The Inheritance

by Charles Finch

  That was a harsh word, and harsher still from the person you loved. There was a long and awkward silence.

  Lenox, wanting to pad out the space between it and them, started to prattle—he could see both sides of the matter, he was conscious of their duty to Parliament but also of their duty to the truth, perhaps they should speak to Cheesewright again.

  But the poison would not draw. Dallington stood up, and said, very politely, “I’ll manage it in my spare time. Excuse me, please.”

  When he had gone a look passed briefly across Polly’s face. In it were regret, frustration, and, Lenox thought, a thwarted love of her own. She and Dallington had become so intimate; and yet without taking the final step that Lenox had expected they would. What did she feel? They must have been so difficult for her, these years of widowhood, London talking about her with its usual reckless cruelty. For some reason her anger with Dallington had come to its knife edge now, but he saw that she already wished she hadn’t—there was a certain softness even in her astringent words to him, a certain lovingness.

  She composed herself, however, and asked Lenox, “How are matters progressing with Leigh? Cohen is with him?”

  “Yes, through today. Pointilleux is at the courts for me now. I hope to find something out soon.”

  She grimaced, looking down at the large index she kept on her desk of the current status of all their detectives and staff. “It’s a great deal to devote to a case without the prospect of payment.”

  “He’ll be back in France by this evening.”

  “Good,” said Polly.

  Lenox returned to his own office. It was now nine o’clock, and he decided that he would dedicate a good hour’s work to Middleton’s ledger.

  It was an oversized volume bound in red leather, with a flexible spine so that it lay flat to each open page. It contained a three-year calendar, covering 1875, 1876, and 1877. Poor Middleton had only made it two days into the third of these years, though as Lenox leafed through he saw that there were numerous appointments filled in for the months to come.

  The solicitor had written densely in nearly every entry, with the exception of a two-week stretch in August that said only “Scotland” in each space. This began on August 11, and Lenox knew that Middleton had been a hunter of grouse. Every year on the “glorious twelfth,” as its participants called it, the season opened, and those first few weeks were their apotheosis. Special train lines ran through Scotland and Ireland in those weeks solely to carry the hunters from moor to moor.

  Though Middleton was a detailed planner, his system was penetrable. Many of his appointments were “IC,” which Lenox quickly concluded meant “in chambers.” Others were out, many at hotels (most often the Savoy, occasionally Claridge’s, but Lenox saw even trips to Leigh’s own smallish Collingwood Hotel), which he guessed was because men of substance visiting London would use the occasion to see their solicitor.

  Here was Terence Fells, too, and with a little chill he saw that Frost had been correct: a line from an entry that had Fells’s initials to Gerald Leigh’s name, which was shortened on the next page to GL, and later appeared again (“letter to GL Paris”), including on the very day of Middleton’s death, when he had been appointed to meet Leigh again, to discuss the case.

  The work was absorbing, a thicket of cross-references. Lenox took profuse notes on a pad of paper. Why had Middleton been so eager to track down a “Mr. Wallace” in the last month, always writing the name in that singularly full and formal style? Who was the increasingly frequent “AR” of December, or the “PQ” that had been scheduled for so many appointments in the coming month? And why did every entry feature some small sum of addition or subtraction? Were those legal fees that he had totted up?

  No doubt Frost and his men had deciphered some of these answers with Beaumont’s help, and the resource of Middleton’s files. He would ask.

  At a quarter past ten, Pointilleux knocked on the door and pushed it open. He was holding a piece of paper. “Hello,” he said. “We have a result.”

  “So quickly?”

  “Immediately,” said Pointilleux. “They are a model of efficiency.”

  So much for Lenox’s vision of the endless aisles in the courthouse, the lost papers. “And?”

  Pointilleux and Phelps, the young man from the Yard, stepped fully into the office. It was the young Frenchman who laid down a sheet of paper before Lenox.

  Clerk: Robbins

  Name queried: Leigh, Gerald Leigh, G. Leigh, G. R. Leigh, Roderick Leigh, G. Roderick Leigh

  Years: 1876, 1877

  Results: None

  Lenox read it and then looked up. “What does this mean?”

  Pointilleux shook his head. “It mean that there is no bequest register to Mr. Leigh in the past two years at the London courts of chancery.”

  “So—”

  “This bequest—it does not exist.”

  It was rare for Lenox to be truly astonished, but now he was. “What?” he said. “Nonexistent?”

  “None-existent,” confirmed Pointilleux, with some justified pride.

  “And it would have been registered in London? There is no question of that?”

  “Yes, certainly—all wills are, and in more particular our clerk knew Mr. Middleton,” said the young Frenchman. “I cannot say the how come, but it is deception. There is no money. Mr. Leigh was left no money.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  This was one of those facts that changed the complexion of the entire case. (Just the sort of enormous discovery, ironically, that thirty years before Leigh and Lenox had been desperate to uncover in their amateurish investigations of the MB, when they had sat in Leigh’s rooms, spinning tales for each other. What if his real father was an Assyrian prince? What if there were 999 identical students sprinkled over the British Isles, and some bizarre philanthropist was playing the same game with all of them at once?)

  “And both of you feel certain that there is no way this is merely an error?” he asked Pointilleux.

  The younger man glanced at Phelps, a hunched fellow with uneven teeth and wide eyes, rather Dutch in appearance. It was he who answered. “I should have said that the clerk, Robbins, was extremely competent. Sober and reliable. I don’t think there can have been a mistake.”

  “Or a circumvention of the courts?” asked Lenox.

  Pointilleux frowned at the long word, but Phelps shook his head. “Unless the money was in ready notes or gold, no. All banks, no matter how small, are obliged to register any transfer of property, and certainly a solicitor such as Middleton would only have worked on a will that was legally registered.”

  “I see.”

  “To quote Mr. Robbins, the system has no gaps except cash.”

  Lenox tilted his head, thinking. “Yes, and Middleton specifically referred to a banking transfer to Leigh.”

  “There you are.”

  “You are off to see Frost next, I assume, Mr. Phelps?”

  “Yes, indeed, Mr. Lenox.”

  “Pass him this note, would you?” Lenox quickly scribbled a letter telling Frost where he was going to meet Leigh. “Thank you.”

  This new information exonerated Salt Townsend. That much was clear. What about Terence Fells? He remained an unknown.

  And without the motive they had presumed this whole while—a second beneficiary, eager to knock Leigh out of contention for that fortune—the case opened up in a dozen new directions.

  Lenox already had one strong idea.

  What was clear was that he needed to discuss the matter with Leigh. Unfortunately his old friend wouldn’t be at the Royal Society for another hour.

  Lenox put on his coat and hurried out, lifting a distracted hand to Polly, who had given him an inquiring look. In the street he was greeted by an icy wind; there were no cabs, and he realized, walking up Chancery Lane, that he was starved. He stopped at a cart where a husband and wife stood, selling skilly—porridge’s London cousin—from a huge vat over a burning wood fire. For an extra p
enny the wife threw in a generous scoop of currants. He ate as he walked, the hot concoction making him feel a little warmer in the cheeks, a little thicker between the ribs of his coat. When he had finished, he gave the bowl to a passing boy, who thanked him, running off to hand it in at the cart, where he would be able to redeem it for a serving of his own.

  At home in Hampden Lane there were bright lights on, and as Lenox entered the house he heard Lady Jane and Sophia, with the nursemaid nearby, discussing lunch. He would have liked to stay to eat with them, but instead he gave each a hurried kiss and then went to his study, where he hunted down a volume of his old notes. He had an inkling that this was where he had written Terence Fells’s name once. But he was frustrated in his search, and finally, in a rush, changed into a new collar and tie and left by carriage for the Royal Society.

  Nearly the first people he saw there were Leigh and Lord Baird (Rowan’s copresident), sipping champagne, and Lenox realized that in the back of his mind, he had been worried throughout the night. But here was his slight, smiling friend, greeting him. Cohen stood at a respectful distance nearby.

  “Lenox!” said Leigh. “We were just discussing a mutual hero of ours, Lord Baird and I were.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Francesco Redi,” said Baird.

  “A painter?”

  Leigh shook his head. “A natural philosopher of the 1600s. I wish more people knew his name. Aristotle, the fool—”

  “Come now!” said Baird, an old and distinguished-looking specimen.

  “Well—in this matter, at least, I mean, a fool, but otherwise passably intelligent—Aristotle put forward a theory called ‘spontaneous generation,’ and somehow or other it endured for nineteen centuries. He thought that living matter simply appeared from nothing.”

  “Most misguided,” said Baird, shaking his head.

  “It was Redi who doubted that a rock could produce a bug. One evening he put little morsels of his supper—meat loaf!—in three glasses, one sealed, one covered with gauze, one open. As you might guess, maggots appeared upon the latter within a few days. The sealed glass generated none. Very consequential meat loaf!”

  Baird laughed, and Lenox joined in politely, though he would probably have agreed, two hundred seconds before, that any theory other than spontaneous generation was claptrap, had these two men averred it.

  After a few moments he was able to get Leigh alone. “Listen, Gerry,” he said. “Something strange has come up.”

  “What?”

  “Frost and I asked two men to go and find out who left you that money in the courts—approaching it from the other end, you see. They returned with some odd news.”

  “Well?”

  “Nobody left you any money at all.”

  Leigh looked perplexed. “What?”

  “There was no inheritance.”

  They were standing in the rotunda, drawing glances from the men who were entering, all of them looking forward to Leigh’s informal remarks, no doubt. “But … Middleton,” he said.

  Middleton. Lenox nodded, grimacing. “Yes. I have been thinking about him all morning, and I suspect we must move him in our minds from one category to another—from victim, to conspirator.”

  “Conspirator! He was so eminently respectable.”

  “Precisely his utility, perhaps. He convinced you that there was a legitimate bequest to you. The question that you must answer now is a much broader one. Why create this odd pretext at all? Who wishes to do you harm, and for what reason, if not over an inheritance?”

  Leigh shook his head. “I cannot think of anyone.”

  “You have no enemies? Nobody whose interests you have trampled, or whose progress you have prevented?”

  Leigh looked bewildered. “Must it be such a sinister causation?”

  “Yes, I think it must. Because if there was no bequest: What was the motivation of Middleton’s actions? There can be only one answer. To bring you to London. Hence his insistence that you could not sign the papers he had through the mail.”

  “Hell.”

  “All morning I have been considering what you told me of your life in France. ‘The university is a fortress,’ you said, and that you rarely leave its grounds.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Your very valet is a member of their army’s special services.”

  Leigh nodded. “They needed me on open ground, you believe, to make their attack. But who? Who?”

  Lenox shook his head. “We are behind in our investigations—fatally behind—because of this charade with the inheritance.”

  Leigh glanced at his pocket watch. “I can scarcely believe I have involved you in all this. And I have to give this blasted speech now.”

  Lenox shook his head. “The sooner you are back in France, the easier I will rest. I can continue the investigation here. What will your movements be for the rest of the day?”

  “I’m meant to take the train to Dover at six past five.”

  “You must hire a special.”

  Leigh nodded. “Yes, of course. Between now and then I shall always be in company—I have promised to go down to Rowan’s lab in the east, and look over his own work on the microbe, and after that he and I and Baird have arranged to have tea at the Collingwood. I had hoped I might pay a call on Lady Jane before I left. But I find that I am a contaminated sample at the moment—not fit for use.”

  Lenox shook his head. “As long as you are not alone. Keep Cohen and the constable with you. Look, there, I see Frost coming in. He and I will figure this out. Search your mind, though, Gerald. Can you think of nobody who bears you enough animus to kill you?”

  Leigh thought for a moment. It was a hard question, to be sure: murder! How out of the run of common things. But he pondered it carefully, before at last saying, “Honestly, I cannot. I still feel as if it must all be some sort of cosmic error, and the truth, when it comes out, should we all remain safe until that time, will look almost comical.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Could it possibly be as simple as that: an error?

  The luncheon was a tedious, long-winded affair, at least in Lenox’s nervy mood. In a different temper he might have found it more congenial. As it was, the chore of being pleasant to his neighbors, sawing through his cut of meat, and attending the various sonorities of the fellows who rose to speak together made for almost more than he could take, given that all he wanted was a moment to think in complete silence.

  But this was difficult to come by. As Lenox looked despairingly on, fellow after fellow rose to praise Leigh—and Rowan, for enticing him to speak—in their toasts. Most also paused to take credit on the Society’s behalf for something that likely would have existed anyway, Lenox thought, first Neptune (“I am proud to say that we predicted it in 1843, confirmed it in 1846!”), then cholera (“we’re close to ending it!”), then Galen (“He died in the year 199, but I think he would have found us a happy company, gentlemen.”)

  Amid these encomia, Leigh was at a raised table, with several illustrious figures around him. Just as coffee was being served, Lenox checked that his friend was still installed in his chair and that Cohen was nearby, then excused himself.

  He found a little alcove near the bathrooms. There was a leather bench there, between two doors, and low yellow lights in a pair of sconces above it. With a sigh, he leaned back upon the bench and closed his eyes, promising himself two uninterrupted moments of contemplation.

  What they had to go on was an odd nexus. Both Ernest Middleton, a wholly respectable solicitor, widely known in the courts, and Messrs. Anderson and Singh, two of the most violent, conscienceless men in London, a blight upon the city’s claims to peaceable civility, were involved in a conspiracy to harm Gerald Leigh: an inoffensive, not especially wealthy British scientist living in France.

  What could have united the interests of those two parties against those of the third?

  It must be money. Leigh couldn’t think of a single enemy he had who was bitter en
ough to have stretched himself to these outlandish efforts, and the Farthings were motivated by little but financial gain, unless you counted revenge.

  And yet, and yet … Lenox, sifting the facts in his mind, could almost discern a pattern. It was like looking at the reverse of a Persian carpet as it hung to dry—in the threads there was the ghost of its true shape, the hint of a figure, the contours of an outline, stippled in ragged white strands.

  “Lenox. There you are.”

  He snapped his eyes open and sat straight up. It was Frost. “You caught me thinking.”

  “Anything useful?”

  Lenox shook his head, troubled. “I’m groping in the dark. And yet I know it’s there. I can feel it in my hands.”

  Frost nodded, familiar with that feeling. “I thought you should know that we just picked up Wasilewski three blocks from here.”

  Lenox felt a flutter. “The Pole who replaced Anderson and Singh.”

  “The Pole who replaced Anderson and Singh. I had instructed my men to arrest him before he got any closer, and they did. Took him by surprise, I’m pleased to say. He had a pistol and a knife on him. No doubt he meant to use them on Leigh.”

  “That’s damning.”

  “He protested that he always carried them—they were in his line of work.”

  “Which is?”

  Frost smiled thinly. “Wallpaper hanger, by his own previous account. But he forgot that he had told us that the last time he was arrested and said just now that he was a night watchman at a factory in the East End.”

  “Not impossible. The Farthings own several.”

  Frost nodded. “Yes. Regardless, I’m pleased to get him off our tail.”

  Lenox was more than pleased, he thought. It was possible that his idea had saved Leigh’s life.

  On the other hand, the tenacity of the gang’s interest was disturbing. “Phelps found you?”

  Frost nodded unhappily. He had his pipe out, and clamped it ruminatively in his back teeth, unlit. “Yes.”

  “The field is wide open now, I’m afraid,” said Lenox.

  “Could you grope any faster?”