ext morning, Grey sat in his bedchamber, unshaven and attired in his nightshirt, banyan, and slippers, drinking tea and debating with himself whether the authoritative benefits conferred by wearing his uniform outweighed the possible consequences—both sartorial and social—of wearing it into the slums of London to inspect a three-day-old corpse. He was disturbed in this meditation by his new orderly, Private Adams, who opened the bedroom door and entered without ceremony.

“A person, my lord,” Adams reported, and stood smartly to attention.

Never at his best early in the day, Grey took a moody swallow of tea and nodded in acknowledgment of this announcement. Adams, new both to Grey and to the job of personal orderly, took this for permission and stood aside, gesturing the person in question into the room.

“Who are you?” Grey gazed in blank astonishment at the young man who stood thus revealed.

“Tom Byrd, me lord,” the young man said, and bowed respectfully, hat in hand. Short and stocky, with a head round as a cannonball, he was young enough still to sport freckles across fair, rounded cheeks and over the bridge of his snubbed nose. Despite his obvious youth, though, he radiated a remarkable air of determination.

“Byrd. Byrd. Oh, Byrd!” Lord John’s sluggish mental processes began to engage themselves. Tom Byrd. Presumably this young man was some relation to the vanished Jack Byrd. “Why are you—oh. Perhaps Mr. Trevelyan has sent you?”

“Yes, me lord. Colonel Quarry sent him a note last night, saying as how you was going to be looking into the matter of... er-hem.” He cleared his throat ostentatiously, with a glance at Adams, who had taken up the shaving brush and was industriously swishing it to and fro in the soap mug, working up a great lather of suds. “Mr. Trevelyan said as how I was to come and assist, whatsoever thing it might be your lordship had need of.”

“Oh? I see; how kind of him.” Grey was amused at Byrd’s air of dignity, but favorably impressed at his discretion. “What duties are you accustomed to perform in Mr. Trevelyan’s household, Tom?”

“I’m a footman, sir.” Byrd stood as straight as he could, chin lifted in an attempt at an extra inch of height; footmen were normally employed for appearance as much as for skill, and tended to be tall and well-formed; Byrd was about Grey’s own height.

Grey rubbed his upper lip, then set aside his teacup and glanced at Adams, who had put down the soap mug and was now holding the razor in one hand, strop in the other, apparently unsure how to employ the two effectively in concert. “Tell me, Byrd, have you any experience at valeting?”

“No, me lord—but I can shave a man.” Tom Byrd sedulously avoided looking at Adams, who had discarded the strop and was testing the edge of the razor against the edge of his shoe sole, frowning.

“You can, can you?”

“Yes, me lord. Father’s a barber, and us boys’d shave the bristles from the scalded hogs he bought for to make brushes of. For practice, like.”

“Hmm.” Grey glanced at himself in the looking glass above the chest of drawers. His beard came in only a shade or two darker than his blond hair, but it grew heavily, and the stubble glimmered thick as wheat straw on his jaw in the morning light. No, he really couldn’t forgo shaving.

“All right,” he said with resignation. “Adams—give the razor to Tom here, if you please. Then go and brush my oldest uniform, and tell the coachman I shall require him. Mr. Byrd and I are going to view a body.”

A night lying in the water at Puddle Dock and two days lying in a shed behind Bow Street compter had not improved Timothy O’Connell’s appearance, never his strongest point to begin with. At that, he was at least still recognizable—more than could be said for the gentleman lying on a bit of canvas by the wall, who had apparently hanged himself.

“Turn him over, if you please,” Grey said tersely, speaking through a handkerchief soaked with oil of wintergreen, which he held against the lower half of his face.

The two prisoners deputed to accompany him to this makeshift morgue looked rebellious—they had already been obliged to take O’Connell from his cheap coffin and remove his shroud for Grey’s inspection—but a gruff word from the constable in charge propelled them into reluctant action.

The corpse had been roughly cleansed, at least. The marks of his last battle were clear, even though the body was bloated and the skin extensively discolored.

Grey bent closer, handkerchief firmly clasped to his face, to inspect the bruises across the back. He beckoned to Tom Byrd, who was standing pressed against the wall of the shed, his freckles dark against the paleness of his face.

“See that?” He pointed to the black mottling over the corpse’s back and buttocks. “He was kicked and trampled upon, I think.”

“Yes, sir?” Byrd said faintly.

“Yes. But you see how the skin is completely discolored upon the dorsal aspect?”

Byrd gave him a look indicating that he saw nothing whatever, including a reason for his own existence.

“His back,” Grey amended. “Dorsum is the Latin word for back.”

“Oh, aye,” Byrd said, intelligence returning. “I see it plain, me lord.”

“That means that he lay upon his back for some time after death. I have seen men taken up from a battlefield for burial; the portions that have lain bottom-most are always discolored in that way.”

Byrd nodded, looking faintly ill.

“But you found him upon his face in the water, is that correct?” Grey turned to the constable.

“Yes, my lord. The coroner’s seen him,” the man added helpfully. “Death by violence.”

“Quite,” Grey said. “There was no grievous wound upon the front of his body that might have caused his death, and I see no such wound here, do you, Byrd? Not stabbed, not shot, not choked with a garrote...”

Byrd swayed slightly, but caught himself, and was heard to mutter something about “... head, mebbe?”

“Perhaps. Here, take this.” Grey shoved the handkerchief into Byrd’s clammy hand, then turned and, holding his breath, gingerly began to feel about in O’Connell’s hair. He was interested to see that an inexpert attempt had been made to do up the corpse’s hair in a proper military queue, wrapped round a pad of lamb’s wool and bound with a leather lacing, though whoever had done it had lacked the rice powder for a finishing touch. Someone who cared had laid the body out—not Mrs. O’Connell, he thought, but someone.

The scalp had begun to loosen, and shifted unpleasantly under his probing fingers. There were assorted lumps, presumably left by kicks or blows... yes, there. And there. In two places, the bone of the skull gave inward in a sickening manner, and a slight ooze moistened Grey’s fingertips.

Byrd made a small choking sound as Grey withdrew his hand, and blundered out, handkerchief still clasped to his face.

“Was he wearing his uniform when he was found?” Grey asked the constable. Deprived of his handkerchief, he wiped his fingers fastidiously on the shroud as he nodded to the two prisoners to restore the corpse to its original state.

“Nah, sir.” The constable shook his head. “Stripped to his shirt. We knew as he was one of yours, though, from his hair, and askin’ about a bit, we found someone as knew his name and regiment.”

Grey’s ears pricked up at that.

“Do you mean to say that he was known in the neighborhood where he was found?”

The constable frowned.

“I s’pose so,” he said, rubbing at his chin to assist thought. “Let me think... yes, sir, I’m sure as that’s right. When we pulled him out o’ the water, and I saw as how he was a soldier, I went round to the Oak and Oyster to inquire, that bein’ the nearest place where the soldiers mostly go. Brought a few of the folk in there along to have a look at him; as I recall, ’twas the barmaid from the Oyster what knew him.”

The body had been turned over, and one of the prisoners, lips pressed tight against the smell, was drawing up the shroud again, when Grey stopped him with a motion. He bent over the coffin, frowning, and traced the mark on O’Connell’s forehead. It was indeed a heelprint, distinctly indented on the livid flesh. He could count the nailheads.

He nodded to himself and straightened up. The body had been moved, so much was plain. But from where? If the Sergeant had been killed in a brawl, as appeared to be the case, perhaps there would have been a report of such an occurrence.

“Might I have a word with your superior, sir?”

“That’d be Constable Magruder, sir—round the front, room on the left. Will you be done with the corpse, sir?” He was already motioning for the two sullen prisoners to restore O’Connell’s wrappings and nail down the coffin lid.

“Oh... yes. I think so.” Grey paused, considering. Ought he perhaps to make some ceremonial gesture of farewell to a comrade in arms? There was nothing in that blank and swollen countenance, though, that seemed to invite such a gesture, and surely the constable did not care. In the end, he gave a slight nod to the corpse, a shilling to the constable for his trouble, and left.

Constable Magruder was a small, foxy-looking man, with narrow eyes that darted constantly from doorway to desk and back again, lest anything escape his notice. Grey took some encouragement from this, hoping that few things did escape the constable of the day and the Bow Street Runners under his purview.

The constable knew Grey’s errand; he saw the wariness lurking at the back of the narrow eyes—and the quick flick of a glance toward the magistrate’s offices next door. It was apparent that he feared Grey might go to the magistrate, Sir John Fielding, with all the consequent trouble this might involve.

Grey did not know Sir John himself, but was reasonably sure that his mother did. Still, at this point, there was no need to invoke him. Realizing what was in Magruder’s mind, Grey did his best to show an attitude of relaxed affability and humble gratitude for the constable’s continued assistance.

“I thank you, sir, for your gracious accommodation. I hesitate to intrude further on your generosity—but if I might ask just one or two questions?”

“Oh, aye, sir.” Magruder went on looking wary, but relaxed a little, relieved that he was not about to be asked to conduct a time-consuming and probably futile investigation.

“I understand that Sergeant O’Connell was likely killed on Saturday night. Are you aware of any disturbances taking place in the neighborhood on that night?”

Magruder’s face twitched.

“Disturbances, Major? The whole place is a disturbance come nightfall, sir. Robbery from the person, purse-cutting, fights and street riots, disagreements betwixt whores and their customers, burglary of premises, theft, tavern brawls, malicious mischief, fire-setting, horse-stealing, housebreaking, random assaults...”

“Yes, I see. Still, we are reasonably sure that no one set Sergeant O’Connell on fire, nor yet mistook him for a lady of the evening.” Grey smiled to abjure any suspicions of sarcasm. “I am only seeking to narrow the possibilities, you see, sir.” He spread his hands, deprecatingly. “My duty, you understand.”

“Oh, aye.” Magruder was not without humor; a small gleam of it lit the narrow eyes and softened the harsh outlines of his face. He glanced from the papers on his desk to the hallway, down which echoed shouts and bangings from the prisoners in the rear, then back to Grey.

“I’ll have to speak to the constable of the night, go through the reports. If I see anything that might be helpful to your inquiry, Major, I’ll send round a note, shall I?”

“I should appreciate it very much, sir.” Grey rose promptly, and the two men parted with mutual expressions of esteem.

Tom Byrd was sitting on the pavement outside, still pale, but improved. He sprang to his feet at Grey’s gesture, and fell into step behind him.

Would Magruder produce anything helpful? Grey wondered. There were so many possibilities. Robbery from the person, Magruder had suggested. Perhaps... but knowing what he did of O’Connell’s ferocious temperament, Grey was not inclined to think that a gang of robbers would have chosen him at random—there were easier sheep to fleece, by far.

But what if O’Connell had succeeded in meeting the spymaster—if there was one, Grey reminded himself—and had turned over his documents and received a sum of money?

He considered the possibility that the spymaster had then murdered O’Connell to retrieve his money or silence a risk—but in that case, why not simply kill O’Connell and take the documents in the first place? Well... if O’Connell had been wise enough not to carry the documents on his person, and the spymaster knew it, he would presumably have taken care to obtain the goods before taking any subsequent steps in disposing of the messenger.

By the same token, though, if someone else had discovered that O’Connell was in possession of a sum of money, they might have killed him in the process of a robbery that had nothing to do with the stolen requisitions. But the amount of damage done to the body... that suggested whoever had done the deed had meant to make sure that O’Connell was dead. Casual robbers would not have cared; they would have knocked O’Connell on the head and absconded, completely careless of whether he lived or died.

A spymaster might make certain of the matter. And yet—would a spymaster depend upon the services of associates? For clearly, O’Connell had faced more than one assailant—and from the condition of his hands, had left his mark on them.

“What do you think, Tom?” he said, more by way of clarifying his thoughts than because he desired Byrd’s opinion. “If secrecy were a concern, would it not be more sensible to use a weapon? Beating a man to death is likely to be a noisy business. Attract a lot of unwelcome attention, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, me lord. I expect that’s so. Though so far as that goes...”

“Yes?” He glanced round at Byrd, who hastened his step a bit to come level with Grey.

“Well, it’s only—mind, I ain’t—haven’t, I mean—seen a man beat to death. But when you go to kill a pig, you only get a terrible lot of screeching if you’ve done it wrong.”

“Done it wrong?”

“Yes, me lord. If you do it right, it doesn’t take but one good blow. The pig doesn’t know what hit ’im, and there’s no noise to speak of. You get a man what doesn’t know what he’s doing, or isn’t strong enough—” Byrd made a face at the thought of such incompetence. “Racket like to wake the dead. There’s a butcher’s across the street from me dad’s shop,” he offered in explanation. “I’ve seen pigs killed often.”

“A very good point, Tom,” Grey said slowly. If either robbery or simple murder was the intent, it could have been accomplished with much less fuss. Ergo, whatever had befallen Tim O’Connell had likely been an accident, in a brawl or street riot, or... and yet the body had been moved, sometime after death. Why?

His cogitations were interrupted by the sound of an agitated altercation in the alleyway that led to the back of the gaol.

“What’re you doing here, you Irish whore?”

“I’ve a right to be here—unlike you, ye draggletail thief!”

“Cunt!”

“Bitch!”

Following the sound of strife into the alley, Grey found Timothy O’Connell’s sealed coffin lying in the roadway, surrounded by people. In the center of the mob was the pregnant figure of Mrs. O’Connell, swathed in a black shawl and squared off against another woman, similarly attired.

The ladies were not alone, he saw; Scanlon the apothecary was vainly trying to persuade Mrs. O’Connell away from her opponent, with the aid of a tall, rawboned Irishman. The second lady had also brought reinforcement, in the person of a small, fat clergyman, dressed in dog collar and rusty coat, who appeared more entertained than distressed by the exchange of cordialities. A number of other people crowded the alley behind both women—mourners, presumably, come to assist in the burial of Sergeant O’Connell.

“Take your wicked friends and be off with ye! He was my husband, not yours!”

“Oh, and a fine wife you were, I’m sure! Didn’t care enough to come and wash the mud from his face when they dragged him out of the ditch! It was me laid him out proper, and me that’ll bury him, thank you very much! Wife! Ha!”

Tom Byrd stood open-mouthed under the eaves of the shed, watching. He glanced up wide-eyed at Grey.

“And it’s me paid for his coffin—think I’ll let you take it? Likely you’ll give the body to a knacker’s shop and sell the box, greedy-guts! Take a man from his wife so you can suck the marrow from his bones—”

“Shut your trap!”

“Shut yours!” bellowed the widow O’Connell, and she took a wild swing at the other woman, who dodged adroitly. Seeing a sudden surge among the mourners on both sides, Grey pushed his way between the women.

“Madam,” he began, grasping Mrs. O’Connell’s arm with determination. “You must—” His admonition was interrupted by a swift elbow in the pit of the stomach, which took him quite by surprise. He staggered back a pace, and stamped inadvertently on the toe of the tall Irishman, who hopped to and fro on one foot, uttering brief blasphemies in what Grey assumed to be the Irish tongue, as it was no form of French.

These were rapidly subsumed by the blasphemies being flung by the two ladies—if that was the word, Grey thought grimly—in an incoherent barrage of insults.

The pistol-shot sound of a slapped cheek rang out, and then the alley erupted in high-pitched shrieks as the women closed with each other, fingers clawed and feet kicking. Grey grabbed for the other woman’s sleeve, but it was torn from his grip and he was knocked heavily into a wall. Someone tripped him, and he went down, rolling and rebounding from the wall of the shed before he could get his feet under him.

Regaining his balance, Grey staggered, then landed on the balls of his feet, and snatched out his sword in a slashing arc that made the metal sing. The thin chime of it cut through the racket in the alleyway like a knife through butter, separating the combatants and sending the women stumbling back from each other. In the moment’s silence that resulted, Grey stepped firmly between the two women and glared back and forth between them.

Assured that he had put at least a momentary stop to the battle, he turned to the unknown woman. A solid person with curly black hair, she wore a wide-brimmed hat that obscured her face, but not her attitude, which was belligerent in the extreme.

“May I inquire your name, madam? And your purpose here?”

“She’s a class of a slut, what else?” Mrs. O’Connell’s voice came from behind him, cracked with contempt, but controlled. Silencing the other woman’s heated response to this with a peremptory movement of his sword, he cast an irritated glance over his shoulder.

“I asked the lady herself—if you please, Mrs. O’Connell.”

“That would be Mrs. Scanlon—if you please, my lord.” The apothecary’s voice was more than polite, but held a note almost of smugness.

“I beg your pardon?” Taken by surprise, he turned completely round to face Scanlon and the widow. Evidently, the other woman was equally shocked, for beyond a loud “What?” behind him, she said nothing.

Scanlon was holding Francine O’Connell by the arm; he tightened his grasp a little and bowed to Grey.

“I have the honor to introduce you to my wife, sir,” he said gravely. “Wed yestereen we were, by special license, with Father Doyle himself doing of the honors.” He nodded at the tall Irishman, who nodded in turn, though keeping a wary eye on the tip of Grey’s rapier.

“What, couldn’t wait ’til poor old Tim was cold, could you? And who’s the slut here, I’d like to know, you with your belly swole up like a farkin’ toad!”

“I’m a married woman—twice married! And you with no name and no shame—”

“Ah, now, Francie, Francie...” Scanlon put his arms around his incensed wife, lugging her back by main force. “Let it be, sweetheart, let it be. Ye don’t want to be doing the babe an injury now, do ye?”

At this reminder of her delicate condition, Francine desisted, though she went on huffing beneath her hat brim, much in the manner of a bull who has chased intruders out of a field and means to see that they stay chased.

Grey turned back to the other woman, just as she opened her mouth again. He put the tip of his rapier firmly against the middle of her chest, cutting her expostulations short and eliciting a brief and startled “Eek!”

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, patience exhausted.

“Iphigenia Stokes,” she replied indignantly. “How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?” She backed up a step, swatting at his sword with a hand whose essential broadness and redness was not disguised by the black shammy mitt covering it.

“And who are you?” Grey swung toward the small clergyman, who had been tranquilly enjoying the show from a place of security behind a barrel.

“Me?” The clerical gentleman looked surprised, but bowed obligingly. “The Reverend Mr. Cobb, sir, curate of St. Giles. I was asked to come and deliver the obsequies for the late Mr. O’Connell, on behalf of Miss Stokes, whom I understand to have had a personal friendship with the deceased.”

“You what? A frigging Protestant?” Francine O’Connell Scanlon stood straight upright, trembling with renewed outrage. Mr. Cobb eyed her warily, but seemed to feel himself safe enough in his retreat, for he bowed politely to her.

“Interment is to be in the churchyard at St. Giles, ma’am—if you and your husband would care to attend?”

At this, the entire Irish contingent pressed forward, obviously intending to seize the casket and carry it off by main force. Nothing daunted, Miss Stokes’s escort likewise pushed eagerly to the fore, several of the gentlemen uprooting boards from a sagging fence to serve as makeshift clubs.

Miss Stokes was encouraging her troops with bellows of “Catholic whore!” while Mr. Scanlon appeared to be of two minds in the matter, simultaneously dragging his wife out of the fray while shaking his free fist in the direction of the Protestants and shouting assorted Irish imprecations.

With visions of bloody riot breaking out, Grey leapt atop the casket and swung his sword viciously from side to side, driving back all comers.

“Tom!” he shouted. “Go for the constables!”

Tom Byrd had not waited for instructions, but had apparently gone for reinforcements during the earlier part of the affray; the word “constables” was barely out of Grey’s mouth, when the sound of running feet came down the street. Constable Magruder and a pair of his men charged into the alley, clubs and pistols at the ready, with Tom Byrd bringing up the rear, panting.

Seeing the arrival of armed authority, the warring funeral parties drew instantly apart, knives disappearing like magic and clubs dropping to the ground with insouciant casualness.

“Are you in difficulties, Major?” Constable Magruder called, looking distinctly entertained as he glanced between the two competing widows and then up at Grey on his precarious roost.

“No, sir... I thank you,” Grey replied politely, gasping for breath. He felt the cheap boards of the coffin creak in a sinister fashion as he shifted his weight, and sweat ran down the groove of his back. “If you would care to go on standing there for just a moment longer, though?...”

He drew a deep breath and stepped gingerly down from his perch. He had rolled through a puddle; the seat of his breeches was wet, and he could feel the split where the sleeve seam beneath his right arm had given way. Goddamn it, now what?

He was inclined toward the simplicity of a Solomonic decree that would award half of Tim O’Connell to each woman, and rejected this notion only because of the time it would take and the fact that his rapier was completely unsuited to the task of such division. If the widows gave him any further difficulties, though, he was sending Tom to fetch a butcher’s cleaver upon the instant, he swore it.

Grey sighed, sheathed his sword, and rubbed the spot between his brows with an index finger.

“Mrs.... Scanlon.”

“Aye?” The swelling of her face had gone down somewhat; it was suspicion and fury now that narrowed those diamond eyes of hers.

“When I called upon you two days ago, you rejected the gift presented by your husband’s comrades in arms, on the grounds that you believed your husband to be in hell and did not wish to waste money upon Masses and candles. Is that not so?”

“It is,” she said, reluctantly. “But—”

“Well, then. If you believe him presently to be occupying the infernal regions,” Grey pointed out, “that is clearly a permanent condition. The act of having his body interred in a particular location, or with Catholic ritual, will not alter his unfortunate destiny.”

“Now, we can’t be knowing for certain as a sinner’s soul has gone to hell,” the priest objected, suddenly seeing the prospects of a fee for burying O’Connell receding. “God’s ways are beyond the ken of us poor men, and for all any of us knows, poor Tim O’Connell repented of his wickedness at the last, made a perfect Act of Contrition, and was taken straight up to paradise in the arms of the angels!”

“Excellent.” Grey leapt on this incautious speculation like a leopard on its prey. “If he is in paradise, he is still less in need of earthly intervention. So”—he bowed punctiliously to the Scanlons and their priest—“according to you, the deceased may be either damned or saved, but is surely in one of those two conditions. Whereas you”—he turned to Miss Stokes—“are of the opinion that Tim O’Connell is perhaps in some intermediate state where intercessory actions might be efficacious?”

Miss Stokes regarded him for a moment, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“I just want ’im buried proper,” she said, sounding suddenly meek. “Sir.”

“Well, then. I consider that you, madam”—he shot a sharp look at the new Mrs. Scanlon—“have to some degree forfeited your legal rights in the matter, being now married to Mr. Scanlon. If Miss Stokes were to reimburse you for the cost of the coffin, would you find that acceptable?”

Grey eyed the Irish contingent, and found them dour-faced but silent. Scanlon glanced at the priest, then at his wife, then finally at Grey, and nodded, very slightly.

“Take him,” Grey said to Miss Stokes, stepping back with a brief gesture toward the coffin.

He strode purposefully toward Scanlon, hand on the hilt of his sword, but while there was a certain amount of shuffling, muttering, and spitting in the ranks, none of the Irish seemed disposed to offer more than the occasional murmured insult as Miss Stokes’s minions took possession of the disputed remains.

“May I offer my felicitations on your marriage, sir?” he said politely.

“I am obliged to ye, sir,” Scanlon said, equally polite. Francine stood by his side, simmering beneath her large black hat.

They stood silent then, all watching as Tim O’Connell was borne away. Iphigenia Stokes was surprisingly gracious in triumph, Grey thought; she cast neither glance nor remark toward the defeated Irish, and her attendants followed her lead, moving in silence to pick up the coffin. Miss Stokes took up her place as chief mourner, and the small procession moved off. At the last, the Reverend Mr. Cobb risked a brief glance back and a tiny wave of the hand toward Grey.

“God rest his soul,” Father Doyle said piously, crossing himself as the coffin disappeared down the alley.

“God rot him,” said Francine O’Connell Scanlon. She turned her head and spat neatly on the ground. “And her.”

It was not yet noon, and the taverns were still largely empty. Constable Magruder and his assistants graciously accepted a quantity of drink in the Blue Swan in reward of their help, and then returned to their duties, leaving Grey to shuck his coat and attempt repairs to his wardrobe in a modicum of privacy.

“It seems you’re a handy fellow with a needle as well as a razor, Tom.” Grey slouched comfortably on a bench in the tavern’s deserted snug, restoring himself with a second pint of stout. “To say nothing of quick with both wits and feet. If you’d not gone for Magruder when you did, I’d likely be laid out in the alley now, cold as yesterday’s turbot.”

Tom Byrd squinted over the red coat he was mending by the imperfect light from a leaded-glass window. He didn’t look up from his work, but a small glow of gratification appeared to spread itself across his snub features.

“Well, I could see as how you had the matter well in hand, me lord,” he said tactfully, “but there was a dreadful lot of them Irish, to say nothin’ of the Frenchies.”

“Frenchies?” Grey put a fist to his mouth to stifle a rising eructation. “What, you thought Miss Stokes’s friends were French? Why?”

Byrd looked up, surprised.

“Why, they was speakin’ French to each other—at least a couple of them. Two black-browed coves, curly-haired, what looked as if they was related to that Miss Stokes.”

Grey was surprised in turn, and furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to recall any remarks that might have been made in French during the recent contretemps, but failing. He had marked out the two swarthy persons described by Tom, who had squared up behind their—sister, cousin? for surely Tom was right; there was an undeniable resemblance—in menacing fashion, but they had looked more like—

“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 did have 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 Père having 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. “That was 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.”

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.”

“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 eat at 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.”