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

“Ask them about the doctor, if you please,” Grey said, glancing from face to face.

“Doctor? You are unwell again?” Von Namtzen snapped his fingers and pointed at a stout woman in an apron, who must be the cook. “You—more eggs!”

“No, no! I am quite well, I thank you. The chambermaids said that Mrs. Mayrhofer was ill this week, and that a doctor had come. I wish to know if any of them saw him.”

“Ah?” Von Namtzen looked interested at this, and at once began peppering the ranks before him with questions. Grey leaned inconspicuously on a bookshelf, affecting an air of keen attention, while the next bout of dizziness spent itself.

The butler and the lady’s maid had seen the doctor, von Namtzen reported, turning to interpret his results to Grey. He had come several times to attend Frau Mayrhofer.

Grey swallowed. Perhaps he should have drunk the last batch of egg whites; they could not taste half so foul as the copper tang in his mouth.

“Did the doctor give his name?” he asked.

No, he had not. He did not dress quite like a doctor, the butler offered, but had seemed confident in his manner.

“Did not dress like a doctor? What does he mean by that?” Grey asked, straightening up.

More interrogation, answered by helpless shrugs from the butler. He did not wear a black suit, was the essential answer, but rather a rough blue coat and homespun breeches. The butler knit his brow, trying to recall further details.

“He did not smell of blood!” von Namtzen reported. “He smelled instead of … plants? Can that be correct?”

Grey closed his eyes briefly, and saw bunches of dried herbs hanging from darkened rafters, the fragrant gold dust drifting down from their leaves in answer to footsteps on the floor above.

“Was the doctor Irish?” he asked, opening his eyes.

Now even von Namtzen looked slightly puzzled.

“How would they tell the difference between an Irishman and an Englishman?” he said. “It is the same language.”

Grey drew a deep breath, but rather than attempt to explain the obvious, changed tack and gave a brief description of Finbar Scanlon. This, translated, resulted in immediate nods of recognition from butler and maid.

“This is important?” von Namtzen asked, watching Grey’s face.

“Very.” Grey folded his hands into fists, trying to think. “It is of the greatest importance that we discover where Frau Mayrhofer is. This ‘doctor’ is very likely a spy, in the Mayrhofers’ employ, and I very much suspect that the lady is in possession of something that His Majesty would strongly prefer to have back.”

He glanced over the ranks of the servants, who had started whispering among themselves, casting looks of awe, annoyance, or puzzlement at the two officers.

“Are you convinced that they are ignorant of the lady’s whereabouts?”

Von Namtzen narrowed his eyes, considering, but before he could reply, Grey became aware of a slight stir among the servants, several of whom were looking toward the door behind him.

He turned to see Tom Byrd standing there, freckles dark on his round face, and fairly quivering with excitement. In his hands were a pair of worn shoes.

“Me lord!” he said, holding them out. “Look! They’re Jack’s!”

Grey seized the shoes, which were large and very worn, the leather across the toes scuffed and cracked. Sure enough, the initials “JB” had been burnt into the soles. One of the heels was loose, hanging from its parent shoe by a single nail. Leather, and round at the back, as Tom had said.

“Who is Jack?” von Namtzen inquired, looking from Tom Byrd to the shoes, with obvious puzzlement.

“Mr. Byrd’s brother,” Grey explained, still turning the shoes over in his hands. “We have been in search of him for some time. Could you please inquire of the servants as to the whereabouts of the man who owns these shoes?”

Von Namtzen was in many ways an admirable associate, Grey thought; he asked no further questions of his own, but merely nodded and returned to the fray, pointing at the shoes and firing questions in a sharp but businesslike manner, as though he fully expected prompt answers.

Such was his air of command, he got them. The household, originally alarmed and then demoralized, had now fallen under von Namtzen’s sway, and appeared to have quite accepted him as temporary master of both the house and the situation.

“The shoes belong to a young man, an Englishman,” he reported to Grey, following a brief colloquy with butler and cook. “He was brought into the house more than a week ago, by a friend of Frau Mayrhofer; the Frau told Herr Burkhardt”—he inclined his head toward the butler, who bowed in acknowledgment—“that the young man was to be treated as a servant of the house, fed and accommodated. She did not explain why he was here, saying only that the situation would be temporary.”

The butler at this point interjected something; von Namtzen nodded, waving a hand to quell further remarks.

“Herr Burkhardt says that the young man was not given specific duties, but that he was helpful to the maids. He would not leave the house, nor would he go far away from Frau Mayrhofer’s rooms, insisting upon sleeping in the closet at the end of the hall near her suite. Herr Burkhardt had the feeling that the young man was guarding Frau Mayrhofer—but from what, he does not know.”

Tom Byrd had been listening to all of this with visible impatience, and could contain himself no longer.

“The devil with what he was doing here—where’s Jack gone?” he demanded.

Grey had his own pressing question, as well.

“This friend of Frau Mayrhofer—do they know his name? Can they describe him?”

With strict attention to social precedence, von Namtzen obtained the answer to Grey’s question first.

“The gentleman gave his name as Mr. Josephs. However, the butler says that he does not think this is his true name—the gentleman hesitated when asked for his name. He was very …” Von Namtzen hesitated himself, groping for translation. “Fein herausgeputzt. Very … polished.”

“Well dressed,” Grey amended. The room seemed very warm, and sweat was trickling down the seam of his back.

Von Namtzen nodded. “A bottle-green silk coat, with gilt buttons. A good wig.”

“Trevelyan,” Grey said, with a sense of inevitability that was composed in equal parts of relief and dismay. He took a deep breath; his heart was racing again. “And Jack Byrd?”

Von Namtzen shrugged.

“Gone. They suppose that he went with Frau Mayrhofer, for no one has seen him since last night.”

“Why’d he leave his shoes behind? Ask ’em that!” Tom Byrd was so upset that he neglected to add a “sir,” but von Namtzen, seeing the boy’s distress, graciously overlooked it.

“He exchanged these shoes for the working pair belonging to this footman.” The Hanoverian nodded at a tall young man who was following the conversation intently, brows knitted in the effort of comprehension. “He did not say why he wished it—perhaps because of the damaged heel; the other pair were also very worn, but serviceable.”

“Why did this young man agree to the exchange?” Grey asked, nodding at the footman. The nod was a mistake; the dizziness rolled suddenly out of its hiding place and revolved slowly round the inside of his skull like a tilting quintain.

A question, an answer. “Because these are leather, with metal buckles,” von Namtzen reported. “The shoes he exchanged were simple clogs, with wooden soles and heels.”

At this point, Grey’s knees gave up the struggle, and he lowered himself into a chair, covering his eyes with the heels of his hands. He breathed shallowly, his thoughts spinning round in slow circles like the orbs of his father’s orrery, light flashing from memory to memory, hearing Harry Quarry say, Sailors all wear wooden heels; leather’s slippery on deck, and then, Trevelyan? Father a baronet, brother in Parliament, a fortune in Cornish tin, up to his eyeballs in the East India Company?

“Oh, Christ,” he said, and dropped his hands. “They’re sailing.”

Chapter 16

Lust Is Perjur’d

It took no little effort to persuade both von Namtzen and Tom Byrd that he was capable of independent movement and would not fall facedown in the street—the more so as he was not entirely sure of it himself. In the end, though, Tom Byrd went reluctantly to Jermyn Street to pack a bag, and von Namtzen—even more reluctantly—was convinced that his own path of duty lay in perusing the contents of Mayrhofer’s desk.

“No one else is capable of reading whatever papers may be there,” Grey pointed out. “The man is dead, and was very likely a spy. I will send someone from the regiment at once to take charge of the premises—but if there is anything urgent in those papers …”

Von Namtzen compressed his lips, but nodded.

“You will take care?” he asked earnestly, putting a large, warm hand on the nape of Grey’s neck, and bending down to look searchingly into his face. The Hanoverian’s eyes were a troubled gray, with small lines of worry round them.

“I will,” Grey said, and did his best to smile in reassurance. He handed Tom a scribbled note, desiring Harry Quarry to send a German speaker at once to Mecklenberg Square, and took his leave.

Three choices, he thought, breathing deeply to control the dizziness as he stepped into a commercial coach. The offices of the East India Company, in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Trevelyan’s chief man of business, a fellow named Royce, who kept offices in the Temple. Or Neil the Cunt.

The sun was nearly down, an evening fog dulling its glow like the steam off a fresh-fired cannonball. That made the choice simple; he could not hope to reach Westminster or the Temple before everyone had gone home for the night. But he knew where Stapleton lived; he had made it his business to find out, after the unsettling interview with Bowles.

“You want what?” Stapleton had been asleep when Grey pounded on his door; he was in his shirt and barefoot. He knuckled one bleary eye, regarding Grey incredulously with the other.

“The names and sailing dates for any ships licensed to the East India Company leaving England this month. Now.”

Stapleton had both eyes open now. He blinked slowly, scratching his ribs.

“How would I know such a thing?”

“I don’t suppose you would. Someone in Bowles’s employ does, though, and I expect you can find out where the information is, without undue loss of time. The matter is urgent.”

“Oh, is it?” Neil’s mouth twisted, and the lower lip protruded a little. His weight shifted subtly, so that he stood suddenly nearer. “How … urgent?”

“Much too urgent for games, Mr. Stapleton. Put on your clothes, please; I have a coach waiting.”

Neil did not reply, but smiled and lifted a hand. He touched Grey’s face, cupping his cheek, a thumb drawing languidly beneath the edge of his mouth. He was very warm, and smelt of bed.

“Not all that much of a rush, surely, Mary?”

Grey gripped the hand and pulled it away from his face, squeezing hard, so that the knucklebones cracked in his grasp.

“You will come with me at once,” he said, very clearly, “or I will inform Mr. Bowles officially of the circumstances under which we first met. Do you understand me, sir?”

He stared at Stapleton, eye to eye. The man was awake now, blue eyes snapping-bright and furious. He freed himself from Grey’s grasp with a wrench and took a half-step backward, trembling with rage.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Stapleton’s tongue flicked across his upper lip—not in attempted flirtation, but in desperation. The light was dying, but not yet so far gone that Grey could not see Stapleton’s face clearly, and discern the bone-deep fright that underlay the fury.

Stapleton glanced round, to be sure they were not overheard, and gripping Grey’s sleeve, drew him into the shelter of the doorway. Standing so near, it was plain that the man wore nothing beneath his shirt; Grey could see the smoothness of his chest in the open neck, golden skin falling away to alluring shadows farther down.

“Do you know what could happen to me if you were to do such a thing?” he hissed.

Grey did. Loss of position and social ruination were the least of it; imprisonment, public whipping, and the pillory were likely. And if it was discovered that Stapleton’s irregular attachments had contributed to a breach of confidence in his duties—which was precisely what Grey was inciting him to do—he would be fortunate to escape hanging for treason.

“I know what will happen to you if you don’t do as I tell you,” Grey said coldly. He pulled his sleeve away and stepped back. “Be quick about it; I have no time to waste.”

It took no more than an hour before they reached a dingy lane and a shabby building that housed a printing shop, closed and shuttered for the night. Without a glance at Grey, Stapleton jumped out of the coach and banged at the door. Within moments, a light showed between the cracks of the shutters, and the door opened. Stapleton murmured something to the old woman who stood there, and slipped inside.

Grey sat well back in the shadows, a slouch hat drawn down to hide his face. The coach was a livery affair, ramshackle enough—but still an oddity in the neighborhood. He could only hope that Stapleton was quick enough in his errand to allow them to remove before some inquisitive footpad thought to try his luck.

The rumble and stink of a night-soil wagon floated through the air, and he tugged the window shut against them.

He was relieved that Stapleton had given in without more struggle; the man was certainly clever enough to have realized that the sword Grey held over his head was a two-edged one. True, Grey claimed to have been in Lavender House only as a matter of inquiry—and the only person who could prove otherwise was the young man with dark hair—but Stapleton didn’t know that.