Текст книги "Lord John and the Hand of Devils"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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The minister nodded like a clockwork doll, but looked back and forth between Grey and the doorway, exhibiting marked perplexity and what looked like embarrassment.

Grey was somewhat perplexed himself. He was also angry with himself for having allowed his personal opinions to intrude on the conversation. No help now but to retreat in good order, perhaps leaving enough goodwill to provide for another visit later. He rose and bowed.

“I thank you for receiving me, sir. I can show myself out.”

The Reverend Mr. Thackeray and the maid both gave sharp gasps as he strode through the door, and the minister made a brief movement as though to prevent him, but Grey ignored it.

The man in the hall was dressed in ordinary riding clothes, his hat in his hand. He turned sharply at Grey’s appearance, surprised.

Grey nodded toward the newcomer, hoping that his face did not reveal the shock he felt at Fanshawe’s appearance. It was the sort of face that drew both men and women, dark and arresting in its beauty—or had been. One eye remained, sapphire-colored, dark-lashed, and framed by an arch of black brow, a perfect jewel.

The other was invisible, whether injured or destroyed, he had no idea. A black silk scarf was bound across Fanshawe’s brow, a bar sinister whose starkness cut across a mass of melted, lividly welted flesh. The nose was mostly gone; only the blunt darkness of the nostrils remained. He had the horrid fancy that they stared, inviting him—almost compellinghim—to look through them into Fanshawe’s brain.

“Your servant, sir,” he heard himself say, bowing automatically.

“And yours.”

Had he ever heard Fanshawe’s voice before? It was colorless, correct, with the slightest tinge of Sussex. Fanshawe turned at a sound from the parlor door, and Grey felt suddenly faint. Part of the captain’s head had been caved in, leaving a shocking depression above the ear, nearly a quarter of the skull…gone. How had he lived?

Grey bowed again, murmuring something meaningless, and escaped, finding himself in the road without noticing how he had got there.

His heart was beating fast and he felt the taste of bile at the back of his throat. He tried to erase the vision of Fanshawe’s head from his mind, but it was no use. The ruined face was terrible to look upon, and filled him with a piercing regret for the loss of beauty—though he had seen such things before. But that sickening place, where the eye expected a solid curve of skull and found emptiness instead, was peculiarly shocking, even to a professional soldier.

He stood still, eyes closed, and breathed slowly, concentrating on the sharp autumnal odors round him: chimney smoke and the sweet scent of windfall apples, rotting in the grass; damp earth and dead leaves, the bitter smell of hawthorn fruits, cut straw, used to mulch the flower beds in Thackeray’s garden. Soap—

Soap?His eyes flew open and he saw that the branches of the hedgerow beside him were heaving.

“Psst!” said the hedge.

“I beg your pardon?” he replied, leaning to look closer. Through the spiny branches of a hawthorn, he made out the anxious face of a young woman, perhaps eighteen or so, whose large, prominent eyes and upturned nose betrayed a close resemblance to the pug-like Mr. Thackeray.

“May I speak to you, sir?” she said, eyes imploring.

“I believe you are, madam, but if you wish to continue doing so, perhaps it would be easier were I to meet you yonder?” He nodded down the road, to a gap where there was a gate set into the hedge.

The clean-smelling young woman met him there, her face pink with cold air and flusterment.

“You will think me forward, sir, but I—Oh, and I doapologize, sir, but I couldn’t help overhearing, and when you spoke to Father about Annie…”

“I collect you are…Miss Thackeray?”

“Oh, I am sorry, sir.” She bobbed him an anxious curtsy, her ruffled cap clean and white, like a fresh mushroom. “I am Barbara Thackeray. My sister is Miss Thackeray—or—or was,” she corrected, blushing deeply.

“Is your sister deceased, then?” Grey inquired, as gently as possible. “Or married?”

“Oh, sir!” She gave him a wide-eyed look. “I do hopeshe is married, and not—not the other. She wrote to me, and said she and Philip meant to be married ever so soon as they might. She is a good girl, Annie; you must not pay attention to anyone who tells you otherwise, indeed you must not!” She looked quite fierce at this, like a small pug dog seizing the edge of a carpet in its teeth, and he nearly laughed, but stopped himself in time.

“She wrote to you, you say?” He glanced involuntarily back at the house, and she correctly interpreted the look.

“She sent a letter in care of Simon Coles, the lawyer. He is—a friend.” Her color deepened. “It was but a brief note, to assure me of her welfare. But I have heard nothing since. And when we heard that Philip—that Lieutenant Lister—was killed…Oh, my fears for her will destroy me, sir, pray believe me!”

She looked so distressed that Grey had no difficulty in believing her, and so assured her.

“May I—may I ask, sir, why you have come?” she asked, pinkening further. “You do not knowanything of Anne, yourself?”

“No. I came in hopes of learning something regarding her whereabouts. You are familiar with Lieutenant Lister’s family, I collect?”

She nodded, brows knit.

“Well, Mr. Lister is most desirous of discovering your sister’s current circumstances, and offering what assistance he might, for his son’s sake,” he said carefully. He really did not know whether Lister would be interested in helping the young woman if she had notgiven birth to Philip Lister’s child, but there was no point in mentioning that possibility.

“Oh,” she breathed, a slight look of hope coming into her face. “Oh! So you are a friend of Mr. Lister’s? It was wise of you not to tell Father so. He holds the Listers responsible entirely for my sister’s disgrace…and in all truth,” she added, with a trace of bitterness, “I cannot say he is wrong to do so. If only Marcus… Hewould have quit the army for Anne’s sake, I know he would. And of course now he is invalided out, but…”

“Captain Fanshawe was an—a suitor of Miss Thackeray’s?” Grey said, hastily substituting that term for the more vulgar “admirer.”

Barbara Thackeray nodded, looking troubled.

“Oh, yes. He and Philip both wished to marry her. My sister could not choose between them, and my father disliked them equally, because of their profession. But then—” She glanced back at the house, involuntarily. “Did you seeMarcus?”

“Yes,” Grey said, unable to repress a small shiver of revulsion. “What happened to him?”

She shuddered in sympathy.

“Is it not terrible? He will not allow me or my younger sisters to see him, save he is masked. But Shelby—the parlor maid—told me what he is like. It was an explosion.”

“What—a cannon?” Grey asked, with a certain feeling of nightmare. She shook her head, though.

“No, sir. The Fanshawes own a powder mill, by the river. One of the buildings went—they do, you know, every so often; we hear the bang sometimes, in the distance, so dreadful! Two workmen were killed; Marcus lived, though everyone says it would have been a mercy had he not.”

Shortly after this tragedy, Philip Lister had eloped with Anne Thackeray, and bar that one short note, evidently nothing further was known of her whereabouts.

“She said that Philip had found her a suitable lodging in Southwark, and that the landlady was most obliging. Is that a help?” Barbara asked hopefully.

“It may be.” Grey tried not to imagine how many obliging landladies there might be in Southwark. “Do you know—did your sister take away any jewelry with her?” The first—perhaps the only—thing a young woman left suddenly destitute might do was to pawn or sell her jewelry. And there might be fewer pawnbrokers in Southwark than landladies.

“Well…yes. At least…I suppose she did.” She looked doubtful. “I could look. Her things…Father wished to dispose of them, and had them packed up, but I—well, I could not bear to part with them.” She blushed, looking down. “I…persuaded Simon to speak to the drover who took away the boxes; they are in his shed, I believe.”

A distant shout made her look over her shoulder, startled.

“They are looking for me. I must go,” she said, already gathering her skirts for flight. “Where do you stay, sir?”

“At Blackthorn Hall,” Grey said. “Edgar DeVane is my brother.”

Her eyes flew wide at that, and he saw her look closely at him for the first time, blinking.

“He is?”

“My half brother,” he amended dryly, seeing that she was taken slightly back by his appearance.

“Oh! Yes,” she said uncertainly, but then her face changed as another shout came from the direction of the house. “I must go. I will send to you about the jewelry. And thank you, sir, ever so much!”

She gave him a quick, low curtsy, then picked up her skirts and fled, gray-striped stockings flashing as she ran.

“Hmm!” he said. Used as he was to general approbation of his person, he was amused to discover that his vanity was mildly affronted at her plain astonishment that such an insignificant sort as himself should be brother to the darkly dramatic Edgar DeVane. He laughed at himself, and turned back toward the spot where he had left Edgar’s horse, swishing his stick through the hedge as he passed.

Despite her rather prominent eyes and her lack of appreciation for his own appearance, he liked Barbara Thackeray. So, obviously, did Simon Coles. He hoped Coles was a more acceptable candidate for marriage than Lister or Fanshawe had been, for the young woman’s sake.

He rather thought he must go and speak to lawyer Coles. Because while Barbara had received only the one note from her sister, both her father and Mr. Lister appeared to believe that Anne had later borne a child. It was possible, he thought, that Simon Coles knew why.

He was not sure what he had expected of Simon Coles, but the reality was different. The lawyer was a slight young man, with sandy hair, a sprinkling of freckles across a thin, homely face, and a withered leg.

“Lord John Grey… MajorGrey?” he exclaimed, leaning eagerly forward over his desk. “But I know you—know ofyou, I should say,” he corrected himself.

“You do?” Once again, Grey found himself uneasy at being the unwitting subject of conversation. Perhaps Edgar had mentioned his impending arrival; he hadsent a note ahead to Blackthorn Hall.

“Yes, yes! I am sure of it! Let me show you.” Reaching for the padded crutch that leaned against the wall, he tucked it deftly beneath one arm and swung himself out from behind the desk, heading so briskly for the bookshelves across the room that Grey was obliged to step out of the way.

“Now where…?” the lawyer murmured, running a finger across a row of books. “Ah, yes, just here, just here!”

Pulling down a large double folio, he bundled it across to the desk, where he flung it open and flicked the pages, revealing it to be a sort of compendium, wherein Grey recognized accounts from various newspapers, carefully cut out and pasted onto the pages. For variety, he glimpsed a number of illustrated broadsheets, and even a few ballad sheets, tucked amongst the pages.

“There! I knew it must be the same, though Grey is not an uncommon name. The circumstances, though—I daresay you found those sufficiently uncommon, did you not, Major?” He looked up with sparkling eyes, his finger planted on a cutting.

Unwilling, Grey felt still compelled to look, and was mortified to read a recently published and highly colored account of his saving a cannon—the gun reported as being named “Tod Belcher”—from the hands of a ravening horde of Austrians after the tragic and untimely demise of the gun’s captain. He, Grey, having personally swept an oncoming Austrian cavalry officer from his saddle, then pinned him to the ground with his sword through the officer’s coat, demanded and accepted his surrender, and then (by report) had fought the gun virtually single-handed, the rest of the crew having been slain by the accident which took the life of “Philbert Lester,” the doomed captain, whose detached limbs had been scattered to the four winds, and his bowels torn out. Rather oddly, the explosion of the cannon that had concluded this remarkable passage at arms was treated in a single offhand sentence.

Whoever had written this piece of bombast hadmanaged, 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 admirationfor 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 charming 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!”

“What odds?” Trevorson drawled, making the table rock with laughter. Grey felt the muscles near his mouth draw back, miming laughter, but the words echoed in the pit of his stomach, mixing uneasily with the roast fowl and prunes.

Some arsehole panicked…

“John, you haven’t touched the trifle! Here, you must have some, it is my own invention, made with gooseberry conserve from the gardens….” Maude waved the butler in his direction, and he could not find will to protest as a large, gooey mass was dolloped onto his plate.

Exercised by his revelations, the members of the consortium kept him late, the brandy bottle passing up and down the table as they argued whether they should go in a body to London to refute this monstrous allegation, or send one of their membership as representative, in which case ought it be DeVane, as the largest mill owner—