Zanoza2016: переводы

→A Troth Is Blighted

→Chapter 14

→“But it isdifferent?” Tom persisted. “This?”
Grey took a deep breath, and a firmer hold on his burden.
“Yes,” he said. “And I should not like to meet the man to whom this is routine.”

→A light rain was falling, and mist rose from the pavements round their feet. The lightermen had come already; the streetlamps flickered and glowed under the glass of their canopies and shone upon the wet stones, helping to dispel the lurking horror of that conference in the hay shed.
“Do you get used to it, me lord?” Tom glanced at him, round face troubled in the transient glow.
“To what? Death, do you mean, and bodies?”
“Well . . . that sort of death, I suppose.” The boy made a diffident gesture toward the bundle. “I’d think this was maybe different than what you see in battle—but maybe I’m wrong?”
“Maybe.” Grey slowed his pace to let a group of gay blades pass, laughing as they crossed the street, dodging an oncoming detachment of mounted Horse Guards, harness glittering in the wet.
“I suppose it is no different in the essentials,” he said, stepping out as the sound of hooves clattered off down Piccadilly. “I have seen more dreadful things on a battlefield, often. And yes, you do get used to that—you must.”

→Which meant that for such trouble to be taken in disguising this particular death—the dead man wassomeone of consequence. Someone who would be missed. The bundle under his arm seemed suddenly heavier, dragging at him like the weight of a severed head.
“Me lord?” Tom Byrd laid a tentative hand on the bundle, offering to take it from him.
“No, Tom, that’s all right.” He shifted the bundle, tucking it more firmly under his arm. “I smell like a slaughterhouse already; no need for you to spoil your clothes as well.”
The boy took his hand away, with an alacrity that informed Grey of the nobility of the original offer. The bundle didstink abominably. He smiled to himself, face hidden in the darkness.
“I’m afraid we will have missed our supper—but I suppose Cook will let us have something.”
“Yes, me lord.”
Piccadilly lay just ahead; the streets were opening out, lined with the shops of clothiers and merchants, rather than the libkens and taverns of the narrower ways near Queen Street. At this time of night, the streets were busy with foot traffic, horses and carriages; random snatches of conversation, shouts and cheerful bustle drifted past.

→He felt Tom glance at him in curiosity, and realized that he must have made some exclamation. He shook his head at the boy and paced on, too engrossed in his speculations to suffer the distraction of conversation.
Even if the truth of the corpse’s sex had been discovered, he thought, it would likely have been assumed that the body belonged to the shady half-world of transvestite commerce—no one of consequence, no one who would be missed.
The body would then have been promptly disposed of, taken off to a dissection room or a potter’s field, depending on its state—but in either case, safely gone, with no chance of its ever being identified.
All of which gave him an unpleasant sensation in the pit of the stomach. A number of boys and young men from that shadow world disappeared in London every year, their fates—when they were noticed at all—usually concealed in official wording that sought to soothe society’s sensibilities by ignoring any hint that they had been involved in abominable perversion.

→The corpse would have been discovered, and taken to the nearest morgue—which was . . . where, exactly? Near Vauxhall, perhaps?
That was promising; Vauxhall was a rowdy district, full of theaters and amusement parks, much patronized by ladies of the evening andby painted mollies out for an evening’s jollification at one of the many masked balls. He must ask Magruder to discover whether there had been a ball on Tuesday night.
So, then. If not for Magruder’s interference, the body would have been taken to a morgue, where it would likely have been assumed to be that of a prostitute, such women not uncommonly meeting with violent ends. Everyone who had seen the body had in fact assumed it to be that of a woman, until Tom the barber’s son had spotted the tiny patch of telltale stubble.
That was it, he thought, with a small spurt of excitement. That was why the gown was not removed and why the face was smashed; to disguise not the identity per se, but the sex of the victim!

→This seemed vaguely wrong; if one’s chief motive was to disguise identity, why clothe the corpse in such a distinctive gown? His mind supplied the answer, belatedly reminding him of what he had seen but not consciously noted at the time. The man had not been dressed in the gown after death—he had been wearing it when he was shot.
There was no doubt about it. The bullet hole in the dress was singed round the edges, and there were powder grains in the fabric of the dress for some distance around it; likewise, the wound in the chest had shreds of fabric driven into it.
That began to make matters seem more sensible. If the victim had been wearing the gown when shot, and there was some reason not to remove it—then the smashing of the man’s face to obscure identity was a reasonable step.
Look at it from the other direction, he thought. If Magruder had not been on the alert for any mention of a green velvet gown—for no one could have known that there was any official interest in such a thing—what might have been expected to happen?

→“You couldn’t sell it to a ragpicker, even was you to wash it.”
“No,” Grey said, “leave it, for now.”
“You don’t mean to leave it in here, do you, sir?” Hicks stood by, arms folded, glowering at the sodden pile of velvet.
“No, I suppose not,” Grey said, with a sigh. “Don’t want to put the horses off their feed, do we?”
It was full dark as they left the stables, but with a gibbous moon rising. No coach would take them as passengers with their malodorous burden, even with it wrapped in tarred canvas, and so they were obliged to walk to Jermyn Street.
They made the journey for the most part in silence, Grey mulling over the events of the day, trying vainly to fit the dead man somehow into the puzzle. Two things alone seemed clear about the matter: one, that a great effort had been made to disguise the man’s identity. Two, that there was some connexion between the dead man and the brothel in Meacham Street—which in turn meant that there must be some connexion with Joseph Trevelyan.

→Grey stared at Tom. The boy was pale, but bright-eyed, intent on his argument.
“You have a very logical sort of mind, Tom,” he said. “Why, indeed?” He stood for a moment looking down at the corpse, trying to reconcile the disparate bits of information at hand. What Tom said made obvious sense—and yet he was convinced that whoever had killed this man had not beaten in his face from anger. Just as he was convinced that whoever had stamped on Tim O’Connell’s face had acted from precisely that emotion.
Tom Byrd stood patiently by, keeping quiet as Grey circled the table, viewing the corpse from all angles. Nothing seemed to make sense of the puzzle, though, and when Hicks’s men came in, he allowed them to bundle up the body into a canvas.
“D’you want us to take this, as well, sir?” One of the men picked up the sodden hem of the green dress, gingerly, between two fingers.
“Not even the mort-man’d want that,” the other objected, wrinkling his nose at the reek.

→“I have no particular reason to think so,” Grey said, a little startled at this supposition. “Why?”
“Well, the, uh, face.” Tom gestured, a little awkwardly, at the remains, and swallowed audibly. One eyeball had been dislodged so far from its parent socket as to dangle out onto the crushed cheek, staring accusingly off into the shadows of the hay shed. “Seems like whoever did this didn’t care for him much—same as whoever stamped on the Sergeant.”
Grey considered that, pursing his lips. Reluctantly, he shook his head.
“I don’t think so, Tom. I think that whoever did this”—he gestured at the corpse—“did it in order to disguise the gentleman’s identity, not out of personal dislike. It’s heavy work, to crush a skull like that, and this was a very thorough job. One would have to be in an absolute frenzy of hatred—and if that was the case, why shoot him first?”
“Did they? Shoot him first, I mean, me lord. ’Coz what you said about dead men don’t bleed—this one surely did, so he can’t have been dead when they . . . erm.” He glanced at the smashed face, and then away. “But he couldn’t live long like that—so why shoot him, then?”

→Use his best judgment, Harry said. His best judgment was that Trevelyan was in this up to his neck—but there was no direct evidence.
There was certainly no evidence to connect the Scanlons with this business, and precious little to connect them with O’Connell’s murder—but Harry’s motive in ordering an arrest there was apparent; if inquiries were eventually made into the conduct of the investigation, it would be prudent to make it look as though affairs were being pursued aggressively. The muddier the waters, the less likely anyone might be to take up the matter of Magda’s inconvenient nationality.
“Major?” He turned, to see Corporal Hicks frowning at him from the doorway. “You aren’t going to leave that thing here, are you?”
“Oh. No, Corporal. You may remove it to the coroner’s. Fetch some men.”
“Right, sir.” Hicks disappeared with alacrity, but Grey hesitated. Was there any further information that the body itself could offer?
“You think it was the same cove what did for that Sergeant O’Connell what did for this ’un, me lord?” Tom Byrd had come to stand alongside him.

→Quarry nodded, straightening the coat on his shoulders.
“Aye. I’ll come myself and speak to him now.” He drummed his fingers restlessly on the table, making the corpse’s slack hand tremble with the vibration. “Grey—I think we shall have the Scanlons taken up, too, as you advised. You’ll question them; go round to the gaol tomorrow, once Magruder has had a chance to lay them by the heels. As for . . . the Cornish gentleman . . . use your best judgment there, will you?”
Grey managed a nod, cursing himself for his idiocy, and then Quarry and Magruder were gone, leaving the faceless corpse naked and staring in the flickering light.
“You in trouble, me lord?” Tom Byrd was frowning worriedly at him from the shadows, having evidently divined some hint of the undercurrents in the preceding conversation.
“I hope not.” He stood looking down at the dead man. Who the devil was he? Grey had been convinced that the body was that of Trevelyan’s lover—and it might still be, he reminded himself. True, Caswell had insisted that it was a woman whom Trevelyan entertained at Lavender House, but Caswell might have been mistaken in his own powers of olfactory discernment—or lying, for reasons unknown.

→It wouldn’t do Grey’s reputation any good, either. He realized now that he ought to have mentioned the situation to Quarry at the time, rather than assuming that he must know of Magda’s background already. But he had allowed himself to be distracted by alcoholic excess, and by Nessie’s disclosure about Trevelyan—and now he could but hope there wasn’t the devil to pay for it.
Harry Quarry drew a deep breath and blew it out again, squaring his shoulders. One of Harry’s many good points was that he never wasted time in recrimination, and—unlike Bernard Sydell—never blamed subordinates, even when they deserved it.
“Well, then,” he said, and turned to Magruder. “I think we must have Mrs. Magda taken into custody and questioned without delay. We shall need to search her premises, as well, I should think—will you require a warrant?”
“Yes, sir. Given the circumstances”—Magruder nodded delicately at the dead man—“I shouldn’t think the magistrate would be reluctant.”

→“Nah, too old,” Magruder objected, fortunately saving Grey from the necessity of finding some way of saying the same thing, without disclosing how he knew it. “This cove would be one as hires such, not one himself.”
Quarry shook his head in disapproval.
“Should never have suspected Maggie of dealing in that sort of thing,” he said, as much in regret as condemnation. “You sure about the dress, then, Grey?”
“Reasonably. It is not impossible that a dressmaker should make more than one gown, of course—but whoever made this one made the one that Magda was wearing.”
“Magda?” Quarry blinked at him.
Grey cleared his throat, a hideous realization coming suddenly over him. Quarry hadn’t known.
“The . . . ah . . . Scottish woman I met there informed me that the madam was called Magda, and is in fact a, um, a German of some type.”
Quarry’s face looked pinched in the lantern light.
“Of some type,” he repeated bleakly. It made considerable difference whichtype, and Quarry was well aware of it. Prussia and Hanover—of course—had allied themselves with England, while the duchy of Saxony had chosen up sides with France and Russia, in support of its neighbor Austria. For an English colonel to be patronizing a brothel owned by a German of unknown background and allegiance, and now with an evident involvement in criminal matters, was a dicey proposition, and one that Quarry must devoutly hope would never come to official notice. Or the notice of the unblinking Mr. Bowles.

→There were not. The corpse’s skin was smooth, devoid of hairs on arms, legs, chest, buttocks and privates. Other than smears of dried blood and caked ordure, and the small black hole of the bullet wound in his chest, only the deep purple-brown of the nipples and the riper tones of the rather well-endowed expanse between the man’s legs interrupted the pale olive perfection of his flesh. Grey thought the gentleman would likely have been quite popular, in certain circles.
“He has stubble. So the shaving took place before death?” Grey asked.
“Oh, yes, me lord. Like I said—he does it regular.”
Quarry scratched his head.
“I will be damned. D’ye think he’s a he-whore, then? A sodomite of some type?”
Grey would have taken a substantial wager to that effect, were it not for one observation. The man was slight, but well-built and muscular, like Grey himself. However, the muscles of chest and arms had begun to sag from lack of use, and there was a definite roll of fat around the middle. Adding to these observations the fact that the man’s neck was deeply seamed and, despite an impeccable manicure, the backs of his hands thickly veined and knobbed, Grey was reasonably sure that the body was that of a man in his late thirties or early forties. Male prostitutes seldom lasted far beyond twenty.

→“Mr. Byrd,” he said, making space for Tom to approach closer. “You are our chief expert on the art of shaving; what can you tell us about this?”
Nostrils pinched against the reek of the corpse, Tom the barber’s son motioned for the lantern to be brought closer, and leaned down, squinting in professional fashion along the planes of the body.
“Well,” he said judiciously, “he does it—did it, I mean—regular. More like, someone did it for him—a nice, professional bit of work. See, there’s no cuts, nor yet no scraping—and that’s an awkward bit, round there.” He pointed, frowning. “Hard to manage by yourself, I should think.”
Quarry made a noise that might have been a laugh, but converted it hastily into a wheezing cough.
Byrd, ignoring this, stretched out a hand and ran it very delicately up the corpse’s leg.
“Oh, yes,” he said, in tones of satisfaction. “Feel that, me lord? You can feel the stubble, sharp-ended, like, when you goes against the grain. It gets like that when a man shaves regular. If he shaves no more than once or twice a month, he’s like to get bumps—the hair curls up under the skin as it grows, see? But no bumps here.”

→
The corpse was, in fact, that of a man. Striking as that was, though, it was not the main point of remark, once the rags of the green gown had been removed to verify the fact.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in me life,” Harry Quarry said, eyeing the dead man with a combination of disgust and fascination. “You, Magruder?”
“Well, on a woman, now and then,” the constable said, pursing his lips fastidiously. “Some of the whores do it regular, I understand. Bit of a curiosity, like.”
“Oh, whores, yes, of course.” Quarry flapped a hand, indicating that such usage was not only familiar to him, but positively commonplace. “But this is a man, dammit! You’ve never seen such a thing, have you, Grey?”
Grey had, in fact, seen such a thing, and more than once, though it was not an affectation that appealed to him personally. It would scarcely do to say so, though, and he shook his head, widening his eyes in a semblance of shocked incomprehension at the perversity of mankind.

→Excitement and dread tightened his belly as he leaned over the dead woman. It had to be; this was Trevelyan’s mysterious lover. But what had happened to her? Had her husband—if she had one—discovered the affair and taken his revenge? Or had Trevelyan . . .
He sniffed again, eager for confirmation.
Where did women wear perfume? Behind the ears—no, not a chance; the corpse had only one ear and the other was in no condition . . . Between the breasts, perhaps; he’d seen his mother tuck a scented cloth down into the top of her stays before a party.
He ducked his head to inhale more deeply, and saw the small, blackened hole in the center of the bodice, inconspicuous amidst the general carnage.
“I will be damned,” he said, looking up at the phalanx of bemused faces hovering over him. “She’s been shot.”
“Do you want to know summat else, me lord?” The whisper came at his elbow. Tom Byrd, by now somewhat inured to nasty sights, had edged his way close, and was looking at the corpse’s smashed face in fascination.
“What’s that, Tom?”
The boy’s finger floated tentatively across the table, pointing at what Grey had taken for a smudge of dirt behind the jaw.
“She’s got whiskers.”

→“Not common, then.” Quarry fingered the tattered rag of the kerchief.
“Not at all.”
Quarry nodded, turning to Magruder.
“I think we shall be wanting a word with a madam named Maggie—house in Meacham Street, you know it? Rather a pity, that,” he added, turning back to Grey with a sigh. “Did like that blonde with the big tits.”
Grey nodded, only half-hearing. The gown itself was so crusted with blood and dirt that the color was almost indistinguishable; only the draggled folds of the skirt still showed emerald green. The smell was very strong in the confined quarters—Quarry had been right, she did reek like a . . .
He bent closer, hands on the table, sniffing deeply. Civet. He’d swear he smelt civet—and something else as well. The corpse was wearing perfume, though the scent was nearly obscured by the earthier reeks of blood and ordure.
She wears a very expensive scent. Civet, vetiver, and orange, if I am not mistaken.He could hear Richard Caswell’s voice in his head, dry as grave flowers. She has dark hair. Nearly black. Your cousin is fair, I believe?”