“Yes.” Grey dipped a forefinger into the small puddle of sauce that was the only thing remaining on the plate, and sucked it clean. “I doubt there’s much to be gained by troubling the Scanlons further, but I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit about his close associates, and where they might have been on Saturday night. Last but not least—what about this hypothetical spymaster?”
Quarry blew out his cheeks and heaved a deep sigh.
“I’ve something in train there—tell you later, if anything comes of it. Meanwhile”—he pushed back his chair and rose, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat—“I’ve got a dinner party to go to.”
“Sure you haven’t spoiled your appetite?” Grey asked, bitingly.
“Ha-ha,” Quarry said, clapping his wig on his head and bending to peer into the looking glass he kept on the wall near his desk. “Surely you don’t think one gets anything to eatat a dinner party?”
“That was my impression, yes. I am mistaken?”
“Well, you do,” Quarry admitted, “but not for hours. Nothing but sips of wine and bits of toast with capers on before dinner—wouldn’t keep a bird alive.”
“What sort of bird?” Grey said, eyeing Quarry’s muscular but substantial hindquarters. “A great bustard?”
“Care to come along?” Quarry straightened and shrugged on his coat. “Not too late, you know.”
“I thank you, no.” Grey rose and stretched, feeling every bone in his back creak with the effort. “I’m going home, before I starve to death.”
Chapter 5
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
(A Little Night Music)
It was well past dark when Grey returned to his mother’s house in Jermyn Street. In spite of his hunger, he was deliberately late, having no desire to face either his mother or Olivia before he had decided upon a course of action with regard to Joseph Trevelyan.
Not late enough, though. To his dismay, he saw light blazing through all the windows and a liveried footman standing by the portico, obviously there to admit invited guests and repel those unwanted. A voice within was upraised in some sort of song, accompanied by the sounds of flute and harpsichord.
“Oh, God. It isn’t Wednesday, is it, Hardy?” he pleaded, ascending the steps toward the footman, who smiled at sight of him, bowing as he opened the door.
“Yes, my lord. Has been all day, I’m afraid.”
Normally, he rather enjoyed his mother’s weekly musicales. However, he was in no condition to be sociable at the moment. He ought to go and spend the night at the Beefsteak—but that meant an arduous journey back across London, and he was perished with hunger.
“I’ll just slip through to the kitchen,” he said to Hardy. “ Don’ttell the Countess I’m here.”
“No indeed, my lord.”
He stole soft-footed into the foyer, pausing for a moment to judge the terrain. Because of the warm weather, the double doors into the main drawing room stood open, to prevent the occupants being suffocated. The music, a lugubrious German duet with a refrain of “Den Tod”—“O Death”—would drown the noise of his footsteps, but he would be in plain view for the second or two required to sprint across the foyer and into the hall that led to the kitchens.
He swallowed, mouth watering heavily at the scents of roast meat and steamed pudding that wafted toward him from the recesses of the house.
Another of the footmen, Thomas, was visible through the half-open door of the library, across the foyer from the drawing room. The footman’s back was turned to the door, and he carried a Hanoverian military helmet, ornately gilded and festooned with an enormous spray of dyed plumes, obviously wondering where to put the ridiculous object.
Grey pressed himself against the wall and eased farther into the foyer. There was a plan. If he could attract Thomas’s attention, he could use the footman as a shield to cross the foyer, thus gain the safety of the staircase, and make it to the sanctuary of his own chamber, whilst Thomas went to fetch him a discreet tray from the kitchen.
This plan of escape was foiled, though, by the sudden appearance of his cousin Olivia on the stair above, elegant in amber silk, blond hair gleaming in a lace cap.
“John!” she cried, beaming at sight of him. “There you are! I was so hoping you’d come home in time.”
“In time for what?” he asked, with a sense of foreboding.
“To sing, of course.” She skipped down the stairs and seized him affectionately by the arm. “We’re having a German evening—and you do the lieder so well, Johnny!”
“Flattery will avail you nothing,” he said, smiling despite himself. “I can’t sing; I’m starving. Besides, it’s nearly over, surely?” He nodded at the case clock by the stair, which read a few minutes past eleven. Supper was almost always served at half-past.
“If you’ll sing, I’m sure they’ll wait to hear you. Then you can eat afterward. Aunt Bennie has the most marvelous collation laid on—the biggest steamed pudding I’ve ever seen, with juniper berries, and lamb cutlets with spinach, and a coq au vin, and some absolutely disgusting sausages—for the Germans, you know. . . .”
Grey’s stomach rumbled loudly at this enticing catalog of gustation. He still would have demurred, though, had he not at this moment caught sight of an elderly woman with a swatch of ostrich plume in her tidy wig, through the open double doors of the drawing room.
The crowd erupted in applause, but as though the lady sensed his start of recognition, she turned her head toward the door, and her face lighted with pleasure as she saw him.
“She’s been hoping you’d come,” Olivia murmured behind him.
No help for it. With distinctly mixed feelings, he took Olivia’s arm and led her down as Hector’s mother hastened out of the drawing room to greet him.
“Lady Mumford! Your servant, ma’am.” He smiled and bent over her hand, but she would have none of this formality.
“Nonsense, sweetheart,” she said, in that warm throaty voice that held echoes of her dead son’s. “Come and kiss me properly, there’s a good boy.”
He straightened and obligingly bussed her cheek. She put her hands on his own cheeks and kissed him soundly on the mouth. The embrace did not recall Hector’s kiss to him, thank God, but was sufficiently unnerving for all that.
“You look well, John,” Lady Mumford said, stepping back and giving him a searching look with Hector’s blue eyes. “Tired, though. A great deal to be done, I expect, with the regiment set to move?”
“A good deal,” he agreed, wondering whether all of London knew that the 47th was due to be reposted. Of course, Lady Mumford had spent most of her life close to the regiment; even with husband and son both dead, she maintained a motherly interest.
“India, I heard,” Lady Mumford went on, frowning slightly as she fingered the cloth of his uniform sleeve. “Now, you’ll have your new uniform ready ordered, I hope? A nice tropical weight of superfine for your coat and weskit, and linen breeches. You don’t want to be spending a summer under the Indian sun, swaddled to the neck in English wool! Take it from me, my dear; I went with Mumford when he was posted there, in ’35. Both of us nearly died, between the heat, the flies, and the food. Spent a whole summer in me shift, having the servants pour water over me; poor old Wally wasn’t so fortunate, sweating about in full uniform, never could get the stains out. Drank nothing but whisky and coconut milk—bear that in mind, dear, when the time comes. Nourishing and stimulating, you know, and so much more wholesome to the stomach than brandywine.”