Free Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon Page B

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