The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  “Were you hoping she had seen something?” asked Dallington.

  “I imagine the Yard’s canvass would have made certain that each sister saw nothing. They were at their prayers anyhow, according to the porter. We can ask Nicholson later if he has any more information in the actual written report. I just found it interesting to see her again, for a second time now, in perfect view of where Jenkins died. If only she had been standing there when he was shot. I suppose it’s not impossible.”

  “Hadn’t we better go and ask Nicholson now?” asked Dallington, stopping to turn back toward Wakefield’s house behind them.

  Lenox shook his head. “I doubt he’ll know. Armbruster is the one we ought to ask, or another of the sergeants. It will keep. I can’t imagine they came away from the convent without a thorough account from the sisters. Whatever the nuns’ vows might be, the average bobby isn’t very fond of either obstruction or silence.”

  “Or Germans,” Dallington pointed out.

  Lenox smiled. “Or Germans.”

  “A rum sort of life it seems to me, sitting in the middle of London, never saying a word, longing all the time for the pastures of Bavaria, or whatever they have over there. Standing in the cold behind some bars and handing out a card that says you can’t talk. It’s not what I call cheerful.”

  “No wonder she watches the traffic,” said Lenox.

  “Well, quite.”

  They spent a few minutes then looking at the spot where Francis and Wakefield were meant to meet each other that evening, a tall gilded black gate with the Queen’s arms worked into its wrought-iron. There were refreshment stands nearby, and after these closed at nightfall it would be easy to conceal themselves behind one and watch the gate.

  As they gazed upon the stands, discussing how they ought to hide, the peculiar rich smell of the London Zoo, situated within the park, floated toward them on the air, some mixture of hay and manure and animal. It wasn’t unpleasant. For Lenox it recalled a trip he and Lady Jane had made there with Sophia the fall before, the child happily babbling for a very long time at the only orangutan ever to be seen in London, her favorite animal. She had also dragged them again and again back toward the quagga, a strange beast whose forward half resembled a zebra but whose back half resembled a horse. Lenox smiled to remember her amazement at the creature. It was an excellent zoo, very likely the best in the world. Two aristocrats had founded it in 1827, for the purposes of scientific study; only in the past few decades had it opened to the public as well, but they loved it beyond anything, coming in their multitudes to look at the oddities of Africa, of Asia, of the Continent.

  When Lenox and Dallington were quite satisfied with their survey of York’s Gate, they hailed a cab and made their way to the Beargarden Club. It was only a short drive. Dallington signed Lenox into the guest book, and then they went to look at the rolls of membership, which were listed in a book hanging from a string near the bar. On a blackboard nearby were chalked the debts that members owed each other—only the bartender could reach it, Lenox saw. Dallington was owed six shillings by someone called Roland Raleigh. The wager was over a year old. Lenox didn’t ask what it had been, and Dallington, absorbed in the membership book, didn’t offer any explanation.

  After riffling through it, Dallington dropped the book, which swung back and forth on its string in a lessening arc. “Nothing,” he said. “No Francis, no Hartley. That’s unlucky.”

  “Would they have the peerages here?”

  Dallington brightened. “Yes, that’s not a bad shout. Let’s have a look. Shall I order us some tea first? We could come back here and read.”

  “That sounds marvelous, now that you say it. Ask if they have toast, too, would you?”

  Dallington spoke to the barman and then led Lenox through a dim hallway back to the snooker room, which was lined with cartoons from Punch. Above the snooker table was a complex system of pulleys and cords by which one could manipulate a scoreboard at the far end of the room. Two very well-dressed young men, one with a monocle screwed in tightly, were playing balls across the vast green felt.

  “Hullo, Dallington,” said one of them. “Here for a game?”

  “Not unless you’ve improved.”

  “I have done, I’ll have you know,” said the fellow indignantly.

  “Keep practicing anyhow. I’m only here for these.”

  Debrett’s and Burke’s, the two great lists of aristocracy in England, were on the end table, much thumbed. Lenox and Dallington took them back to the bar. Their tea was waiting on a table, with several stacks of golden-brown toast, glistening with butter.

  “I’ll take Debrett’s, shall I?” asked Dallington.

  “I’ll take the toast.”

  Soon they were reading and sipping their tea in companionable silence, the pale midday light flooding the empty room. Bars were always most pleasant in daytime, Lenox thought. The tea was wonderful, dark and sweet. He had been hungrier than he realized. He helped himself to another piece of toast, folding it in half and crunching it between his teeth, then following it with a sip of the warm tea.

  After half an hour they’d found nothing. There were plenty of people named Francis, and a few named Hartley, but none seemed to match the man they were looking for: a man of under forty, living in London. Most of the Francis clan seemed to be based far in the west, and none of the men were below fifty. Lenox copied out a few addresses anyhow, just to be sure. There might be second sons, cousins. Nevertheless it was dispiriting.

  Dallington signaled to the bartender for more hot water, then turned back to Lenox, rotating his cup ruminatively in his hand. “What the hell do you think is happening, then?” he asked. “First Jenkins, and then Wakefield?”

  Lenox considered the question for a moment. He took a wedge of toast and ate it. At last, he said, “The thing that worries me most is the third mystery.”

  “Which is that?”

  “Not Jenkins’s death, nor Wakefield’s—but the fact that Jenkins’s papers, the ones he felt were important enough that he left a note for me about them in case he should be killed, seem to have vanished completely.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  For the rest of that afternoon, as Lenox and Dallington continued their search for Wakefield’s friend and compatriot Francis (or was it Hartley?), this was the subject they discussed: the missing papers, a mystery that was easy to overlook because it was bookended by two murders. Were they merely hidden somewhere by the inspector, who had evidently been in a mood to take precautions? Or had they been stolen? If they had, was it from Jenkins’s office or from his person? In fact, was it possible that he had been murdered for the papers?

  “They might have contained the information that would send Wakefield to prison,” said Dallington. “Or to trial, at any rate.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Lenox. “We’ll have to see what McConnell says.”

  “About what?”

  “Wakefield’s body. I’ll be very curious to learn how long he’s been dead. Whether, for instance, he was dead at seven o’clock last night, when Jenkins was shot—or whether he might have killed Jenkins himself and then been murdered.”

  Dallington considered this. “A marquess,” he said. “I cannot imagine he would commit such a crime himself, and so close to his own house.”

  “He would if he were desperate,” said Lenox.

  Dallington nodded. “Yes. If he were desperate. Which he might have been, after all.”

  “Who do you think killed these two men?” asked Lenox.

  Dallington smiled. “It was you who taught me the principle of parsimony, Lenox, I believe six or seven years ago now. That the simplest path between events is the most likely.”

  “And what is the simplest path between these events?”

  “I think it was this Francis fellow, whoever in damnation he might be. That’s why I wish we could find him.”

  Unfortunately the afternoon saw this wish go unmet. The two men checked in at the Cardplayers Club i
n Old Burlington Street, where several exceedingly drunk young men in the front hallways were boasting to each other about old darts victories, but there was no member called Francis or Hartley there. (The porter knew Dallington by sight, though he wasn’t a member.) After that they checked several of the clubs along Pall Mall. They weren’t quite sure how else to proceed. Who’s Who had nothing to offer them, but all that really told them was that Francis wasn’t a Member of Parliament or a bishop, neither of which scenarios had ever seemed particularly likely. It would be a boon to detectives all across England if Who’s Who began to expand its scope, as rumor had it doing. There was also no Francis or Hartley who was contemporary with Wakefield at school or at university, according to a quick scan of the old directories at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. The business directories of London contained several men named Francis, but none of them were under the age of fifty.

  At six, thoroughly frustrated, Lenox and Dallington split apart. Dallington was going to continue the search; Lenox wanted to speak to McConnell. They were due to meet Nicholson at eleven thirty at York’s Gate but wanted to talk over their evening’s work first, and so they agreed to meet again at eleven o’clock at Mitchell’s. This was a restaurant near Regent’s Park, which Lady Jane was fond of saying served the worst food in London. Still, it was handy, staying open until midnight to accommodate the post-theater crowd.

  Lenox ran McConnell to ground at the enormous house where he and Toto lived in Grosvenor Square. He was red-eyed, as if he had been squinting, and his tie was off. He answered the door himself.

  “I thought it might be you,” he said. “Come in. I’ve been working on Wakefield since you sent word for me.”

  “You can’t have his body here?”

  McConnell led Lenox up the fine light-filled front staircase, in the direction of his lab. “No, no. I went and consulted on the autopsy. The Yard isn’t usually so rapid with its autopsies, but this time they brought in Dr. Sarver—from Harley Street, you know, very eminent fellow—and it was done in a proper operating theater. They were kind enough to give me some of the stomach tissue.”

  “A profound kindness indeed,” said Lenox, though the wryness in his voice was lost on the doctor, who merely agreed. When he was working his absorption was such that he sometimes lost his sense of humor. “Did they decide what killed him?”

  “It was certainly poisoning. We all concurred upon that point. After that it is less clear, though I have a theory of which I feel pretty confident.”

  “What is it?”

  “Come in, and I’ll tell you.”

  McConnell conducted his scientific studies in a beautiful two-story library on the east side of the house. Toward the far end of the lower story were several long and wide tables full of faultlessly organized bottles of chemicals, alkalis, acids, rare poisons, the dried leaves of exotic plants. The middle of the room was dominated by a set of armchairs, which were always scattered, when McConnell was working, with leather volumes randomly pulled down from the bookcases.

  These bookcases were in the gallery on the second level, which contained row upon row of scientific texts. One reached them by a very narrow winding staircase made of marble, with cherubim cut into its sides.

  McConnell’s career had been proof, in its way, of the limits of money. It was Toto’s family’s enormous fortune that had allowed him to stock this laboratory, this library, but for all the years he’d had it, the pleasure he got from his work there had never equaled the pleasure he derived from his work as a practicing physician. This had been his vocation before his marriage, but her family had been too great to welcome a doctor into its midst and had been adamant that he give up his position. In the decade between that forfeiture of his career and the last year, when he had started working at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, McConnell had never seemed quite himself—no matter the luxury of his laboratory. It gave Lenox a sense of relief to know that his friend, who was inclined to drink in low times, was once again content; as for Toto’s family, McConnell now quite sensibly ignored their protests. Toto herself was a willful person but more significantly a loving one. She had come to accept the new job for what it was: the best of outcomes for her husband’s happiness.

  McConnell led Lenox to the tables, where a glass bowl was full of a dark red liquid. “This is wine,” he said.

  “While you’re working?” asked Lenox.

  McConnell smiled. “When I boarded the Gunner and saw that there were no markings on Wakefield’s body, no wounds, the first thing I looked at was—”

  “His hands,” said Lenox, who had known the doctor’s methods for a long time.

  “A good guess, but no—his gums. They can often tell us something about a poisoning. As they did this time, though not in the way I had expected. On both his upper and lower gums, very near the teeth, there were thin, steel gray lines. It was a textbook example of the Burton line.”

  “What is the Burton line? What poison does it mean?”

  “That’s what’s so interesting—I would never have expected to find the Burton line on the gums of an aristocrat. It indicates an exposure to lead.”

  Lenox frowned. Lead. “Is that so unlikely?”

  “Yes, it is. He was not a painter—they will go on using lead in their paints, no matter how they are warned—and he was not a metalworker. Fortunately they gave me this tissue sample.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Something called litharge of gold. It’s very definite confirmation that Lord Wakefield ingested lead. And I would be surprised if it hadn’t caused his death.”

  “Why would he have ingested lead? Doesn’t it taste awful?”

  “I told you before that lead poisoning is no longer very common. It is nevertheless famous enough that I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The reason is that for twenty centuries or so, since the Romans began the practice, human beings, idiots that we are, adulterated our wine with lead. More specifically, with this litharge of gold, which is in fact not gold but a brickred color. It sweetens sour wine and makes the flavor of it more even, or at least that’s the conventional belief. Unfortunately it also kills you. Though I should say that first it drives you insane. Nearly every mad Roman emperor was probably suffering in some measure from lead poisoning. It’s only been in the last seventy years or so that we’ve persuaded people to stop using lead in their wine and port. The benefit to the public health has been dramatic, genuinely significant.”

  “So he was poisoned by wine?”

  “I believe so, based on his stomach tissue. And for the first time in two millennia you can feel fairly sure that it can’t have been accidental.”

  “Wouldn’t it have tasted bitter, this wine, if it were full enough of lead to kill him just like that?” asked Lenox.

  “Ah, I should have been more clear. The line I described on Wakefield’s gums doesn’t indicate simply that he was exposed to lead. It indicates that he’s suffered from chronic exposure to lead. I believe someone had been poisoning him slowly for many weeks, perhaps even for months.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was following this illuminating discussion with McConnell that Lenox finally returned to Hampden Lane after his long day, to find Lady Jane and Toto together with their daughters. When Toto had gone he ate a quick bite and then sat in his study, thinking. Lady Jane stayed with him there to keep him company, reading next to the fire at the end of the room, occasionally closing her eyes to drowse. Lenox, for his part, was wide awake. His mind was working, working. Eventually he pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and began to write up his notes from his day’s activity.

  A slow, methodical poisoning—it stood in stark contrast to the brutal and instantaneous method of Jenkins’s murder. Lenox wondered what Wakefield’s habits of drinking had been. According to his butler he had generally eaten lunch at the Beargarden and supper at the Cardplayers. It would be necessary to inquire there about his drinking habits—indeed, they might even have his bills,
showing what he drank and when. Lenox jotted down a word to remind himself to check this.

  “Why would the lead have suddenly killed him just now, so soon after Jenkins’s death?” Lenox had asked McConnell in the laboratory. “I mean to say, if the poisoning had gone on for weeks, mightn’t he have died at any moment?”

  McConnell shook his head. “By the time he died, he would have been inured to the taste of the lead in his wine, I expect, and whoever was poisoning him could have increased the dosage enough to kill him outright. His body would have been so toxic at that stage that any little extra amount would have pushed him over the edge.”

  “A brilliant method if you have the time,” said Lenox. “I’m surprised I’ve never come across it. An ideal means for a wife to kill a husband, I would have thought.”

  Replaying this conversation in his mind, Lenox looked across at his own wife and smiled. “Jane, if you had to kill me, how would you do it?”

  Without opening her eyes, she said, “I’d have elephants stomp you. That’s how they do it in India.”

  “It seems unnecessarily harsh.”

  “You shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.” She opened her eyes and looked across at him pointedly, but couldn’t keep a straight face, and laughed. “I could never kill you. What on earth do you mean by asking, Charles?”

  “If I weren’t me and you weren’t you, I suppose I mean.”

  “Thank goodness that’s not the case.”

  “But if it were? Would you poison me?”

  “I don’t want to think about it. This sort of thing never came up when you were in Parliament.” She looked up at the clock on his mantel. “It’s late, too.”

  He stood up from his desk and went across the room to give her a kiss on the forehead. “You ought to go up to bed.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”