A Beautiful Blue Death (28 page)

“What?”

“Poison for insects. Perfectly harmless for human beings.” McConnell laughed. “Sorry for the joke.”

“Why would he have it?”

“Ah, I asked around. Bit of an amateur entomologist, I
understand. Studies bugs, you know. I think he made a study of northern water beetles that the Royal Academy published.”

“Ah.”

“The knife gave nothing away either. Relatively clean. No fingerprints, although they would be inconclusive, anyway. Drenched in blood, of course. No powders. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Lenox sighed. “It’s all right,” he said. “I am close to a solution; I can tell I only want a missing piece. But that piece!”

“I’m sorry, Charles.”

“Quite all right, quite all right. Well, I must be off.” He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and began to walk back toward the door with McConnell at his side.

But then he felt something at the bottom of his pocket. “Hang on a moment.” He extracted the object; it was a crumpled leaf, the one he had discovered by Barnard’s house. “I don’t suppose you know what this is, Thomas?”

“It looks like a leaf.”

Lenox chuckled. “Could you find out what it is, though?”

“Yes, of course. It will take me an hour or so. I must look into a few books.” He pointed upward, at the library that surrounded the balcony of the room.

“Will you come over when you do?”

“Yes, indeed,” said the doctor.

Lenox handed the leaf over gingerly. “I’ll be off, then,” he said. “You shall find me at home. I plan to smoke my pipe and solve the case.”

“Ambitious.”

“As ever, Thomas. Well—goodbye.”

“You’ll find your way out?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Lenox left McConnell hurrying back to his tables, where he would place the leaf between two glass sheets. He soon found
his carriage again, said goodbye to the somnolent Shreve, left his salutations to the lady of the house, and went home.

Once there he removed the boots, found his slippers and a comfortable old jacket, and, as he had promised, lit a pipe and sat before the fire, thinking. Here was the problem: Effectively, he could remove every suspect from suspicion: Potts, Duff, Claude, Eustace, Soames, poor devil, and Barnard himself, who would seem to have no motive whatsoever and who also lacked opportunity, for he had been on the spot immediately after Soames’s death. He couldn’t have gone through the window and come around that quickly.

He smoked his pipe, waited for visitors, and mulled it over. But he didn’t have, any longer, the feeling of being blocked. He felt instead as if he were circling closer.

About an hour after he had arrived home, McConnell came in, looking flushed from the cold but pleased.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“Yes? Already?”

“I was lucky to find Tilney in—but let me begin at the beginning.”

“Would you like a cup of tea or anything?”

“Certainly—I skipped tea.”

“Graham?” said Lenox, and the butler withdrew.

“Japanese maple, my dear Charles. Called
Acer palmatum.
An exceedingly rare tree here in the West. Many of the leaves look like normal maple leaves, you know, but as you can see”—he took the two plates of glass with the leaf between them out of his pocket and handed them over—“these are lace-leaf, more deeply cut and of a different shape.”

At this moment the tea came in and each man took a cup, as well as a piece of toast.

“How did you find this out?”

“I went around to an acquaintance of mine on Bond Street. I doubt you know him: John Tilney. Cares for no company but
that of his oldest friends, who are all, like him, past seventy, but I daresay he has made as close a study of trees as any man in the kingdom. He has a virtual forest of exotic trees at Talliver Point, his house in the country. Fascinating old man. And now, this is the interesting part: He says they’re hardy trees but susceptible to English frost. As a result, only the botanical gardens here in London stock them—and those would have gone bare some months ago. So somebody has preserved this leaf for at least a month.”

“Fascinating,” said Lenox, as the wheels revolved in his mind.

“It is indeed. Something I never would have imagined knowing, you see.”

“Nor I.”

“And you know, Barnard has an interest in rare trees.”

“Yes,” said Lenox thoughtfully. “And I know for a fact that he was in the botanical gardens recently. Eustace might have been too.” He sighed. “Or anybody, for that matter.”

McConnell smiled. “There is great pleasure in true work, Charles. At times I almost think of returning to it full-time.” He was flushed now with excitement, not cold.

Lenox paused. “It makes me happy to hear you say that,” he said quietly.

“But at any rate, I must be off. Thanks ever so much for the tea—and for all the interesting pursuits of the case, sad as it is.” McConnell stood, shook hands, and went quickly on his way.

Lenox ran his fingertips over the glass and began to ponder, but at that moment the front door opened again—it seemed to be off its hinges, practically, it had opened and closed so often that day—and Lenox went into the front hall to see who had come now.

I
t was Edmund.

“Charles! I’ve just seen McConnell.”

“Yes, he was here.”

“Charles, I’ve never had such a thrilling day in all my life!”

Lenox laughed. “Yes, I can see,” he said.

Edmund was still clad in the rumpled clothes and brownish hat that Lenox had given him, and his face was still scuffed with ash here and there, which concealed his identity very well, as he said cheerfully, and he had rolled in some trash so he would smell dreadful.

But where you could see his face, his cheeks were bright pink and he was plainly beaming.

“I’ve missed my vocation, Charles! I would have made an excellent detective.”

“You make an excellent panhandler, as well. What did you discover?”

Edmund waved his hand. “Nothing, nothing. I mean to go back after the session this evening. But the sheer excitement of it! Eluding Exeter! And Barnard went straight past and didn’t even look at me!”

“You mean to go back? I really don’t wish to put you to so much trouble, Edmund.”

“Trouble! I would rather Parliament burned to the ground than give up the evening I have planned. Yes, a quick bite—perhaps a sandwich—and then out to patrol the area. Oh, Charles, you should see how I explain myself to the police who try to remove me! I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the funds!”

And then it happened: All the loose strings came into Lenox’s hand, and he felt with all the force of his mind, which had never fallen so short as in the past few days, that he had it. The minute puzzle pieces he had collected so carefully at last fit together. “You’ve given it to me, my dear brother!” he shouted. “Yes, it just may work! I would kiss you, if you didn’t smell so awful!”

Sir Edmund’s face fell.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing!” Sir Edmund said. “I’m very pleased, Charles. What did I say?”

“Oh, a trifle—never mind it.”

“So I shan’t have to go back out? What excellent news, Charles. It was beastly cold.”

Lenox understood immediately. “Oh, no, Edmund,” he said. “You must by all means go out this evening. I apologize for your discomfort, but I must impose upon you. It is vital that you continue your work.”

“Vital? Are you sure?”

“Oh, absolutely. The cold can’t be helped. I myself have boots that seem to be made of paper—but no, we must go forward.”

“Very well,” said Sir Edmund.

“And now I shall go,” said Lenox, gathering together his effects.

“Good, good, excellent. May I take a bath, though, do you think? Your house is closer to Whitehall.”

“By all means, Edmund. And remember, I’m counting on your help.”

Very solemnly, the baronet said, “Oh, yes, indeed. I certainly shan’t fail you.”

A moment later Lenox’s carriage rattled down Hampden Lane and out into the West End of London, along the snowy streets, through a dense afternoon fog that reached up to the starless sky above.

Shortly thereafter he knocked on the door of his friend Lord Cabot, with whom he had shared a pleasant evening at the Travelers the evening after Prue Smith’s death. He walked into his friend’s study behind the butler.

“Cabot,” he said, without bothering to say hello. “You know the keeper of the records, don’t you?”

“Why, Lenox—well, yes, I do. The son of Colonel Waring, my oldest friend.”

“Will he do you a favor?”

“Yes, of course: anything legal.”

“Without delay?”

“Yes, of course. But why the rush, Lenox? Are you quite well?” Lord Cabot was very fixed in his habits and thought of Lenox, who moved in the fashionable world and had his detective work besides, as a positive dervish.

“Yes, very well—arisen out of the murky fog, I daresay. Come with me?”

After a moment’s cajoling, Lord Cabot assented, and then took his time preparing to go outdoors; in truth, he had planned to stay inside all day and further catalog his collection of Chinese pottery, his main passion. The catalog was badly outdated, poorly compiled, and neglected many fascinating recent additions; so he told an impatient Lenox, who in quieter moments had listened with great interest on the subject.

Soon he finished his lecture and then took a long time finding his cloak and searching for his hat, all to Lenox’s silent
frustration. But at last they went out to Lenox’s carriage and began to drive toward the Thames, near the Cleopatra Needle, where the Hall of Records was.

This large building was made of the old white Roman stone, with marble columns, and had a series of steel doors in front. They went into one of these and asked for Colonel Waring’s son, who was named Morgan. He was an agreeable young man of thirty or so, already risen to a prominent position and, so Lord Cabot had assured Lenox on the ride, destined for great things. Young Mr. Waring said that Lenox could certainly look through the records. Soon Lord Cabot had bid his goodbyes, and Lenox had at his fingertips the financial records of the entire market for the last century, which had been kept in earnest after the “South Sea Bubble.”

The Bubble was the only reason any of this existed, and for that he was thankful. Lenox remembered his grandfather telling him of
his
father’s boyhood memories of the Bubble, back in the early 1700s. What happened was simple. King Philip V of Spain had agreed for the first time to allow a very small number of ships from England to travel to the ports of his empire, and the South Sea Company was formed (with the consent of Parliament) to send these ships across.

But people quickly forgot that the agreement permitted very few ships and, picturing the mining of huge untapped gold deposits in Chile and Peru, not to mention other as yet unknown opportunities, they began to invest their money heavily. Almost instantly the company was worth millions of pounds, despite the fact that it didn’t even own a ship and had no goals it knew to be attainable. The delusion of the people investing in the South Sea Company had been unbelievable: merely a hope and a wish, spurred on by other people’s certainty and greed.

Then, in September of 1720, the bottom of the stock fell out. A few people sold at the top, but nearly everyone else sold at the bottom because there was so little demand and, of course, no
regulation of the price. Poor families were ruined and sank to destitution. Rich families saw their worth drop severely. The malaise lasted years, and the terror of investing lasted generations. Nearly every financial rule of the modern day came from that single company’s missteps, as well as the conservative market of Queen Victoria’s reign.

Lenox thought of all this in passing and thanked his lucky stars that there were papers to go through. A young clerk named Throckmortin was assigned to help him. The lad seemed very censorious at first of the interruption to his usual schedule, but only until young Morgan Waring told him to look sharp, because he was taking a special interest in Lenox’s progress.

The room in which the records were stored was dark, with only a few small high windows, and though it was clean there was a smell of mustiness in the air. It was a large room, as well, brimming from floor to high ceiling with paper, and after his initial excitement Lenox was daunted by the task ahead of him.

He spent from three until six, combing through documents relating the financial history of the Pacific Trust. From what he could gather, it was a company devoted to trading overseas commodities in Europe at favorable prices. Like the East India or any of these companies, it was relatively sound. Since the Bubble Act, all such companies had needed a royal charter, which was only stingily given. But what the Trust did wasn’t of interest to Lenox. He was looking only for a name.

He worked diligently but unsuccessfully. It was difficult work because the order of the papers shifted from alphabetical to chronological seemingly at random, and even the now-attentive clerk was flagging by 6 P.M. So Lenox sent his coachman around to Fortnum & Mason for a basket of supper, which he and Throckmortin shared in the dim quiet of the hall of records, seated at a small table. There was a tureen of soup, and then a side of roast beef, which they ate with a fine claret as complement.

Throckmortin was supporting his parents, he told Lenox, and
hoped for advancement. His ultimate aim was to become head clerk at a large financial firm. Lenox listened carefully while they ate their dessert, a large buttery peach tart, and then the two men began their search again with renewed vigor.

Ten minutes later, Lenox found the first relevant document. It was dated from several years ago, but it had either been misplaced or filed according to someone’s cryptic system. He shouted happily when he scanned it and asked the young clerk to help him on a few points so he could be sure. The clerk confirmed his suspicion.

“Just as I thought, just as I thought,” Lenox said.

And then, his fortune suddenly reversed, a second document presented itself only twenty minutes later that again revealed what Lenox had suspected.