He felt a quick anger at seeing Sheridan’s name—his horses, his wax-tipped mustache, his casual manner. But he could not see anything sinister in the person, only superb indifference to others.
He knew Witt and Jonas by reputation, nothing more. “They’re all Members of Parliament, as you obviously know. Shouldn’t they go in the first column?”
Cobb shook his head. He tapped the book that he had asked Lenox to show him: Who’s Who, which had come out annually for six years now and quickly become famous, a compilation of the background, education, and careers of Great Britain’s most prominent men.
It was a wide-ranging publication. Lenox had grown up with Debrett’s, which listed the peers, but the WW (as everyone called it) included peers as well as artists, politicians, civil servants, and judges, and there were aristocrats it omitted. The only criterion was notability: achievement in life. It reflected, Lenox thought, a new attitude that had started to weave its way into England’s fabric and must feel familiar to Cobb: the belief that a person’s birth was secondary to his or her qualities.
“All eleven men in the left-hand column have extensive entries,” Cobb said. “So do the ones in the middle. Only one of the three on the right does—Forsythe Witt, and that’s because of his career in shipping. It scarcely mentions his political career.”
“Yes,” Lenox said. “He was only returned to Parliament as a Member last spring. The rich man’s retirement—a seat on the green benches.”
“Would it be correct to say that all three are backbenchers?”
Lenox nodded. “The very definition of them.”
“Then why would Gilman have arranged meetings with them, when the rest of his contacts were of the highest caliber?”
“It’s an excellent question. I don’t have an answer.”
At that moment there was a knock at the door. Lenox excused himself and answered it—concomitantly with Mrs. Huggins, since Graham was out—to find Lady Jane.
“Why have you sent over for all of my brown bread, Charles?” Jane asked. “Are you trying to starve us out?”
She was curious, not irritated, but Mrs. Huggins looked guilty. Lenox gave her a glance. “Our guest only eats brown bread and milk,” he told Lady Jane.
“Is he four?”
“No, I would put him at forty or thereabouts. Mrs. Huggins?”
“I believe I hear Ellie calling me, sir, excuse me.”
“She heard no such thing,” Lenox said, when the housekeeper had vanished downstairs. He turned back to Lady Jane. “Did you come just about the bread?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to have lunch, but now I see that you have company.”
She said it in such a light, offhanded tone that Lenox knew immediately—for he understood the people he loved by an instinct that preceded logical deduction, the same way he sometimes understood clues before he knew why—that she was lonely.
“As a matter of fact, if you could accompany me to Paddington Station for ten minutes first, I can give you lunch at the coffeehouse there.”
She looked glad. “Such glamour that would be! But are you really on your way? I’m not inconveniencing you?”
He pointed behind her. “No, no! You can see for yourself that I called for the carriage a few minutes ago. Here it comes round from the stables.”
At Paddington, Lenox and Lady Jane stopped at the stationmaster’s small brick hut. None other than Mr. Joseph Beauregard Stanley was there. Lenox asked him if he was off the night shift, and Stanley said that they’d been kind enough to give him mornings, since he was still perturbed by the events of the 449.
Lady Jane said she didn’t blame him; the stationmaster blushed, apparently not having registered her presence, and asked in a hurried way what had brought Lenox back. Lenox said he was in search of Willikens.
“He’ll be on Platform 1 this time. The 222 from Glasgow arrives in nine minutes. But you’ll have to look—he has a new coat.”
They found the little boy sorting and tidying his newspapers and tobaccos and breath-sweetening mints. He was still in the suit Lenox had given him; he declined all other clothes, seemingly out of some superstition, even when Lenox said it would be terribly hot in the summers; that was a problem for summer, the boy said dismissively, and Lenox realized that life had taught the lad not to look as far ahead as most people did.
He greeted Lenox without any particular favor, and Lenox did not feel he ought to ask about the room above the station in which Willikens was now boarding, or the breakfast and supper that his landlady, Mrs. Hudson, was meant to give him.
Instead, he said, “I need to ask you again about the fellow who bought all your papers.”
“Bert Smith?”
“You know his name?” said Lenox.
Willikens pointed at the newspapers. “Yes, there’s been a bit of news about him.”
Lenox hadn’t known he could read. “I need to ask you if you remember anything else about him at all. A scar—perhaps on his face, or hands?”
“No scars on his face or hands.”
“Take your time,” Lenox said.
“No scars,” Willikens repeated firmly. “I told you everything else.”
Lenox knelt down. “Joseph, I need you to do me this one last favor. Close your eyes and think. We’ll watch your papers. Just think.”
“Who is that lady?”
“Don’t talk … she’s … it’s very rude—”
“I’m Lady Jane Grey,” said Lady Jane, and put out her gloved hand.
Willikens raised his eyebrows. “You’re not.”
“I’m almost sure I am.”
“You hosted a ball for the naval fund last week at the Longleat Club with the Duchess of Marchmain.”
Lady Jane laughed. “Did I? I suppose I did.”
“It was in the papers.”
“Willikens!” said Lenox.
“Fine, fine,” said the boy.
He shut his eyes, and they waited. To his credit, he kept them closed, and in his tight little face, lightly freckled, the muscles of concentration flickered.
At last he opened them. “Nothing,” he said. “Well—one thing. I do remember coughing when he leaned over. There was a kind of powder off him.”
“Powder? Talc?”
“Something like that, maybe. Musty and white, like.”
“Did it get on you?”
Willikens shook his head. “Not really. Maybe. But I don’t think so—it just filled the air for a moment and then went away.”
“Hm.” Lenox made nothing of that whatsoever, unless perhaps Bert Smith had shaved to disguise himself. He sighed. “Well, thank you anyhow. If you think of anything else, send word. Otherwise I’ll see you next time I’m here. Or you can always reach me at the address on that card I gave you.”
“Righto. How many papers do you want before you leave?” Willikens asked, and Lenox thought that took some cheek. But Lady Jane bought one of each, and some mints as well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Having had a happy luncheon with Jane, Lenox returned to Hampden Lane. He was hanging up his hat when Mrs. Huggins appeared.
“Did you give Cobb something to eat?” he asked her.
She looked horribly unhappy. “I tried, sir.”
“But didn’t succeed?”
“He said he didn’t want to impose on me and that he would get his own lunch—and he went and returned with three apples,” she said.
“Then everything ended well. How is he coming along on the bread, though?”
“Sir,” she said, and gave him a look of such betrayal that he felt guilty.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Huggins. Why don’t you bring in something light for the two of us now?”
He had eaten a hearty bowl of broccoli and potato soup served with crusty bread and plenty of butter at the coffee shop with Lady Jane—an ideal meal in this weather. But he would eat again to make the housekeeper happy.
In the brightly lit dining room, covered in stacks of pa
per and loose objects that the staff had been instructed not to touch, Lenox and Cobb traded reports of their progress. Cobb was still making his inventory of the contents of the trunk.
“I am all curiosity for Mr. Graham to return,” said the American.
“As am I,” said Lenox, “but I don’t know that we should look for him until much later today. He’s methodical.”
In the event, Graham proved Lenox’s prediction wrong. He was back not twenty minutes later, cheeks red, the cold rushing in the front door and down the hall behind him—most welcome in this case.
“Graham!” said Lenox.
The valet made straight for the dining room, unpinning his cloak and removing his hat on the way, sensing, no doubt, that the two investigators were eager for his report.
“How do you do, sir?”
“Very well—and you?”
“It was a satisfactory morning,” said Graham, taking a seat.
Lenox felt a surge of excitement. “Why? What did she say?”
Graham took a twice-folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “I wrote down everything I could after I left,” he said. “But two facts I found particularly salient.”
“Go on.”
“The first is that Winfield Bell suddenly came into a great deal of money in September.” Graham glanced between his listeners and was apparently content with their reaction, because he went on. “Mrs. Peck—though she goes by the sobriquet Lady Elaine, her name is Anne Peck—was sharing a room with Bell at the time.”
“How did they fall in together?” asked Lenox.
“They met three years ago, just after Bell moved here, at the White Horse. As she recalls there was an immediate affinity between them.”
“Sorry to interrupt. Please go on.”
“Mrs. Peck complained that she had often been responsible for Bell financially. He was fond of drinking and gambling, and she was secretive about what work he did, if any. In September, however, he returned home with a pair of gold earrings for her. She was wearing them this morning.”
“Did he offer an explanation?” asked Cobb.
“No. She assumed that he had been on a successful run at cards. But his behavior continued to change. For instance, he bought a new suit of clothes, and when she became sick in late September he paid for a doctor to visit.”
“Sweet of him. Did she have any idea where the money came from?”
Graham shook his head. “None. In fact, she is convinced of Bell’s innocence.”
“Innocence!”
“Yes, partly because of the second piece of information she offered that piqued my curiosity. It would seem that, whatever his other faults, he had no special obsession with matters of racial origin.”
“How do you mean?” asked Cobb.
“According to Mrs. Peck, Bell’s best friend from the merchant navy was an African, who stayed with Bell every time his ship stopped in London. The two of them would go on long sprees, she said—a week or more.”
Interesting. Lenox recalled that Bell had been in the American navy. This was one of the most common careers he met in his investigations, and it had struck him as deepening some prejudices irreversibly (against women, for instance) while loosening others (most obviously against other nationalities, since there was such a motley of people aboard a ship).
“But he was a member of the Patriots Abroad,” said Cobb.
Graham nodded. “I asked about that. She said that he couldn’t give a—well, she said it colorfully, but making the point that he had no interest in slavery, for or against. He was apolitical. I pressed her on that question. She insisted that he had only begun to frequent the White Horse because when he moved here, after his discharge from the American navy, he had a friend who was there every night. He was a game but passive member of the group, as I understand it.”
“I should have spoken to her long ago,” said Lenox. “Superb work, Graham. Thank you.”
Cobb nodded soberly. “It is. But tell us—what did you make of her honesty? Her story seems so clearly to Bell’s benefit.”
“On the contrary, it seems to me to guarantee that he was guilty of murder,” said Lenox. “That is how he came into his temporary fortune.”
“Yes. Yet it also makes it sound exceedingly unlikely that he would have murdered Gilman purely for reasons of racial pride or prejudice.”
“I do not think Mrs. Peck would be capable of constructing the character she has given Bell from nothing,” Graham said. “She is a lax talker—a drinker, incautious. My belief is that she was telling the truth.”
“Does she mourn Bell?”
Graham shrugged. “After her fashion, sir. I would hazard that she is accustomed to sudden loss—death included. She has a new male friend already.”
“From the White Horse.”
“No. He’s a police officer, she told me. With some pride.”
Lenox was curious. “Did she say whom?”
“No, she refused.”
At that moment Mrs. Huggins entered the room, trailed by a kitchen maid named Mercy. Between them they carried a banquet’s worth of food and drink, as if by sheer volume they could overcome Mr. Cobb’s taste—tea, buttered toast, a plate of soft cheeses, caraway biscuits, chocolate biscuits, and much more. Off to the side were a glass of milk, several brown rolls, and an apple.
Mrs. Huggins placed all of this on the table, with a face that seemed to say that she did so absolutely without judgment or intolerance. If a person wanted to eat a hundred apples it was all one and the same to her.
“Can I pour anyone tea?” she asked.
“I might as well give it a whirl, thank you so much, Mrs. Huggins,” said Cobb, smiling, and Lenox liked him all the more in that moment, for putting her at her ease.
In the end all three of them took tea, and some of the color came back into Graham’s cheeks.
Cobb was asking him further details about Lady Elaine, taking notes. Lenox, half listening, pulled Who’s Who over. He read his brother’s familiar entry—he himself had none—then looked up the name Ashbrook (no luck there), before turning to the page Cobb had flagged.
Witt, Forsythe, financier; b. Newcastle, 9 April 1808; educated as bookkeeper and cashier, Travers and Co., 1818–1824; traveled in 1825 to Mandeville, Jamaica, as bookkeeper to Elfrid Robinson; remained in employ there 1825–1828, surviving two epidemics of cholera, removing in 1828 to St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica; there founded Witt and Co. Shipping; m. 1830 Miss Alana Robinson, daughter of his former employer (d. 1851, in childbirth); who bore him seven children, five living; returned to England 1848, having survived further cholera outbreaks and a smallpox epidemic; m. Mrs. Chelsea Adkins, relict of Rev. Theophilus Adkins; returned in 1854 as MP for Rivington-upon-Tyne.
Mandeville, Jamaica. Tuning Cobb and Graham out entirely now, he read the entry again carefully, starting from the beginning. As he did, a strange idea stirred somewhere in his mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When Lenox saw Kitty Ashbrook the next morning, for the first time since he had departed London for the Christmas holiday, their interaction was noticeably different.
The pretense of platonic friendship, the deflecting banter of the crowded ballroom—both of these had evaporated, replaced by a deep, immediate, and reciprocal gratitude that they were together once more.
“You are most welcome,” she said when Lenox arrived exactly at ten, the first person there, indeed almost impolite in his promptness.
He felt the sincerity of her words. She was attired quietly, in a navy-blue dress with a small diamond necklace, and her rich, fragrant hair was clipped so that almost all of it fell over her left shoulder save a few bewitching strands curling down her neck.
Perhaps it was not that she had never looked so fine, but that her eyes had not searched his like this before; or perhaps that his had not searched hers.
He took both of her hands. “I am so very pleased to see you again, Miss Ashbrook,” he said.
For once he was consc
ious of his own dress: the gleam of his boots, the perfect turn of his collar. These were Graham’s standards, not Lenox’s. But he was appreciative of them now.
“I trust you passed an agreeable Christmas?” she asked.
“I did. Yet I missed seeing you here!” he said. “And you?”
She smiled. “We were quite gay. My cousin has a large family, and they squeezed us into it without even noticing, which is the nicest way, I think. Don’t you?”
“I do,” he said.
He might have been agreeing to anything on earth, for all he knew at that moment was the feel of her light, cool hands in his, the nearness of her face, her pale neck, her sweet eyes.
Why did he not kiss her? The question posed itself to his mind, and he thought—standing before the fire, the dainty prints of Bath and York Cathedral on the mantel just next to them, the broad windows overlooking Eaton Square casting a subtle loveliness of light into the room—that he would. The time had come. He could see it in her face, too, her spirit reaching toward his, and her body, her face, ready to follow at the slightest encouragement.
As he was leaning forward, however, the bell rang.
She dropped his hands with a squeeze and smiled apologetically. A frustration—yet one tinged with happiness, for deferral could only add a kind of charming unhappiness that contained the joy which would be theirs when at last they did kiss.
He hadn’t thought until this very moment of the man who had visited him at Hampden Lane, ordering him to leave Kitty Ashbrook alone. Now he expected to see this gentleman when the door opened. Instead, as it happened, it was a friend of Mrs. Ashbrook, and Kitty’s mother hurried in.
Soon the room was full of half a dozen people. Lenox still felt the electricity of his private moment with Kitty nearly an hour later, when he reluctantly departed. The carefully developed language of love was entirely insufficient, he discovered: the tingle of happiness on his face—no poem he had read had approximated that, what it had felt to be present in that room, alive with every fiber in him to Kitty’s movements, the subtle ways she adjusted her body, the glances she cast at him more often than, it seemed, wonderfully to his heart, she would have if she could have helped it.
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