A Beautiful Blue Death clm-1

by Charles Finch

  “That’s wicked of Toto. I’ll say something stern about it next time I see her.” But she couldn’t help laughing a little bit.

  “But look here—about the case. Is there anything, Charles?”

  “Is there anything what?”

  “Anything mysterious? I know you well enough to see when you’re stalling.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like to tell you this, but she was murdered.”

  Lady Jane froze with a sandwich nearly on her lips and then, roused by Lenox’s offering her the sherry, smiled strangely.

  “I knew it in a way.”

  “How could you have?”

  “You don’t remember her at all?”

  “Not at all, I’m afraid.”

  “She was a sweet enough girl, you know, but she was—how shall I put it?—she was provocative.”

  “Do you mean with men?”

  “With men, yes, and with her friends. She was lively and cheerful, but she was also in low spirits now and then—all of those things to such an extreme that I recognized them, when usually the servants are as utter a mystery to me as I try to be to them.”

  “In low spirits—do you think suicidal?”

  “Not that sort of low spirits, no. I only mean that she had two sides to her. As we all do, I expect.”

  There was a long pause before Lenox spoke.

  “Well, I’m glad you told me. That may help.”

  “I hope.”

  “But you know, I only just spoke with her fiancé.”

  “Nevertheless,” she said.

  On Lady Jane’s face was a peculiar mixture of emotions: sorrow, unhappiness, reluctance—but also determination.

  “I think, Charles,” she said, “that if you mean to take the case, you should hear what I’m telling you.”

  “All right,” he said, nodding.

  “Now, will you tell me what you learned?”

  “When we arrived, there was a note, a glass, and a bottle of poison on the desk.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Oh, yes—and a fresh candle.”

  “Not a pen?”

  “Good for you,” he said. “You would make a better inspector than Jenkins.”

  “The police’s uniforms are so ugly, though.”

  “Not quite the thing, you’re right.”

  “And what did the note say?” she asked.

  “It said, It is too much. Sorry, James. I am sorry. Unsigned.”

  “Rather strange.”

  “I would tend to agree, but that remains to be seen. She may have written the note herself, after all, either because she intended to commit suicide and somebody hurried her along or on another matter entirely.”

  “Then how do you know that it’s murder?”

  “I’m nearly sure, and that because of McConnell. It was the bottle of poison on her desk, you see.”

  “What killed her?”

  “A rare, expensive poison called bella indigo.”

  “Well, and won’t that serve as easily as another poison, if you want to die?”

  “There are two things. First, it is a truly expensive poison; it costs more than her yearly salary for an ounce.”

  “She could have stolen it from Barnard.”

  “That occurred to me. But more importantly, the poison on her desk wasn’t the poison that had killed her.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “And there was no pen, but the note was uncreased, which most likely means that she hadn’t carried it around, or it would be folded. One generally doesn’t write a suicide note and then return a borrowed pen. After the note, the actual suicide is usually next.”

  “You know the thing you mentioned earlier, Charles? About George Barnard?”

  “Which part?”

  “You know, about… ?”

  “Oh, about his liking for you?”

  “Well, yes. I was thinking, perhaps I could use that—well, those feelings, though mind you I don’t think they’re actually there—but at least use our acquaintance to spend some time with him and see what I can see. If that makes sense.”

  Lenox whitened. “Absolutely not.”

  “But Charles—”

  “Absolutely not! I won’t have you doing that. For one thing it might be dangerous.”

  She was about to speak when they both heard footsteps across the great hall.

  “What was that?” Lenox asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Stay here.”

  He went to the door, wheeled around, and went quickly into the hallway. He found a small young woman in a nightdress. She looked vaguely familiar.

  “Will you follow me, please?” Lenox said.

  She nodded, and they walked into the drawing room.

  “Excuse me, Lady Grey,” said the woman, “I only—”

  “Lucy! Why are you awake at this hour?”

  “I only wanted to ’ear a word over Prue, m’lady.”

  There was a pause, but then Jane looked at her sympathetically. “You poor thing,” she said. “Charles, this is Lucy, one of our maids. She was Prudence Smith’s close friend. Sit down, dear.”

  Lucy looked embarrassed at the thought of sitting down.

  “How do you do?” said Lenox.

  “Lucy,” said Lady Jane, “we know nothing for certain yet—whatever you may have heard in the hallway—but you will know when we do. And now you should really get some rest. We’ve all had a trying day.”

  “Yes, m’lady.”

  But Lenox held up a hand; both women waited expectantly. He walked to the desk, found a pen, and quickly scratched a few words across a piece of paper. Then he walked to Lucy and handed the paper to her.

  “Does anything strike you as strange about this?”

  “Lucy,” Lady Jane said, “you must not divulge what you are reading to—”

  But for once, Lucy didn’t listen. She read the note twice, Lenox could tell, because her lips moved with the words. Then she looked up.

  “Two things, sir.”

  “Two things?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are they, Lucy?”

  “The first is she would never call ’im James, formal-like.”

  “What did she call him?”

  “Jem, always Jem. Or Jemmie, if she was in a mood.”

  “But she may have felt formal, if she was going to commit suicide.”

  “Maybe, sir. But there’s the second thing.”

  “What’s that?” said Lenox.

  “Prue couldn’t read nor write.”

  Chapter 7

  Graham, cancel my trip to Villefranche,” Lenox said, when at long last he reached home.

  “Sir?” said Graham. He was sitting in small chair in the hallway, still dressed as he had been earlier that evening, reading the late penny paper. When Lenox came in, he folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket.

  “Villefranche, Graham, on the Riviera. I must have told you.”

  “No, sir. Although I did notice several maps of France on the desk in your library, sir.”

  Lenox sighed. “That’s the second trip canceled this year, you know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Paris in the autumn, before the damned forgery, and now Villefranche. There are many interesting archaeological mysteries in Villefranche.” One of Lenox’s passions was the Roman Empire, about which he read endlessly. From time to time he visited spots where the empire had left its mark, large or small.

  “Sir?”

  “And beaches, Graham. Warm beaches.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Paris, and now the coast.”

  “I’m sorry that the trips have been delayed, sir.”

  “Doesn’t seem quite fair.”

  “It does not, sir. Your nightcap, sir?”

  They walked together into the library, and as Lenox sat down Graham gave him a glass of hot wine.

  “That’s the ticket,” said Lenox, taking a sip. He sighed.
“I was planning a trip of two weeks. I had the mapmaker order a map of the region.”

  “I believe it came this afternoon, sir. There was no opportunity to give it to you before you went to Lady Grey’s.”

  “Can you lay your hands on it, Graham?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  He left and came back a moment later with a long tube in his hand. Lenox took it from him and cleared off a section of his desk, knocking some books to the floor.

  “Ah!” he said, as he unrolled it.

  It was a beautiful map of the Côte d’Azur, a beautiful map being one of his favorite things in the world. He had always wanted to be a traveler in his heart, and while he had made it pretty far—Russia, Rome, Iceland—he had never lost that childhood vision of himself, dusty and tired but triumphant, finding something completely new out on the edge of the world.

  “Look, Graham,” he said, pointing to the thin edge of the coast. “That’s where we were going to go.”

  “Beautiful land, sir.”

  “Beautiful.”

  Both men lingered over the drawing, and then, with a sigh, Lenox rolled it up and placed it in an umbrella rack, which he had taken from his family’s house as a place to keep his favorite maps. His father had used it for the Japanese scrolls he liked to collect. They were a family of collectors, as the marble busts of ancient Romans in the back corner of the bookshelf attested.

  “Graham,” he said, “we shall get there one day, you know.”

  “There is no doubt in my mind, sir.”

  Lenox smiled and then sighed one last sigh. “Are you too tired for a quick word?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “We had better sit down, then.”

  The two men moved toward the armchairs by the fireplace and both sat down, although, while Lenox leaned back into a pillow and took a sip of his wine, Graham perched upright on the edge of the cushion.

  Briefly, Lenox related what had happened over the course of the evening: the note, the poison, the fiancé, the wax on the floor, the examination, the window, the unused candle. Graham seemed to absorb it all fairly steadily.

  “So you see,” Lenox finished, “I must do it, if only for Lady Jane.”

  “If I may express my opinion, sir, I agree entirely.” Graham was a fierce partisan of Lady Jane’s.

  “Did you know the girl at all?”

  “Miss Smith, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew her to nod hello to in the streets, sir. Mr. Kirk disapproved of her.”

  “Kirk did?”

  “Yes, sir. And he is more lenient than some men in our profession.”

  Lenox laughed. “I see,” he said.

  “At the same time, sir, she was popular with the girls of this house and in Lady Grey’s.”

  “They were disappointed when she left?”

  “Extremely, sir. They thought of her as slightly exotic, I believe.”

  “Graham, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I need you to find out who the five people staying with George Barnard are.”

  Graham nodded.

  “No doubt you’ve already concluded that they are our best suspects. The open window concerns me, of course. But Barnard’s horrid housekeeper insists that all five guests were in the house the entire time, and that no milkman or anyone of the sort came along in the relevant hours.”

  “A claim with definite liabilities, sir. Any house can be penetrated.”

  “Yes. But still, I think that they must be our best lead. And I think as well that you could find out about them more easily than I could. There are questions I cannot ask. And you know how much I trust you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Lenox and Graham had an unusual bond, often formal, sometimes bordering on camaraderie, much of it unspoken. This bond went back a great many years and was seared into both men’s memories because of certain rather dark events that had taken place. This matter of asking Graham for help on a case was part of that unusual bond—a result of trust in Graham as a man, first of all, and in his competence too. In the end, each man relied on their deep mutual loyalty, which would be hard for anyone to test. Lenox found Graham to be almost perfect in this unique role: honest, respectful but never toadying, willing to make a point that might disagree with his employer’s—always, in short, his own man. Of all the men he knew, he thought Graham among the finest.

  “Will that be all right, then?” Lenox asked.

  “Yes, sir. If I may suggest something else, sir?”

  “Go on.”

  “I think I might also have an easier time than you in finding out more about Miss Smith, sir.”

  “The same sort of task, only here on Hampden Lane?”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “Dashed good idea, that. Wish I’d thought of it. Jane says she was provocative, and you say she was exotic. What does that mean?”

  “I shall try to find out, sir.”

  “Ask the girls in both houses—at any rate, it was your idea and you’ll know how to handle it.”

  “Hopefully, sir.”

  “Good work. All right then, take the day off tomorrow to do those things. Oh,” he said. “Here are a few pounds to do them with.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good night, Graham.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  He sighed. “Villefranche, Graham.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  The butler walked out of the room, though Lenox knew that he would sit in the hallway until Lenox himself had gone to bed. Which would be wonderfully soon, he thought.

  The fire was dying but warm, and once again he took off his boots and his socks and warmed his feet, which were again wet and cold, by the embers. He picked up The Small House at Alling-ton and read a chapter, sipping the last of his warm wine while he did. What a long day it had been!

  And oh, how he had been looking forward to the seaside! Well, well, he thought. It will all turn out right. He dropped the book to his side, placed his hands on the top of his stomach, and stared, for a few moments, into the fire. Poor Jane, he thought. Bella indigo, whatever that was. He would have to visit a chemist on his own.…

  His eyes began to close, and he knew it was time to wander up to his bedroom and put on his nightcap. He heaved his body from the chair and said, as he walked into the hallway, “Oh, and Graham? You had better cancel the trip with Mr. Kerr in the morning.”

  Graham was, of course, seated in the hall, reading his newspaper and eating an oat cake. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “And you’d better give him fifty pounds as good-faith money for the next trip.” Lenox yawned. “He’ll be terribly cross, you know. I keep canceling.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now really, Graham, go to bed. I’m only going to have a bath and fall asleep.”

  The butler stood up, and Lenox smiled at him.

  “Good night,” he said. “And good luck tomorrow.”

  Graham nodded. “Good night, sir,” he said, and sat down again in his chair, pulling the newspaper from his pocket.

  Chapter 8

  Lenox’s stationery was plain white, with his address printed at the top in dark blue. When he woke up the next morning, he took a piece of it from his bedside table, wrote in a quick hand, Prudence Smith could neither read nor write, and put it in an envelope without signing it. On the envelope he printed the name MCCONNELL and then rang a bell to fetch a servant, whom he asked to take the letter to his friend’s house on Bond Street.

  That done, he lay back in bed, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the time: seven-thirty He would have to hurry to make breakfast with Barnard.

  He thought as he dressed about the shocking moment when Jane’s maid had discredited the suicide note entirely. The idea of murder had clicked from probability to truth. At the same time, he thought, there was a closed household to deal with. Five guests; even more servants. Although there was the open window.
And the unused candle, which troubled him. How often were candles changed? He should ask Graham. Or better yet, ask Graham to find out from one of the servants at Barnard’s house.

  It was funny, he thought; his first case had revolved around a candle, too. He had been only twenty-two and had gone to visit a family friend, Lady Deborah Marbury, to pay his respects after her son’s violent murder. John Marbury had been discovered shot, slumped over the table at his club, and Deborah had been sure it was his friend Hawkins, whom she thought rather a bad influence.

  The details from the paper, mixed with the sorrow of his father’s friend, had rankled Lenox. Slowly he had begun to nibble around the edges of the case, going to the club where it had happened (and where he was a member), asking around a bit about Hawkins. The deeper he went the more perplexing it got. Hawkins appeared to be innocent. For one thing, Hawkins had been facing young John Marbury across the card table, but the wound indicated that the bullet had come from the roof across the street.

  He solved the case by looking through the card room at the club, where he found, tucked beneath a curtain, three half-used candles and an only slightly used fourth one. One detail that policemen had found puzzling was that Hawkins had had three candles. He had explained he needed them to read his cards by, but it was a well-lighted room. Then he had added a fourth candle, and almost immediately Marbury had been shot. The fourth candle was the signal. A single candle wouldn’t have done, because the brightness wouldn’t have shown across the street. There had turned out to be gambling debts. If the game had gone the right way, the fourth candle would have stayed underneath the table.

  Lenox had anonymously given his findings in a sheath of papers to the police at Scotland Yard. The case had been instantly settled, and since then Lenox had been fascinated by detective work. People reached him only by word of mouth. He was an amateur—and because he worked for free, not needing to do otherwise, he attracted many poor clients. On the other hand, because he was from one of the oldest and most respected families in England, he also attracted the rich and the noble, who expected him to have the discretion of a friend.

  What had made him think of all this? The candle.…