A Beautiful Blue Death (26 page)

“Sir Edmund Lenox, sir,” he said.

“Downstairs already?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Drat. I need to dress,” he said, getting out of bed. “Tell him I’ll be a moment. Offer him some tea, please, or some breakfast if he hasn’t had any. Oh, and give him those papers,” he said, gesturing to the nightstand.

“Yes, sir.”

Graham left, and Lenox put on the clothes that had been laid out for him on the armchair; black cloak, gray pants, and a homburg. He took the time to tie his tie neatly but otherwise rather rushed, so it was only a short time later that he went downstairs to join his brother.

H
ave you glanced over the papers yet?” said Lenox, coming through the double doors of the library.

Sir Edmund was sitting in one of the two armchairs before the fire.

“It’s really terribly cold out,” he said crossly.

“Oh, Edmund, I’m sorry,” said Charles, trying not to smile.

“Well, all right, all right.”

“Those are the demands upon the investigator, you know. Harsh weather, for one.”

Now this seemed to appease Sir Edmund. “Really?” he said. “By Jove, yes, I suppose that’s right. Well, at your service, then.” He mimicked a salute.

“Have you looked at the papers?”

“Oh, yes, the papers. Well,
The Times.”

“Not the
Post
?”

Sir Edmund shuddered. “Gracious, no.”

“Take a look at it,” said Lenox, sitting down in the other chair and gesturing at the papers Graham had left on the small table between them.

His brother studiously looked over the article and went so
far—which Lenox had admittedly not thought he would do—as to open the paper and read the entire story.

“Most interesting,” he said, after a moment. He was smoking his pipe while Lenox smoked a cigarette. “Yes, very interesting. Although the popular gossip has been wrong before, Lord knows.”

“Millions of times. But I find this intriguing. What triggered this particular gossip? Was there any event? Any indication?”

“None at all, I think,” said Sir Edmund. “In fact, I remember it only started when he won a bit at the Derby. People said it was a good thing he had.”

“How odd, really! Isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why—”

“Well, leave it, then,” said Lenox. “Would you like anything to eat? Or a cup of tea?”

“Coffee would be lovely. I’m due back at the House this afternoon, and I shall have to stay awake, I suppose.”

Lenox called for Graham and ordered a pot of coffee.

“Now, Edmund, I called you over this morning.”

“I know you did. I had to walk across half of the South Pole to get here. Hyde Park too.”

Lenox laughed. “It’s for a good reason, I think. I’d like to hear an exact account of your evening before they discovered Soames.”

“Poor chap,” said Sir Edmund, ruminatively. “Well, ashes to ashes, I daresay. Now, let’s see, my evening. Yes. Well, I arrived only in time for the dance, as you know. And you told me to follow those two cousins. I was perhaps overzealous at first—don’t laugh, it’s not kind—and followed too close upon them, because Claude kept looking at me and making faces.”

“Faces?”

“Yes, like an animal. So I backed off a bit. I got a glass of wine and sipped it pretty slowly and watched them. Claude danced with any number of girls, whereas Eustace seemed to be
lecturing elderly men about something or other, I can’t imagine what.”

“I can,” said Lenox.

“You’ll know, then. Well, that was how it went. They only talked one time—in the doorway between the ballroom and the salon. For ten seconds or so. Then Claude hit Eustace, rather hard. Most uncousinly.”

“Why, I remember you hitting Cousin Ronald on the nose!”

Sir Edmund reddened. “Totally different situation. And it’s ungentlemanly of you to bring it up.”

“Well, it was ungentlemanly and uncousinly to hit Ronald in the nose!”

“Dash it all, if Ronald would insist on commenting on perfectly nice parlor maids all the time, it’s not my lookout what happens to him.”

“Oh, yes, that’s when you loved that parlor maid… what was her name… Mary?”

“I did not love her at all. A fine manly affection, yes. A fondness for the extra dessert she slipped me now and then, certainly.”

Lenox laughed. “I apologize. Will you tell me what happened?”

Sir Edmund tried to master his emotions and deliver the rest of his report. “After that, I tracked only Claude, because Eustace went into the salon, and you had told me Eustace was less important.”

“I did. Now. You’ve done very well, Edmund, but there remains work to do.”

“There does?”

“Yes. I need you to spend whatever time you can in front of Barnard’s house.”

“What?”

“Specifically, in front of Prue Smith’s window. Fourth on the right.”

“The window?”

“Yes. Look through the window, see if anyone enters, see if anyone’s lurking—however you can.”

“But I shall be noticed!”

“No, you shan’t.” Lenox walked to a chest in the corner of the room. “Wear these,” he said, and he held up a houndstooth suit with mud all over it.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, yes. Clean on the inside, my dear brother, and warm as a button. Wear a low hat. Scuff your face—I use tobacco ash. Come back here before you have to go to the House, and then—when you can—go round again.”

Sir Edmund took a great deal of cajoling, but gradually Lenox convinced him that he could imitate a loafer and was earning his stripes as a detective.

At last, after half an hour and several more cups of coffee, his brother went upstairs to change into the clothes. Graham fetched him some ashes from the grate, and when Sir Edmund came back down again he looked fairly convincing.

“I look all right?” he said.

“For the part, perfect,” said Lenox. “Graham, bring a flask of brandy for Sir Edmund, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox wrote a quick note on a piece of paper. “If any of the constables trouble you, ask them to give this to Exeter. It says you’re there on my behalf.”

“If you’re sure, Charles,” said Edmund.

“Positive. Now, take this flask,” he said, as Graham returned. “Brandy will keep you warm and also give you the proper smell. But don’t get tipsy.”

After a few more minutes of reluctance, Edmund left. Lenox chuckled to himself for a moment. But he was glad that Edmund was going. The murderer was bound to come back for the weapon if he had any wits about him, and Lenox had specifically omitted this fact when he talked to Exeter. A constable by
the door of Prue Smith’s room would have scared anybody off almost instantly. It was a long shot, but maybe Edmund would find something. It was a job he would usually have asked Skaggs to do, but he was waiting for Skaggs to complete his work on an equally pressing business: an investigation into the altogether mysterious Roderick Potts.

I
n one of their many conversations since the beginnings of the case, both brief and long, Lady Jane had said something that had rankled in Lenox’s mind. Specifically, she had said he had a responsibility to inform James, the young footman, about Prue Smith’s true actions. Her argument was that it would save him suffering; it would allow the young man to make a clean break with the past, even if his immediate reaction was of deeper grief. The truth would bring him peace. Or at any rate, he wouldn’t live a half-life, unwilling to love any girl as he loved the ideal of Prue.

In response, Lenox had said that James would indeed be devastated, but the devastation wouldn’t dissolve as quickly as she thought. There would be no answers about Prue’s behavior that would satisfy him. While he might forget her sooner if he was told about the maid’s affairs, he might also pore over them endlessly, withering away in jealousy, self-doubt, and the strange mixture of hatred and love that devolves upon someone in grief who learns an unpleasant fact about the object of his worship.

And this quick argument—not even an argument but a
considered exchange of ideas—had remained with Lenox longer than he might have thought.

Then he found, as so often happens, that the subject on his mind was confronted by the situation itself. Soon after Edmund left, James knocked on the door and was admitted to the library while Lenox was deciding what to do next.

This was really too much, Lenox felt. Grief, he forgave. But the young man was dogging his footsteps and in a very real way impeding the progress of the case. Perhaps the time had come to follow Lady Jane’s advice.

Lenox had been sitting at his desk, and he stood up when James came in. The young man was extremely pale, and because his hair was black the contrast was shocking. His face seemed even gaunter than it had, and his hawkish features, in particular his long melancholy nose, had grown pronounced with lack of sleep and food.

“James,” said Lenox, gesturing toward the chair in front of his desk.

“Mr. Lenox, I truly am sorry, sir, only—only—I can’t get it away from me.”

“James?”

“Like her ghost—not a real ghost, mind you—but like a ghost, all the same.”

Lenox looked at him with sympathy. “I understand.”

The young man laid his head in his hands and moaned. “It’s agony,” he said.

“I’m so very sorry, James. I truly am. She must have been a remarkable girl, if you love her so.”

“A gem, sir,” said James, barely lifting his head to speak.

Here was the moment. Time to tell him. Lenox was on the verge of thinking that Lady Jane had been right. The young man looked as if he would pine away into nothingness. Why, he must have lost ten pounds already.

“James—”

The young man looked up, and Lenox was very nearly prepared to do it, to reveal Prue’s betrayals of him with both Deck and Claude. But at the moment his will failed.

It was not that Lenox reconsidered Lady Jane’s position, or even that he considered anything at all. It was an entirely instinctive decision. Even if the suffering would be greater through the years this way, he hadn’t the heart to be so cruel, to dash this young man’s certainty, his grief, his true pledged love, because it was the right thing to do.

Here was a characteristic that Lenox came up against in himself sometimes, which even vexed him in rare instances. It could be cowardice or compassion; he cared little what it was called. It was in him, and that was all.

He went around the desk and put his hand on James’s shoulder.

“I know it seems as if you’ve lost the only girl you’ll ever love,” he said, “and I know it seems impossible that your life will ever be happy and contented again, and I know each hour seems blacker than the last. I know all these things. But don’t become black inside. You may think you’re left with nothing, but you still have your memories of her, and you have time. Sorrow is all very well but, as the church says, darkness never lasts, and light always comes. Even when it doesn’t seem so, my boy.”

James lifted his head. “I suppose,” he said. “I suppose.”

“I promise.” In truth Lenox didn’t know. But he made the promise anyway. “You must try to live, James.”

“Aye.”

“It will be all right.”

“There’s no more I can do, sir? Nothing?”

“I’m afraid not. But we’ll get him, sooner or later. I promise that, too.”

James stood up, bowed slightly, and walked out of the room
without saying anything. Lenox sighed and leaned over with his hands on the desk, looking out at the snow on the sidewalks and the people walking along, and eventually he saw James come out, looking very dark against the white of the landscape in his heavy black coat.

O
nly a moment later the doorbell sounded again, and Graham’s light footsteps echoed along the hallway, while Lenox pricked his ears and wondered who it was.

Graham opened the doors of the library. “Newton Duff, sir.”

You could have knocked Lenox over with a feather. It appeared that today the case had decided to come to him. But then, he reflected, as he waved for Graham to admit the visitor, that was often how it came out at the end; and though the ideas in his mind were elusive, he knew the end was near. Briefly he wondered about that arsenic. Was this a man capable of murder?

He stood up to receive the Member from Warwick Downs, and the two shook hands. Lenox gestured toward the armchairs by the fire and then followed Duff as he went over to sit down.

“Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

“I take nothing between meals, sir.”

“Water?”

“Yes, please.”

“Graham?” said Lenox, and nodded. “May I help you, Mr. Duff?”

“You may help me, I may help you; at any rate, I am here now, and we shall see.”

“As you please, of course.”

There was a moment of silence, and Lenox took it to study the man in front of him. Anybody’s first impression would have been the same: a hard jaw, black hair, thick eyebrows, a rigid posture, and a well-fitting old gray suit, with a gleaming pocket watch that he checked as he sat down. But the eyes—well, the eyes were shrewd and quick.

Lenox broke the silence. “You plan to stand in another borough, Mr. Duff?”

Duff started. “Have you been in my business, then, Lenox? But I’ve told nobody! Damned cheek!”

“No, no, not in your business beyond the present case, I assure you.”

“Well, I am. What of it?”

“Nothing at all. But your father is dead, is he not, for some years? The country all knows that.”

“Well, what the deuce does that figure?”

“Since I have known you, your pocket watch has been a present from the electors of your borough. And now I see a pocket watch with your father’s initials, which are as famous as your own. You have evidently had the watch for some time, because he is dead, but have chosen not to wear it until now—when, I would suppose, you have no further reason to ask the favor of the Warwick electors.”

Duff nodded grudgingly. “Yes, I am returning to my hometown this next election. It was always one of my desires to do so, though Warwick Downs has treated me very well. At any rate, Mr. Lenox, enough of this.”

“Quite so. How may I help you?”