The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [70]
“Coffee?” he asked as Quire sat down.
“No, thank you. Not my drink.”
“I find it as much food as drink, myself. One of the few pleasures of true luxury your city offers.”
The man’s voice was flowing; heavily accented, but in the controlled way of one entirely comfortable with a second language.
“If you say so,” Quire said. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Monsieur Durand?”
“Ah, you treat my language with a little more gentleness than most of your compatriots.”
“And your English is excellent.”
“Thank you. I have a certain facility in languages, it is true. And I have had the time to master yours: I became an exile from my homeland many years ago. London was my refuge. And latterly here, of course. A beautiful city you have, Sergeant Quire.”
“I’m sure it’s very happy that you like it. Is there something you’re wanting to tell me, sir?”
“Not so gentle when it comes to pleasantries, I see. I have found that to be a common trait of your countrymen. Not that I complain. Not that I complain.”
Durand took a sip from his cup. He held it delicately. An increasingly loud argument—or perhaps it was a negotiation; it could be hard to tell the difference in these avaricious times—at the next table distracted Quire, and he shot an irritated glare at its occupiers. The two men concerned were sucking away at cigars in between their expostulations, blowing out jets of blue-grey smoke. That was a sight and smell that Quire always considered a little odd, not because he found it unpleasant—he rather liked that deep scent, in fact—but because it spoke to him of Spain. There had been hardly a cigar to be found in Britain until its officers and men came back from the Peninsular War, having learned the habit from the Spanish. The long struggle against Napoleon had all but bankrupted the country, and delivered only strange little trophies.
Quire turned back to Durand.
“Do you know what happened to Edward Carlyle? Can you testify to what occurred at Duddingston Kirk?”
“So hasty,” Durand said quietly, setting down his coffee. “No, I regret I will testify to nothing. Not in a court of law. Not unless I am assured of my safety, and that, I fear, will be a great deal harder to secure than you imagine.”
“What use are you to me, then?” muttered Quire in frustration.
“I confess, I am more interested in the question of what use you might be to me. Are you familiar with the Shelley book?”
“I’m not much of a man for poetry.”
“No, the wife. Frankenstein. The Modern Prometheus.”
“Not much of a man for reading in its entirety, to be truthful.”
“Not a requirement of your profession, I suppose. Never mind. Tell me: you have the manner, and are of the right age… you fought against my countrymen, perhaps?”
The change in the course of the conversation did not greatly surprise Quire. For all his poise, Durand was a man quite evidently ill at ease with his situation, and with his company. His hand betrayed it, tapping nervously at the boss atop his cane. His eyes betrayed it, flicking from the thick, steaming black coffee to Quire’s face, to the door over his shoulder. The man needed a little indulgence, Quire judged, and he bit back his impatience.
“Seven years in the army, near enough. I was at Waterloo; Spain and Portugal before that.”
“Ah. Do you think me your enemy, then?”
“No, sir. That business is over and done with. If there are current matters fit to make you my enemy, of course, that’s different. But I’m hoping still that you’re here to make yourself a friend.”
“Indeed. I met Napoleon, you know.” A brief loss of focus to those nervous eyes, a glance towards memory. “It was a long time ago, before I fell out of favour with his regime. In Egypt. I was a member of the scientific expedition that accompanied him in his conquest of those lands.”
“I know.”
Durand’s surprise was obvious. Quire had no intention of providing an explanation for his knowledge, though. Let the man ponder the fact that he was not the only one with secrets.
“He was very small, I heard,” Quire