“Last Friday? Tramp? Yer, that were old Dickie!” Ben Thompson was perfectly certain, although he’d only caught a glimpse of him as he’d disappeared. “I’d know him anywhere! He’s been missing for quite a while, of course. That being the nature of these gentlemen. Wandering. He’s been away up north, word is, revisiting his roots. Some of them have roots, yer know. But there was no mistaking that beard and that thatch of hair and that swagger. Dickie has this special way of walking . . . brazen as a bandmaster! Put ’im in front of a regiment and they’d march after ’im, all right.”

Hole in one! Thoday kept the thought to himself and tried to stay calm. A firm, professional identification of an individual in prehaircut state was what he’d just been handed. The poor old sod had tidied himself up in preparation for whatever skulduggery had befallen him behind closed oak doors, if Redfyre had read the tracks right. Well, now! With increased eagerness for the hunt, Thoday turned his attention back to the constable.

In between gasps and indrawn breaths responding to heroics on the cricket field, he ascertained that the incident was not as he had supposed—a disagreement between gentlemen of the road—but a scuffle involving Dickie and the owner of the tea shop. Unusually—Dickie being no trouble and never a lawbreaker—he’d gone for him. Thumped him in the bread basket and winded the old bugger! Been asking for it for years, mind, and no one blamed Dickie at all.

The self-appointed arbiter of the impromptu fisticuffs had been—no—not a bulldog, but a don. Tall, youngish, superior and wearing one o’ them gowns. He hadn’t stuck around to give his details. Never known to acknowledge, let alone help the police, those fellers. And Dickie himself had shown a clean pair of heels. He’d even abandoned a good sum of money, some of it in sixpences, on the pavement in his hurry. Thompson had picked up four shillings and five pence and handed that in at the front desk.

In response to Thoday’s last-minute question of, “Anything else strike you as odd about the incident?” the constable considered, then slowly said, “Might be something. There was another bloke watching what was going on. Not connected with the skirmishing, but interested. More-than-usual interested. Everyone else in the audience had drifted off about his business when the excitement was over, but this bloke popped out of the shop and watched Dickie until he turned the corner. Then he went after him. Not rushing to catch him up. More sort of . . . trailing him. They might be able to tell you more in the café about him. They have some sharp girls on the till there. Better than Aunty deserves.”