Lord John and the Private Matter Read Online Free PDF Page B

O’Connell’s benefit?”
    Quarry regarded him blandly. “Wasn’t announced officially, was it?”
    “No. And we take it that the coincidence of such an unofficial decision and the sudden demise of Sergeant O’Connell is sufficient to be . . . interesting?”
    “Depends on your tastes, I s’pose,” Quarry said, heaving a deep sigh. “Damn nuisance, I call it.”
    The servant came quietly back into the room, bearing a humidor in one hand, a rack of pipes in the other. The supper hour was drawing to a close, and those members who liked a smoke to settle their digestions would be coming down the hallway shortly, each to claim his own pipe and his preferred chair.
    Grey sat frowning for a moment.
    “Why was . . . the gentleman in question . . . suspected?”
    “Can’t tell you that.” Quarry lifted one shoulder, leaving it unclear as to whether his reticence was a matter of ignorance or of official discretion.
    “I see. So perhaps my brother is in France—and perhaps he isn’t?”
    A slight smile twitched the white scar on Quarry’s cheek.
    “You’d know better than I would, Grey.”
    The servant had gone out again, to fetch the other humidors; several members kept their personal blends of tobacco and snuff at the club. He could already hear the stir from the dining room, of scraping chairs and postprandial conversation. Grey leaned forward, ready to rise.
    “But you had him followed, of course—O’Connell. Someone must have kept a close eye on him in London.”
    “Oh, yes.” Quarry shook himself into rough order, brushing ash from the knees of his breeches and pulling down his rumpled waistcoat. “Hal found a man. Very discreet, well-placed. A footman employed by a friend of the family—your family, that is.”
    “And that friend would be . . .”
    “The Honorable Joseph Trevelyan.” Heaving himself to his feet, Quarry led the way out of the smoking room, leaving Grey to follow as he might, senses reeling from more than tobacco smoke.
             
    It all made a horrid sense, though, he thought, following Quarry toward the door. Trevelyan’s family and Grey’s had been associated for the last couple of centuries, and it was in some part Joseph Trevelyan’s friendship with Hal that had led to his betrothal to Olivia in the first place.
    It wasn’t a close friendship; one founded on a commonality of association, clubs, and political interests, rather than on personal affection. Still, if Hal had been looking for a discreet man to put on O’Connell’s trail, it would have been necessary to look outside the army—for who knew what alliances O’Connell had formed, both within the regiment and outside it? And so, evidently, Hal had spoken to his friend Trevelyan, who had recommended his own footman . . . and it was simply a matter of dreadful irony that he, Grey, should now be obliged to interfere in Trevelyan’s personal life.
    Outside the Beefsteak, the doorman had procured a commercial carriage; Quarry was already into it, beckoning Grey impatiently.
    “Come along, come along! I’m starving. We’ll go up to Kettrick’s, shall we? They do an excellent eel pie there. I could relish an eel pie, and perhaps a bucket or two of stout to go along. Wash the smoke down, what?”
    Grey nodded, setting his hat on the seat beside him where it wouldn’t be crushed. Quarry stuck his head out the window and shouted up to the driver, then pulled it in and relapsed back onto the grimy squabs with a sigh.
    “So,” Quarry went on, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the rattle and squeak of the carriage, “this man, Trevelyan’s footman—Byrd, his name is, Jack Byrd—he took up rooms across from the slammerkin O’Connell lived with. Been following the Sergeant to and fro, up and down London, for the past six weeks.”
    Grey glanced out of the window; the weather had kept fine for several days, but was about to break. Thunder growled in the distance, and he could feel the coming rain in