Matthew was taken aback, but he thought it best to go along. “Correct. I mean … right.”

“Are they joking, Edgar?” the lady asked, newly stricken. “Tell me they’re joking!”

“We never joke about murder,” said Julian, grim-faced, and with a voice that would’ve made a professional assassin blanch.

The coach went on, rumbling and grumbling along the rutted road. Rain pelted the roof and Matthew envisioned the driver and shooter up there both curled up in their coats, under their hats with water dripping from the brims. In spite of the weather, Benson did not spare the speed, and Matthew figured the horses were being pushed to their limits, but Benson must have enough experience not to exhaust them entirely before they reached the next coaching inn.

Lady Turlentort had taken to opening a little white clamshell of a purse and dabbing her flabby throat from a bottle of perfume that smelled of roses, faintly rotten.

“Unshaven, unwashed beasts!” Edgar muttered. “I shall ruin this company!”

“Oh we’re not so bad,” said Julian. “You should have seen the men we’ve had to kill.”

“Killing! Killing! Killing!” Edgar’s nostrils flared wide again. “Is that all you live for?”

“No. I do like the occasional slice of chocolate cake.”

“Madness! You two belong behind the bars of Newgate Prison!”

“I’ve been there,” Matthew said, and realized at once that such a statement simply painted him a darker villain. The expression of renewed horror on the faces of the lord and lady spurred him on. “I broke out, of course.” And then: “No prison can hold me.”

Lady Turlentort stared at him as if he were a creature never seen before in the world … at least, not in her world. “You don’t appear to have the face of a killer. I mean to say … I see that scar, but—”

“Tell them how you got that scar,” Julian suggested.

“Well,” Matthew began, “I was—”

“—about to be hanged by the neck for the murder of three men and a woman,” Julian interrupted, his voice again as one nearly speaking from beyond the tomb. “Right there under the hangman’s noose, he stood. About to go kick the very Devil in his ass. And then … his gang stormed the town square … swarmed over the gallows with their swords and pistols, cutting down every man of the law in sight.” He nodded, looking back and forth from the two wide-eyed faces. “Yes. But … the executioner himself had a hook for a hand. Just as a pistol ball parted the rope that would send Scar to his maker … the executioner swung on him. Carved him, just as you see. And with the blood streaming from his face, Scar threw himself at the executioner and down they fell from the gallows to the gore-soaked ground below. They fought as animals do, down on that bloody battlefield, and—”

“But …” Edgar Turlentort’s voice was a wisp. “Scar’s hands were tied behind him, weren’t they?”