He had hoped to escape from Blackthorn Hall unnoticed, and was in the act of depositing a gracious note of thanks—pleading urgent business as excuse for his abrupt removal—on Edgar’s desk, when a voice spoke suddenly behind him.
“John!”
He whirled, guilt stamped upon his features, to find Maude in the doorway, a garden trug over one arm, filled with what looked like onions but were probably daffodil bulbs or something agricultural of the sort.
“Oh. Maude. How pleased I am to see you. I thought I should have to take my leave without expressing my thanks for your kindness. How fortunate—”
“You’re leaving us, John? So soon?”
She was a tall woman, and handsome, her dark good looks a proper match for Edgar’s. Maude’s eyes, however, were not those of a poetess. Something more in the nature of a gorgon’s, he had always felt; riveting the attention of her auditors, even though all instinct bade them flee.
“I…yes. Yes. I received a letter—” He had Coles’s note with him, and flourished it as evidence. “I must—”
“Oh, from Mr. Coles, of course. The butler told me he had brought you a note, when he brought me mine.”
She was looking at him with a most unaccustomed fondness, which gave him a small chill up the back. This increased when she moved suddenly toward him, setting aside her trug, and cupped a hand behind his head, looking searchingly into his eyes. Her breath was warm on his cheek, smelling of fried egg.
“Are you sure you are quite well enough to travel, my dear?”
“Ahh…yes,” he said. “Quite. Quite sure.” God in heaven, did she mean to kiss him?
Thank God, she did not. After examining his face feature by feature, she released him.
“You should have told us, you know,” she said reproachfully.
He managed a vaguely interrogative noise in answer to this, and she nodded toward the desk. Where, he now saw, the newspaper cutting referring to him as the Hero of Crefeld was displayed in all its glory, along with a note in Simon Coles’s handwriting.
“Oh,” he said. “Ah. That. It really—”
“We had not the slightest idea,” she said, looking at him with what in a lesser woman would have passed for doe-eyed respect. “You are so modest, John! To think of all you have suffered—it shows so clearly upon your haggard countenance—and to say not a word, even to your family!”
It was a cold day and the library fire had not been lit, but he was beginning to feel very warm. He coughed.
“There is, of course, a certain degree of exaggeration—”
“Nonsense, nonsense. But of course, your natural nobility of character causes you to shun public acclaim, I understand entirely.”
“I knew you would,” Grey said, giving up. They beamed at each other for a few seconds; then he coughed again and made purposefully to pass her.
“John.”
He halted, obedient, and she took him by the arm. She was slightly taller than he was, which he found disquieting, as though she might drag him off to her lair at any moment.
“You will be careful, John?” She was looking at him with such earnest concern that he felt touched, in spite of everything.
“Yes, dear sister,” he said, and patted her hand gently. “I will.”
Her hand relaxed, and he was able to detach himself without violence. In the moment’s delay afforded by the action, though, a belated thought had occurred to him.
“Maude—a question?”
“To be sure, John. What is it?” She paused in the act of picking up her trug, expectant.
“Do you know, perhaps, what would lead Douglas Fanshawe to describe a politician named Mortimer Oswald as a snake?”
She drew herself up, suffering a slight reversion to her former attitude toward him.
“Really, John. Can you possibly be in ignorance of Oswald’s despicable behavior during the election last year?”
“I…er…believe I may have been abroad,” he said politely, with a nod at the cutting on the desk. Her face changed at once, expressing remorse.
“Oh, of course! I am so sorry, John. Naturally you would have been preoccupied. Well, then; it is only that Mr. Oswald simply slithered round the district, spreading loathsome insinuations and ill-natured gossip about Edgar—nay, absolute lies, though he took great care never to be caught out about them, the beast!”
“Er…what sort of insinuations? Other than being loathsome, I mean.”
“Hints meant to suggest that there was something…corrupt”—her lips writhed delicately away from the word—“in the means by which Edgar and his partners gained their contracts with the government. Which of course there was not!”
“Of course not,” Grey said, but she was in full spate, eyes flashing magnificently in indignation.
“As though Oswald’s own hands were clean, in that regard! Everyone knows that the man simply battens upon bribery! He is a perfect viper of depravity!”
“Indeed.” Grey was undergoing a swift process of enlightenment, realizing belatedly that Oswald had clearly been Edgar’s opponent in the recent election. Which explained very neatly the insinuations of sabotage directed at the DeVane consortium. A better way of removing any future political threat could scarcely be imagined.
Oswald’s cleverness in the matter had been in leading Marchmont and Twelvetrees to make the accusations, virtuously avoiding any appearance of involvement himself. Yes, “snake” seemed reasonably accurate as a description.
“Who bribes him?” he asked.
There, though, Maude was at a loss, able only to repeat that everyone knew—but not precisely what everyone knew. Meaning that if Oswald did take bribes, he was reasonably circumspect about it. A word with Harry Quarry might shed a bit more light on the matter, though.
Invigorated by this thought, and the more eager to return to London, he smiled warmly upon Maude.
“Thank you, Maude, my dear,” he said. “You are a blessing and a boon.” Standing a-tiptoe, he kissed her startled cheek, then strode with great determination for the stables.