The Vanishing Man

by Charles Finch

  Very abruptly he turned and walked away.

  Lenox watched him go, then peered back down Hampden Lane himself. For his part, he couldn’t see Graham anywhere.

  He sighed. “Damn,” he said to himself.

  He walked back down the street in the direction of his house, and called out to Graham to show himself.

  The valet emerged from a shadowed doorway. “Sir,” he said.

  “He spotted you.”

  “Did he?” Graham frowned. “My apologies.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize. I don’t know how he managed it. Uncommonly good hearing, perhaps? I should have talked more.”

  They returned to the house. “That was the Mr. Bonden you have had occasion to mention, sir?”

  There was little Graham didn’t know of Lenox’s professional life. “Yes. I hoped he might assist us on the duke’s case. He declined.”

  “Then the duke is missing something, sir?”

  “He is. No matter, though. We’ll find it on our own.”

  And indeed Lenox believed they would. The two of them had been through a great deal in the years since Lenox came to London from university, collaborating every day, out in cold and hot together upon false trails and real ones. Aside from his brother there was nobody in the city that Lenox trusted more.

  “But not until I eat,” Lenox said, opening the door to his house, peering in cautiously to be sure Lancelot wasn’t waiting to spring. He slotted the walking stick back into its brass stand. “I’m starved. In fact I’m happy that Bonden has turned us down, blast him.”

  “What was the crime to do with, then, sir?” asked Graham, as they proceeded down the long central hall.

  It was kept lit to a perfect lulling low candlelight by Lenox’s redoubtable housekeeper, Mrs. Huggins, who with any luck had locked cousin Lancelot into some dark, damp, and narrow closet.

  “An assault upon a very august personage, in fact.”

  “Who, sir?” Graham.

  “It will wait one moment longer—he’s been dead two hundred and fifty years.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lenox had recently taken to drinking strong tea with his supper. In the mornings he preferred to have Pekoe, the tea of his childhood, which, because it was made of the earliest spring buds, was light and fragrant; but for whatever reason, in the evenings he found that only the very black workingman’s India tea, drunk by nine of ten households in England, would suffice. Taken with two spoonfuls of sugar, it gave him a few hours of vibrant energy to work before, for whatever mysterious reason, allowing him to drop into a sweet and effortless sleep.

  That evening, as he ate first his leek-and-potato soup, then a very good chop with buttered potatoes and spring peas, he sipped his tea and felt himself slowly stirring into new life after his long day.

  Graham sat opposite, hands closed together on the table, listening to Lenox as he described his meeting with the duke. He only interjected once, his eyes widening.

  “Shakespeare!” he said.

  This counted as a positive effusion from Graham, and Lenox smiled.

  “Yes,” replied the young detective. “I’m told he’s quite famous.”

  Graham would not be drawn. “But that was not the painting stolen, sir?”

  “No,” said Lenox, eating his chop. “It’s the poor old twelfth duke who’s gone. The current one being the fifteenth.”

  “Perhaps the thieves took the wrong painting? A portrait of Shakespeare would be—well, priceless, of course, sir.”

  “The duke had the same initial thought, and so did I.”

  “But then, sir?”

  Lenox stood up. There were madeleines on the sideboard, the specialty of his cook, Ellie. He took two, returning to the table and dunking one into his tea.

  “The first thing I asked the duke was which three people’s company I had joined in this knowledge, that there was a painting of Shakespeare from life sitting in the middle of London. I did not also say: if it was indeed a picture of Shakespeare, and this was not some dull, easily disproven family legend.”

  The duke had given Lenox his answer very simply.

  “Myself, the Queen, and Sir Charles Locke Eastlake,” he had said.

  “Who is Sir Charles Eastlake, Your Grace?” Lenox had asked.

  “The Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures.”

  Lenox had never heard of him before in his life. “May I ask you about your decision to confide in him, sir?”

  “It was on the advice of Her Majesty. It is a national treasure, after all.”

  Almost involuntarily both had at that moment glanced at the painting.

  And the truth was that Lenox had just then felt an odd sort of radiant power emanating from the shabby little portrait, though in itself it was nothing, the sort of three-quarters pose that you could find stacked by the dozen at any London marketplace on a Saturday morning. An art student might have bought it simply to paint over. It was surrounded by what even he could see was much finer art.

  But Shakespeare!

  There were few people in England to whom his works were not as intimately familiar as the stories of the Bible, and often, as with the Bible, through lovingly wrong retellings, plays put on at local fetes, bedside stories that missed and altered dozens of details—the sort of backhanded homages that make a piece of literature more than a piece of literature, stitching it instead into a nation’s culture.

  Beyond the work, there were the mysteries. Who was the dark woman of his sonnets? Had Shakespeare been a secret Catholic? Where had he been during his famous lost years? Why had he left his wife his “second best bed” in his will—as a snub or a compliment? Each was tantalizing, each impossible to answer conclusively. For Lenox—who had always preferred novels to the theater, and never quite understood the pure elation the playwright seemed to elicit in some people—they were more interesting than the work itself. Perhaps naturally, since he was a detective.

  “And Sir Charles Locke Eastlake struck you as a trustworthy person, Your Grace?”

  “He certainly seemed to be. Sober as a judge, very tedious. But when can one ever be sure?”

  “Indeed, Your Grace.”

  Dorset looked at Lenox evenly. “You may have noticed several surprising people absent from that list of three. My wife, for instance.”

  “I had noticed that, yes, Your Grace.”

  “It is the great secret of the Dukes of Dorset, passed hand over hand from one to the next. It is a responsibility each duke has taken very seriously.”

  “And your son, Your Grace?”

  “My solicitors hold a sealed letter to be given to my son in the event that anything happens to me. I shall tell him myself when he turns twenty-five. He is nineteen at the moment.”

  “What is his name, Your Grace?”

  “Corfe.”

  Lenox nodded. There was a Corfe Castle in Dorset. “How did your family acquire the painting, Your Grace?”

  “That is a long story, and not relevant.” The duke stubbed out his small cigar and took another from the gold case. “But I hope you can now see why it matters more to me who took the painting than where the painting is?”

  “I have a guess, Your Grace.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you believe that the thief took the wrong painting?” Lenox gestured toward the wall. “The sixth, rather than the fifth, from the windows?”

  Dorset looked satisfied. He checked his watch. “Yes.”

  Lenox, heart beating hard, said, “And yet I wonder, Your Grace.”

  “Eh?”

  Lenox didn’t speak for a moment, staring at the portraits. “Is the missing picture similar in size to the remaining ones, excluding the portrait of Shakespeare?”

  “Identical. They are all modeled on the first.”

  They both looked toward the first and oldest portrait, next to the windows. “What gives me pause,” Lenox said, “is that the Shakespeare is so very different in size, style, framing—in every detail—from the other painti
ngs here. All of those are large, and very majestic, and very—well, ducal, Your Grace.”

  Dorset frowned. “But why would someone steal a painting from this room other than the Shakespeare? Or if they did, why on earth not the Reynolds?”

  Lenox shrugged. “That I do not know, Your Grace. For that matter, why would they steal a painting rather than—just to take an example—your snuffbox there? Those are diamonds, if I am not mistaken?”

  Dorset touched his fingertips to the box. “You are not, though I keep pen nibs in it, not taking snuff myself.” He looked up at Lenox. “If they were not after the portrait of Shakespeare, I have made an error telling you about it.”

  Lenox inclined his head noncommittally. “At least I can promise you that I will not compound the error by telling anyone else, Your Grace, if indeed it was an error.”

  “Thank you,” said Dorset, though his mind was elsewhere.

  “Had you contemplated Sir Charles Eastlake, Your Grace, as the possible thief?”

  The duke glanced at him. “I had.”

  Lenox shook his head. “I believe we can safely rule him out, personally. If he were the thief, I imagine he would be absolutely and entirely sure to get the right painting. It would have been an insane risk, and he has a very great deal to lose. He would have made no mistake.”

  “Hm.”

  “Moreover, he would also know how immediately suspicion must fall upon him.”

  The duke wore the look of a man who had found himself in deeper waters than he thought and did not like it—though Lenox could tell there was also some relief in the possibility that the portrait of Shakespeare was not part of the robber’s plan.

  “Yes. True. He might have told someone still, however, though he very solemnly swore to me and to the Queen that he would not.”

  “He might have, Your Grace.”

  Dorset looked at Lenox. “The Queen, of course, was not scaling the water pipe of my house on a Monday evening.”

  “No, Your Grace. It would not have been very stately.”

  “Besides, it is hers for the asking,” the duke murmured, in such a definite way that it surprised Lenox—this glimpse of the intense loyalty of the medieval nobleman, who considered his life worth staking on his sovereign’s slightest wish.

  Their conversation had not continued much longer, and now, many hours later, in Hampden Lane, slowly eating his madeleines, Lenox sketched in its contours for Graham. He had asked for a detailed description of the painting, had inspected the windows (there was no evidence at all that they had been forced), then had inspected the room, without result.

  After that, the 15th Duke of Dorset had rung for Ward and asked him to provide any general information that Lenox needed. As they left, Lenox thanked him, and the duke offered only a troubled nod.

  It had occurred to Lenox how very alone he would be again in a moment.

  Graham took all this in. “That is why you asked Bonden for his help, sir,” he said at last.

  Lenox nodded. “Yes. I wondered if there might be something about the missing painting itself, number six as I think of it, which is important after all. Perhaps nothing to do with William Shakespeare whatsoever.”

  “What will you do now, sir?”

  “Go to sleep.” Lenox smiled ruefully. “But in the morning, I intend to find this worthless painting, with or without Bonden’s help.”

  Graham nodded but looked troubled. Both of them had it, Lenox could feel: the catch of irresolution, the absolute need to know what had happened, and why. The circumstances were too confused, too ambiguous.

  “Very good, sir, though to remind you, you are engaged to have breakfast with Lady Jane Grey.”

  “Oh, I am, aren’t I. Planning this garden party?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox threw his napkin onto the table. “My life is a plague of obligations.”

  As if to confirm this bleak statement, upstairs there was a minor boom, which meant his cousin Lancelot was once again in motion—like a battalion marching under cover of darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lenox was up at the stroke of six o’clock the next morning. By quarter past, he was seated at the desk in his study, carefully reading through the papers, a pair of scissors at hand so that he could clip any article he thought relevant to his encompassing study of criminal activity in London.

  It had taken him some time to be happy in this house; his rooms from the year he had first moved to London held a dear place in his heart, with their expansive view of Green Park. It was when he had made this large rectangular study comfortable that he had at last felt really at home. Now he couldn’t imagine a better place to work. His books were arranged as he liked, history on one side of the room, fiction on the other. At the far end of the long chamber there was a fireplace surrounded by comfortable chairs; here, closer to the windows, was his desk, topped in red leather. From his chair he could turn and ponder the passersby a few feet below on Hampden Lane.

  These morning hours were his most serious time of work. One of the reasons he had hoped to have Bonden’s help was to add to his own education, to which he was ardently committed. He wouldn’t have minded being a person who could find anything.

  Mrs. Huggins came in. “Good morning, sir. Do you have enough tea?”

  The housekeeper was a widow of approximately fifty-five, attractive and severe, with dark hair going gray in streaks—who kept house for him more exactingly than perhaps he would quite have preferred.

  Lenox looked at the monumental teapot on the corner of his desk, which could have accommodated the needs of a party of eight, then at his own very small teacup.

  “For now I think I’ll be able to get on, Mrs. Huggins,” he said, looking up at her earnestly. “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Graham is preparing your eggs, sir, and your toast is in the brazier.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Huggins.”

  “If you had time to peruse a few matters of household—”

  “Unfortunately it is a very busy morning, Mrs. Huggins. Could we put off the perusing until tomorrow?”

  She knew very well what that meant—that he would try to put it off to the day of revelation, if he could. “Very well, sir.”

  He tried a slight smile. “Be sure to give me two or three reports before the food comes, though. I would like to be apprised of absolutely all this information as it becomes available.”

  Some days she was receptive to a joke; some days not. Today: not. “I thought you would like to know, sir,” she said stiffly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I would. I’m very hungry.” Then, pressing his luck, he said, “I also much need to take something along with me to Jane’s for breakfast—to Lady Jane’s—but it slipped my mind to buy flowers, or what have you, yesterday. Do we have anything sitting around?”

  “Sitting around, sir!” said Mrs. Huggins.

  “Well, I mean, a savory cake, or something of that sort.”

  She looked at him almost sadly. He knew in these moments that he seemed to her an irredeemable specimen representing the lost ways of a whole generation. “A cake, sir.”

  “Or something. I did say, ‘or something,’ Mrs. Huggins.”

  “I could make a tulip cake in a pinch, sir.”

  “Might you? I would be extremely grateful.”

  “In that case Mr. Graham will have to be the one to bring you up your eggs and toast, though, sir! And see to it if you need any more tea!”

  Graham could have done this blindfolded and backward. He had been Lenox’s scout at Balliol for three years—even now was the person Lenox liked to make his soft-boiled eggs, a duty Mrs. Huggins had only conceded after the bitterest protest—but Lenox just said, “Thank you, Mrs. Huggins. You are a brick.”

  “I suppose such emergencies are part of being in service, Mr. Lenox,” she said.

  Before long Graham brought the eggs and toast, and Lenox tucked into them with a hearty appetite. The valet sat down in the chair opposite, with his own cu
p of tea and his own stack of newspapers, and was soon as absorbed as Lenox. This was their daily ritual—or their friendly competition, you might say. Each was put out if the other found a significant clipping that he had missed.

  “These are cracking good eggs,” said Lenox after a long period of silence, looking up.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Lenox laughed. “Eh? Cracking? Did you pick up on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cracking.”

  “Almost painfully humorous, sir,” said Graham, nodding.

  Lenox frowned. “You need to get about more, Graham.”

  “It may well be so, sir.”

  Lenox glanced up at the clock on his mantel. It was close to eight o’clock. The rays of the sun were just beginning to fall more insistently across the room’s dark carpet. “What time is the breakfast, remind me?” he said.

  “Nine o’clock.”

  Lenox sat back. “I have just enough time to run out and call on Mayne. But I doubt he’ll be in the office before eight thirty, and then I shall have to turn around. It’s a nuisance.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Graham, though this time his sympathy was sincere.

  Instead of leaving, Lenox took out his notepad. He flipped to the page where he had written the duke’s description of the missing painting.

  “The painting was thirty inches high by twenty-two inches across,” Lenox said, reading. “Or at least the frame was, because he swore it was the same size as the other seven, and he had asked Theodore Ward, my old school friend, to measure one of those.”

  “Do you have any suspicions of Ward, sir?” asked Graham.