Lenox smiled. “I suspect that just around the time when you are about to die you’ll begin to feel as if the whole concern is really yours once and for all.”
“What a comfort you are, Charles.”
Because their journey concerned Harrow they spent some time discussing that; then Parliament again; then the downfall of a mutual acquaintance who had lost against the market, and was trying to rebound. The time slipped silkily away—though it was a four-hour ride, it felt as if it had lasted only twenty or thirty minutes, and they arrived in happy spirits, glad at having had the time together.
“Where do we go, then?” asked Edmund as they left the train. “I meant to ask you on the ride.”
“Do you need lunch?”
“I can wait.”
“Straight to the bank, in that case.”
Charles had been to the Bank of Cornwall’s branch in London the day before. In the distant days of their investigation, he and Leigh had discovered that Harrow accepted fees remitted only by banks in London. This meant that the ninety-eight pounds Harrow had received from P. Wilkins in 1846 must have been drawn on the London branch, and Lenox had thought that perhaps they would have information about him there.
In the event, however, it had only proved a tiny office, and they said it had always been this way: two men on staff, both clerks, without any clients in the metropolis, present there only to handle precisely the kind of business that needed to be cleared through London. They had advised Lenox that he had better make the trip out if he had any business to conduct with the local bank, and given him an address in Truro.
Lenox explained this to Edmund as they walked from the tiny platform down a series of stairs, ending at a cabstand where a local boy wearing a kerchief around his neck sat atop a cart, first in line, a donkey draped in a wool blanket patiently unmoving ahead of him.
They mounted this noble conveyance one by one. It was only a twelve-minute drive, the boy said; after that he spat continually, and if he was impressed to be carrying two gentlemen from the London train in expensive clothes through his hometown, he certainly kept it to himself, which Lenox rather approved.
The Bank of Cornwall was a low, handsome building in the style the Tudors had favored—possibly even original, Lenox thought, eyeing its black and white timbers. He and Edmund went inside, and found a cozy room dominated by a large round polished desk, with clerks sitting inside of it, facing outward, various pigeonholes and lockboxes at each of their stations.
A clerk greeted the brothers. “Good afternoon, sirs.”
Lenox stepped forward. “I had a question about a customer here. I wonder whether I might speak to your manager?”
To the right of the young man, an older one, with white hair and a matching roundness in his spectacles and his belly, looked up. “I hold that position. Adams. How may I help you?”
“Ah! How do you do—I am Charles Lenox. This is my brother, Edmund.”
They both passed their cards across the desk. Adams raised his eyes slightly at the second, and stood: a member of Her Majesty’s government, after all. “What brings you to Truro, sir?”
“I am looking for a customer of yours by the name of P. Wilkins.”
“Percival Wilkins?” said Adams.
The other clerks all glanced up, looks of recognition on their faces. “I believe so.”
“He isn’t a customer here,” said Adams.
“No?”
“He banks with the Truro Limited. A sound establishment—none of the London quarrels here, business enough for all of us. And we occasionally come to Mr. Wilkins’s assistance in his professional line. Is it do with an inheritance? An estate?”
Lenox paused infinitesimally, and then said, “Yes.”
“Well, there you are. Mr. Wilkins will be two streets down, three over, and one down again. Matching Lane. Where all the solicitors have their offices in Truro.”
“Number six,” said one of the young men.
Adams, looking intensely irritated, said, “That’s what I said—Six Matching Lane.”
The solicitors! Was this to be another dead end?
Edmund and Lenox followed the (very clear) directions of the bank manager, and arrived at a street that looked rather like Cheyne Walk in London, with small gardens in front of tidy squared-off white houses. Number 6 had—as all of them did—a brass nameplate.
P. Wilkins, Solicitor, 6
Mr. Percival Wilkins, private residence, 6 and ½
Lenox looked and saw that there were two symmetrical paths leading to two doors, one left, one right, the former, evidently, belonging to the professional life of Mr. P. Wilkins, the latter to the domestic.
They took the left path and knocked on the door. It flew open. A very young man stood there, with bright red cheeks and wild blond hair. “How do you do!” he said.
“We hoped to see Mr. Wilkins.”
“He is with a client at the moment. Your business?”
“It involves an estate.”
The young man nodded seriously. “In that case you may wait in the entrance hall.”
Lenox smiled at Edmund after the clerk, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, turned his back and led them to a wall lined with several armchairs. There was a print of Queen Victoria on the wall, and another of the Battle of Blenheim. Deep England, they had found themselves in.
They chatted in low voices for some time, waiting—Edmund was getting hungry and wondering where they ought to eat—and then, at last, the young man reemerged, beckoning them back.
The office he led them into was neat as a pin, and overlooked a lovely garden, which, to Lenox’s surprise, had a small stream behind it. And here was Percival Wilkins: just the right age, thank God, certainly nearing seventy. “Thank you, Percy,” he said to the clerk firmly.
“Of course, Father,” said the young man, and left, closing the door behind him.
The brothers once again presented their cards, and Wilkins inspected them. “I do not believe we have ever met.”
“No!” said Lenox cheerfully. “No, we’re here on behalf of a friend.”
“Who is that?”
He had decided to be fairly honest. “Gerald Leigh,” he said. “A local boy. Many years ago he was the recipient of a mysterious benefaction. His school fees were paid for him, when his family could not afford them. Now he wishes to know who did him that kindness, so that he might, having enjoyed success himself, repay the kindness.”
Wilkins, to Lenox’s surprise, let fall his impassive legal countenance, and half smiled. “He has been a success, hasn’t he? We worried once that he might not be.”
“Who worried? You?”
“Well—I have been the family solicitor for some time, yes. Probably around fifty years now. I knew his father, bless his heart.”
“Then you can tell us who paid the fees?”
“Gerald’s fees for Harrow? Why! Who else? His mother!”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Several hours later, Edmund and Charles Lenox were ensconced in the Boscawen Arms, gazing out of its mullioned windows at the passing traffic. Each had a pint pot of bitter, and there was a carving board of bread and cheese between them, into which each made the occasional foray. A thoroughly contented hour of life’s passage, Lenox thought. There was a 6:29 train back to London—the second-to-last of the evening—and they intended to catch it, in a little more than forty minutes.
“It only took you thirty years to solve your first case,” said Edmund.
Lenox smiled. “Twenty-nine and a half.”
“Better still! You should double your bonus for the year. That’s fast work.”
“You’re very witty.”
Edmund smiled. “No, no. I do think you did it well.”
“And now the question. Shall I tell him?”
Wilkins had been very candid with the brothers, for the simple reason, he said, that Mrs. Leigh was dead now. She had insisted upon secrecy from her son while she was alive about the source of
his school fees; but there was no need to prolong the secret now that she was gone, Wilkins thought.
“Why did she want it kept from Gerald to begin with?” Lenox had asked Wilkins, in his little office with its view over the back garden.
Wilkins had leaned back, thinking over the question. He was the picture of a small-town solicitor: reliable, comfortable, a friend as surely as a professional. “Because he wouldn’t have wanted her to do what she did.”
“What she did?”
Wilkins frowned. “I handled the estate of Gerald’s father. Struck down in the prime of his life, now—just when he was setting out, certainly younger than both of you gentlemen, and therefore not having had a chance to accumulate much in the way of savings. There was no fortune there. He left them in a position that they might just squeak by—the cottage outright, and fifty or sixty pounds a year.”
“Townsend never gave them money?”
“Townsend? No. No, no. What on earth gave you that idea? The squire’s wife, Mrs. Williston, gave Mrs. Leigh things here and there, when they could be disguised as other than charity—cloth for a dress, you know, or a pair of pullets from the farm. Not Townsend, however. No.”
“And yet Leigh went to Harrow.”
Wilkins nodded, his fingers steepled. “She was set upon it, Mrs. Regina Leigh. It was her obsession. She was in grief herself, I believe, though she was not a communicative person—not at all like her husband.
“But you see, she had loved him very, very much, and Harrow had been vital to his upbringing, to his sense of the world, and I believe she wanted to offer Gerald the same opportunity. I advised her against it, frankly. The fees were more than their entire remaining annual income.”
“How did she pay them, then?” Lenox asked curiously. “Her family?”
Wilkins shook his head. “It is an impoverished earldom, you know, besides which there was a falling-out between the two branches. No, what she did was to invent this canard of an anonymous benefactor—with my reluctant consent—and then, while Gerald was away, she earned the money herself.”
“How?”
Wilkins sighed. “Whatever her uncle was, she was the granddaughter of an earl, Mrs. Leigh, and very proud. But she had to have the money, and so she did two things. The first was to take in boarders.”
“Leigh always said their house was small.”
“Yes, two bedrooms. She let each of them during school term, and slept in the kitchen.”
“Brought low indeed,” Lenox murmured.
“And the second thing?” asked Edmund.
“She began to take in piecework, sewing at night, and during the day she began to teach lessons. Whatever came to hand—etiquette, piano, French, German, drawing, for of course she had all the accomplishments of her class, and she was happy to teach anything. The Ashe name means a great deal in these parts, and she priced herself reasonably, which meant that all the townswomen could send their daughters to her. A bragging right. That was how she scraped the money together for Harrow.”
“And you transmitted the fees.”
“I did. I would have helped, except—well, as a solicitor, once you begin to take pity on your clients, all of them need money, don’t they? Or a great many. The best you can do is give it to the local societies, or the church, and help where help is needed direly. A public school—I respected her decision, and helped her arrange to send Gerald there. Not for long, as it happened.”
“What about holidays?” asked Lenox, still stuck on Regina Leigh.
“The lodgers’ terms always ended the day before he came home, and she taught no lessons while he was in Cornwall.”
“I see.”
“It was only a period of two years, though they were brutally hard ones for her. After that, indeed, I believe he was able to send money back to her.”
Lenox nodded. “That’s true.”
“She once referred to a bird trap, I think,” said Wilkins, trying to remember. “I may have that wrong.”
Lenox had felt a sudden stinging at the corners of his eyes then, quite unexpectedly. Why? Perhaps because Leigh had said, so often, how dull his mother was, how far less interesting than his father. Perhaps because she was gone. For his friend. For his own mother. Or perhaps it was universal: He looked over to his brother, who admittedly had had a very soft heart since Molly’s death, and saw that his face was screwed up tightly and seriously, which had meant since he was five years old that he was determined not to betray his own emotions.
“Thank you for solving our puzzle,” Lenox had said.
“Do you see Leigh?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I hope he will return to these parts soon. He came for his mother’s funeral, of course, and to settle her estate—but he still has many friends here, you know!”
Lenox nodded and said that he would give Leigh that message—conscious, however, that his friend was not likely to return to Cornwall, now that it had relinquished its one claim on him.
Charles and Edmund had taken their leave of Wilkins after this, thanking him again and complimenting his garden on their way, and wandered out into the street, a little aimless.
“What shall we do now?” Edmund had asked.
“We could have a look around Truro.”
“Yes, that should be a thrilling eight minutes.”
Lenox laughed. “Come along. Let’s walk south and see what we may find.”
As it happened Truro was a very pretty small city, with two rivers flowing through it, and many winding streets full of charm and character, teashops, a row of competing greengrocers, in the public square a half-indoor pantomime theater whose troupe was currently delighting a gang of small children. It was more like an English village overgrown than like a city—and they passed a diverting hour walking it, each of them picking up a few small souvenirs, Lenox, for Sophia and Jane, a pair of matching silver spoons with the city’s name and motto engraved on the handles.
After some time they had found themselves—a little chilly, with the fall of the sun—seeking out the warm table by the fire at the Boscawen Arms where they now sat.
When Lenox ought to have known, he told his brother, was when that mysterious Greek dictionary appeared after Leigh had lost it during half term. Who else but his mother could have known? A master, perhaps; a friend—but not Townsend, nor his uncle. Poor detective work.
“You must go easy on yourself,” said Edmund. “You were inexperienced.”
“Rum, isn’t it, to be thinking back to clues from our days at school.”
“Indeed.”
Lenox felt a certain lonely dejection, as they walked slowly through the darkened evening toward the train station. He couldn’t say exactly why. But the compartment they secured in the first-class carriage was cozy and warm, and each of them bought a cup of tea from the lady passing down the aisle, and soon they were warmly ensconced in the conversation they had been conducting for all these years, and which never, even in periods of remission, ceased, and Lenox felt better. Just past St. Austell, Edmund fell asleep, and Charles, taking advantage of the moment, began to sketch out with a nib of charcoal a long letter to Leigh. When this first draft was done he began to make a list of clients he ought to check in on the next morning, by wire or by letter; one thought led to another, and soon he was jotting down ideas for how they might improve, for example, the efficiency of their monthly check-ins at the soap factory in Birmingham.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
By the first of April, Lord John Dallington was once more able to walk.
Not well, however. “Nor will he ever,” said McConnell. He and Lenox were passing along Carlton Terrace, with its beautiful wisteria-lined alabaster houses, sunstruck on this mellow morning, on their way to have lunch at Lenox’s club. “The left leg took too brutal a splintering.”
“Will he be able to run again?”
“No.”
That was a hindrance to a detective—and to a person, of course. “And yet he looks very well.”
There were still ugly raised scars on Dallington’s hands and arms, as well as one that ran up the back of his neck—and no doubt on his legs, too. But his face, always so alert and youthful, had mostly healed.
It was true on the other hand that it looked dimmer now, less full of light. His betrothal to Polly had been announced in the Times, a date set that summer for them to be wed at Marchmain House, and yet despite this good fortune, Dallington’s manner seemed singularly joyless to Lenox these days. He had no interest in work, though he offered his dutiful thoughts on the cases Lenox tried to interest him in, and smiled with inauthentic enthusiasm when one suggested that he would return soon.
McConnell, perhaps reading Lenox’s thoughts, said, “There is always some period of despondency to be endured during such a recuperation.”
“Is this the length you would expect?”
The doctor frowned, his long strides slowing slightly. “Perhaps. Perhaps it is slightly longer. I am not yet worried.”
After they had eaten, Lenox asked McConnell if he wished to come and see Leigh. He had that morning returned from a week in Cambridge—of the two universities the more scientific in its strengths, whereas Oxford’s lineage was in politics, letters, classics, history—where he had been meeting with colleagues. McConnell was very happy to say yes; and inquired, how did it go with Rowan?
Strangely, was the answer.
A city by all rights ought to spread rumors like fire, indiscriminately and evenly, without regard for whom they harmed or what they wrought. There was the famous story of the Dublin theater owner who bet a friend he could coin a new word: He wrote a random one on a few hundred pieces of paper and had his lads spread them all over town, waiting to see when the neologism would return to his ears. It had done so within a few hours—people thinking it was some kind of test, which was how the word, “quiz,” had earned its meaning.
Rowan had shown that he had a bizarre immunity to that kind of circulation. It was a skill, perhaps; within the Royal Society, by all accounts, he was considered a wronged man, and in London at large there was some vague sense of injustice surrounding his case. He maintained his innocence steadfastly, and had many friends who did the same—and above all, Lenox suspected that some of the great fortune he held within his control, the one that extended so far and wide over the East End’s racked tenements, was being used to defer unfavorable coverage in the newspapers and encourage favorable. He had attempted to find some explicit evidence of this, without luck. One of those conspiracies of omission, instead, which are so difficult to prove.
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