Lestrade was only half-listening at first. Who could blame him? He had his fingers wrapped around his first bottle of Grozet in a fortnight. A more than unusual double suicide pact had not made life any less complicated for himself—or for the Yard—but the flurry had died down, irrevocable proof produced for the case itself, and no one had to be arrested. Praise be, Gregson had vocalized what they were all thinking when the last bit of paper had been toted off to its rightful home in the archives. No arrests. That was half the paperwork gone right then and there.
"Unless you're the priest," Hopkins pointed out. "He's the one that has to think of something polite for the funeral sermon."
"Perhaps he can just make something up." Gregson managed to single-handedly scandalize three Constables, one Chief Constable, and four Inspectors all in one fell blow. He lifted his hand and signaled the usual hardluck boy who was in charge of their table in the corner.
"Gregson, I don't think a priest can make something up." Inspector Morton said it as gently as possible, but Constable Forbes was turning a dangerous color around his leather collar and Hopkins was still gasping for air.
Lestrade only wanted his Grozet. He tried very hard to ignore the present in hopes for his better future. A familiar little face darted through the crowd and on automatic reflex, he reached out and snagged the boy.
"Toby, give the bartender back his wallet and help Ronald with the drinks." Lestrade shook the ill-gotten means out of the child's oversized pocket, put it in his hands, and turned him in the right direction.
"Speaking of making things up," Chief Constable Neil shook his head. "How long before his grandmother catches on as to what he's really learning with that money she set aside for his education?"
"Heaven knows." Lestrade sank into the bench and put his back against the wall with a sigh. "I'm still trying to get him to understand this 'game' his late father taught him has sad consequences."
"Back to the original topic," Hopkins persisted. "A priest really can't come up with some sort of fairy tale."
"Well it's for a good cause." Gregson was nothing if not persistent. And wiley. "Think of the trauma when the Dowager is faced with the truth in public?"
Lestrade sighed and tuned it all out as the Constables gleefully took their usual table with their Chief in the opposite corner. He personally didn't care a fig about the Dowager Duchess. She was plated cast iron in all directions and no doubt unfazed at the thought of a relative or two who took the coward's way out over some mismatched bank records. Suicide was certainly a more attractive option than being left to face that dragon.
Toby Irish popped back up into the vertical sea of humanity and plopped two chill glass bottles before him. Lestrade traded it for a small coin, which was taken happily. Oh, finally. Nothing left to do but enjoy his drinks and watch Gregson try to yank poor Hopkins into another drinking contest. Lestrade didn't know who to sympathize with more—Hopkins, who could drink all night without a wobble but who hated the taste of most forms of alcohol…
…or Gregson, who seemed to think that the last three times Hopkins had put him under the table was some sort of fluke…
"…what do you say, Lestrade?"
"Mn?" Lestrade jumped slightly, and realized after a quick mental inventory the discussion had gone from Reasons Why Priests Can't Lie to…him. How had that happened?
Gregson sighed. "Names. What people are called."
Another mental stumble. "We're discussing name-calling?"
"Nooo, we're discussing how most of us are somewhat less than ecstatic over the choice of our parents' naming. Case in point. You."
"Me?" This called for another swallow of ale. "In what way?"
"Well, you always sign your name G. Lestrade. If you've written it out, I'm sure I've never seen it."
What was it about certain questions that caused an unplanned moment of perverse gaming? "Gregson, I don't have to spell it out—I'm the only Lestrade at the Yard—and thank God for that, I might add."
"I'll concede the point," Gregson said—doggedly. Lestrade wondered why everyone said he was the most stubborn Inspector at Whitehall? When Gregson got going, he could hammer reason into a tree-trunk. "But it doesn't change the fact that you never write your name out, and it's most likely for the reason that you don't like your baptismal name any better than we like ours."
"What have you got against Tobias?" Lestrade had to know.
Gregson scowled at him, but put out. "My father was a Biblical scholar. When he was told I had the right number of eyes, ears, noses, fingers and toes and without any discernible birth defect, he said, "God is Good" which is what Tobias means."
"Oh." Lestrade lifted his ale in a salute. "That's…quite a story. You have…an interesting father."
"He's a sodding lunatic." Gregson contradicted rudely. "Spends more time dickering about with his secret anti-paperlouse powder than he does with living humans."
Bradstreet chuffed. "Hah. D'you think that's a rum job? What do you think the naming options are in the middle of the island?" He didn't wait for an answer, which gave Lestrade time for another gulp.
The big man nursed his pint of Oatmeal Stout inside his large hands. Large mustaches bristled like the feelers on a cat, and giving him a temporary familial resemblance to Inspector Morton. "People joke the Scots are stingy…they have nothing on the Bradstreets." He said gloomily. "The name Roger's been around since the bloomin' Medieval times in the family, back to when there was an ancestor fighting for hire."
"Ah. "Renowned spearman." Hopkins noted. "Why is it a stingy name?"
Roger glared. "Because there's one in every generation! My family can't throw anything away, and that includes names! Every so many years, someone new is saddled with it. Not any of my sons, though. The plague stops here." He mashed the plank table with his thumb.
"One up you," Morton snorted. "Morris Morton." He paused. "Middle name…Andrew."
A polite but disturbed silence filtrated over the table as everyone inevitably lined up the first letters of his names and came up with good reason to be frequently beaten on in childhood. Hopkins winced.
"Stanley," Hopkins picked up the punch. "Stane, lea. Stony meadow. Another dusty old English name the family keeps in the attic when they want to remember the glorious ancestral history—which I'm certain is half myth while the other half is outright drunken lying."
"Well we may be heading to drunkenness," Morton pointed out, "but thanks to our forefathers, we needn't lie at all."
"So." Gregson hammered. "What's the story behind Geoffrey?"
"What about guessing?" Bradstreet asked wickedly.
"But—" Lestrade began.
"Geoffrey of Monmouth?" Morton wondered.
Lestrade felt his jaw click open. "Why would you guess that?" He wondered.
"Well, you're a Breton, and Geoffrey of Monmouth is Welsh," Morton said as if that solved many problems at once.
"That's not a bad guess." Bradstreet chipped in. "Aren't the Welsh the closest kin to the Brets right after the Cornish?"
"Hold on, Geoffrey of Monmouth was supposed to be a Breton to begin with, wasn't he?" Gregson wondered.
Everyone paused to look at Gregson.
"I... thought you avoided anything and everything that smacked of Catholicism." Hopkins observed.
"I do. But my father is a layspeaker."
Everyone looked at each other. They didn't understand.
Gregson sighed, long-suffering. "He studies everything. And he likes to talk about it at the breakfast-table." Gregson looked sour. "Every day."
"You must have a lot in your head." Morton commented. Lestrade had been thinking something along those lines himself--only not as politely.
"Far too much." Gregson muttered over his beer--it was like his tobacco. Questionable. "Methodism is all well and good, but there's a great number of them that take great serenity in facts."
Lestrade sighed. "Let's get this over with. My mother liked the works of Geoffrey Chaucer."
"That's it?"
"What do you mean, Hopkins? 'That's it?'" Lestrade decided he would put up with perhaps a few more moments of this before he went back to the peace and quiet of his own thoughts.
"Well...how do you feel about your name?" Hopkins demonstrated yet again his admirably healthy backbone.
"Hmph." Lestrade glowered. "You're asking a man with a French surname, in London, if he minds having one name acceptably English." He gave the youngest Inspector a sardonic salute. "It got me out of getting thrashed at least once by a group of vaguely anti-French bullies."
"Wouldn't know how that felt myself." Gregson said with that horrible confidence that was the mixed admiration and exasperation of the Yard. "Nobody wants to touch a layspeaker's son."
"Still wouldn't, I imagine." Morton said dryly.
"Huh. Cleverness becomes you, Morris." Gregson retorted. They were still continuing the debate on who should assist who's case as punishment half an hour later when they were leaving. Hopkins had already departed long since, wanting to socialize a bit with some of his old mates at the Constables' table.
"That went rather well." Bradstreet commented. "I'm impressed.
"You ought to be." Lestrade complained. "That poppycock about the Welsh…my word, Bradstreet!" Slightly tipsy (no one should have to endure a debate with Gregson in it, sober), he put the next empty bottle in a neat row by the others. Bradstreet was still making inroads on his oatmeal stouts.
"Wasn't poppycock." Bradstreet protested.
"It was poppycock. You know full well how I got my name."
Bradstreet snickered. "That's because you were drunk when you confessed."
"And you were too drunk to be anything but nauseating in your sympathy. Spare me. Americans wonder why the English race always speaks to their closest friends by their surnames...well there's the un-lovely explanation. First names are more trouble than they're worth."
"As if I'm going to argue with you... Have you idea what happens at the family reunions when someone calls for Roger?"
Both men snickered in unified agreement. Just as quickly, utmost relief washed over the humour.
"Thank GOD he didn't go into middle names."
"I nearly choked on my ale when Morton mentioned his. If Gregson would have chosen a time to deviate on that subject..."
"Don't." Roger shuddered. "Don't even call that down upon us."
"Not to worry." Lestrade sighed and closed his eyes a moment, enjoying the feel of the wall against his back. "What do you say we go find a platter of fried oysters somewhere, Roger T. Bradstreet?"
"Excellent idea, G.B. Lestrade."
"And while we're at it..." Lestrade opened one eye. "Should this topic ever come up..."
"Yessss?" Bradstreet asked slowly.
"I'll make up a plausible fairytale on why your middle name is Thomas if you make up something about my middle name."
"Deal. What would you like? Bartholomew? Bres? Bors? Bertie?"
"You can say it stands for Boron, Borax, Begonia, or Bumblebee for all I care--you just aren't going to tell them the truth." Lestrade said firmly. "Are you?"
Bradstreet shook his head firmly. "Not a word. What are friends for?"
"In this case? My middle name is a tale for which the Yard will never be prepared."
"That's because truth is stranger than fiction." Bradstreet said confidently. "And sometimes, a lot funnier."
"Says the man who was named after--" Lestrade caught his best friend's expression and held up his hand. "Peace. Let's get to those oysters."