Whoever had written this piece of bombast had managed, to Grey’s amazement, both to spell his own name correctly—scarcely a blessing, in the circumstances—and to note that the event had occurred in Germany.
“But Mr. Coles!” Grey said, aghast. “This—this—it is the most arrant poppycock!”
“Oh, now, Major, you must not be modest,” Coles assured him, wringing him by the hand. “You must not seek to lessen the honor your presence grants to my office, you know!”
He laughed merrily, and Grey, with a feeling of helplessness, found himself obliged to smile and bow in an awkward parody of graciousness.
Coles’s clerk, a youth named Boggs, was summoned in to meet the hero of Crefeld, then sent off in a state of wide-eyed excitement to fetch refreshment—against Grey’s protests—from the local ordinary. Where, Grey reflected grimly, he was no doubt presently recounting the whole idiotic story to anyone who would listen. He resolved to finish his business in Mudling Parva as quickly as possible, and decamp back to London before Edgar and Maude got wind of the newspaper story.
As it was, he had considerable trouble in getting Mr. Coles to attend to the matter in hand, as the lawyer wished to ask him any number of questions regarding Germany, his experiences in the army, his opinion of the current political situation, and what it was like to kill someone.
“What is it like …” Grey said, thoroughly taken aback. “To—In battle, I suppose you mean?”
“Well, yes,” said Coles, his eagerness slightly—though only slightly—abating. “Surely you have not been slaughtering your fellow citizens in cold blood, Major?” He laughed, and Grey joined—politely—in the laughter, wondering what in God’s name to say next.
He was fortunately saved by Coles’s own sense of propriety—evidently he did have one, overborne though it was by gusts of enthusiasm.
“You must forgive me, Major,” Coles said, sobering a little. “I am sure the matter is a sensitive one. I should not have asked—and I beg pardon for so intruding upon your feelings. It is only that I have always had a strong and most … abiding admiration for the profession of war.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Oh, there you are, Boggs! Thank you, thank you … yes, you will have some wine, I hope, Major? Allow me, please. Yes,” he repeated, settling back in his chair and waving his reluctant clerk firmly out of the room. “Many of the men of my family in previous generations have taken up commissions—my great-grandfather fought in Holland—and I should no doubt have pursued the same career myself, were it not for this.” He gestured ruefully toward his leg.
“Thus my fascination with the subject. I have made a small study of military history”—this was obviously modesty speaking, Grey thought, judging by the impressive collection on the shelves behind him, which seemed to include everyone from Tacitus and Caesar to King Frederick of Prussia—“and have even been so bold as to compose a brief essay upon the history of siege warfare. I, um, do not suppose you have ever been involved personally in a siege, have you, Major?”
“No, no,” Grey said hurriedly. He had been penned up in Edinburgh Castle with the rest of the government troops during the Jacobite occupation of the city, but it was a siege in name only; the Jacobites had had no thought of battering their way into the castle, let alone of starving out the inhabitants.
“Mr. Coles,” he said, inspired by thought of battering rams, and seeing that the only way of progressing in his own interest was by bluntness, “I collect that you are acquainted with the Thackeray family—specifically, with a Miss Barbara Thackeray?”
Coles blinked, looking almost comically nonplussed.
“Oh! Yes,” he said, a little uncertain. “Of course. I, er, have the honor to consider myself a friend of the family.” Meaning, Grey thought, that Mr. Thackeray was probably unaware of Coles’s friendship with Barbara.
“I flatter myself that I may count myself a friend to them, as well,” Grey said, “though our acquaintance is so new.” He smiled, and Coles, sunny by disposition, smiled back.
An understanding thus established, there seemed no reason to avoid mention of Mr. Lister with Coles, and so Grey put the matter before him straightforwardly.
“Miss Barbara said that she had had a note from her sister, forwarded by your kind offices,” Grey said carefully, and Coles blushed.
“I should have taken it to her father, I know,” he said awkwardly. “But … but … she … I mean, Miss Barbara Thackeray is …”
“A friend,” Grey finished for him, echoing Barbara Thackeray’s own words—spoken, he noted, with precisely the same blushing intonation. “Of course.”
Skating away from that delicate subject, he said, “Mr. Lister believes there is a possibility that Anne Thackeray is or was with child. From something that Mr. Thackeray let slip during our conversation, I believe he may have the same impression. I wonder, Mr. Coles, whether you can shed any light on this possibility?”
For the first time, Coles looked uneasy.
“I have no idea,” he said. Grey thought it was as well the young lawyer was a country solicitor; someone with so little talent for lying would fare ill before the Bench.
“Mr. Coles,” he said, letting a bit of steel show in his voice, “it is a question of the young woman’s life.”
The lawyer paled a little, the freckles on his cheeks standing out.
“Oh. Well … I, er …”
“Did you receive any further communications from Anne Thackeray?”
“Yes,” Coles said, succumbing with a distinct air of relief. “Just the one. It was addressed to me, rather than to Barbara—I should not have read it, else. It was written just before the news came of Philip’s death; she did not know of it.”
Grey noted the familiarity of the Christian name, and thought that Coles must have known Philip Lister personally—but of course he did. This was not London; everyone knew everyone—and very likely, everything about them.
Anne Thackeray had written in desperation, saying that she had recently discovered herself to be with child, had exhausted the money Philip had left for her, and was near the end of her resources. She had appealed to Simon Coles to intercede for her with her father.
“Which I did—or tried to.” Coles wiped his nose with a crumpled handkerchief, which, Grey noted, he wore in his sleeve, like a soldier. “My efforts were not, alas, successful.”
“The Reverend Mr. Thackeray does seem a trifle … strict in his views,” Grey observed.
Coles nodded, tucking away the handkerchief.
“You must not think too hardly of him,” he said earnestly. “He is a good man, a most excellent minister. But he has always been very … firm … with his family. And his daughters’ virtue is naturally a matter of the greatest importance.”
“Greater than their physical well-being, evidently,” Grey observed caustically, but then dismissed that with a wave. “So, when Mr. Thackeray refused to listen, you naturally went to Mr. Lister.”
Coles looked embarrassed.
“It was professionally quite wrong of me, I know. Indiscreet, at best, and most presumptuous. But I really did not know what else to do, and I thought that perhaps the Listers would be more inclined to …”
But they hadn’t. Mr. Lister had sent the young lawyer away with a flea in his ear. But that, of course, was before Philip Lister had been killed.
“What was the address on the letter?” Grey asked. “If she expected help, surely she must have given an address to which it could be sent.”
“She did give an address, in Southwark.” Coles took up his neglected glass of wine and swallowed, avoiding Grey’s gaze. “I—I could not ignore her plea, you see. I—we—that is, I prevailed upon a mutual friend to take some money to her, and to see how she fared. I would have gone myself, but …” He indicated his crutch.
“Did he find her?”
“No. He came back in some agitation of mind, and reported that she was gone.”
“Gone?” Grey echoed. �
�Gone where?”
“I don’t know.” The young lawyer looked thoroughly miserable. “He inquired in every place he could think of, but was unable to discover any clue to her whereabouts. Her landlady said that Anne—Miss Thackeray—had been unable to pay her account, and had thus been put out of her room. The woman had no idea where she had gone then.”
“Not very obliging of her,” Grey observed.
“No. I—I tried to make further inquiries. I hired a commercial inquiry agent in London, but he made no further discoveries. Oh, if only I had sent to her at once!” Coles cried, his face contorting in sudden anguish.
“I should not have wasted so much time in thinking how to approach her father, in screwing up my courage to go to the Listers, but I was afraid, afraid to speak to them, afraid of failing—and yet I did fail. I am a coward, and whatever has become of Anne is all my fault. How am I to look her sister in the face?”
It took Grey some time to console and reassure the young lawyer, and his efforts were only partially successful. In the end, Coles was restored to some semblance of resolution by Grey’s recounting of his conversation with Barbara regarding her sister’s jewelry.
“Yes. Yes! I do have Anne’s boxes, safely in my shed. I will look them out this afternoon. We must make some pretext, Barbara and I, to meet and examine them—”
“I am sure that such a challenge will prove no bar to someone with your extensive study of strategy and tactics,” Grey assured him, rising from his chair. “If you or Miss Barbara will then send me a note, describing any trinkets that may be missing …?”
He took his leave, and was nearly out the door when Coles called after him.
“Major?”
He turned to see the young lawyer leaning on his desk, his quicksilver face for once settled into seriousness.
“Yes, Mr. Coles?”
“What I asked you … what it feels like to have killed someone in battle … that was mere vulgar curiosity. But it makes me think. I hope I have not killed Anne Thackeray. But if I have—you will tell me? I think I would prefer to know, rather than to fear.”
Grey smiled at him.
“You would have made a good soldier, Mr. Coles. Yes, I’ll tell you. Good day.”
“Any joy, Tom?”
“Dunno as I’d go so far, me lord.” Tom looked dubious, and put a hand to his mouth to stifle a belch. “I will say as the Goose and Grapes has very good beer. Grub’s not so good as the Lark’s Nest, but not bad. Did you get summat to eat, me lord?”
“Oh, yes,” Grey said, dismissing the matter. In fact, his sole consumption since breakfast had been half a slice of fruitcake at Mr. Thackeray’s, and a considerable quantity of wine, taken in Mr. Coles’s company. It had come, he was sure, from the Goose and Grapes, but had not shared the excellent quality of the beer. It had, however, been strong, and his head showed a disturbing disposition to spin slightly if he moved too suddenly. Luckily the horse knew the way home.
“Were you able to hear anything about the Thackerays, the Listers, the Fanshawes, the Trevorsons—or for that matter, the DeVanes?”
“Oh, a good bit about all of ’em, me lord. Especially about Mrs. DeVane.” He grinned.
“I daresay. Well, perhaps we can save that for entertainment on our journey back to London,” Grey said dryly. “What about the Fanshawes and Trevorsons?”
Tom squinted, considering. He had declined to share Grey’s horse, and was walking alongside.
“Squire Trevorson’s a sporting man, they say. Gambling, aye?”
“In debt?”
“To his eyeballs,” Tom said cheerfully. “They didn’t know for sure, but the talk is his place—Mayapple Farm, it’s called, and there’s an unlucky name for you—is mortgaged to the eaves.”
“What the hell is unlucky about it?”
Tom glanced up at Grey’s unaccustomed sharpness, but answered mildly.
“A mayapple’s a thing grows in the Americas, me lord. The red Indians use it for medicine, they say, but it’s poison otherwise.”
Grey digested this for a moment.
“Has Trevorson got connexions in America, then?”
“Yes, me lord. An uncle in Canada, and two younger brothers in Boston and Philadelphia.”
“Indeed. And does popular knowledge extend to the politics of these connexions?” It seemed far-fetched, but if sabotage were truly involved in the cannon explosions—and Quarry seemed to think it might be—then the loyalties of Trevorson’s family might become a point of interest.
The denizens of the Goose and Grapes had not possessed any knowledge on that point, though—or at least had volunteered none. About the Fanshawes, talk had been voluble, but centered about the terrible misfortune that had befallen Marcus; nothing to the discredit of his father, Douglas Fanshawe, seemed to be known.
“Captain Fanshawe got himself blown up in one o’ the milling sheds,” Tom informed Grey. “Tore off half his face, they said!”
“For once, public comment is understated. I saw the captain at the Thackerays.”
“Cor, you saw him?” Tom was awed. “Was it as bad as they say, then?”
“Much worse. Did anyone talk about the accident? Do they know what happened?”
Tom shook his head.
“Nobody knows but Captain Fanshawe. He’s the only one that lived, and he doesn’t talk to anybody save the Reverend Mr. Thackeray.”
“He does talk to Thackeray?”
“Aye, me lord. He goes there regular to visit, but nowhere else. It’ll be weeks on end when no one sees him—and folk don’t speak when they do; he’s a proper creepy sight, they say, going about in a black silk mask and everybody a-knowing what’s behind it. The reverend treats him very kind, though, they say.”
Grey remembered Coles, young and earnest, saying, You must not think too hardly of him. He is a good man, a most excellent minister. Evidently Thackeray did have some bowels of compassion, even if not for his daughter.
“Speaking of Thackeray, did you learn anything there?”
“Well, there was a deal of gossip,” Tom said doubtfully. “Not really what you’d call information, like. Just folk arguing was Miss Anne a wicked trollop or was she se-dyuced”—he pronounced it carefully—“by Lieutenant Lister.”
“One side or the other prevalent?”
Tom shook his head.
“No, me lord. Six of one, half a dozen o’ the other.”
Opinion had been likewise divided as to the schism in the local Methodist congregation that had culminated in the Listers being ousted. Comment had been prolonged and colorful, but there appeared to be no useful kernels of information in it.
News exhausted, silence fell between them. The sun had long since set, and cold darkness crept up from the fallow fields on either side. Tom Byrd was no more than a shadow, pacing by his stirrup, patient as de—Grey drew himself up in the saddle, shaking his head to drive off the thought.
“You all right, me lord?” Tom asked, suspicions at once aroused. “You’re not a-going to fall off that nag, are you?”
“Certainly not,” Grey said crisply. In fact, he was desperately tired, hunger and unaccustomed exertion weighting his limbs.
“You been overdoing. I knew it,” Tom said, with gloomy relish. “You’d best go straight to bed, me lord, with a bit o’ bread and milk.”
Grey did not, of course, go to bed, dearly as he would have liked to.
Instead, hastily washed, brushed, and changed by a disapproving Tom Byrd, he went down to supper to meet the consortium, all hastily summoned by Edgar at his request.
Matters did not proceed as smoothly as he had hoped. For one thing, Maude was present, and loud in her disbelief that anyone could suppose that the sacred name of DeVane could be disparaged in this wanton fashion.
Edgar, bolstered by support from the distaff side, kept thwacking a metaphorical riding crop against his leg, clearly imagining the prospect of thrashing Lord Marchmont or Colonel Twelvetrees with it. Grey admitted the ch
arming nature of the notion, but found the repetition of the sentiment wearing.
As for Fanshawe and Trevorson, both appeared to be exactly as described—an honest, rather dull farmer, and a slightly reckless country squire, given to ostentatious waistcoats. Both were bugeyed with shock at news of what had been said at the Commission of Inquiry, and both professed complete bewilderment at what the commission could possibly have been thinking.
Ignorance did not, of course, prevent their speculating.
“Marchmont,” Trevorson said, in tones of puzzlement. “I confess I do not understand this at all. If it had been—you did say Mortimer Oswald was a member of this … body?”
“Yes,” Grey said, though he forbore nodding, fearing that his head might fall off. “Why?”
Trevorson humphed into his claret cup.
“Snake,” he said briefly. “No doubt he put Marchmont up to it. Feebleminded collop.”
Grey tried to form some sensible question in response to this information, but could make no connexion between Marchmont’s feeblemindedness, Oswald’s presumably serpentlike nature, and the problem at hand. The hell with it, he decided, glassy-eyed. He’d ask Edgar in the morning.
“Ridiculous!” Fanshawe was saying. “What idiocy is this? Explode a cannon by loading it with tricky powder? A thousand times more likely that the gun crew made some error.” He smacked a hand down on the table. “I’ll wager you a hundred guineas, some arsehole panicked and double-loaded the thing!”
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