“Oh,” he said, struck by a thought. “Did it sound perhaps a bit like this?” He recited a brief verse from Homer, doing his best to infuse it with a crude English accent.
Tom’s face lighted and he nodded vigorously, the end of the thread in his mouth.
“I did wonder where she’d got Iphigenia,” Grey said, smiling. “Shouldn’t think her father was a scholar of the classics, after all. It’s Greek, Tom,” he clarified, seeing his young valet frown in incomprehension. “Likely Miss Stokes and her brothers—if that’s what they are—have a Greek mother or grandmother, for I’m sure Stokes is home-grown enough.”
“Oh, Greek,” Tom said uncertainly, obviously unclear on the distinctions between this and any other form of French. “To be sure, me lord.” He delicately removed a bit of thread stuck to his lip, and shook out the folds of the coat. “Here, me lord; I won’t say as it’s good as new, but you can at least be wearing it without the lining peepin’ out.”
Grey nodded in thanks, and pushed a full mug of beer in Tom’s direction. He shrugged himself carefully into the mended coat, inspecting the torn seam. It was scarcely tailor’s work, but the repair looked stout enough.
He wondered whether Iphigenia Stokes might repay closer inspection; if she didhave family ties to France, it would suggest both a motive for O’Connell’s treachery—if he had been a traitor—and an avenue by which he might have disposed of the Calais information. But Greek . . . that argued for Stokes P и rehaving been a sailor, perhaps. Likely merchant seaman rather than naval, if he’d brought home a foreign wife.
Yes, he rather thought the Stokes family would bear looking into. Seafaring ran in families, and while his observations had necessarily been cursory under the circumstances, he thought that one or two of the men in the Stokes party had looked like sailors; one had had a gold ring in his ear, he was sure. And sailors would be well-placed for smuggling information out of Britain, though in that case—
“Me lord?”
“Yes, Tom?” He frowned slightly at the interruption to his thoughts, but answered courteously.
“It’s only I was thinking . . . seeing the dead cove, I mean—”
“Sergeant O’Connell, you mean?” Grey amended, not liking to hear a late comrade in arms referred to carelessly as “the dead cove,” traitor or not.
“Yes, me lord.” Tom took a deep swallow of his beer, then looked up, meeting Grey’s eyes directly. “Do you think me brother’s dead, too?”
That brought him up short. He readjusted the coat on his shoulders, thinking what to say. In fact, he did not think Jack Byrd was dead; he agreed with Harry Quarry that the fellow had probably either joined forces with whoever had killed O’Connell—or had killed the Sergeant himself. Neither speculation was likely to be reassuring to Jack Byrd’s brother, though.
“No,” he said slowly. “I do not. If he had been killed by the persons who brought about Sergeant O’Connell’s death, I think his body would have been discovered nearby. There could be no particular reason to hide it, do you think?”
The boy’s rigid shoulders relaxed a little, and he shook his head, taking another gulp of his beer.
“No, me lord.” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Only—if he’s not dead, where do ye think he might be?”
“I don’t know,” Grey answered honestly. “I am hoping we shall discover that soon.” It occurred to him that if Jack Byrd had not yet left London, his brother might be a help in determining his whereabouts, witting or not.
“Can you think of places where your brother might go? If he was—frightened, perhaps? Or felt himself to be in danger?”
Tom Byrd shot him a sharp look, and he realized that the boy was a good deal more intelligent than he had at first assumed.
“No, me lord. If he needed help—well, there’s six of us boys and Dad, and me father’s two brothers and their boys, too; we takes care of our own. But he’s not been home; I know that much.”
“Quite a thriving rookery of Byrds, it seems. You’ve spoken to your family, then?” Grey felt gingerly beneath the skirts of his coat; finding his breeches mostly dried, he sat down again opposite Byrd.
“Yes, me lord. Me sister—there’s only the one of her—come to Mr. Trevelyan’s on Sunday last, a-looking for Jack with a message. That was when Mr. Trevelyan said he’d not heard from Jack since the night before Mr. O’Connell died.”
The boy shook his head.
“If it happened Jack ran into summat too much for him, that Dad and us couldn’t handle, he would have gone to Mr. Trevelyan, I think. But he didn’t do that. If something happened, I think it must’ve been sudden, like.”
A clatter in the passageway announced the return of the barmaid, and prevented Grey answering—which was as well, since he had no useful suggestion to offer.
“Are you hungry, Tom?” The tray of fresh pasties the woman carried were hot and doubtless savory enough, but Grey’s nose was still numbed with oil of wintergreen, and the memory of O’Connell’s corpse fresh enough in mind to suppress his appetite.
The same appeared true of Byrd, for he shook his head emphatically.
“Well, then. Give the lady back her needle—and a bit for her kindness—and we’ll be off.”
Grey had not kept the coach, and so they walked back toward Bow Street, where they might find transport. Byrd slouched along, a little behind Grey, kicking at pebbles; obviously thoughts of his brother were weighing on his mind.
“Was your brother accustomed to report back to Mr. Trevelyan regularly?” Grey asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Whilst watching Sergeant O’Connell, I mean?”
Tom shrugged, looking unhappy.
“Dunno, me lord. Jack didn’t say what it was he was up to; only that it was a special thing Mr. Joseph wanted him to do, and that was why he wouldn’t be in the house for a bit.”
“But you know now? What he was doing, and why?”
An expression of wariness flitted through the boy’s eyes.
“No, me lord. Mr. Trevelyan only said as I should help you. He didn’t say specially what with.”
“I see.” Grey wondered how much of the situation to impart. It was the anxious look on Tom Byrd’s face, as much as anything else, that decided him on full disclosure. Full, that is, bar the precise nature of O’Connell’s suspected peculations and Grey’s private conjectures regarding the role of Jack Byrd in the matter.
“So you don’t think the dead—Sergeant O’Connell, I mean—you don’t think he was just knocked on the head by accident, like, me lord?” Byrd had come out of his mope; the clammy look had left his cheeks, and he was walking briskly now, engrossed in the details of Grey’s account.
“Well, you see, Tom, I still cannot say so with any certainty. I was hoping that perhaps we should discover some particular mark upon the body that would make it clear that someone had deliberately set out to murder Sergeant O’Connell, and I found nothing of that nature. On the other hand . . .”
“On the other hand, whoever stamped on his face didn’t like him much,” Tom completed the thought shrewdly. “ Thatwas no accident, me lord.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Grey agreed dryly. “That was done after death, not in the frenzy of the moment.”
Tom’s eyes went quite round.
“However do you know that? Me lord,” he added hastily.
“You looked closely at the heelprint? Several of the nailheads had broken through the skin, and yet there was no blood extravasated.”