Page 41 of The Rum and The Fox

This was spoken with such a gloomy air that his constable took pity on him and was clearly of a mind to give him some good news.

“The surgeon said you could call on him today, sir,” said Mr Greenly, with the apparent expectation that he would think this a rare treat. Not having such a ghoulish turn of mind as his constable, Formby just glowered at him.

“What for?” he demanded.

Greenly shrugged and fell into step with his superior. “I don’t know, sir, only ‘e wasn’t available when you wanted ‘im, but now ‘e is.”

Formby sighed and muttered, but nodded his agreement. “Very well, tell him I’ll be there before lunchtime, oh,” he said turning to his companion before he headed off to do his bidding. “And I want you to track down that young varlet as stole Ashwicke’s watch. I want to speak to him again.”

“What for?” Greenly demanded, looking intrigued and clearly not having yet learned that it was a bad idea to question his superior’s motives, especially at this hour on a wet Wednesday when his digestion was troubling him.

“Because I know sommat ain’t right, constable!” Formby snapped, having reached the end of his tether as the indigestion wore away the remnants of his patience. “I don’t know what, nor why, nor who, but my gut tells me someone is pullin’ my strings, and I don’t bleedin’ well like it!”

And with that retort hanging in the damp air, he stalked off in the direction of Royal Crescent.

***

“Oh, the devil take him!” Ash cursed as his valet informed him that a rather bedraggled Inspector Formby was awaiting him downstairs. He had been in the middle of practising a fiendishly difficult style of tying his cravat - and doing rather nicely too, until his concentration had been shattered. Throwing the ruined cravat to the floor in irritation, he snatched up a new one and deftly tied it in the Oriental style which he could do in his sleep.

So it was not an even-tempered duke who greeted Keziah as he spied her emerging from her room. Doing his best to put a cheerful face on things, he smiled at her and enquired if she had slept well.

Sadly, the answer was evident before her wan smile insisted, “Perfectly well, thank you.”

His beloved looked tired and pale, and Ash urged her to return to her bed.

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head as she walked the landing. “Our dear friend Formby has demanded my presence,” she added with a grimace.

“Damn him,” Ash muttered, reaching out and taking her hand. “Well, he can go to perdition, I shall tell him you are unwell and not up to seeing him.”

But Keziah merely shook her head, giving his fingers a brief squeeze before letting go and carrying on ahead of him. “There’s no sense in putting it off,” she said over her shoulder. “If I try and avoid him, he’ll only get suspicious, and he’ll just keep coming back until he gets what he wants.”

Ash snorted as he followed her down the stairs. “As he wants my head on a platter, I’m not sure how to feel about that.”

Any further conversation had to wait as they presented themselves before Mr Formby. Whilst Ash was not in the least high in the instep, nor one to insist on a great hue and cry over his lofty title, being forced to dance attendance on someone whom he took no pleasure in seeing and heartily wished to Hades was wearing on his nerves and his tolerance. That Keziah was also being forced to endure another interview in - what he considered - her fragile state of health was enough to make him really rather angry. So it may have been that his impatience with the inspector was rather more obvious than was perhaps politic when he greeted him.

“What the devil do you want now?”

That Mr Formby was likewise in a bad skin was soon perfectly evident.

“What do I want, your grace?” the inspector repeated, with the air of a man who sorely wanted to throttle the life out of someone. “Well, I’ll tell you, sir. What I want, very much, is to discover who exactly shot Martin Snyder in the head and left his lifeless corpse in a back alley during the early hours of this morning. That’s what I want if it’s all right with you, your grace.”

“Dammit, sir!” Ash exclaimed, guiding Keziah, who had gone as white as the marble bust of Aphrodite that he had once compared her to. “Ladies present.”

The inspector reddened a little and nodded his apology. “Forgive me, Lady Todd, for speakin’ plain. But it seems a right neat little happenstance for Lord Ashwicke here that the only eye witness to his part in this affair has been done to death!”

The inspector was near to shouting now, and Ash discovered that there were indeed limits to what even the most mild-mannered of men could endure.

“Unless you have come here to arrest me, sir,” he said with an icy calm that in no way disguised the depths of his fury, “I suggest you tread very carefully indeed. Now get out of my house before I have you thrown out!”

The two men glared at each other, one with the weight of centuries of power and breeding and wealth at his back, the other with the law.

“Where was you last night?” Formby pressed, staring at Ash, his tone low and angry now.

“Here,” Ash replied, equally furious as he folded his arms to stop himself from planting the man a facer. How strange that he’d never before felt the slightest urge to do violence to his fellow man, but in recent days it had been all too easy to contemplate. “The household is not in the best of spirits, and we all retired early.”

“Anyone to corroborate that, your grace?” Formby asked, narrowing his eyes.

“My valet was with me until close to eleven, but other than that, no,” Ash replied, the words bitten out in such a way that it was clear the inspector would be on thin ice if he pressed the matter further. “Now, you’ve asked your questions, so get out!”

“Wait,” Keziah said, reaching out to tug at Ash’s sleeve before Formby could raise an objection to being dismissed. “Inspector, you said the man was shot in the head?”

“Aye, that’s right,” Formby replied, clearly curious as to her interest. His face turned from curious to downright perplexed as Keziah began to laugh.

Mr Formby stared at her, obviously bewildered as he turned to Ash, who was also a little taken aback and trying hard not to look shocked.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, inspector,” Keziah said, wiping her eyes and shaking her head in an indulgent manner. “Only, it couldn’t possibly have been Lord Ashwicke who shot Martin,” she said, smiling at him.

“Oh?” Formby replied, folding his arms and quite clearly unconvinced.

“Of course not.” Keziah leaned back in her chair and sighed, giving Ash a fond look which only mystified him further. “You see, Lord Ashwicke is famous for being a truly appalling shot. He couldn’t hit the long side of a barn.”

Ash felt his cheeks flush a little, and wished she hadn’t been quite so forthright. Whilst he was all for not being at the top of the inspector’s list of suspects, having his less than creditable skills with a pistol bandied about was not something a fellow wanted. And … dash it, she might know he was a bad shot, but how the devil did she know he was famous for it?

He sent Keziah a rather wounded look, which he did not need to fake, before sighing and nodding as the inspector turned to him. “Much as I hate to admit it, that is perfectly true,” he said, sounding just a trifle indignant. “You can ask any of my intimate circle,” he added with an irritated wave of his hand. “And now … if that is all?”

“For now,” Formby glowered, clearly not at all happy at how things had proceeded. “But don’t go thinking you won’t see me again because someone killed that blighter, and whoever did was a bloody fine shot.”