Murder in Grosvenor Square by Ashley Gardner Page B

Nine
     
    “My boy.” Sir Gideon sank to the chair at the side of Leland’s bed. “My poor dear boy.” He clasped his son’s hand, tears running unashamedly down his face.
    I stood awkwardly nearby, letting Sir Gideon have a private moment. His round back shook and his white head bowed over Leland’s too-pale hand.
    “How did this happen?” he asked in a broken voice. “Who did this, Captain? Why should anyone want to hurt Leland ? He is the kindest of us all.”
    I agreed with him. Leland had no harm in him at all, and as far as I knew, Travers had not had either.
    “You will find out, won’t you?” Sir Gideon mopped his damp face with a large handkerchief, but didn’t release his son’s hand. “You will find who did this and bring him to justice?”
    What could I do but agree? I only hoped Sir Gideon’s trust in me wasn’t badly misplaced.
    *
    Sir Gideon wanted to take Leland home. I did not like to move him, but Grenville had brought his traveling chaise, whose rear seat slid down into a makeshift bed. He’d had the seat fashioned to ease his inclination toward motion sickness, and I blessed Grenville’s thoughtfulness in bringing it tonight.
    Brewster carried Leland down the stairs and out to the carriage, Sir Gideon and I coming behind them. Brewster laid out Leland on the bed, careful of his injuries, and tucked blankets around him. Grenville thanked Brewster and helped a shaking Sir Gideon into the carriage.
    Grenville paused with one booted foot on the step, one hand on the side of the carriage. “I’ve made arrangements to transport Travers to the Derwents’ house as well,” he said in a low voice, wind moving the tails of his coat. “Sir Gideon wishes it. He also told me how to find Travers’s family. In Bermondsey.” He briefly gave me the directions to a vicarage there.
    “Thank you,” I said. Grenville was a good man to have at one’s side in a crisis. He gave me a nod and swung himself inside the carriage.
    Brewster shut the door for him. The carriage jerked and rolled away, leaving Brewster and me in foggy darkness, Travers dead in the house behind us.
    *
    Brewster again helped move Travers’s body when the smaller carriage Grenville sent for the purpose rolled up soon afterward. The coachman refused to come down off his box, not at all happy about having to transport a dead body, but we got Travers settled, and I pulled a sheet over the lad’s silent and graying face.
    The carriage moved away, wheels grating on the cobbles. I found my knees bending as I nearly collapsed in reaction. Brewster held me steady and got me inside to the dusty, empty drawing room on the ground floor. He thrust a glass filled with more of the brandy Grenville had left into my hand, and I drank it down.
    “Thank you,” I said, wiping my mouth. “You’ve been a great help, Brewster.”
    “Mr. Denis’s orders.”
    “I know that,” I said impatiently. “But there’s carrying out orders, and there’s carrying them out well. I understand the difference.”
    Did Brewster grovel in the face of my thanks? No, he grunted and sat down on a striped damask sofa, pouring himself some of the brandy. My new friends in Mayfair would be horrified to see a man like Brewster sitting in the drawing room with me, drinking the finest brandy France produced from an elegant crystal goblet. I saw no reason for him not to, and drank with him in silence.
    “What will you do now?” Brewster asked after a time.
    I sighed. “Hunt up Mr. Travers the elder. Though I do not relish the task of breaking this news.”
    “Maybe you should leave it to Mr. Derwent’s father.”
    I thought of Sir Gideon, a man of feeling who hid none of his emotions. Reverend Travers would end up comforting Sir Gideon instead of the other way about. “No. I’d better do it,” I said.
    “I’ll come with you, sir.”
    I glanced at him in some surprise. “No need. I doubt an elderly clergyman will pose any danger to me.”
    “All the same.