Tom gave him a look of mingled bewilderment and suspicion, obviously suspecting that Grey had made up the word upon the moment for the express purpose of tormenting him, but merely said, “Oh?”
“Oh, indeed.” Grey felt some slight chagrin at having inadvertently shown up the deficiencies of Tom’s vocabulary, but didn’t wish to make further issue of the point by apologizing.
“Dead men don’t bleed, you see—save they have suffered some grievous wound, such as the loss of a limb, and are picked up soon after. Then you will see some dripping, of course, but the blood soon thickens as it chills, and—” Seeing the pallid look reappear on Tom’s face, he coughed, and resumed upon another tack.
“No doubt you are thinking that the nail marks might have bled, but the blood had been cleansed away?”
“Oh. Um . . . yes,” Tom said faintly.
“Possible,” Grey conceded, “but not likely. Wounds to the head bleed inordinately—like a stuck pig, as the saying is.”
“Whoever says it hasn’t likely seen a stuck pig,” Tom said, rallying stoutly. “I have. Floods of it, there is. Enough to fill a barrel—or two!”
Grey nodded, noting that it was clearly not the notion of blood per se that was disturbing the lad.
“Yes, that’s the way of it. I looked very carefully and found no dried blood in the corpse’s hair or on the skin of the face—though the cleansing appeared otherwise to be rather crude. So no, I am fairly sure the mark was made some little time after the Sergeant had ceased to breathe.”
“Well, it wasn’t Jack what made it!”
Grey glanced at him, startled. Well, now he knew what was disturbing the boy; beyond simple worry at his brother’s absence, Tom clearly feared that Jack Byrd might be guilty of murder—or at least suspected of it.
“I did not suggest that he did,” he replied carefully.
“But I know he didn’t! I can prove it, me lord!” Byrd grasped him by the sleeve, carried away by the passion of his speech.
“Jack’s shoes have square heels, me lord! Whoever stamped the dead cove had round ones! Wooden ones, too, and Jack’s shoes have leather heels!”
He paused, almost panting in his excitement, searching Grey’s face with wide eyes, anxious for any sign of agreement.
“I see,” Grey said slowly. The boy was still gripping his arm. He put his own hand over the boy’s and squeezed lightly. “I am glad to hear it, Tom. Very glad.”
Byrd searched his face a moment longer, then evidently found what he had been seeking, for he drew a deep breath and let go of Grey’s sleeve with a shaky nod.
They reached Bow Street a few moments later, and Grey waved an arm to summon a carriage, glad of the excuse to discontinue the conversation. For while he was sure that Tom was telling the truth regarding his brother’s shoes, one fact remained: The disappearance of Jack Byrd was still the main reason for presuming that O’Connell’s death had been no accident.
Harry Quarry was eating supper at his desk while doing paperwork, but put aside both plate and papers to listen to Grey’s account of Sergeant O’Connell’s dramatic departure.
“‘How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?’ She really said that?” He wheezed, wiping tears of amusement from the corners of his eyes. “Christ, Johnny, you’ve had a more entertaining day than I have, by a long shot!”
“You are quite welcome to resume the personal aspects of this investigation at any moment,” Grey assured him, leaning over to pluck a radish from the ravaged remains of Quarry’s meal. He had had no food since breakfast, and was ravenous. “I won’t mind at all.”
“No, no,” Quarry reassured him. “Wouldn’t dream of deprivin’ you of the opportunity. What d’ye make of Scanlon and the widow, coming to bury O’Connell like that?”
Grey shrugged, chewing the radish as he brushed flecks of dried mud from the skirts of his coat.
“He’d just married O’Connell’s widow, mere days after the sergeant was killed. I suppose he meant to deflect suspicion, assuming that people would scarce suspect him of having killed the man if he had the face to show up looking pious and paying for the funeral, complete with priest and trimmings.”
“Mm.” Quarry nodded, picking up a stalk of buttered asparagus and inserting it whole into his mouth. “Geddaluk t’shus?”
“Scanlon’s shoes? No, I hadn’t the opportunity, what with those two harpies trying to murder each other. Stubbs did look at his hands, though, when we were round at his shop. If Scanlon did for O’Connell, someone else did the heavy work.”
“D’you think he did it?”
“God knows. Are you going to eat that muffin?”
“Yes,” Quarry said, biting into it. Consuming the muffin in two large bites, he tilted back in his chair, squinting at the plate in hopes of discovering something else edible.
“So, this new valet of yours says his brother can’t have done it? Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
“Perhaps so—but the same argument obtains as for Scanlon; it took more than one person to kill O’Connell. So far as we know, Jack Byrd was quite alone—and I can’t envision a mere footman by himself doing what was done to Tim O’Connell.”
Failing to find anything more substantial, Quarry broke a gnawed chicken bone in two and sucked out the marrow.
“So,” he summed up, licking his fingers, “what it comes down to is that O’Connell was killed by two or more men, after which someone stamped on his face, then left him to lie for a bit. Sometime later, someone—whether the same someone who killed him, or someone else—picked him up and dropped him into the Fleet Ditch off Puddle Dock.”
“That’s it. I asked the constable in charge to look through his reports, to see whether there was any fighting reported anywhere on the night O’Connell died. Beyond that—” Grey rubbed his forehead, fighting weariness. “We should look closely at Iphigenia Stokes and her family, I think.”
“You don’t suppose she did it, do you? Woman scorned and all that—and she has got the sailor brothers. Sailors all wear wooden heels; leather’s slippery on deck.”
Grey looked at him, surprised.
“However do you come to know that, Harry?”
“Sailed from Edinburgh to France in a new pair of leather-heeled shoes once,” Quarry said, picking up a lettuce leaf and peering hopefully beneath it. “Squalls all the way, and nearly broke me leg six times.”
Grey plucked the lettuce leaf out of Quarry’s hand and ate it.
“An excellent point,” he said, swallowing. “And it would account for the apparent personal animosity evident in the crime. But no, I cannot think Miss Stokes had the Sergeant murdered. Scanlon might easily maintain a pose of pious concern for the purpose of disarming suspicion—but not she. She was entirely sincere in her desire to see O’Connell decently buried; I am sure of it.”
“Mm.” Quarry rubbed thoughtfully at the scar on his cheek. “Perhaps. Might her male relations have discovered that O’Connell had a wife, though, and done him in for honor’s sake? They might not have told her what they’d done, if so.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” Grey admitted. He examined the notion, finding it appealing on several grounds. It would explain the physical circumstances of the Sergeant’s death very nicely; not only the battering, done by multiple persons, but the viciousness of the heelprint—and if the killing had been done in or near Miss Stokes’s residence, then there was plainly a need to dispose of the body at a safe distance, which would explain its having been moved after death.
“It’s not a bad idea at all, Harry. May I have Stubbs, Calvert, and Jowett, then, to help with the inquiries?”
“Take anyone you like. And you’ll keep looking for Jack Byrd, of course.”