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“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’Co
“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’Co
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. “ Dorsumis 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’Co
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 ma
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’Co
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’Co
“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.