A Beautiful Blue Death (32 page)

Exeter’s hot trail had gone cold and he finally came over,
where he heard the story, promptly said he thought it was something “very much of the sort,” bemoaned the lax morals (perhaps correctly) of the young “aristos, who never had to earn a pound,” and took Claude into custody. Claude had pressed his suit himself and neatly tied his tie. He looked very somber, but also somehow relieved.

The next matter was to find Eustace. He was not at Barnard’s house, where McConnell and Lenox first looked. Nor was he at any of the several clubs he belonged to. They went back to Barnard’s, then, and asked to be let into Eustace’s room. It still seemed occupied, but the possessions in the room had thinned out since Lenox last looked there, and finally the ever-charming Miss Harrison reluctantly told them that Mr. Bramwell had left with a trunk, saying he was on a trip home for a few days to check on his mother.

Lenox and McConnell stood for a moment in the entryway of the house, talking, after hearing this news and walking downstairs. They thanked the housekeeper and stepped outside onto the freshly coated sidewalk.

“I suppose we shall have to follow him up there,” said Lenox.

“Yes,” said McConnell. “He can’t know anybody’s after him.”

Lenox paused at this and then cried out, as fast as he could, “Come with me, come with me—there’s no time to lose!”

Without asking for an explanation, McConnell leaped into his carriage, which had four horses at Toto’s insistence, and beckoned Lenox to follow him.

“Where?” he said, when they were both in.

“The head of the river!” shouted Lenox, “and fast as can be!”

“A ship?” said McConnell, as they rattled quickly along the cobblestones.

“Yes, yes, a ship!” said Lenox. “Oh, how stupid I’ve been! How stupid, all through the case! To underestimate such an intelligent man! Oh, I shall never forgive myself, Thomas!”

“But how do you know that he’s on a ship?”

“A full trunk? To visit the North for a few days? No, no, no. And the trains out of England leave too irregularly and too slowly, but there is a ship every day, and we could scarcely hope to catch a ship as we could a train! Everything indicates it, Thomas. He must have followed Claude to my house and realized the game was up.”

They arrived at the dock very quickly and ran through the small building where people bought tickets, waited, and said their goodbyes. Yes, there was a ship, the man at the ticket counter informed them, bound for Egypt, and then on to Asia, and yes, there were still berths available.

They ran to the dock, and Lenox scanned the deck of the ship while McConnell looked at the passengers still on dry land.

“Nothing,” said the doctor as the crowd thinned out, and Lenox, too, saw nothing.

“Last call!” the captain shouted out, and at the same moment McConnell yelled and pointed. “There he is!”

It was Eustace Bramwell, standing on the foredeck of the ship, unmistakable, dark-haired and wearing a gray suit. He hadn’t even thought to hide in his room until they had gone, so sure had he been that Lenox wouldn’t decipher his plans. There was a yelp behind them, but their eyes remained fixed on Eustace.

Lenox ran over to the captain. “We need to get on,” said Lenox. “There’s a criminal on board!”

“Are you the police?” the captain asked.

“No, but we’re surrogates,” said Lenox.

“Sorry. Ship’s off limits.” He prepared to walk up the gangway himself, but a last passenger streaked toward it, while McConnell reasoned without avail to the captain.

The last passenger anxiously handed his ticket over. He had absolutely no luggage.

“Third class,” the captain said, tore the ticket, and pointed
up the gangway. He managed to resist the implorings of Lenox and McConnell, even forcibly repelling them once, and after five minutes of waiting for more passengers, he himself went up to the deck of the ship and cut her loose.

Lenox stood there, then, feeling hopeless, while McConnell walked off to make futile contact with the police, but then he saw something. It was the last passenger, who had rushed onto the ship without luggage. The man’s eyes were firmly focused on Eustace, and he only looked back at Lenox once. When he did, he pointed at Eustace and made an inquisitive face. Lenox nodded; yes, that was the murderer. He knew he was sealing Bramwell’s fate but he nodded anyway.

The man was dressed in a pitch-black suit. After Lenox’s nod, he walked slowly toward Eustace, stopping a few feet away and gazing intensely, hatefully, at him. It was James, the footman, Prue’s fiancé. And Lenox saw with clarity the inevitable course of events. He waved McConnell back to him as the ship slowly began to move and told him not to make any further effort. He pointed out James and Eustace, feet apart, and told the doctor what he knew would happen.

He sent word to Egypt to look for Eustace but expected no results. And six days later, when the ship docked in Cairo, he was no more surprised—when the captain remitted the following message to the English authorities, which was then repeated in the papers—than he was surprised that the sun rose in the morning.

A
few days later, Lenox turned his thoughts to his Christmas visit with his brother, due to begin soon. He still wanted to take Edmund to task after Newton Duff’s revelatory comments, perhaps that evening over supper and a bottle of their father’s wine. And of course Lady Jane would be there, just a few miles off with her brother, in the house where she had grown up.

For now, though, Lenox was in a place that offered even greater measures of bliss than Lenox House, the home of his childhood. He was in Linehan’s, Bootmakers, Crown Street, in a respectable middle-class neighborhood by Leicester Square. Not the type of place he would have found on his own, he thought. Thank God for Skaggs.

“Yes, three pairs, cork-soled, two black, one brown, all lined with flannel,” he said, repeating his order. He had come in two days earlier, and now his boots were ready.

“Packed up?” asked Mr. Linehan, a jolly, rotund, white-haired man.

“No, I shall wear the brown pair, please.” “Would you like us to wrap your old boots?” Lenox shuddered. “I hope never to see them again.”

Mr. Linehan laughed. “Well, I guarantee these, Mr. Lenox. You’re at the right place. I admit I don’t think much of the boots you’re wearing.”

“Nor do I, Mr. Linehan. I can’t abide them for another moment.”

Mr. Linehan laughed again, took the offending boots, which Lenox had slipped off, and offered the brown pair, designed specifically for his feet from the measurements that Lenox had found much pleasure in seeing Mr. Linehan take.

Lenox put on a fresh pair of socks, which he had brought especially, and then the boots, and wasn’t disappointed. Instantly warm, but soft—yes, this was all he truly needed. He gave his profuse thanks to the cobbler, received a bag with the other two pairs, blessed Skaggs for his practicality, and walked onto the street, where, despite the new snow, his feet remained warm and dry. It was a heavenly feeling.

He had two more errands before the evening trip to Lenox House. The less pleasant first. He directed his coachman to Bow Street and Scotland Yard. Today was the day of Exeter’s promotion. In combination with the diminishing crime rates in the West End, his bailiwick, there were the Marlborough forgery and the Jack Soames case to his credit.

Though it was cold, Lenox saw that Exeter and William Melville, the head of Scotland Yard, were standing on the sidewalk by the gates before headquarters, addressing a crowd of maybe fifteen journalists and a few citizens. There were a few moments of remarks from each of them, a large grin on Exeter’s face the whole time. Lenox didn’t mind especially, though he felt slightly duped.

After the remarks were over, the journalists milled about, taking pictures of the principals and of Exeter’s young family. Lenox shook Exeter’s hand without receiving much attention. But after the majority of the pictures were taken, Exeter brought a young boy of perhaps eight to see Lenox. They moved off a bit to the side.

“This is my son, Mr. Lenox. John.”

“How do you do, John?”

“What do you say?” Exeter said, addressing the boy.

“Thank you, sir,” the boy said.

Lenox’s and Exeter’s eyes met. Lenox offered his hand, Exeter shook it, and the detective and his son walked away. Climbing back into his carriage, Lenox thought, Ridiculous, in a way. But as they drove, he couldn’t help feeling a little moved.

Their second stop was at the Clark Lane storefront of Mr. Kerr, travel agent.

“Mr. Kerr!” Lenox said, walking in. It was a dusty room but well lit and cluttered with papers, itineraries, and maps.

“Ah. Mr. Lenox.”

“Yes indeed, Mr. Kerr.”

“Come to plan a trip?”

“Just so, Mr. Kerr.”

The elderly man laughed sourly. “Don’t see the use. You never go anywhere; I never make any money!”

“Why, Mr. Kerr, I did in fact go to Moscow, only a few years ago.”

“Nine.”

“Well, work will come up, Mr. Kerr.”

“Not for me, with such clients!”

“Ah! Now there you’re incorrect, if you’ll excuse me saying so. One word, Mr. Kerr: Persia. What have you got?”

“What’ve I got? Empty promises! What about France?”

“Well, well, I had to cancel. But Graham came by with fifty pounds, did he not?”

“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Kerr, begrudgingly but slightly mollified.

“Excellent. Now, what have you got in the way of Persia? I was thinking of a four-city tour, if you can manage it, with a native guide. I may go off the beaten path a bit.…”

The conversation began to grow concrete, and very slowly Mr. Kerr pulled out the proper maps and said that yes, perhaps
he knew a man who was familiar with the Persian countryside. Gradually, as he always did, Lenox drew the grumpy old man out, until by the end they were equally excited. Often people told him he should go to a different agent, but Lenox liked their ritual and stubborn Mr. Kerr’s gradual acceptance of Lenox’s good cheer. And then he had one quality that Lenox judged him for beyond all others: Mr. Kerr, too, loved to plan trips. He had found his métier by being the sort of dreamer Lenox was when it came to travel.

Lenox left an hour later with several papers in hand and promises to return after the New Year to plan things more specifically. Who knew if he would get to Persia—but as he planned, he always believed that this time he really would.

On the way home, he asked to be dropped at the end of Hampden Lane and walked happily up the street with a little arrangement of flowers in his hand. They were forget-me-nots, and he left them with Kirk, along with a note that said,
Thank you for everything, and see you soon!

He then walked back to his house, next door, still gratefully warm of foot, and walked up his own stoop contentedly. He received a telegram when he came in.

Claude Barnard had just pled guilty to charges of murder at the Assizes, saving himself a trial, and received twenty-five years in prison, commuted from hanging on the strength of Lenox’s private advocacy of compassion to the judge.

It may as well do to explain his fate now, as his cousin’s has already been determined. Claude did in fact receive 200,000 pounds, his shares and Eustace’s, when the board of the Pacific Trust voted again—despite the public’s futile insistence that Jack Soames’s memory be honored by his last vote. The cousins had arranged that ownership of their joint stock would transfer to the remaining cousin upon the death of one, or, upon the death of both, would be split equally between their families.

The money tantalized Claude for the first year in prison, when
he could only spread a pound here and there for better meals and a private room. But gradually, after the passage of some years, he grew content with his lot and even wrote a treatise, “On the English Prison,” which was well received, for there was only a dim memory of his crime and ample evidence of his contrition.

Then, in his tenth year in prison, Claude began to distribute his money among charities he chose quite carefully. When he was released after nineteen years for good behavior, he had given away all but forty thousand pounds. There was conjecture that he was trying to pay his way out of his memories, and this may well have been true, but the orphans and troubled women who received the money looked for very little motive, and even if he was guilty of assuaging his guilt with his gild, it didn’t change the fact that he did an immense amount of good.

He was forty when he again became a free man. He took small but comfortable rooms in an obscure part of the city and traveled to warm climates in the winter. At forty-five he wrote another treatise, called “On the Alteration of Man’s Will”; it is not too much to say that it became a minor classic in its time and was still occasionally being dusted off, even after his premature death, of drink, at fifty-three.

Lenox saw him only one more time, on the streets of London. It was on a warm sunny day in June, near the entrance to Hyde Park. Claude seemed unable to speak, and when Lenox said, “I’m glad to see you’ve turned your fortune to the benefit of the city,” Claude merely nodded and then ran off very quickly, stooped over, carrying a number of books under his arm.

L
enox arrived home in his new boots and went into his library. There he carefully tidied his desk and pulled out a last books he had forgotten to ask Graham to pack. Then he gave the room a last good look and shut the doors.

Graham waited in the front hallway. After Lenox had looked here and there to make sure things were in order, and even gone up to his bedroom, the two men left for Paddington, where they caught the evening train to Markethouse.