m not sure ‘e deserves it after the ‘it ‘e tried to get in on Reesy.”
“I’m sure you’re right. However, in this case, the best way to gather flies is with honey rather than vinegar.”
Jess snorted, and I realized she had a fairly impressive repertoire of the noises one expects from an old, corpulent, ill-tempered, bushy-eyebrowed man. “What flies and ‘oney ‘ave to do with anythin’ is even dafter than givin’ a grouchy baker more than ‘e deserves.”
“You’ll see.”
I left her outside Mrs. Milliner’s bakery and went in to speak with my baker’s wife about her brother. Mrs. Milliner was delighted to hear that I had tracked down the thieves of her poor brother’s goose, and she sent a messenger to fetch him right away. I was pleased to note that Jess, without prearrangement with me, had gone after the messenger boy to follow him.
After ten minutes of listening to Mrs. Milliner describe the aches in her ankles, the sad state of the economy, and the horrible woman with no tolerance for hard times whom her brother had married, I was very relieved to see a small-framed, dapper man stride down the street toward us. His resemblance to a rooster was rather striking, and when he entered the bakery, Jess passed by the window just behind him. She gave a quick nod before she left to let me know this was indeed the man from whom they’d stolen the goose.
“This is my brother Henry now. Henry, this is Mr. Devereux, the man who has found your goose,” said Mrs. Milliner effusively. How the woman had any breath left at all after her diatribe on everything that was wrong with the world was one of the great mysteries of the ages.
I shook his hand and noted the missing ring, the squint, and the scuffed shoes.
I debated silence, but his frank up and down appraisal of my wardrobe, rather like he was fitting me for the size of my bank account, made me slightly less polite than I might otherwise have been. “If you removed the lifts from your shoes, sir, you would likely have less pain in your back.”
He looked surprised at first, and then he scowled as Mrs. Milliner scolded him. “Henry, you know it’s foolish to wear lifts. Da always complained about his back, and Ma swore up and down it was from trying to look taller than he was.”
I almost felt sorry for opening my mouth, until Henry snarled at me. “I’ll thank you for mindin’ your own affairs.”
I shrugged, and said mildly, “Suit yourself. Your wife might come back to you if your temper improved, but you’d likely have to stop gambling with household money too.”
Now Mrs. Milliner gaped at me, and in my peripheral vision I could see that Jess had slipped inside the bakery and was listening from below the edge of the counter. “And how do you know that about my brother, Mr. Devereux?”
“Well, the bad temper is clearly from the pain in his back. And it’s not difficult to spot the new gambler. They assess everyone they meet for their worth, as your brother just did with me, and you’ll notice that his fingertips are stained with the heavy, oil-based inks found in the chromolithographic prints of playing cards. Those facts, coupled with the evidence of recent financial trouble and the departure of a wife, would seem to indicate an acquired gaming habit.”
I didn’t give either of them a chance to reply, as I realized that cleverness with the cocky baker was likely going to get in the way of the information I needed. “Now, all of that conjecture notwithstanding, I have here a butchered and cleaned goose.”
I thrust the butcher paper-wrapped package into Henry’s arms and continued. “This is not, however, the same goose that was chased out of your arms. I did find the thief and manage to persuade him to return the profits from that goose, with which I purchased this one. I do hope that is a satisfactory end to this business for you?”
Henry the baker stood there, somewhat dumbfounded, a wrapped goose in his hands, and absolutely nothing to say. His sister did not suffer the same condition.
“Well that’s just wonderful, Mr. Devereux!” she exclaimed. “However did you find the thieves?”
I waved a hand. “That isn’t important. I just hope my solution to the problem of the stolen goose meets with your approval, sir?”
Henry stared down at the package in his hands. “Well, I had rather been wanting to cook that goose last week when my wife … never mind.” He returned his gaze at me, surprise and something that looked a bit like shame still written on his face. “It is generous of you to go to the trouble of finding the thieves, young children though they were, and returning a goose to me – an even bigger one than I’d had before, if my arms don’t deceive me. Thank you, sir.”
He suddenly placed the goose on the counter and sat on a stool. He removed first one shoe, then the other, and pulled substantial lifts out of the insoles of each one before replacing the shoes. Mrs. Milliner glared at him. “Henry! No wonder you’ve been so irritable. You’re in pain!”
“I regret …” he looked at me, and then his sister, and then the ground, “many things,” he said with a sigh.
“Oh Henry,” said Mrs. Milliner.
“I was wondering,” I began, before the scene could turn maudlin, “might you remember where you bought the original goose that the children chased away?”
“Those children—” The baker sounded remorseful.
I interrupted, though not unkindly. “—said the goose fetched a tidy sum from the butcher to whom they sold it, and I wondered from where such a valuable fowl had come?”
“A man named Breckinridge in Covent Garden sold it to me. He’d received a shipment just that day, and I was his first customer, he said. Perhaps you’ll find he still has them, as he keeps the live geese in a yard behind his shop.”
Jess slipped toward the door, and I made a show of shaking Henry Baker’s hand. “Good luck to you, Mr. Baker. Might I suggest that if you were to wear your glasses more often, you’d know when to compliment your wife on such things as a new hairstyle or a pretty smile. I’m told wives like such things, though mine seems to prefer compliments about well-trained dogs and perfectly ugly trolls.”
These were the things I loved best about my wife, but I felt no inclination to share the sentiment with Mr. Baker and his sister. I nodded to Mrs. Milliner, my work there done. “Good day, ma’am. Please give my regards to Mr. Milliner.”
The door was just closing behind Jess when I reached it. Mrs. Milliner came rushing forward and thrust a bag at me. “Here, Mr. Devereux. For your dogs,” she said, with a flustered grin. I thanked her kindly and left the shop feeling as though a bit of honesty might have made a small difference in a man’s life.