Chapter 30
Early the next morning, Sebastian went in search of the late General Sir Peyton Keebles’s brother, Vernon, who turned out to be very much alive.
Now a widower, the retired barrister kept a house in Chancery Lane but was known for taking most of his meals in the various pubs and small hotels near the Inns of Court. “I don’t like to eat alone,” he would tell anyone who asked the reason for his peculiar practice.
Sebastian finally ran Mr. Vernon Keebles to ground eating beefsteak and potatoes in the low-ceilinged, oak-paneled dining room of an ancient inn near Temple Bar.
The atmosphere was thick with the smell of roasting meat, strong ale, tobacco, and smoke from the fire that danced on the hearth.
“I know who you are,” said the barrister when Sebastian introduced himself and apologized for interrupting his meal.
“Have a seat, please. Looking into what happened to my nevvy, are you?”
Sebastian nodded as he settled on the opposite bench. “He was friends with my sister’s son.”
“Ah, that’s right; I was forgetting Martin Wilcox married Hendon’s girl.
” Vernon Keebles reached for his tankard, took a deep drink, then wiped his lips.
A thin, stoop-shouldered man with wispy white hair and deeply wrinkled, yellow-tinged skin, he was the General’s junior by only a year.
And given that Peyton Keebles had been over fifty when he sired Gilbert, Sebastian figured the barrister must be nearing eighty.
“Never cared for him, you know,” the barrister was saying. “My nevvy, I mean. Peyton indulged him beyond all reason. Acted like the sun shone out the boy’s backside, as they say. I can only be grateful my brother didn’t live long enough to see what happened to his precious only son.”
“Do you have any idea who might be doing this? Killing Gilbert and his friends, I mean.”
Keebles pressed his shoulder blades against the high wooden back of his bench and let his hands rest idle on the tabletop. “No idea at all. And I won’t deny I’ve spent some time pondering it.”
“I understand your brother and Sir Samuel Toole both served in New York and the Carolinas in the American War. Were they together?”
“I know they were in the Carolinas together. Not sure about New York.”
“What about Phineas’s father, Sir Lawrence Upcott? He also spent time in the colonies. Was he in the Carolinas with them?”
“That I couldn’t tell you.” The old man’s watery blue eyes blinked rapidly. “You think that’s what’s behind the murder of Gilbert and his friends? Payback for something my brother and the others did in the war?”
“I think it’s possible, yes. I’m told that after Yorktown, when General Keebles was paroled and returned to England, someone sent an anonymous letter to the papers castigating him. Do you have any idea who wrote it?”
Keebles looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.
“I remember Peyton telling me he had a pretty good idea who was behind it. But if he named the fellow, I don’t recall it.
” He stared at Sebastian for a long moment.
“It’s been thirty-five years since Yorktown.
What makes you think you need to go back that far to find an explanation for what’s happening today? ”
“I don’t have any actual evidence that points to the fathers’ war service as an explanation, but I can’t discount it as a possibility, either. At least, not yet.”
Keebles brought up a hand to rub absently at his forehead.
“As much as it pains me to say it, I suspect there’s no need to go looking into what my brother or anyone else did in the war.
Gilbert might’ve been my nephew, but that never blinded me to the fact that he was a disgusting little shite who thought he was better than everyone else.
I always said it was a pity the lad didn’t follow his father into the Army—put all those nasty impulses of his to work killing the French and Americans rather than making life miserable for whatever poor sod happened to have the misfortune to come across him in this country. ”
“But you can’t think of who might have killed him?”
“Not really. The thing is, men like Gilbert and his kind are usually careful to pick on those who can’t or won’t fight back. Why, the last time I saw him, he was laughing about how he and his friends went after some woman who publishes one of those Radical weeklies. A woman!”
Sebastian stared at him. “You mean, Kate Price?”
Keebles shrugged. “If he said her name, I don’t recall it.”
“When was this?”
“That I saw Gilbert?” Keebles pondered the question a moment.
“Must’ve been a month or so ago, at least. I tried to avoid the lad as much as possible, you know.
All I remember is that he was aggravated because just as they were set to destroy her place, someone came along and stopped them. Gilbert wasn’t laughing about that.”
“How does one man stop five or six?” said Sebastian.
“With a sword, apparently.” The old man chuckled.
“Don’t know what he was doing walking around London with a cavalry saber, but from what Gil was telling me, the fellow has something of a reputation as a fencing master.
He’s Black, you know; from Jamaica. I don’t follow such things myself, but you may’ve heard of him. ”
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “I’ve heard of him.”