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The butler, a square person of middle age with a stubborn cast to his brow, was stoutly withstanding this preliminary barrage by insisting that his master was not at home, but clearly the man had no notion of the true nature of the forces ranged against him.
“I am Stephan, Landgrave von Erdberg,” von Namtzen a
He promptly did so, bending his neck only sufficiently to prevent the obliteration of his helmet. The butler fell back, sputtering and waving his hands in agitated protest. Grey nodded coolly to the man as he passed, and managed to uphold the dignity of His Majesty’s army by navigating the length of the entry hall without support. Reaching the morning room, he made for the first seat in evidence, and managed to sit down upon it before his legs gave way.
Von Namtzen was lobbing mortar shells into the butler’s position, which appeared to be rapidly crumbling but was still being defended. No, the butler said, now visibly wringing his hands, no, the master was most certainly not at home, and no, nor was the mistress, alas. . . .
Tom Byrd had followed Grey and was looking round the room in some awe, taking in the set of malachite-topped tables with gold feet, the white damask draperies, and the gigantic paintings in gilded frames that covered every wall.
Grey was sweating heavily from the effort of walking, and the dizziness set his head spi
“Tom,” he said, low-voiced, so as not to draw the attention of the embattled butler. “Go and search the house. Come and tell me what—or who—you find.”
Byrd gave him a suspicious look, obviously thinking this a device to get rid of him so that Grey could die surreptitiously—but Grey stayed rigidly upright, jaw set tight, and after a moment, the boy nodded and slipped quietly out, u
Grey let out a deep breath, and closed his eyes, holding tight to his knees until the spi
Von Namtzen in the meantime appeared to have vanquished the butler, and was now demanding in stentorian tones the immediate assembly of the entire household. He cast a glance over his shoulder at Grey, and interrupted his tirade for an instant.
“Oh—and you will bring me the whites of three eggs, please, in a cup.”
“Bitte?”said the butler, faintly.
“Eggs. You are deaf?” von Namtzen inquired, in biting tones. “Only the whites. Schnell!”
Stung at this public solicitude for his weakened condition, Grey forced himself to his feet, coming to stand beside the Hanoverian, who—with the butler in full rout—had now removed his helmet and was looking quite pleased with himself.
“You are better now, Major?” he inquired, dabbing sweat delicately from his hairline with a linen handkerchief.
“Much, I thank you. I take it that both Reinhardt Mayrhofer and his wife are out?” Reinhardt, he reflected, was almost certainly out. But the wife—
“So the butler says. If he is not out, he is a coward,” von Namtzen said with satisfaction, putting away his handkerchief. “I will root him out of his hiding place like a turnip, though, and then—what will you do, then?” he inquired.
“Probably nothing,” Grey said. “I believe him to be dead. Is that the gentleman in question, by chance?” He nodded at a small framed portrait on a table by the window, its frame set with pearls.
“Yes, that is Mayrhofer and his wife, Maria. They are cousins,” he added, u
While both had a delicacy of feature, with long necks and rounded chins, Reinhardt was possessed of an imposing nose and an aristocratic scowl. Maria was a lovely woman, though, Grey thought; she was wigged in the portrait, of course, but had the same warm skin tones and brown eyes as her husband, and so was also likely dark-haired.
“Reinhardt is dead?” von Namtzen asked with interest, looking at the portrait. “How did he die?”
“Shot,” Grey replied briefly. “Quite possibly by the gentleman who poisoned me.”
“What a very industrious sort of fellow.” Von Namtzen’s attention was distracted at this point by the entrance of a parlor maid, white-faced with nerves and clutching a small dish containing the requested egg whites. She glanced from one man to the other, then held out the dish timidly toward von Namtzen.
“Danke,”he said. He handed the dish to Grey, then proceeded at once to catechize the maid, bending toward her in a way that made her press herself against the nearest wall, terrorized into speechlessness and capable only of shaking her head yes and no.
Unable to follow the nuances of this one-sided conversation, Grey turned away, viewing the contents of his dish with distaste. The sound of footsteps in the corridor and agitated voices indicated that the butler was indeed assembling the household, as ordered. Depositing the dish behind an alabaster vase on the desk, he stepped out into the corridor, to find a small crowd of household servants milling about, all chattering in excited German.
At sight of him, they stopped abruptly and stared, with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, and what looked like simple fright on some faces. Why? he wondered. Was it the uniform?
“Guten Tag,”he said, smiling pleasantly. “Are any of you English?”
There were shifty glances to and fro, the focus of which seemed to be a pair of young chambermaids. He smiled reassuringly at them, beckoning them to one side. They looked at him wide-eyed, like a pair of young deer confronted by a hunter, but a glance at von Namtzen, emerging from the morning room behind him, hastily decided them that Lord John was the lesser of the evils on offer, and they followed close on his heels back into the room, leaving von Namtzen to deal with the crowd in the entry hall.
Their names, the girls admitted, with much stammering and blushing, were A
“I gather that Herr Mayrhofer is not, in fact, at home today,” Grey said, still smiling. “When did he go out?”
The girls glanced at each other in confusion.
“Yesterday?” Grey suggested. “This morning?”
“Oh, no, sir,” A
And Magruder’s men had discovered the corpse on Wednesday morning.
“Ah, I see. Do you know where he went?”
Naturally, they did not. They did, however, say—after much shuffling and contradicting of each other—that Herr Mayrhofer was often given to short journeys, leaving home for several days at a time, two or three times a month.
“Indeed,” Grey said. “And what is Herr Mayrhofer’s business, pray?”
Baffled looks, followed by shrugs. Herr Mayrhofer had money, plainly; where it came from was no concern of theirs. Grey felt a growing metallic taste at the back of his tongue, and swallowed, trying to force it down.
“Well, then. When he left the house this time, did he go out in the morning? Or later in the day?”
The girls frowned and conferred with each other in murmurs, before deciding that, well, in fact, they had neither of them actually seen Herr Reinhardt leave the house, and no, they had not heard the carriage draw up, but—
“He must have done, though, A