Grey eyed her with interest—and a certain amount of admiration—then glanced at the apothecary, to see how he took this speech. Scanlon had dropped back a step; his eyes were fixed on the woman’s bruised face, a slight frown between the heavy brows.
Grey settled the silver gorget that hung at his neck, then leaned forward and picked up the purse from the table, jingling it gently in his palm.
“As you will, madam. Do you wish also to reject the pension to which you are entitled, as a sergeant’s widow?” Such a pension was little enough; but given the woman’s situation . . .
She stood for a moment, undecided, then her head lifted again.
“That, I’ll take,” she said, giving him a glittering look through one slitted eye. “I’ve earned it.”
Chapter 3
O What a Tangled Web
We Weave
There was nothing for it but report the matter. Finding someone to report to was more difficult; with the regiment refitting and furbishing for a new posting, there were constant comings and goings. The usual parade had been temporarily discontinued, and no one was where he ought to be. It was just past sunset of the following day when Grey eventually ran Quarry to earth, in the smoking room at the Beefsteak.
“Were they telling the truth, d’ye think?” Quarry pursed his lips, and blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “Scanlon and the woman?”
Grey shook his head, concentrating on getting his fresh cheroot to draw. Once it seemed well alight, he took it from his lips long enough to answer.
“She was—mostly. He wasn’t.”
Quarry’s brows lifted, then dropped in a frown.
“Sure of it? You said he was nervous; might that be only because he didn’t want you to discover Mrs. O’Connell, and thus his relations with her?”
“Yes,” Grey said. “But even after we’d spoken with her . . . I can’t say precisely what it was that Scanlon was lying about—or even that he lied, specifically. But he knew something about O’Connell’s death that he wasn’t telling straight, or I’m a Dutchman.”
Quarry grunted in response to this, and lay back in his chair, smoking fiercely and scowling at the ceiling in concentration. Indolent by nature, Harry Quarry disliked thinking, but he could do it when obliged to.
Respecting the labor involved, Grey said nothing, taking an occasional pull from the Spanish cigar that had been pressed upon him by Quarry, who fancied the exotic weed. He himself normally drank tobacco smoke only medicinally, when suffering from a heavy rheum, but the smoking room at the Beefsteak offered the best chance of private conversation at this time of day, most members being at their suppers.
Grey’s stomach growled at the thought of supper, but he ignored it. Time enough for food later.
Quarry removed the cigar from his lips long enough to say, “Damn your brother,” then replaced it and resumed his contemplation of the pastoral frolic taking place on the gessoed ceiling above.
Grey nodded, in substantial agreement with this sentiment. Hal was Colonel of the Regiment, as well as the head of Grey’s family. Hal was presently in France—had been for a month—and his temporary absence was creating an uncomfortable burden on those required to shoulder those responsibilities that were rightfully his. Nothing to be done about it, though; duty was duty.
In Hal’s absence, command of the regiment devolved upon its two regular Colonels, Harry Quarry and Bernard Sydell. Grey had had not the slightest hesitation in choosing to whom to make his report. Sydell was an elderly man, crotchety and strict, with little knowledge of his troops and less interest in them.
Observing the inferno in progress, one of the ever-watchful servants came silently forward to place a small porcelain dish on Quarry’s chest, lest the fuming ashes of his cigar set his waistcoat on fire. Quarry ignored this, puffing rhythmically and making occasional small growling noises between his teeth.
Grey’s cheroot had burnt itself out by the time Quarry removed the porcelain dish from his chest and the soggy remains of his own cigar from his mouth. He sat up and sighed deeply.
“No help for it,” he said. “You’ll have to know.”
“Know what?”
“We think O’Connell was a spy.”
Astonishment and dismay vied for place in Grey’s bosom with a certain feeling of satisfaction. He’d known there was something fishy about the situation in Brewster’s Alley—and it wasn’t codfish.
“A spy for whom?” They were alone; the ubiquitous servant had disappeared momentarily, but Grey nonetheless glanced round and lowered his voice.
“We don’t know.” Quarry squashed the stump of his cigar into the dish and set it aside. “That was why your brother decided to leave him be for a bit after we began to suspect him—in hopes of discovering his paymaster, once the regiment was back in London.”
That made sense; while O’Connell might have gathered useful military information in the field, he would have found it infinitely easier to pass it on in the seething anthill of London—where men of every nation on earth mingled daily in the streams of commerce that flowed up the Thames—than in the shoulder-rubbing confines of a military camp.
“Oh, I see,” Grey said, shooting a sharp glance at Quarry as the light dawned. “Hal took advantage of the gossip regarding the regimental posting, didn’t he? Stubbs told me after luncheon that he’d heard from DeVries that we were definitely set for France again—likely Calais. I take it that was misdirection, for O’Connell’s benefit?”
Quarry regarded him blandly. “Wasn’t announced officially, was it?”
“No. And we take it that the coincidence of such an unofficial decision and the sudden demise of Sergeant O’Connell is sufficient to be . . . interesting?”
“Depends on your tastes, I s’pose,” Quarry said, heaving a deep sigh. “Damn nuisance, I call it.”
The servant came quietly back into the room, bearing a humidor in one hand, a rack of pipes in the other. The supper hour was drawing to a close, and those members who liked a smoke to settle their digestions would be coming down the hallway shortly, each to claim his own pipe and his preferred chair.
Grey sat frowning for a moment.
“Why was . . . the gentleman in question . . . suspected?”
“Can’t tell you that.” Quarry lifted one shoulder, leaving it unclear as to whether his reticence was a matter of ignorance or of official discretion.
“I see. So perhaps my brother is in France—and perhaps he isn’t?”
A slight smile twitched the white scar on Quarry’s cheek.
“You’d know better than I would, Grey.”
The servant had gone out again, to fetch the other humidors; several members kept their personal blends of tobacco and snuff at the club. He could already hear the stir from the dining room, of scraping chairs and postprandial conversation. Grey leaned forward, ready to rise.
“But you had him followed, of course—O’Connell. Someone must have kept a close eye on him in London.”
“Oh, yes.” Quarry shook himself into rough order, brushing ash from the knees of his breeches and pulling down his rumpled waistcoat. “Hal found a man. Very discreet, well-placed. A footman employed by a friend of the family—your family, that is.”
“And that friend would be . . .”
“The Honorable Joseph Trevelyan.” Heaving himself to his feet, Quarry led the way out of the smoking room, leaving Grey to follow as he might, senses reeling from more than tobacco smoke.
It all made a horrid sense, though, he thought, following Quarry toward the door. Trevelyan’s family and Grey’s had been associated for the last couple of centuries, and it was in some part Joseph Trevelyan’s friendship with Hal that had led to his betrothal to Olivia in the first place.