Lord John and the Private Matter (Lord John Grey #1) 7

“Reasonably. It is not impossible that a dressmaker should make more than one gown, of course—but whoever made this one made the one that Magda was wearing.”

“Magda?” Quarry blinked at him.

Grey cleared his throat, a hideous realization coming suddenly over him. Quarry hadn’t known.

“The … ah … Scottish woman I met there informed me that the madam was called Magda, and is in fact a, um, a German of some type.”

Quarry’s face looked pinched in the lantern light.

“Of some type,” he repeated bleakly. It made considerable difference which type, and Quarry was well aware of it. Prussia and Hanover—of course—had allied themselves with England, while the duchy of Saxony had chosen up sides with France and Russia, in support of its neighbor Austria. For an English colonel to be patronizing a brothel owned by a German of unknown background and allegiance, and now with an evident involvement in criminal matters, was a dicey proposition, and one that Quarry must devoutly hope would never come to official notice. Or the notice of the unblinking Mr. Bowles.

It wouldn’t do Grey’s reputation any good, either. He realized now that he ought to have mentioned the situation to Quarry at the time, rather than assuming that he must know of Magda’s background already. But he had allowed himself to be distracted by alcoholic excess, and by Nessie’s disclosure about Trevelyan—and now he could but hope there wasn’t the devil to pay for it.

Harry Quarry drew a deep breath and blew it out again, squaring his shoulders. One of Harry’s many good points was that he never wasted time in recrimination, and—unlike Bernard Sydell—never blamed subordinates, even when they deserved it.

“Well, then,” he said, and turned to Magruder. “I think we must have Mrs. Magda taken into custody and questioned without delay. We shall need to search her premises, as well, I should think—will you require a warrant?”

“Yes, sir. Given the circumstances”—Magruder nodded delicately at the dead man—“I shouldn’t think the magistrate would be reluctant.”

Quarry nodded, straightening the coat on his shoulders.

“Aye. I’ll come myself and speak to him now.” He drummed his fingers restlessly on the table, making the corpse’s slack hand tremble with the vibration. “Grey—I think we shall have the Scanlons taken up, too, as you advised. You’ll question them; go round to the gaol tomorrow, once Magruder has had a chance to lay them by the heels. As for … the Cornish gentleman … use your best judgment there, will you?”

Grey managed a nod, cursing himself for his idiocy, and then Quarry and Magruder were gone, leaving the faceless corpse naked and staring in the flickering light.

“You in trouble, me lord?” Tom Byrd was frowning worriedly at him from the shadows, having evidently divined some hint of the undercurrents in the preceding conversation.

“I hope not.” He stood looking down at the dead man. Who the devil was he? Grey had been convinced that the body was that of Trevelyan’s lover—and it might still be, he reminded himself. True, Caswell had insisted that it was a woman whom Trevelyan entertained at Lavender House, but Caswell might have been mistaken in his own powers of olfactory discernment—or lying, for reasons unknown.

Use his best judgment, Harry said. His best judgment was that Trevelyan was in this up to his neck—but there was no direct evidence.

There was certainly no evidence to connect the Scanlons with this business, and precious little to connect them with O’Connell’s murder—but Harry’s motive in ordering an arrest there was apparent; if inquiries were eventually made into the conduct of the investigation, it would be prudent to make it look as though affairs were being pursued aggressively. The muddier the waters, the less likely anyone might be to take up the matter of Magda’s inconvenient nationality.

“Major?” He turned, to see Corporal Hicks frowning at him from the doorway. “You aren’t going to leave that thing here, are you?”

“Oh. No, Corporal. You may remove it to the coroner’s. Fetch some men.”

“Right, sir.” Hicks disappeared with alacrity, but Grey hesitated. Was there any further information that the body itself could offer?

“You think it was the same cove what did for that Sergeant O’Connell what did for this ’un, me lord?” Tom Byrd had come to stand alongside him.

“I have no particular reason to think so,” Grey said, a little startled at this supposition. “Why?”

“Well, the, uh, face.” Tom gestured, a little awkwardly, at the remains, and swallowed audibly. One eyeball had been dislodged so far from its parent socket as to dangle out onto the crushed cheek, staring accusingly off into the shadows of the hay shed. “Seems like whoever did this didn’t care for him much—same as whoever stamped on the Sergeant.”

Grey considered that, pursing his lips. Reluctantly, he shook his head.

“I don’t think so, Tom. I think that whoever did this”—he gestured at the corpse—“did it in order to disguise the gentleman’s identity, not out of personal dislike. It’s heavy work, to crush a skull like that, and this was a very thorough job. One would have to be in an absolute frenzy of hatred—and if that was the case, why shoot him first?”

“Did they? Shoot him first, I mean, me lord. ’Coz what you said about dead men don’t bleed—this one surely did, so he can’t have been dead when they … erm.” He glanced at the smashed face, and then away. “But he couldn’t live long like that—so why shoot him, then?”

Grey stared at Tom. The boy was pale, but bright-eyed, intent on his argument.

“You have a very logical sort of mind, Tom,” he said. “Why, indeed?” He stood for a moment looking down at the corpse, trying to reconcile the disparate bits of information at hand. What Tom said made obvious sense—and yet he was convinced that whoever had killed this man had not beaten in his face from anger. Just as he was convinced that whoever had stamped on Tim O’Connell’s face had acted from precisely that emotion.

Tom Byrd stood patiently by, keeping quiet as Grey circled the table, viewing the corpse from all angles. Nothing seemed to make sense of the puzzle, though, and when Hicks’s men came in, he allowed them to bundle up the body into a canvas.

“D’you want us to take this, as well, sir?” One of the men picked up the sodden hem of the green dress, gingerly, between two fingers.

“Not even the mort-man’d want that,” the other objected, wrinkling his nose at the reek.

“You couldn’t sell it to a ragpicker, even was you to wash it.”

“No,” Grey said, “leave it, for now.”

“You don’t mean to leave it in here, do you, sir?” Hicks stood by, arms folded, glowering at the sodden pile of velvet.

“No, I suppose not,” Grey said, with a sigh. “Don’t want to put the horses off their feed, do we?”

It was full dark as they left the stables, but with a gibbous moon rising. No coach would take them as passengers with their malodorous burden, even with it wrapped in tarred canvas, and so they were obliged to walk to Jermyn Street.

They made the journey for the most part in silence, Grey mulling over the events of the day, trying vainly to fit the dead man somehow into the puzzle. Two things alone seemed clear about the matter: one, that a great effort had been made to disguise the man’s identity. Two, that there was some connexion between the dead man and the brothel in Meacham Street—which in turn meant that there must be some connexion with Joseph Trevelyan.

This seemed vaguely wrong; if one’s chief motive was to disguise identity, why clothe the corpse in such a distinctive gown? His mind supplied the answer, belatedly reminding him of what he had seen but not consciously noted at the time. The man had not been dressed in the gown after death—he had been wearing it when he was shot.

There was no doubt about it. The bullet hole in the dress was singed round the edges, and there were powder grains in the fabric of the dress for some distance around it; likewise, the wound in the chest had shreds of fabric driven into it.

That began to make matters seem more sensible. If the victim had been wearing the gown when shot, and there was some reason not to remove it—then the smashing of the man’s face to obscure identity was a reasonable step.

Look at it from the other direction, he thought. If Magruder had not been on the alert for any mention of a green velvet gown—for no one could have known that there was any official interest in such a thing—what might have been expected to happen?

The corpse would have been discovered, and taken to the nearest morgue—which was … where, exactly? Near Vauxhall, perhaps?

That was promising; Vauxhall was a rowdy district, full of theaters and amusement parks, much patronized by ladies of the evening and by painted mollies out for an evening’s jollification at one of the many masked balls. He must ask Magruder to discover whether there had been a ball on Tuesday night.

So, then. If not for Magruder’s interference, the body would have been taken to a morgue, where it would likely have been assumed to be that of a prostitute, such women not uncommonly meeting with violent ends. Everyone who had seen the body had in fact assumed it to be that of a woman, until Tom the barber’s son had spotted the tiny patch of telltale stubble.

That was it, he thought, with a small spurt of excitement. That was why the gown was not removed and why the face was smashed; to disguise not the identity per se, but the sex of the victim!

He felt Tom glance at him in curiosity, and realized that he must have made some exclamation. He shook his head at the boy and paced on, too engrossed in his speculations to suffer the distraction of conversation.

Even if the truth of the corpse’s sex had been discovered, he thought, it would likely have been assumed that the body belonged to the shady half-world of transvestite commerce—no one of consequence, no one who would be missed.

The body would then have been promptly disposed of, taken off to a dissection room or a potter’s field, depending on its state—but in either case, safely gone, with no chance of its ever being identified.

All of which gave him an unpleasant sensation in the pit of the stomach. A number of boys and young men from that shadow world disappeared in London every year, their fates—when they were noticed at all—usually concealed in official wording that sought to soothe society’s sensibilities by ignoring any hint that they had been involved in abominable perversion.

Which meant that for such trouble to be taken in disguising this particular death—the dead man was someone of consequence. Someone who would be missed. The bundle under his arm seemed suddenly heavier, dragging at him like the weight of a severed head.

“Me lord?” Tom Byrd laid a tentative hand on the bundle, offering to take it from him.

“No, Tom, that’s all right.” He shifted the bundle, tucking it more firmly under his arm. “I smell like a slaughterhouse already; no need for you to spoil your clothes as well.”

The boy took his hand away, with an alacrity that informed Grey of the nobility of the original offer. The bundle did stink abominably. He smiled to himself, face hidden in the darkness.

“I’m afraid we will have missed our supper—but I suppose Cook will let us have something.”

“Yes, me lord.”

Piccadilly lay just ahead; the streets were opening out, lined with the shops of clothiers and merchants, rather than the libkens and taverns of the narrower ways near Queen Street. At this time of night, the streets were busy with foot traffic, horses and carriages; random snatches of conversation, shouts and cheerful bustle drifted past.

A light rain was falling, and mist rose from the pavements round their feet. The lightermen had come already; the streetlamps flickered and glowed under the glass of their canopies and shone upon the wet stones, helping to dispel the lurking horror of that conference in the hay shed.

“Do you get used to it, me lord?” Tom glanced at him, round face troubled in the transient glow.

“To what? Death, do you mean, and bodies?”

“Well … that sort of death, I suppose.” The boy made a diffident gesture toward the bundle. “I’d think this was maybe different than what you see in battle—but maybe I’m wrong?”

“Maybe.” Grey slowed his pace to let a group of gay blades pass, laughing as they crossed the street, dodging an oncoming detachment of mounted Horse Guards, harness glittering in the wet.

“I suppose it is no different in the essentials,” he said, stepping out as the sound of hooves clattered off down Piccadilly. “I have seen more dreadful things on a battlefield, often. And yes, you do get used to that—you must.”

“But it is different?” Tom persisted. “This?”

Grey took a deep breath, and a firmer hold on his burden.

“Yes,” he said. “And I should not like to meet the man to whom this is routine.”

Chapter 14

A Troth Is Blighted

Grey was rudely roused from his bed just after dawn, to find Corporal Jowett arrived on the doorstep with bad news.

“Ruddy birds had flown, sir,” Jowett said, handing over a note from Malcolm Stubbs to the same effect. “Lieutenant Stubbs and I went round with a couple of soldiers, along with that Magruder fellow and two constables, thinking to take the Scanlons unawares whilst it was still dark.” Jowett looked like an emaciated bulldog at the best of times; his face now was positively savage. “Found the door locked and broke it in—only to find the place empty as a ruddy tomb on Easter morning.”