Страница 39 из 64
“I will be damned. D’ye think he’s a he-whore, then? A sodomite of some type?”
Grey would have taken a substantial wager to that effect, were it not for one observation. The man was slight, but well-built and muscular, like Grey himself. However, the muscles of chest and arms had begun to sag from lack of use, and there was a definite roll of fat around the middle. Adding to these observations the fact that the man’s neck was deeply seamed and, despite an impeccable manicure, the backs of his hands thickly veined and knobbed, Grey was reasonably sure that the body was that of a man in his late thirties or early forties. Male prostitutes seldom lasted far beyond twenty.
“Nah, too old,” Magruder objected, fortunately saving Grey from the necessity of finding some way of saying the same thing, without disclosing how he knew it. “This cove would be one as hires such, not one himself.”
Quarry shook his head in disapproval.
“Should never have suspected Maggie of dealing in that sort of thing,” he said, as much in regret as condemnation. “You sure about the dress, then, Grey?”
“Reasonably. It is not impossible that a dressmaker should make more than one gown, of course—but whoever made this one made the one that Magda was wearing.”
“Magda?” Quarry blinked at him.
Grey cleared his throat, a hideous realization coming suddenly over him. Quarry hadn’t known.
“The . . . ah . . . Scottish woman I met there informed me that the madam was called Magda, and is in fact a, um, a German of some type.”
Quarry’s face looked pinched in the lantern light.
“Of some type,” he repeated bleakly. It made considerable difference whichtype, and Quarry was well aware of it. Prussia and Hanover—of course—had allied themselves with England, while the duchy of Saxony had chosen up sides with France and Russia, in support of its neighbor Austria. For an English colonel to be patronizing a brothel owned by a German of unknown background and allegiance, and now with an evident involvement in criminal matters, was a dicey proposition, and one that Quarry must devoutly hope would never come to official notice. Or the notice of the unblinking Mr. Bowles.
It wouldn’t do Grey’s reputation any good, either. He realized now that he ought to have mentioned the situation to Quarry at the time, rather than assuming that he must know of Magda’s background already. But he had allowed himself to be distracted by alcoholic excess, and by Nessie’s disclosure about Trevelyan—and now he could but hope there wasn’t the devil to pay for it.
Harry Quarry drew a deep breath and blew it out again, squaring his shoulders. One of Harry’s many good points was that he never wasted time in recrimination, and—unlike Bernard Sydell—never blamed subordinates, even when they deserved it.
“Well, then,” he said, and turned to Magruder. “I think we must have Mrs. Magda taken into custody and questioned without delay. We shall need to search her premises, as well, I should think—will you require a warrant?”
“Yes, sir. Given the circumstances”—Magruder nodded delicately at the dead man—“I shouldn’t think the magistrate would be reluctant.”
Quarry nodded, straightening the coat on his shoulders.
“Aye. I’ll come myself and speak to him now.” He drummed his fingers restlessly on the table, making the corpse’s slack hand tremble with the vibration. “Grey—I think we shall have the Scanlons taken up, too, as you advised. You’ll question them; go round to the gaol tomorrow, once Magruder has had a chance to lay them by the heels. As for . . . the Cornish gentleman . . . use your best judgment there, will you?”
Grey managed a nod, cursing himself for his idiocy, and then Quarry and Magruder were gone, leaving the faceless corpse naked and staring in the flickering light.
“You in trouble, me lord?” Tom Byrd was frowning worriedly at him from the shadows, having evidently divined some hint of the undercurrents in the preceding conversation.
“I hope not.” He stood looking down at the dead man. Who the devil was he? Grey had been convinced that the body was that of Trevelyan’s lover—and it might still be, he reminded himself. True, Caswell had insisted that it was a woman whom Trevelyan entertained at Lavender House, but Caswell might have been mistaken in his own powers of olfactory discernment—or lying, for reasons unknown.
Use his best judgment, Harry said. His best judgment was that Trevelyan was in this up to his neck—but there was no direct evidence.
There was certainly no evidence to co
“Major?” He turned, to see Corporal Hicks frowning at him from the doorway. “You aren’t going to leave that thing here, are you?”
“Oh. No, Corporal. You may remove it to the coroner’s. Fetch some men.”
“Right, sir.” Hicks disappeared with alacrity, but Grey hesitated. Was there any further information that the body itself could offer?
“You think it was the same cove what did for that Sergeant O’Co
“I have no particular reason to think so,” Grey said, a little startled at this supposition. “Why?”
“Well, the, uh, face.” Tom gestured, a little awkwardly, at the remains, and swallowed audibly. One eyeball had been dislodged so far from its parent socket as to dangle out onto the crushed cheek, staring accusingly off into the shadows of the hay shed. “Seems like whoever did this didn’t care for him much—same as whoever stamped on the Sergeant.”
Grey considered that, pursing his lips. Reluctantly, he shook his head.
“I don’t think so, Tom. I think that whoever did this”—he gestured at the corpse—“did it in order to disguise the gentleman’s identity, not out of personal dislike. It’s heavy work, to crush a skull like that, and this was a very thorough job. One would have to be in an absolute frenzy of hatred—and if that was the case, why shoot him first?”
“Did they? Shoot him first, I mean, me lord. ’Coz what you said about dead men don’t bleed—this one surely did, so he can’t have been dead when they . . . erm.” He glanced at the smashed face, and then away. “But he couldn’t live long like that—so why shoot him, then?”
Grey stared at Tom. The boy was pale, but bright-eyed, intent on his argument.
“You have a very logical sort of mind, Tom,” he said. “Why, indeed?” He stood for a moment looking down at the corpse, trying to reconcile the disparate bits of information at hand. What Tom said made obvious sense—and yet he was convinced that whoever had killed this man had not beaten in his face from anger. Just as he was convinced that whoever had stamped on Tim O’Co
Tom Byrd stood patiently by, keeping quiet as Grey circled the table, viewing the corpse from all angles. Nothing seemed to make sense of the puzzle, though, and when Hicks’s men came in, he allowed them to bundle up the body into a canvas.
“D’you want us to take this, as well, sir?” One of the men picked up the sodden hem of the green dress, gingerly, between two fingers.
“Not even the mort-man’d want that,” the other objected, wrinkling his nose at the reek.
“You couldn’t sell it to a ragpicker, even was you to wash it.”
“No,” Grey said, “leave it, for now.”
“You don’t mean to leave it in here, do you, sir?” Hicks stood by, arms folded, glowering at the sodden pile of velvet.
“No, I suppose not,” Grey said, with a sigh. “Don’t want to put the horses off their feed, do we?”