Lord John and the Private Matter Page 4

  "No, it would have taken a large rucksack, or a sail bag--something of that sort--to cart it all away. But cart it away someone did."

  The alarm had been raised promptly, of course, and a search instigated, but Calais was a medieval warren of a place, and nothing had been found.

  "Meanwhile, O'Connell disappeared--quite properly; he was given three days' leave when he took the requisitions in. We hunted for him; found him on the second day, smelling of drink and looking as though he hadn't slept for the whole of the time."

  "Which would be quite as usual."

  "Yes, it would. But that's also what you'd expect a man to look like who'd sat up for two days and nights in a hired room, making a precis of that mass of paper and turning it into something a good bit smaller and more portable--feeding the requisitions into the fire as he went."

  "So they weren't ever found? The originals?"

  "No. We watched O'Connell carefully; he had no chance to pass on the information to anyone after that--and we think it unlikely that he handed it on before we found him."

  "Because now he's dead--and because Jack Byrd has disappeared."

  "Rem acu tetigisti," Quarry replied, then snorted, half-pleased with himself.

  Grey smiled in spite of himself. "You have touched the matter with a needle"; it meant, "you've put your finger on it." Probably the only bit of Latin Quarry recalled from his schooldays, other than cave canem.

  "And was O'Connell the only suspect?"

  "No, damn it. Hence the difficulty. We couldn't simply arrest him and sweat the truth out of him with no more evidence than the fact of his being there. At least six other men--all from different regiments, damn it!--were there during the relevant time, as well."

  "I see. So the other regiments are now quietly investigating their potential black sheep?"

  "They are. On the other hand," Quarry added judiciously, "the other five are still alive. Which might be an indication, eh?"

  The coach stopped, and the sounds and smells of Kettrick's Eel-Pye House floated through the window: laughter and talk, the sizzle of food and clank of wooden plates and pie tins. The brine-smell of jellied eels and ale and the solace of floury pies lapped round them, warm and comforting, spiced with the sauce of alcoholic conviviality.

  "Do we know for certain how O'Connell was killed? Did anyone from the regiment see the body?" Grey asked suddenly, as Quarry descended heavily to the pavement.

  "No," Quarry said, not looking round, but heading for the door with single-minded determination. "You're going to go and do that tomorrow, before they bury the bugger."

  Grey waited until the pies had been set down in front of them before he undertook to argue with Quarry's statement that he, Grey, was forthwith relieved of other duties in order to pursue an investigation into the activities and death of Sergeant Timothy O'Connell.

  "Why me?" Grey was astonished. "Surely it's sufficiently serious a matter to justify the senior ranking officer's attention--that would be you, Harry," he pointed out, "or possibly Bernard."

  Quarry had his eyes closed in momentary bliss, mouth full of eel pie. He chewed slowly, swallowed, then opened his eyes reluctantly.

  "Bernard--ha-ha. Very funny." He brushed crumbs from his chest. "As for me . . . well, it might be, ordinarily. Fact is, though--I was in Calais, too, when the requisitions were taken. Could have done it meself. Didn't, of course, but I could have."

  "No one in his right mind would suspect you, Harry, surely?"

  "Think the War Office is in its right mind, do you?" Quarry raised one cynical eyebrow, along with his spoon.

  "I take your point. But still . . ."

  "Crenshaw was on home leave," Quarry said, naming one of the captains of the regiment. "Meant to be in England, but who's to say he didn't sneak back to Calais?"

  "And Captain Wilmot? You can't all have been on leave!"

  "Oh, Wilmot was in camp where he ought to have been, all proper and above suspicion. But he had a fit of some sort at his club this Monday past. Apoplexy, the quack says. Can't walk, can't talk, can't view bodies." Quarry pointed his spoon briefly at Grey's chest. "You're it."

  Grey opened his mouth to expostulate further, but finding no good argument to hand, inserted a bite of pie instead, chewing moodily.

  With fate's usual turn for irony, the scandal that had sent him to Ardsmuir in disgrace had now placed him beyond suspicion, as the only functioning senior officer of the regiment who could not possibly have had anything to do with the disappearance of the Calais requisitions. He had returned from his Scottish exile by the time of the disappearance, true--but had probably been in London, having not formally rejoined his regiment until a month ago.

  Harry had a genius for avoiding unpleasant jobs, but in the present situation, Grey was forced to admit it wasn't entirely Harry's doing.

  Kettrick's was crowded, as usual, but they had found a bench in a secluded corner, and their uniforms kept the other diners at a safe distance. The clatter of spoons and pie tins, the crash and scrape of shifting benches, and the raucous conversation bouncing from the low wooden rafters provided more than sufficient cover for a private conversation. Nonetheless, Grey leaned closer and lowered his voice.

  "Does the Cornish gentleman of whom we were speaking earlier know that his servant is incommunicabilis?" Grey asked circumspectly.

  Quarry nodded, champing eel pie industriously. He coughed to clear a bit of pastry from his throat, and took a deep pull at his tankard of stout.

  "Oh, yes. We thought the servant in question might have been scared off by whatever it was that happened to the sergeant--in which case, the natural thing would be for him to scuttle off back to . . . his place of employment." Quarry beetled his brows at Grey, indicating that naturally he understood the necessity for discretion--did Grey think him dense? "Sent Stubbs round to ask--no sign of him. Our Cornish friend is disturbed."

  Grey nodded, and conversation was temporarily suspended while both men concentrated on their meal. Grey was scraping a bit of bread round his empty pannikin, unwilling to let a drop of the savory broth escape, when Quarry, having polished off two pies and three pints, belched amiably and chose to resume in a more social vein.

  "Speakin' of Cornishmen, what have you done about your putative cousin-in-law? Arranged to take him to a brothel yet?"

  "He says he doesn't go to brothels," Grey replied tersely, recalled unwillingly to the matter of his cousin's marriage. Christ, weren't spies and suspected murder enough?

  "And you're letting him marry your cousin?" Quarry's thick brows drew down. "How d'ye know he's not impotent, or a sodomite, let alone diseased?"

  "I am reasonably sure," Lord John said, repressing the sudden insane urge to remark that, after all, the Honorable Mr. Trevelyan had not been watching him at the chamber pot.

  He had called on Trevelyan earlier in the day, with an invitation to supper and various libidinous "amusements" to bid a proper farewell to Trevelyan's bachelorhood. Trevelyan had agreed with thanks to a cordial supper, but claimed to have promised his mother upon her deathbed to have nothing to do with prostitutes.

  Quarry's shaggy brows shot up.

  "What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn't do that, would she?"

  "I have no idea," Grey said. "The situation has fortunately not arisen. But I suppose," he said, attempting to divert the conversation, "that surely there are men who do not seek such recreation. . . ."

  Quarry gave him a look of jaundiced doubt. "Damn few," he said. "And Trevelyan ain't one of 'em."

  "You seem sure of it," Grey said, slightly piqued.

  "I am." Quarry settled back, looking pleased with himself. "Asked around a bit--no, no, I was quite discreet, no need to fret. Trevelyan goes to a house in Meacham Street. Good taste; been there meself."

  "Oh?" Grey set aside his empty pie pan, and raised a brow in interest. "Why would he not wish to go with me, I wonder?"

  "Maybe afraid you'll blab to Olivia, disill
usion the girl." Quarry lifted a massive shoulder in dismissal of Trevelyan's possible motives. "Be that as it may--why not go round and speak to the whores there? Chap I talked to says he's seen Trevelyan there at least twice a month--good chance whichever girl he took last can tell you if he's poxed or not."

  "Yes, perhaps," Grey said slowly. Quarry took this for immediate agreement, and tossed back the remains of his final pint, belching slightly as he set it down.

  "Splendid. We'll go round day after tomorrow, then."

  "Day after tomorrow?"

  "Got to go to dinner at my brother's house tomorrow--my sister-in-law is having Lord Worplesdon."

  "Steamed, boiled, or baked en croute?"

  Quarry guffawed, his already ruddy face achieving a deeper hue under the stress of amusement.

  "Oh, a good one, Johnny! I'll tell Amanda--come to think, shall I have her invite you? She's fond of you, you know."

  "No, no," Grey said hastily. He was in turn fond of Quarry's sister-in-law, Lady Joffrey, but was only too well aware that she regarded him not merely as a friend, but also as prey--a potential husband for one of her myriad sisters and cousins. "I am engaged tomorrow. But this brothel you've discovered--"

  "Well, no time like the present, I agree," Harry said, pushing back his bench. "But you'll need your rest tonight, if you're going to look at bodies in the morning. Besides," he added, swirling his cloak over his shoulders, "I'm never at me best in bed after eel pie. Makes me fart."

  Chapter 4

  A Valet Calls

  Next morning, Grey sat in his bedchamber, unshaven and attired in his nightshirt, banyan, and slippers, drinking tea and debating with himself whether the authoritative benefits conferred by wearing his uniform outweighed the possible consequences--both sartorial and social--of wearing it into the slums of London to inspect a three-day-old corpse. He was disturbed in this meditation by his new orderly, Private Adams, who opened the bedroom door and entered without ceremony.

  "A person, my lord," Adams reported, and stood smartly to attention.

  Never at his best early in the day, Grey took a moody swallow of tea and nodded in acknowledgment of this announcement. Adams, new both to Grey and to the job of personal orderly, took this for permission and stood aside, gesturing the person in question into the room.

  "Who are you?" Grey gazed in blank astonishment at the young man who stood thus revealed.

  "Tom Byrd, me lord," the young man said, and bowed respectfully, hat in hand. Short and stocky, with a head round as a cannonball, he was young enough still to sport freckles across fair, rounded cheeks and over the bridge of his snubbed nose. Despite his obvious youth, though, he radiated a remarkable air of determination.

  "Byrd. Byrd. Oh, Byrd!" Lord John's sluggish mental processes began to engage themselves. Tom Byrd. Presumably this young man was some relation to the vanished Jack Byrd. "Why are you--oh. Perhaps Mr. Trevelyan has sent you?"

  "Yes, me lord. Colonel Quarry sent him a note last night, saying as how you was going to be looking into the matter of . . . er-hem." He cleared his throat ostentatiously, with a glance at Adams, who had taken up the shaving brush and was industriously swishing it to and fro in the soap mug, working up a great lather of suds. "Mr. Trevelyan said as how I was to come and assist, whatsoever thing it might be your lordship had need of."

  "Oh? I see; how kind of him." Grey was amused at Byrd's air of dignity, but favorably impressed at his discretion. "What duties are you accustomed to perform in Mr. Trevelyan's household, Tom?"

  "I'm a footman, sir." Byrd stood as straight as he could, chin lifted in an attempt at an extra inch of height; footmen were normally employed for appearance as much as for skill, and tended to be tall and well-formed; Byrd was about Grey's own height.

  Grey rubbed his upper lip, then set aside his teacup and glanced at Adams, who had put down the soap mug and was now holding the razor in one hand, strop in the other, apparently unsure how to employ the two effectively in concert. "Tell me, Byrd, have you any experience at valeting?"

  "No, me lord--but I can shave a man." Tom Byrd sedulously avoided looking at Adams, who had discarded the strop and was testing the edge of the razor against the edge of his shoe sole, frowning.

  "You can, can you?"

  "Yes, me lord. Father's a barber, and us boys'd shave the bristles from the scalded hogs he bought for to make brushes of. For practice, like."

  "Hmm." Grey glanced at himself in the looking glass above the chest of drawers. His beard came in only a shade or two darker than his blond hair, but it grew heavily, and the stubble glimmered thick as wheat straw on his jaw in the morning light. No, he really couldn't forgo shaving.

  "All right," he said with resignation. "Adams--give the razor to Tom here, if you please. Then go and brush my oldest uniform, and tell the coachman I shall require him. Mr. Byrd and I are going to view a body."

  A night lying in the water at Puddle Dock and two days lying in a shed behind Bow Street compter had not improved Timothy O'Connell's appearance, never his strongest point to begin with. At that, he was at least still recognizable--more than could be said for the gentleman lying on a bit of canvas by the wall, who had apparently hanged himself.

  "Turn him over, if you please," Grey said tersely, speaking through a handkerchief soaked with oil of wintergreen, which he held against the lower half of his face.

  The two prisoners deputed to accompany him to this makeshift morgue looked rebellious--they had already been obliged to take O'Connell from his cheap coffin and remove his shroud for Grey's inspection--but a gruff word from the constable in charge propelled them into reluctant action.

  The corpse had been roughly cleansed, at least. The marks of his last battle were clear, even though the body was bloated and the skin extensively discolored.

  Grey bent closer, handkerchief firmly clasped to his face, to inspect the bruises across the back. He beckoned to Tom Byrd, who was standing pressed against the wall of the shed, his freckles dark against the paleness of his face.

  "See that?" He pointed to the black mottling over the corpse's back and buttocks. "He was kicked and trampled upon, I think."

  "Yes, sir?" Byrd said faintly.

  "Yes. But you see how the skin is completely discolored upon the dorsal aspect?"

  Byrd gave him a look indicating that he saw nothing whatever, including a reason for his own existence.

  "His back," Grey amended. "Dorsum is the Latin word for back."

  "Oh, aye," Byrd said, intelligence returning. "I see it plain, me lord."

  "That means that he lay upon his back for some time after death. I have seen men taken up from a battlefield for burial; the portions that have lain bottom-most are always discolored in that way."

  Byrd nodded, looking faintly ill.

  "But you found him upon his face in the water, is that correct?" Grey turned to the constable.

  "Yes, my lord. The coroner's seen him," the man added helpfully. "Death by violence."

  "Quite," Grey said. "There was no grievous wound upon the front of his body that might have caused his death, and I see no such wound here, do you, Byrd? Not stabbed, not shot, not choked with a garrote . . ."

  Byrd swayed slightly, but caught himself, and was heard to mutter something about ". . . head, mebbe?"

  "Perhaps. Here, take this." Grey shoved the handkerchief into Byrd's clammy hand, then turned and, holding his breath, gingerly began to feel about in O'Connell's hair. He was interested to see that an inexpert attempt had been made to do up the corpse's hair in a proper military queue, wrapped round a pad of lamb's wool and bound with a leather lacing, though whoever had done it had lacked the rice powder for a finishing touch. Someone who cared had laid the body out--not Mrs. O'Connell, he thought, but someone.

  The scalp had begun to loosen, and shifted unpleasantly under his probing fingers. There were assorted lumps, presumably left by kicks or blows . . . yes, there. And there. In two places, the bone of the skull gave inward in a sickening m
anner, and a slight ooze moistened Grey's fingertips.

  Byrd made a small choking sound as Grey withdrew his hand, and blundered out, handkerchief still clasped to his face.

  "Was he wearing his uniform when he was found?" Grey asked the constable. Deprived of his handkerchief, he wiped his fingers fastidiously on the shroud as he nodded to the two prisoners to restore the corpse to its original state.

  "Nah, sir." The constable shook his head. "Stripped to his shirt. We knew as he was one of yours, though, from his hair, and askin' about a bit, we found someone as knew his name and regiment."

  Grey's ears pricked up at that.

  "Do you mean to say that he was known in the neighborhood where he was found?"

  The constable frowned.

  "I s'pose so," he said, rubbing at his chin to assist thought. "Let me think . . . yes, sir, I'm sure as that's right. When we pulled him out o' the water, and I saw as how he was a soldier, I went round to the Oak and Oyster to inquire, that bein' the nearest place where the soldiers mostly go. Brought a few of the folk in there along to have a look at him; as I recall, 'twas the barmaid from the Oyster what knew him."

  The body had been turned over, and one of the prisoners, lips pressed tight against the smell, was drawing up the shroud again, when Grey stopped him with a motion. He bent over the coffin, frowning, and traced the mark on O'Connell's forehead. It was indeed a heelprint, distinctly indented on the livid flesh. He could count the nailheads.

  He nodded to himself and straightened up. The body had been moved, so much was plain. But from where? If the Sergeant had been killed in a brawl, as appeared to be the case, perhaps there would have been a report of such an occurrence.

  "Might I have a word with your superior, sir?"

  "That'd be Constable Magruder, sir--round the front, room on the left. Will you be done with the corpse, sir?" He was already motioning for the two sullen prisoners to restore O'Connell's wrappings and nail down the coffin lid.

  "Oh . . . yes. I think so." Grey paused, considering. Ought he perhaps to make some ceremonial gesture of farewell to a comrade in arms? There was nothing in that blank and swollen countenance, though, that seemed to invite such a gesture, and surely the constable did not care. In the end, he gave a slight nod to the corpse, a shilling to the constable for his trouble, and left.