Bragg’s bristly eyebrows came down in a fearsome frown. “Good God in the foothills, Tom,” he burst out, “I might have thought you had more important things to worry about than who blew the head off Honest Dick the Steamer King. It’s a goddamn sideshow: that’s all it is, nothing else but. You’ve been moaning how you haven’t got time for this and you haven’t got time for that, but somehow you have got time for something that hasn’t got anything much to do with where The Two Georges is. Drop it, that’s all I can tell you. Let the New Liverpool constables do their job. You do yours.”
Bushell stared at the RAM commandant. He couldn’t remember the last time his old friend (who’d laid his wife - but there was a piece that didn’t fit into the jigsaw puzzle) had been so flustered by a case. Sir Horace didn’t slip back into the North Carolina accents of his youth unless he was very upset. Cautiously, Bushell said, “Sir, it looks to me as if what they’re doing back in New Liverpool is liable to be important to what I’m doing here.”
“It doesn’t look that way to me,” Bragg declared. “Even if they do catch Tricky Dick’s killer, that’s not going to give us The Two Georges. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir, I do -“ Bushell began.
Before he could say anything more, Sir Horace seemed to deflate before his eyes, like a balloon with a coronium leak. Bragg leaned forward and buried his face in his hands for close to a minute. When he straightened, he seemed more himself. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said. “I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. Trying to come up with that miserable, stinking painting has taken twenty years off my life, I swear it has. I haven’t slept. I’ve been eating like a pig, too, trying to make up for it.”
That sounded like the Horace Bragg Bushell knew. The RAM commandant was, if anything, skinnier than ever.
Bragg went on, “I did mean what I said, though. The murder case isn’t your responsibility; it belongs to this Munoz - “
“Macias,” Bushell corrected automatically.
“Whatever his name is,” Sir Horace said with an impatient wave. “You have more important things to do. Seeing whether Sir David Clarke is a traitor to the Crown springs to mind, for instance.”
Most of the time, Bushell would have risen to that like a trout to a fly. Now - “I’ve got that well under way, sir,” was all he said. Bragg nodded, apparently satisfied. Bushell himself was rather less so. Some of the triumph of proving the man he hated a villain had evaporated in the conversation he’d had with Clarke. And Sir David turned out not to have been the only man with whom Irene had betrayed him. Sitting across the desk was another one.
Sir Horace proceeded down the track of his own train of thought: “If we can disgrace Sir David or show that he’s a villain, maybe Sir Martin will listen to a man of sense instead.”
“That’s possible, sir,” Bushell agreed. “Sir Devereaux Jones seems to have a good deal of common sense buried under the politico’s exterior he wears.”
“Perhaps.” By the way Bragg said it, Sir Devereaux Jones was not the man of sense he’d had in mind. In grudging tones, he admitted, “I suppose anyone would be better than that scoundrel Clarke. After what he did to you - “
“Yes, sir.” Bushell got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me -“ He managed to smile at Sally Reese as he went past her, but it wasn’t easy. How could Bragg tax him about Sir David’s iniquity when his own matched it? Simple, Bushell though. He doesn’t think I know about his. The dining room of the William and Mary was so packed, anyone should have had an easy time getting close enough to spy on someone else. But it was also so noisy, no one at one table could make sense of what anyone at the next table said. You had trouble enough hearing what anyone at your own table said. Over crab cakes and sweet potatoes in a glaze of molasses, cinnamon, and ginger, Bushell took advantage of that relative anonymity to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Sir Horace. His heart just doesn’t seem to be in this case. If he were a musician, he’d always be coming in a beat late.”
He didn’t say anything about Irene. What had happened there was relevant to his friendship with the RAM commandant, but not, he thought, to tracking down TheTwo Georges.
“I’ve noticed the same thing, Chief,” Samuel Stanley said after swallowing a bite of crab. “I kept my mouth shut, doubting I could be just. But if you see it, too, I’d say it’s really there.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Bushell said. “When I tried to tell him about what Captain Macias is digging up out in New Liverpool, he told me to leave Macias alone and concentrate on what’s going on here in Victoria. That’s not like him, Sam; he’s always been one for sweeping in all the evidence from wherever it shows up. He taught me that, for heaven’s sake.”
“Maybe the safety valve is stuck on his boiler,” Kathleen Flannery said. “Sometimes, if too much piles onto people, they do blow up. This isn’t the best time for him to do it, though.”
The understatement there was enough to make Bushell raise the glass of Jameson to his lips. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “Sam and I have known Sir Horace for - a long time now, and I don’t think either one of us has ever seen him act anything like this.”
“Not even close,” Stanley said emphatically. “Either the steam pressure in there is way too high, or else he’s playing some game of his own.”
Bushell realized what Stanley meant was, Or else he’s a villain. The suggestion should have shocked him more than it did. Also speaking obliquely, he said, “I know how we can find out.”
“Good,” Stanley said, and turned the subject. “What news about Sir David Clarke?”
“He called me this afternoon and denied everything,” Bushell answered, “but I wouldn’t have looked for him to do anything else, not after a swarm of RAMs took typewriter samples from America’s Number Ten. As best we can tell, though, none of those samples matches up with the one on the note we found at Phineas Stanage’s home. Neither do samples from the typewriters at Sir David’s residence. A couple of points for him, but nothing conclusive.”
“How did you get typewriter samples from Sir David’s home?” Kathleen asked. Bushell paused to take another bite. After he’d swallowed, he said, “I may have had better crab cakes in Baltimore, but I wouldn’t swear to it. These are pretty tasty.” He sipped his drink. When Kathleen realized that was all the reply she’d get, she started to say something angry. Bushell raised his hand in warning, just a little. She looked thoughtful. Then her face cleared. “Oh,” she said.
“That was unofficial, then.” Bushell still didn’t answer, but she seemed to have found out what she wanted.
Later that evening, lying beside Bushell up in his room, Kathleen said, “Why won’t you talk about what your people do unofficially?”
“Because if I did, I’d have to admit we do things unofficially,” he answered, “and if you admit to doing things unofficially, they almost become official.”
“But it’s only me,” Kathleen said. “If you can’t talk about unofficial things with me, with whom can you?”
“Don’t wheedle,” he told her, and watched her eyes kindle. Before either of them could take it any further, the telephone rang. “Saved by the bell,” Bushell said, and reached across her to answer it. His arm brushed her bare flesh, distracting him as he picked up the handset. “Hullo? Bushell here.”