The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  “I have to go out again.”

  “Do be safe.”

  “I will, I will. You have my word.”

  She squeezed his hand and stood up from the chair, her copy of Middlemarch under her arm. She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  After Jane had gone to bed Lenox sat at his desk again, ruminating about the case. He felt as if there were too much to do. He mustn’t lose track of Jenkins. That was crucial.

  At ten forty, tired, he departed Hampden Lane in the carriage, his horses apparently again in full health. He stopped in front of Mitchell’s, where he saw Dallington just about to enter. “John,” he called from the carriage.

  Dallington turned. “Ah, there you are.”

  “Let’s go to Wakefield’s instead. I’ll explain on the way what McConnell has told me.”

  “Right-o.”

  It was too late to expect Wakefield’s servants still to be awake, and the house was mostly dim, so when Lenox rang the bell it was with the expectation that there would be a wait of some time. Instead the door opened almost immediately. Wakefield’s butler, Smith, was still dressed for his job.

  He bowed slightly. “Your Lordship, Mr. Lenox, how do you do. Can I help you?”

  “We had a few more questions we wanted to ask you, and perhaps the other servants.”

  “By all means, sir—though I should say at the moment Lord Wakefield’s cousin is here, Mr. Theodore Murray. I have been attending to him.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “I am given to understand that he is arranging Lord Wakefield’s business matters,” said Smith quietly. They were standing in the front hallway. “In preparation for the new Lord Wakefield’s arrival tomorrow—my employer’s son. He has been informed of his father’s death and is coming to London by an early train.”

  This was the Earl of Calder, at Cambridge, Lenox recalled. “We needn’t come all the way in,” said Lenox. “We are primarily curious about His Lordship’s daily habits, and you might just answer our questions about those.”

  “His daily habits, sir?”

  “His meals, for instance. You mentioned that he often ate out.”

  “Not breakfast, sir.”

  “He ate breakfast here every morning?”

  “Yes, sir, in his rooms. He took two pots of tea and four eggs, poached on toast. It was a very regular thing with him, sir.”

  “And his lunch? His supper?”

  “I don’t think His Lordship ate either meal here more than a dozen times in the year I’ve been working for him, sir. He was very constant at the Beargarden and the Cardplayers.”

  “Did he return home in between? Did he have a glass of wine before he went out?”

  “He sometimes returned home between lunch and supper, sometimes not, sir. As for a glass of wine—no, his preference before supper was for ale. We always keep a great supply of it from Hatting Hall, where they make it themselves. It’s very strong.”

  “Do you know if he drank wine at supper, at his club?” asked Lenox.

  “I couldn’t say, sir. He didn’t generally drink wine, though I know that he was fond of port, Lord Wakefield. He had it by the case from Berry Brothers. He kept it in his rooms.”

  Lenox looked at Dallington. Port—that could be it. “Could we see the bottles of port he drank?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you like me to fetch it, or would you like to come up to his rooms for yourselves?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather we went up.”

  Wakefield’s rooms were tidy and as impersonal as the rest of the house, with the exception of his desk, which was covered with loose snuff, chits of paper, all manner of debris. Smith, observing them take in the state of the desk, said, “We were under orders not to disturb it.”

  “Did Nicholson and his men look through the desk?” asked Dallington.

  “Oh, yes, sir, very thoroughly.”

  Near the fireplace in the second of the two rooms Wakefield used for himself was a stand of liquor, and there on top of it was a bottle of ruby port. Lenox opened it and sniffed it. “Could I take this?” he asked.

  Smith looked doubtful. “Perhaps if you could ask Mr. Murray?” he said. “Only I know that port is very expensive, sometimes, sir.”

  Lenox had a small glass phial in his valise. “Here’s a bargain for you—I’ll take a thimbleful and leave the bottle.”

  “Oh, in that case—yes, that should be fine, sir.” As Lenox shook the bottle hard (McConnell had told him the litharge of gold might sift down to the bottom) and then took his sample, Smith went on, saying, “You can see, under here, sirs, where he kept the rest of the case.”

  He opened the cabinet to reveal a wooden crate with an open top, which must have held six bottles once. Now it held two. Dallington pulled it out and inspected it. “It’s stamped with Berry Brothers’ seal on the side, right here,” he said.

  Lenox closed the phial, put it in his valise, and took the crate from Dallington. He held it under the lamp to look more closely. “Look,” he said to Dallington, “an invoice.”

  Glued to the underside of the box was a sheet of paper. Lenox pulled it off and read it. His eyes widened, and he looked at Dallington. “What?” asked the young lord.

  “Look at the order.”

  Dallington took the sheet of paper. After a moment his eyes, too, widened. “We need to take this as well,” he said to Smith.

  “As you please, sir,” said the butler. “It was only that I didn’t want anything that the heirs … that might be of value.”

  Not much later Dallington and Lenox walked out along the street, passing the convent as they strolled toward Regent’s Park. It was not quite eleven thirty. “I’m disappointed in Nicholson and his men that they missed the invoice,” Lenox said.

  “It was glued to the underside of the box, in fairness.”

  Soon they met the inspector at the gate, where he was waiting, and together they took up their chilly post. They stayed until twelve thirty, but there was never any sign of Francis.

  Softening the disappointment of this, however, was that invoice, which they showed Nicholson before they went their separate ways—for it gave the address of the person who had bought the potentially fatal port that Lord Wakefield had spent his last weeks of life drinking: one Andrew H. Francis, of Mornington Crescent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next morning at the offices of Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire, the four principals of the agency gathered for their weekly meeting. Though they had been awake late, Lenox and Dallington were the first two to arrive, as if in accidental obeisance to the order of their names upon the brass plate outside the office’s door. They sat and were halfway through a cup of tea by the time Polly and LeMaire entered the room, each with a polite hello.

  It was the loveliest day yet of 1876—the sweet o’ the year, as Shakespeare had called this time in April. The sun shone a mild gold through the lightly shifting trees, and the streets below, still wet from a cleaning, sparkled brightly. The mood of the city on mornings like this one was somehow brotherly, amiable, ineffably unified. Through the windows of their second-story offices it was possible to see the small conversations that took place on every city street—the cabman calling down a joke to the fruit seller, the banter between a nurse pushing a pram and a constable swinging his whistle. Sometimes Lenox loved London very much indeed.

  Polly seemed tired. Anixter was speaking to Pointilleux in the next room, loudly enough to be overheard, and as she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Mrs. O’Neill had made she looked testily toward the door. Lenox watched concern fall across Dallington’s face.

  LeMaire, meanwhile, had a large sheaf of papers. He set these down on the table in front of himself.

  “New business first, then?” said Dallington, when Polly sat down. “Charles has a case that we’re working on together, as you both know. Polly, I hope you’ve been able to manage without me?”

&nb
sp; “Somehow,” she said, though she smiled to reduce the bite in this reply.

  “I have a piece of firm business first, if you would not mind,” said LeMaire.

  “You do?” asked Dallington. “What about the order of the meeting?”

  It was usually LeMaire who was most conscientious about sticking to the schedule by which these meetings always ran. “My patience is not long at the moment,” said LeMaire. From his sheaf of papers he pulled a newspaper. “I wonder if you have seen the Telegraph this morning.”

  “No,” said Dallington.

  From her eyes, Lenox could tell that Polly had. It wasn’t fatigue in her eyes, it was worry. He hadn’t—he’d woken late and quickly absorbed the main headlines of the Times on the way here, but the other papers were arranged in a neat half-moon on his desk, awaiting him. “We are mentioned,” said LeMaire. “Not as favorably as might be wished.”

  Lenox’s heart fell. LeMaire had slid the paper across the table in the general direction of the other three, and Lenox took it.

  Former MP Takes Hand in Jenkins Investigation

  Hon. Charles Lenox making personal search for murderer

  Interference feared detrimental to inquiry

  Quickly he ran his eyes over the text of the article. One paragraph stung particularly:

  Ironically, it was Jenkins himself who warned the Telegraph, in an on-the-record interview shortly before his death, that “London criminals have more than enough to fear from Scotland Yard already, and London citizens more than enough protection. The firm is a reckless venture.”

  It was a new quote, one that hadn’t appeared in the previous article. Lenox passed over it as best he could and finished reading. “There is no mention at all that I’m a member of a firm,” he said when he was done. “Nor that our services have been retained by the Yard.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Dallington.

  LeMaire’s eyes widened slightly, as if Dallington’s incredulity at this unfairness did him no very great credit. “Did you expect it would be?” he asked.

  Dallington took the paper and looked at it for fifteen or twenty seconds, then offered it to Polly. She declined it. “There’s no mention of all of Charles’s past successes,” said the young lord. “Nor ours, for that matter. We must write a letter.”

  LeMaire sighed heavily. “If the three of you choose to write a letter, of course you must.”

  Now, for the first time, Polly looked alert. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Oh!” said Lenox. She had gotten there more rapidly than he had. “LeMaire, surely not.”

  Dallington looked up and down the table. “What?”

  LeMaire nodded, his face set with forbidding determination. “I must leave the firm at the end of April,” he said. “That will give me time to conclude my open business here. I will pay my quarter of the rent through the end of May, which should be ample time to let this space and find a new one, should the three of you wish to move into smaller premises, but I must ask that my name be taken off the firm’s letterhead at the end of the month.”

  “This is hasty,” said Lenox. “It’s only been three months. All businesses struggle at the start.”

  LeMaire shook his head. “I have very great respect for all three of you, but I do not believe the business is viable. The idea was good—but, if I may speak frankly, three cannot support four, and when, in addition, the fourth brings only negative attention to the firm … no, it is not sustainable, Mr. Lenox, I am sorry. I have the greatest respect for your achievements of the past, as I say.”

  There was silence in the room. LeMaire lifted his cup of tea and took a sip from it, meeting their gazes levelly, awaiting their replies.

  It was Dallington who spoke first. He stood up. “Good riddance, then,” he said. “Best of luck, and all that, of course. For my part, I think we’ll be better off without you.”

  “Since I account for thirty-eight percent of the firm’s receipts I cannot agree,” said LeMaire. “Mrs. Buchanan accounts for twenty-nine percent. You for twenty-two percent, Lord John. Nearly a quarter, I will grant you.”

  LeMaire had the politeness to stop there, but nobody needed to do the math for Lenox. Eleven percent, and that included the cases that somehow Lady Jane had arranged for him. He felt his face get red. What a mistake it was to have left Parliament. He wished the earth would open up and swallow him.

  “I really do think we just need a little bit more time,” said Polly now. “And I think the first thing we need to do, by hook or by crook, is to arrange some kind of favorable press. I don’t care if we have to pay someone for it.”

  “I cannot see it helping, unfortunately,” said LeMaire.

  Polly persisted. “Why not agree to reconvene this meeting in two months’ time, at the start of June? If you feel as you did, you can leave with immediate effect, and with no hard feelings.”

  “With immediate effect, anyway,” said Dallington shortly.

  “I really do think things will look up,” said Polly, ignoring Dallington and focusing on LeMaire.

  LeMaire opened the door and called out something in brisk French. After a moment his nephew came in. LeMaire invited him into the room and closed the door behind him. “Pointilleux, what are they saying about us, the people in our profession that you’ve met in London since you came to live with me? My nephew attends a great many professional luncheons, you see, as part of his training.”

  Pointilleux thought for a moment, raising his eyes, and kept them there as he said, in his methodical way, “They say the firm is run very bad. They say the firm is four chickens without even one head. They say it is all some jokes, they say it is … I don’t search the word in my brain … incompetentente.”

  “‘Incompetent’ is the word in English,” said Lenox.

  “Incompetent,” Pointilleux repeated brightly, pleased to have learned something new.

  LeMaire raised his hands, as if his case were made, and then stood. “I will speak with Mrs. Buchanan about the financial arrangements of my departure, since she has the business head among the remaining partners—no offense to either of you, rather take it as a compliment, please, Mrs. Buchanan. Otherwise, I hope when we meet it will be as friends, despite this unpleasant conclusion to our professional association. Do any of you wish to ask me anything?”

  There was silence, and after a beat the Frenchman bowed and left the room. None of the three remaining partners looked at each other.

  There was still one surprise left in the meeting, however. Pointilleux, who had been sitting in a chair near the door, placed some feet back from the table where the principals always sat, rose. “For my part, I would like to stay,” he said. “I have observe you all very closely, and though I respect my uncle, I think the firm will be nevertheless a”—here he groped for the correct phrase in his brain, and apparently found one from the West End stage posters he must have seen—“a marvelous hit for the ages.”

  Now they did exchange glances, and then Dallington said, speaking for all of them, “We’d love to have you, of course.”

  Pointilleux smiled and said, “Excellent,” then left the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Nicholson’s team had examined Wakefield’s house the day before, they had also interviewed each of the members of the marquess’s staff more extensively. As Lenox and Dallington rode across London in a hansom, on their way toward Mornington Crescent, they looked over the notes.

  All five servants agreed on Francis’s appearance, albeit with some minor points of variation. The cook—who likely would have had the least opportunity to see him, as Dallington pointed out—felt passionately sure that the scattering of moles on his face was on his forehead, though the other four placed them on his cheek. (No one was sure whether it was left or right.) This was the most significant physical marker of their suspect. He was of average height and build. All five servants said he had dark hair, and the three women called him “not bad-looking,” “dead handsome,” and �
�a right Billy boy” in their respective interviews.

  “What is a Billy boy?” asked Lenox.

  “I’m dismayed that you think I would know,” said Dallington.

  Lenox asked one of the servants, for clarification: “a man prettier than a woman” was the elliptical answer, and left him contemplating what it might mean.

  Francis was also, apparently, an unusual dresser. It was Smith, the butler, who was best able to articulate this in his interview, perhaps because he had been responsible for dressing Wakefield and therefore understood clothes better than the other four. According to Smith, Francis never wore a tie, but had some sort of bright scarf at his neck generally, and his pants were cut very loose, almost as if for summer lightness, even in the winter. All five servants mentioned that his clothing was odd. The footman used the word “poncey,” which was new to Lenox. It meant effeminate, according to Dallington, and then Lenox recalled that prostitutes sometimes called the idle men they kept with their earnings, their beaux, “ponces.”

  The final detail of interest to Lenox was that Francis had, apparently, been a generous tipper. Both maids and the footman recalled as much, and Smith, after an embarrassed refusal to answer at first, had eventually admitted that he received a pound from Francis at Christmas. It indicated money; also exceptional closeness to Wakefield. Lenox occasionally tipped the servants at houses where he spent a great deal of time, but only if they were the employees of very intimate friends. It would have been inappropriate otherwise.

  They had arranged to rendezvous with Nicholson at 11:00 A.M. in Carlow Street, just around the corner from Mornington Crescent, thinking it was less conspicuous if two carriages didn’t pull up precisely in front of Francis’s house.

  Nicholson was waiting for them in front of the Crowndale Arms. “Gentlemen,” he said, an agreeable look on his thin face. “Shall we make an arrest?”

  “Thank you for letting us come along.”

  “Of course. You have the order form from the box of port?”