Part III
The Hero’s Return
Would you say that I appear haggard, Tom?” he inquired. There was a looking glass upon his dresser, but he found himself reluctant to employ it.
“Yes, me lord.”
“Oh. Well, Colonel Quarry won’t mind, I suppose. You know what to do?”
“Yes, me lord.” Tom Byrd hesitated, looking at him narrowly. “You’re sure as you’ll be all right alone, me lord?”
“Certainly,” he said, with what heartiness he could muster. He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll be fine.”
Byrd eyed him in patent disbelief.
“I’ll summon you a coach, me lord,” he said.
He resisted the suggestion for form’s sake, in order not to alarm Tom, but once safely inside the coach, he sank gratefully into the dusty squabs, closing his eyes, and concentrated on breathing for the journey to the Beefsteak.
How many pawnshops might there be in Southwark? he wondered, as the coach rattled through the streets. Tom had made several careful copies of the list of Anne Thackeray’s jewelry; he and his brothers would see whether any of the bits and bobs had been pawned.
He had a most uneasy feeling about Anne Thackeray, but hoped for her sister’s sake that some trace of her could be found. He had gone himself to her last known address directly upon his return to London, but the landlady, a hard-faced bitch of a woman, had known nothing—or at least, nothing she would tell, even for a price.
He felt mildly feverish; after he’d seen Harry, perhaps he’d take a room at the Beefsteak for the night and go to bed. But he wanted to tell Quarry what he’d learned in Sussex, and set him on the trail of Mortimer Oswald. Granted, Maude DeVane was not an unbiased witness on the subject of the MP, but the way she had said, Everyone knows, so positive…If Oswald did take bribes, it was more than possible that Harry could find out. Harry’s own half brother was Sir Richard Joffrey, an influential and canny politician who had survived a good many shifts in government over the course of the last fifteen years. No one did that without knowing where a few bodies were buried.
He paid the coach and turned to find the doorman holding open the Beefsteak’s door, bowing with unusual respect.
“My lord!” the man said fervently.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Dobbs?” he asked.
“Never better, sir,” the man assured him, bowing him inside. “Colonel Quarry’s a-waiting on you in the library, my lord.”
His sense of unease grew as he passed through the hall. Mr. Bodley, the steward, stopped dead upon seeing him, eyes round, then vanished hurriedly into the dining room, presumably to fetch his tray.
He paused warily at the door to the library, but all seemed reassuringly as usual. Quarry’s broad back was visible, bent over a table by the window. As Grey drew near, he saw that the table was covered with newspapers, one of which Harry Quarry was perusing, a look of absorption upon his face. At Grey’s step, he looked up, his craggy face breaking into an ears-wide grin.
“Ho!” he said in greeting. “It’s the man himself! A bumper of your best brandy, Mr. Bodley, if you please, for the Hero of Crefeld!”
“Oh, shit!” said Grey.
In the end, he did spend the night at the Beefsteak, having been—despite his repeated protests, which went completely ignored by everyone—obliged to join in so many extravagant toasts in his honor that merely walking became problematic, let alone finding his way back to his quarters in the barracks.
An attempt at escape in the morning was frustrated by the baying hounds of Fleet Street, several of whom had got wind of his presence at the club and hovered outside, kept at bay by the indomitable Mr. Dobbs, who had survived being tomahawked by red Indians in America and thus was not intimidated by mere scribblers.
One of the most intransigent balladeers took up a station under the windows of the library and bellowed out a never-ending performance of a dramatic—and execrably rhymed—lay entitled “The Death of Tom Pilchard,” to the general disedification of Mr. Wilbraham and the other inhabitants of the Hermit’s Corner, all of whom glared at Grey, holding him responsible for the disturbance.
He escaped at last under cover of darkness, disguised in Mr. Dobbs’s shabby greatcoat and laced hat, and made his way on foot through the streets, arriving hungry and exhausted—though finally sober—to find Tom Byrd and his elder brother Jack awaiting him impatiently at the barracks.
“I found it at a place called Markham’s,” Jack told him, displaying his find. “Pawned a month ago, by a lady. Young, the pawnbroker said, and summat of a pop-eyed look about her, though he didn’t remember nothing else.”
“It’s hers, isn’t it, me lord?” Tom chipped in anxiously.
Grey picked up the trinket—a cheap silver locket, inscribed with the letter “A.” He compared it for form’s sake to the sheet Barbara had given him, but there could be little doubt.
“Excellent!” he said. “You asked, of course, whether she had left an address.”
Jack nodded.
“No joy there, my lord. The only thing…” He glanced at his younger brother, who was, after all, Grey’s valet, and thus had rights.
“The feller didn’t want to sell it to us, me lord. He said he’d had other things from this lady, and there was a gent what would come by, asking particular for her things, and pay a very pretty price for ’em.”
“Aye, sir,” Jack said, nodding agreement. “I thought it wasn’t but a ruse to get more, and wouldn’t have paid, but Tom said as how we must. I hope that was all right?”
“Yes, of course.” Grey waved that aside. “The man—did the pawnbroker remember him?”
“Oh, yes, me lord,” Tom said. His hair was nearly standing on end with excitement at what he had to impart. “He remembered him well enough. Said it was a man what always wore a mask—a black silk mask.”
Grey felt a surge of excitement equal to the Byrds’.
“Christ!” he said. “Fanshawe!”
Tom nodded.
“I thought it must be, me lord. Is he looking for Miss Thackeray, too, d’ye suppose?”
“I can’t think what else he might intend—though surely he is not pursuing her with any great determination, if he has not yet discovered her lodgings.”
“Perhaps he has,” Jack Byrd suggested, “but he’s not got up his nerve to see her, what with the face an’ all—Tom told me what happened to him.” Jack shuddered reflexively at the thought.
Grey glanced at the window, black night showing through the half-drawn curtains.
“Well, we can do little about it tonight. I will write a note, though—if you will take it in the morning, Jack?”
“What, to Sussex?” Jack looked slightly nonplussed. “Well, of course, my lord, if you like, but—”
“No, I think we needn’t go that far,” Grey assured him. “Plainly, Captain Fanshawe visits London regularly. He is a member at White’s; leave the note there, to be delivered upon his arrival.”
The two Byrds bowed, for an instant looking absurdly alike, though they did not really resemble each other closely.
“Very good, me lord,” Tom said. “Will you have a bit of supper, then?”
Grey nodded and sat down to compose his note. He had just trimmed his quill when he became aware that neither Byrd had departed; both were standing on the opposite side of the room, viewing him with approval.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing, me lord,” Tom said, smiling beneficently. “I was just telling Jack, you aren’t looking quite so hag-rid as you was.”
“You mean haggard?”
“That, neither.”
Grey had finally fallen into an uneasy sleep, in which he hurried endlessly through stubbled fields with crows cawing overhead, sure that he must reach a distant red-brick building in order to prevent some unspeakable disaster, but never drawing closer.
One crow dived low, shrieking, and he ducked, covering his head, then sat up abruptly, realizing that the crow had said, “Wake up, me lord.”
“What?” he said blankly. He could not focus eyes or mind, but the terrible sense of urgency from his dream had not left him. “Who…what?”
“There’s a soldier come, me lord. I’d not have waked you, but he says it’s a man’s life.”
His eyes finally consenting to operate, he saw Tom Byrd, round face worried but alight with interest, shaking out his banyan before a hastily poked-up fire.
“Yes. Of course. He…did he…” He groped simultaneously for words and bedclothes. “Name?”
“Yes, me lord. Captain Jones, he says.”
Scrambling out of bed, Grey thrust his arms into the sleeves of his banyan, but did not wait for Tom to find his slippers, padding quick and barefoot through the cold to the darkened sitting room.
Jones was stirring up the fire, a black and burly demon whose silhouette was limned by sparks. He turned at Grey’s entrance, dropping the poker with a crash upon the hearth.
“Where is he?” He reached as though to seize Grey’s arm, but Grey stepped aside.
“Where is who?”
“Herbert Gormley, of course! What have you done with him?”
“Gormless?” Grey was so startled that the name popped out of him. “What’s happened to him?”
Jones’s clenched-fist expression, just visible by the glow of the fire, relaxed a trifle at that.
“Gormless? You call him that, too, do you?”
“Not to his face, certainly. Thank you, Tom.” Byrd, hurrying in, had placed his slippers on the floor, eyeing Jones with marked wariness.
“What has happened?” Grey repeated, thrusting his cold feet into the slippers and noting absently that they were warm; Tom had taken time to hold them over the bedroom fire.
“He’s disappeared, Major—and so has Tom Pilchard. And I want to know what you have to do with the matter.”
He stared at Jones, unable for a moment to take this in. Still half in the grip of nightmare, his brain produced a vision of Herbert Gormley absconding by night, the remains of a massive cannon tucked tidily under one arm. He shook his head to clear it of this nonsense, and gestured Jones to the sofa.
“Sit. I assure you, sir, I have nothing ‘to do’ with the matter—but I certainly wish to know who does. Tell me what you know.”
Jones’s face worked briefly—Grey had the notion that he was grinding his teeth—but he nodded shortly and sat down, though he remained poised upon the edge of the sofa, hands on his knees, ready to leap up at a moment’s notice.
“He’s gone—Herbert. When I found the cannon gone, I went to find him, ask what—but he was nowhere to be found. I’ve been searching for him since the day before yesterday. Do you know where he is?”
Tom had been building up the fire; the flame was high enough now to show Jones’s heavy face, hollowed by worry and pouched with fatigue.
“No. You know where he lives?” Grey sat down himself, and scrubbed a hand over his face in an effort to rouse himself completely.
Jones nodded, massive fists clenching and unclenching unconsciously upon his thighs.
“He’s not been home in two days. The last anyone saw of him was Wednesday evening, when he left the laboratory. You’re quite sure he’s not been here?” Dark eyes flicked suspiciously at Grey.
“You are entirely welcome to search the place.” Grey waved a hand toward the room and the door through which Tom Byrd had disappeared, presumably toward the barracks kitchen in search of refreshment. “Why the devil would he come here?”
“For that bit of shrapnel.”
For a moment, Grey looked blank; then memory returned. His hand rose involuntarily toward his chest, but he altered the motion, pretending instead to stifle a yawn.
“The bit of iron from Tom Pilchard? The leopard’s head? What on earth would he—or you—want it for?”
Jones measured him for a long moment before replying, but answered at last, reluctant.
“With the cannon gone, that may be the only evidence.”
“Evidence of what, for God’s sake? And what do you mean, the cannon’s gone?” he added, belatedly realizing that he had overlooked the other bit of Jones’s statement. “Who in Christ’s name would steal a burst cannon?”
“It wasn’t stolen,” Jones answered shortly. “The foundrymen took it—and the others. It’s been melted down.”
This seemed an entirely reasonable thing to do, and Grey said as much, causing Jones’s face to work again. He was grinding his teeth; Grey could hear it.
Jones abruptly shut his eyes, upper lip folded under his lower teeth in a way that reminded Grey of his cousin Olivia’s bulldog, Alfred. It was an amiable animal, but remarkably stubborn.
The chiming clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour: two o’clock. The captain was likely telling the truth about searching everywhere else before coming to Grey’s door.
Jones at length opened his eyes—they were bloodshot, enhancing the resemblance to Alfred—though the teeth remained fixed in his lip. At last he shook his head in resignation and sighed.
“I’ll have to trust you, I suppose,” he said.
“I am distinctly honored,” Grey said, with an edge. “Thank you, Tom.”
Byrd had reappeared with a tray hastily furnished with two cups of tea. The tea was stewed and black, undoubtedly from the urn kept for the night watch, but served in Grey’s decent vine-patterned china. He took a cup gratefully, adding a substantial dollop of brandy from the decanter.
Jones stared at the cup of tea in his own hand, as though wondering where it had come from, but essayed a cautious sip, then coughed and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.
“The cannon. Herbert said he thought you knew nothing about the process of gun-founding; is that true?”
“Nothing more than he told me himself.” The hot tea and brandy were both comfort and stimulant; Grey began to feel more alert. “Why?”
Jones blew out his breath, making a small cloud of steam; the air in the sitting room was still chilly.
“Without describing the entire process to you—you do know that the bronze of a cannon is an alloy, produced by—”
“Yes, I do know that.” Grey was sufficiently awake by now as to be annoyed. “What does that—”
“I am sure that the burst cannon—all of them—had been cast from an inferior alloy, one lacking the proper proportion of copper.” He stared meaningfully at Grey, obviously expecting him to drop his tea, clutch his head, or otherwise exhibit signs of horrified comprehension.
“Oh?” Grey said, and reached for the brandy again.
Jones heaved a sigh that went all the way to his feet, and put out a hand for the decanter in turn.
“Not to put too fine a point upon the matter, Major,” he said, eyes on the amber stream splashing into his tea, “I am a spy.”
Grey narrowly prevented himself saying, “Oh?” again, and instead said, “For the French? Or the Austrians?” Tom Byrd, who had been loitering respectfully in the background, stiffened, then bent casually to pick up the poker from the hearth.
“Neither, for God’s sake,” Jones said crossly. “I am in the employ of His Majesty’s government.”
“Well, who the bloody hell are you spying on, then?” Grey said, losing patience.
“The Arsenal,” Jones replied, looking surprised, as though this should be obvious. “Or rather, the foundry.”
There ensued a tedious ten minutes of extraction which brought Grey to the point of wishing to gnash his own teeth. At the end of it, though, he had managed to get Jones to admit—with extreme reluctance—that he was not in fact employed by the Arsenal, as Grey had assumed. He was a genuine captain in the Royal Artillery Regiment, though, and as such had been sent to nose unofficially about the Arsenal and see what he could discover regarding the matter of the exploding cannons—the Royal Artillery having an interest, as Grey might suppose.
“Couldn’t be official, d’ye see,” Jones said, becoming more confidential. “The Royal Commission had already been appointed, and it’s their show, so to speak.”
Grey nodded, curious. Twelvetrees, who was a member of the Commission of Inquiry, belonged to the Royal Artillery; why ought the regiment be sending Jones to do surreptitiously what Twelvetrees was doing so overtly? Unless…unless someone suspected Twelvetrees of something?
“To whom do you report your findings?” Grey asked. Jones began again to look shifty, and a small premonitory prickle ran suddenly down Grey’s spine.
Jones’s lips worked in and out in indecision, but at last he bit the bullet and blurted, “A man named Bowles.”
As though cued by an invisible prompter, the teacup began to rattle gently in its saucer. Grey felt a monstrous sense of irritation; was he never going to be allowed to drink a full cup of tea in peace, for God’s sake? Very carefully, he set down the cup and saucer, and wiped his hands upon the skirts of his dressing gown.
“Oh, you know him, do you?” Jones’s red-rimmed eyes fixed on Grey, suddenly alert.
“I know of him.” Grey did not wish to admit to his relations with Bowles, let alone discuss them. He had met the mysterious Mr. Bowles once, and had no wish to repeat the experience.
“So you had no official standing at the laboratory?”
“No, that’s why I needed Gormley.”
Herbert Gormley had no great authority within the hierarchy of the Ordnance Office, but he had the necessary knowledge to locate the remains of the exploded cannon, and sufficient administrative skill to have them quietly brought to the guns’ graveyard near the proving grounds and sequestered there for autopsy.
“There are hundreds of broken guns there; they should have been safe!” Jones’s teeth were clenched in frustration; in hopes of preventing further damage to the man’s molars, Grey poured more brandy into his empty cup.
Jones gulped it and set down the cup, eyes watering.
“But they weren’t,” he said hoarsely. “They’re gone. There were eight of them under my investigation—all gone. But only those eight—the ones Gormley found for me. Everything else is still there. And now Gormley’s gone, too. You can’t tell me that’s coincidence, Major!”
Grey had no intention of doing so.
“You do not suppose that Gormless—Gormley—had anything to do with the removal of the exploded cannon?”
Jones shook his head violently.
“Not a chance. No, he’s onto me. Has to be.”
“He? Whom do you mean?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Jones’s hands clenched together in an unconscious pantomime of neck-wringing. “Not for sure. But I’ll get him,” he added, giving Grey a fierce look, with a glimpse of clenched, bared fang. “If he’s harmed poor little Herbert, I’ll—I’ll—”
The man would be toothless before he was forty, Grey thought.
“We will find Mr. Gormley,” he said firmly. “But wherever he is, I doubt that we can discover him before daylight. Compose yourself, Captain, if you please—and then tell me the goddamn truth about what’s going on at the Arsenal.”
The truth, once extracted and divested of its encrustations of laborious speculation and deductive dead ends, was relatively simple: Gormley and Jones had concluded, on the basis of close examination, that someone at the foundry was abstracting a good part of the copper meant to be used in the alloy for casting. Result being that while new cannon cast with this alloy looked quite as usual, the metal was more brittle than it should be, thus liable to sudden failure under sustained fire.
“Those marks you noticed on Tom Pilchard,” Jones said, describing a series of semicircles in the air with a blunt forefinger. “Those are the marks where holes left in the casting have been plugged later, then sanded flat and burnished over. You might get a hole or two in any casting—completely normal—but if the alloy’s wanting, you’ll get a lot more.”
“And a much higher chance of the metal’s fracturing where you have several holes together, such as those I saw. Quite.”
He did. He saw himself and four other men, standing no more than a foot away from a cannon riddled like a cheese with invisible holes, each charge rammed down its smoking barrel one more throw of crooked dice. Grey was beginning to have a metallic taste in the back of his mouth. Rather than lift the cup and saucer again, he simply picked up the decanter and drank from it, holding it round the neck.
“Whoever is taking the copper—they’re selling it, of course?” Copper was largely imported, and valuable.
“Yes, but I haven’t been able to trace any of it,” Jones admitted, moodily. “The damn stuff hasn’t any identifying marks. And with the Dockyards so handy…might be going anywhere. To the Dutch, the French—maybe to someone private, the East India Company perhaps—wouldn’t put it past the bastards.” He glanced at the window, where a slice of night still showed black between the heavy curtains, and sighed.
“We will find him,” Grey repeated, more gently, though he was himself by no means so sure of it. He coughed, and drank again.
“If you are correct—if copper has been abstracted—then surely whoever is responsible for the casting would know of it?”
“Howard Stoughton,” Jones said bleakly. “The Master Founder. Yes, most likely. I’ve been watching him for weeks, though, and he’s not put a foot wrong. No hint of any secret meetings with foreign agents; he scarcely leaves the foundry, and when he does, he goes home and stays there. But if it is the copper, and it is him, and Gormley’s found some proof…”
Another thought occurred to Grey, and he felt obliged to put it, despite the risk to Jones’s tooth enamel.
“We have two assumptions here, Captain, do we not? Firstly, that you and Mr. Gormley are correct in your assessment of the cause of the cannons’ failure. And secondly, that Mr. Gormley is missing because he has discovered who is responsible for the abstraction of copper from the Arsenal and been removed in consequence. But these are assumptions only, for the moment.
“Have you considered the alternative possibility,” he said, taking a firmer hold of the brandy bottle in case he should require a weapon, “that Mr. Gormley might himself have been involved in the matter?”
Jones’s inflamed eyes swiveled slowly in Grey’s direction, bulging slightly, and the muscles of his neck bunched. Before he could speak, though, a discreet cough came from the vicinity of the hearth.
“Me lord?” Tom Byrd, who had been listening raptly, poker in hand, now set it down and stepped diffidently forward.
“Yes, Tom?”
“Beg pardon, me lord. Only as I was in the Lark’s Nest Wednesday—having stopped for a bite on my way back from the Arsenal, see—and the place was a-buzz, riled like it was a hornets’ nest, rather than a lark’s. Was a press gang going through the neighborhood, they said; took up two men was regulars, and there was talk about would they maybe go and try to get them back—but you could see there wasn’t nothing in it but talk. They warned me to go careful when I left, though.”
The young valet hesitated, looking from one gentleman to another.
“I think they maybe got him, this Gormley.”
“A press gang?” Jones said, his scowl diminishing only slightly. “Well, it’s a thought, but—”
“Begging your pardon, sir, it’s maybe summat more than a thought. I saw them.”
Grey’s heart began to beat faster.
“The press gang?”
Tom turned a freckled, earnest face in his employer’s direction.
“Yes, sir. ’Twas a heavy fog comin’ in from the river, and so I heard them coming down the street afore they saw me, and ducked rabbity into an alleyway and hid behind a pile of rubbish. But they passed me by close, sir, and I did see ’em; six sailors and four men they’d seized, all roped together.”
He hesitated, frowning.
“It was foggy, sir. And I ain’t—haven’t—seen him before. But it was right near the Arsenal, and that what you called him—Gormless. It’s only—would he maybe be a dark, small, clever-looking cove, with a pretty face like a girl’s and dressed like a clerk?”
“He would,” Grey said, ignoring Jones, who had made a sound like a stuck pig. “Could you see anything to tell which ship they came from?”
Tom Byrd shook his head.
“No, sir. They was real sailors, though, the way they talked.”
Jones stared at him.
“Why wouldn’t they be real sailors? What do you mean, boy?”
“Mr. Byrd has a somewhat suspicious mind,” Grey intervened tactfully, seeing Tom flush with indignation. “A most valuable attribute, on occasion. On the present occasion, I presume that he means only that your initial supposition was that Mr. Gormley had been abducted by the person or persons responsible for the removal of copper from the foundry, but apparently that is not the case. By the way,” he added, struck by a thought, “have you any indication that copper is missing from the foundry? That would be evidence in support of your theory.”
“Yes,” Jones said, a small measure of satisfaction lightening the anxiety in his face. “We have got that, by God. When I reported our suspicions about the copper, Mr. Bowles undertook to introduce another of his subordinates, a man named Stapleton, into the foundry in the capacity of clerk and set him to inspect the accounts and inventory on the quiet. A good man, Stapleton,” he added with approval. “Got the information in less than a week.”
“Splendid,” Grey said, and took a searingly large swallow of brandy. The hairs rose on his body at the mention of Neil Stapleton. Neil of the hot blue eyes…and even more incendiary attributes. Known to his intimates—if not necessarily his friends—as Neil the Cunt.
He’d met Stapleton twice: initially, at a very private club called Lavender House, in such circumstances as to leave no doubt of either’s private inclinations. And again when Grey had ruthlessly threatened to expose those inclinations to Hubert Bowles, in order to force Stapleton to obtain urgent information for him. Christ, how close had he come to meeting the man again? He shoved that thought hastily away and took another drink.
Jones was showing signs of impatience, tapping his feet back and forth in a soundless tattoo upon the carpet.
“It’s got to be a ship anchored by the Dockyards. Soon as it’s light, I’m going through them like a dose of salts, and then we’ll be to the bottom of this!”
“I wish you the best of luck,” Grey said politely. “And I do hope that the gentleman Tom saw in the custody of the press gang was Mr. Gormley. However—if he was, does this not rather obviate your conclusion that he was in possession of incriminating information regarding the perpetrator?”
Jones gave him a glassy look, and Tom Byrd looked reproving.
“Now, me lord, you know you oughtn’t talk like that at this hour of the morning. You got to pardon his lordship, sir,” he said apologetically to Jones. “His father—the duke, you know—had him schooled in logic. He can’t really help it, like.”
Jones shook his head like a swimmer emerging from heavy surf, and reached wordlessly for the brandy, which Grey surrendered with a brief gesture of apology.
“I mean,” he amended, “if Gormley’s been taken by a press gang, it might be simple misfortune. It needn’t have anything to do with your inquiries.”
Jones pressed his lips together, looking displeased.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the first thing is to get Gormley back. Agreed?”
“Certainly,” Grey said, wondering privately just how complex a matter it might prove to pry a new seaman—no matter how unwillingly recruited—from the rapacious grasp of the navy.
Jones nodded, satisfied, and glanced at the clock. A few minutes until three; the sun would not be up for several hours yet. Tom Byrd yawned suddenly, and Grey felt his own jaw muscles creak in sympathy.
All conversation seemed to have ceased abruptly; there was nothing more to say, and they sat for some moments in silence. There were sounds from the distant barracks and the murmur of the fire, but these were muted, unreal. The night hung over them, heavy with possibilities—most of them threatening.
Grey began to be conscious of his heartbeat, and just behind each beat, a slight, sharp pain in his chest.
“I’m going to bed,” he said abruptly, gathering his feet under him. “Tom, will you find Captain Jones somewhere to sleep?”
Disregarding the captain’s muttered reply that he needn’t bother, wouldn’t sleep anyway, he stood and turned for the door, his brandy-clouded vision smearing light and shadow. Just short of the door, though, one final question occurred to him.
“Captain—you are positive that all the explosions are the result of weakened alloy, are you?” Grey asked, swinging round. “No evidence of deliberate sabotage—as, for instance, by the provision of bombs packed with a higher grade of powder than they should be?”
Jones blinked at him, owl-eyed.
“Why, yes,” he said slowly. “In fact, there is. That’s what began the investigation; the Ordnance Office discovered two grapeshot cartridges packed with a great deal more powder than they should have been, and fine-ground, too—you know that’s unstable, yes? But very explosive. Bombs, they were.”
Grey nodded, his hands curving in unconscious memory of the shape and the weight of the grapeshot cartridges he had handled at Crefeld, tossing them in careless hurry, as though they had been harmless as stones.
“This was just as they began to be aware of the destruction of the cannon,” Jones said, shrugging, “and so they convened the Commission of Inquiry.”
Dry-mouthed, Grey licked his lips.
“How did they discover this?”
“Testing on the proving grounds. Came near to killing one of the proving crew. Gormley was almost sure that it had nothing to do with the cannons’ fracturing, though.”
“Almost?” Grey echoed, with a skeptical intonation.
“He could prove it was the alloy, he said. He could assay the metal from the ruined cannon, and prove that it lacked the proper mix of copper. He couldn’t do it openly, though; he had to wait on an opportunity to use the laboratory’s facilities secretly.”
Jones’s throat worked, whether with anger or grief, Grey couldn’t tell. He swallowed his emotion, though, and went on.
“But they took the cannon before he could make his tests. That’s why I was sure at first that he’d come to you, Major,” he added, fixing Grey with a gimlet eye.
“That bit of shrapnel you took away is the only metal from an exploded cannon that hasn’t been melted down and lost. It’s the only bit of proof that’s left. You will take care of it, won’t you?”