“I’m not certain,” he said. “Perhaps the establishment of LeMaire’s firm has raised awareness that such a thing as a detective agency exists—and that means ours, too. A rising tide, and all that. Or I suppose it may be that after the murders, our names appeared in the papers often enough to be noticed.”
“I give Polly the credit, personally.”
“Thank you, my dear. It’s nice always to have one ally.”
Lady Jane laughed. She looked very lovely, a slender champagne flute in her hand, the falling light capturing the soft contours of her face. “No, I give you the credit,” she said. “I only meant that she always seems to know exactly what to do.”
Polly had been at Hampden Lane fairly often in the past few weeks, as had Dallington, a few small quick meetings at first turning into a series of teas and suppers there, until it became a kind of office away from the office. They had sat in Lenox’s study for many hours, and though they had always liked each other, something about this second space, combined perhaps with their revitalized business, had knitted the three of them closer together. Even Dallington and Polly were becoming easier with each other again. Partly that was because of Lady Jane, who always interrupted their meetings to bring them sandwiches, or drinks, or to tell Lenox something—interruptions that made the meetings feel homelike, informal, but also somehow more productive. It all seemed very natural for the first time, this business of running a detective agency.
Lenox reached over and put his hand on Sophia’s head, though she pushed it away irritably and kept rocking. He smiled. “Yes, she’s splendid. To be honest I don’t think we could have done it without her, Dallington and I. We both like the detective work, but she sees the whole picture. Thank goodness for Atkinson, to take just one example.”
Despite all of this, the agency was still battling uphill. Though Lenox had taken several additional meetings after that first marathon of a day, they had only produced one more client, and the massive initial infusion of money they had received would have to be carefully apportioned out over the course of the year, would have to pay for the salaries of the new employees, the trips to visit their clients, the offices. Lenox and Dallington also continued, rather guiltily, to take cases for free when the clients couldn’t afford to pay. Polly—more practical—showed such softness far more rarely.
Then, at the end of May, something disquieting happened: LeMaire poached one of their clients, a mill owner named Templeton, the Member for Stratford. His first quarterly payment to them would be his last. “Better rates with Monomark’s fellow, Lenox,” he said when they saw each other at a party. “He told me all about it at Ascot. Same service. It’s the nature of business, you know. I’m sorry to have to leave you.”
Dallington was furious. Polly was more philosophical; she recommended that they meet with their clients to be sure that they were happy with the agency. Still, it made for a worrying week, and a few late nights looking at the books and making lists of possible new clients, until, almost as if the universe had decided to rebalance their luck, something fortuitous happened.
It was on a June morning (a rainy one, at last) just a week before Obadiah Smith’s trial was to begin. The papers were full of the case again, and the Slavonian Club. The journalists all felt sure that Smith would go to prison for a few years, but that it would be impossible to convict him of the murders of Jenkins and Wakefield, as the crown hoped to do. Lenox had pulled out his notes on the case, studying them a thousandth time, searching for some detail to pin Smith to the crimes. The gun—that would have been their best hope, but it had been wiped clean, and packaged in that parcel from Francis. It was maddening. The butler had been too clever for them.
Pointilleux knocked on the door and came in without waiting for an answer. “You have a visitor.”
“Who is it?”
“Someone named Mr. Graham.”
“Graham! Push him in.”
“I will, I will,” said Pointilleux testily. He had been in a bad mood all morning because of dyspepsia caused by the breakfast his landlady had made him. (“The egg in this country are pepper beyond anything reasonable.”) “He is wet with rain, unfortunately.”
Graham was, indeed, wet with rain, but he smiled and put out a hand as Lenox stood and welcomed him in. “What brings you away from Parliament?” asked Lenox. “Look, you’re soaked. Let me ring for tea.”
The office had another new employee, a maid named Mrs. Barry, and a few moments after Lenox asked for it she came in with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits. Graham accepted a cup of tea gratefully, sipping carefully as the steam rose from it.
“Busy at the Commons?” asked Lenox, taking a sip of his own tea.
“There’s a vote later today,” said Graham. “The foreign trade bill.”
“I know. I’ve seen some of the speeches in the papers. You’ve taken on a very great role.”
“Yes,” said Graham, nodding grimly, as if it hadn’t been by choice, or altogether to his liking. “The first time I’ve spoken much.”
“I feel very sorry to have missed your maiden speech. If I had known you meant to give it I would have been in the gallery.”
“It was a necessity at the last moment, unfortunately. Qualls fell ill and had to bow out.”
“And then—the responses.”
Graham smiled dryly. “Yes, quite.”
When Graham had been Lenox’s secretary in Parliament, the other party had spread rumors about his conduct—namely, that he was corrupt. These had seemed plausible perhaps more than they otherwise would have because of Graham’s birth, which was low for anyone intimately involved with England’s national politics. In the last weeks those rumors—quelled when he ran for Parliament—had resurfaced, with oblique mentions in speeches from the other benches. They implied that certain foreign powers, particularly Russia, had bought Graham’s influence.
“Is there something I can do?” asked Lenox. “Someone to whom I can speak?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” said Graham. “We can handle them.”
Lenox nodded. Graham, more than anyone else he knew, would be able to manage his position in the brutal joust of Parliament. “But then why have you come? Not that I don’t wish it were a more frequent occurrence.”
“I wonder if you recall that form you filled out when we had lunch several weeks ago?” asked Graham. “The very long one?”
“Yes—the exit interview, as it were. They wanted to know how much port I drink, which I thought intrusive of them. Not that it’s very much.”
“I’m afraid I deceived you,” said Graham. The word “sir” still hovered toward the end of the sentence, without appearing. He reached down into his valise and pulled out a thin sheaf of papers. “It was a questionnaire that the House rules subcommittee wished you to fill out.”
Lenox frowned. “The House rules subcommittee?”
“We would like to offer you a new position that has been created only this week. As yet it doesn’t have a name, but you would be the official house detectives of the Commons and the Lords.”
Lenox’s eyes widened, and for a moment he was struck dumb. “Never, really?”
Graham smiled. “Of course, we have army officers and Metropolitan Police stationed around the building.”
“I remember them.”
“But there are as many small and large crimes in Parliament as in any other concern involving several thousand men, and the Yard is not always as quick as one would like in its response, or indeed its solution of them.” Graham paused and then said delicately, “There would be a retainer of nine hundred pounds a year, and of course any additional expenses would be reimbursed.”
Lenox looked at his old friend, touched. He could tell even glancing at the papers Graham had passed him that this had been his work—his gesture. “I would be honored to accept,” he said. “Thank you. Particularly as it means we might have lunch more often now, too.”
For whatever reason, it was at this moment that Lenox finally belie
ved that the agency was going to succeed. It wasn’t even the money that gave him the feeling. In the next room Polly was meeting with a new client; Dallington was out upon a case, as were Pointilleux and Atkinson; the scratch of different pens rose from the outer office; and in his chest he had a feeling that at last things had clicked into place. It would be easier from here on out. Of course there would be challenges—but not defeats, he felt sure. They would make it.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The morning that Smith’s trial was to begin, Lenox and Dallington had breakfast with Nicholson in a small, noisy restaurant near the courthouse. They hadn’t seen him in some time. He looked tired and flagged down the waiter several times to ask for more coffee.
“We’ve been trying desperately to find further evidence against Smith,” he said. “The case has been given a very high priority at the Yard, as you can imagine—a police inspector and a marquess. No limit to the budget or the manpower at my disposal. But for all that, we haven’t been able to find definite proof. There is Armbruster’s word, but even he didn’t see the murder directly—and of course he’s cooperating with us to avoid punishment himself, which makes him less than an ideal witness. Smith must be a genius, I think, to have come through this foul situation without a mark on him.”
“He’s been both clever and lucky,” said Lenox. “Anyone in the world might have seen the murder on Portland Place.”
“Sister Grethe comes to mind as a possible witness,” said Dallington dryly.
“Too bad her trial begins today, too,” said Nicholson. Gwen Smith was also at the Old Bailey. “I can’t imagine she’ll escape prison, at least. That’s a minor consolation.”
“You have him on the Slavonian, too, though?” asked Lenox.
“Oh, there’s no question at all about that. Dozens of witnesses, each more eager than the last to point a finger at him. The difficulty is that it won’t put him behind bars for more than three or four years. That’s the law. What’s heartbreaking is that it’s probably the precise punishment he would have served if Jenkins and Wakefield had lived. He’s saved himself nothing, and cost them a great deal—Jenkins especially, of course.”
The waiter set down an extra plate of buttered toast at the center of their table, and Dallington took a piece, tearing it into bites moodily. The clink and clatter of silverware and the din of cheerful voices was all around, a London morning, but the three of them sat silent for some time.
At the courthouse there was a push of journalists standing by the doors, shouting questions at the witnesses and solicitors who entered. Fleet Street would use any excuse it could find to bring the Slavonian Club back into its headlines, the story’s lurid mixture of aristocracy, money, and sex selling out editions faster than anything else had in 1876, every tutting curate and bored housemaid desperate to devour each minor new detail that the press could winkle out of the case.
“Mr. Lenox! Will he hang, Mr. Lenox!” cried out one chap, and another at the same moment said, “Nicholson! Inspector Nicholson! Is it true as you were a client as well, and you and Armbruster hushed it all!”
Nicholson flushed and turned. “Don’t answer,” Dallington advised.
At the door there was a small line, and Lenox found himself waiting behind a thin-shouldered man in an expensive cloak. The man turned as Lenox came up behind him. It was Monomark.
“Lord Monomark,” said the detective, smiling faintly. He was surprised. “Are you sitting in the galleries?”
Monomark had brilliant, predatory eyes, in a thin, ascetic face. “Surprised you’re here,” he said, “after all that our Inspector Jenkins said about you in the papers. Wonderful quotes, those, honest and forthright. A testament to the chap. Though they must have stung, I expect. Dear, dear.”
It did sting—and the Telegraph had reprinted the quotes that very morning. Lenox only widened his smile and said, “They ask you to come when you solve the case, you see. I’m not surprised LeMaire has yet to learn that, however.”
Monomark flushed—he was not a man whose jibes were often answered. “We’ll see you out of business within the year. Mark my words.”
“Did you hear that we’d been named official investigators for the Houses of Parliament?” Lenox asked mildly. “Mrs. Buchanan is there even now. More work than we know what to do with. Tell LeMaire we’re happy to hire him back, when he’s out of a job.”
In another lifetime, Lenox probably wouldn’t have made his words so barbed. Business had changed him, however. Monomark, who no doubt thought of him as part of the soft circle of aristocrats to which he had gained only halting and uneasy entry, seemed to reassess him with those eyes. “Parliament,” he said. Lenox could tell he hadn’t heard of their hiring. “A pack of fools. Everything you need to know about the House of Lords you can learn from the fact that three is a quorum.”
“The house in which you sit, if I’m not mistaken, My Lord.”
“I didn’t—”
But what Monomark did or didn’t do would have to wait, because just then, behind them, there was a piercing cry on the steps. “She’s dead!” It was one of the runners, who were able to enter the cells with messages. “Gwen Smith is dead! I saw the note! Story to the highest bidder!”
There was a pause, and then the full pack of journalists sprinted toward the boy. Monomark almost looked as if he wanted to join them, and for an instant Lenox liked the old man, his will still so bent upon success, upon victory. “False, I’m sure,” he said.
Behind Lenox, Nicholson pushed his way through. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Enough of this. Scotland Yard—yes, this is my badge, stare at it if you like, but quickly, quickly.”
It was the truth: Obadiah Smith’s mother was dead. She had poisoned herself. It would be several hours before the coroner confirmed the cause of death, but he didn’t have to bother to convince the detectives—she had left a note.
In it, she confessed to every crime of which her son might have been guilty.
And then I did take the pistol and shoot Inspector Jenkins from short range in the head … packaged the pistol in a parcel under the fraudulent seal of an invented person of my own invention, Andrew Francis … never informed my son that the port had been poisoned … I know he believed the club located at 75 Portland Place to be a wholly legal business … I take my own life out of guilt and ask only that he be fully exonerated and allowed to live his life …
The note ended with an entreaty, incredible on its face, that the new marquess of Wakefield retain Smith as his butler. It’s only fair, Your Lordship, said the note.
Nine days later, Obadiah Smith received a sentence of two months’ imprisonment in Newgate. He also received a hundred pounds from the Telegraph to write a story: INSIDE THE SLAVONIAN CLUB: AN INNOCENT’S TALE. In prison that money, in addition to whatever else he had saved, afforded him a life of luxury, in particular the most sumptuous thing a person in his position could buy—privacy. For a few extra coins, as well, Miss Randall went to visit him each night. Smith was working on a book, from what the guards said. It would expand upon the article, profess his innocence, lament his mother’s misdeeds. And—what guaranteed that it would make him a small fortune—it would name the names of the aristocrats who had frequented the club.
The same coroner who had determined that Gwen Smith poisoned herself informed Nicholson, one morning, that she had been in a very advanced stage of illness, with mere months to live, perhaps even weeks. Lenox was a father, and just as he had felt a fleeting tincture of admiration for Monomark, so he did for Gwen Smith. It must have taken mettle to plan and then carry out her own death, all to shield her son.
Of course, he was also distraught. After the trial, he, Dallington, and Nicholson took their carriage to Jenkins’s house and sat with Madeleine Jenkins for an hour. They apologized for their failure. To Lenox’s surprise she seemed better, however, even, when her children entered the room just before they left, allowing a smile to appear on her face. Perhaps he had underestimated her
resilience.
“Did we ever contribute to the fund for the family?” asked Dallington as they left, in a low voice.
“The firm did,” said Lenox.
“It’s not enough.”
“No.”
And it wasn’t. When they returned to the office in Chancery Lane that afternoon, Lenox fetched a small slate blackboard he had in his office. He went and hung it by the door and carefully wrote two names on it:
William Anson
Obadiah Smith
The two men who had eluded him since he returned to detection. The agency would carry on, obviously, and his own work in the next months might lead him anywhere, to any corner of England or the world—and how thrilling that seemed, how distant from the dry closeted workings of Parliament!—but sooner or later he would repay the debt he owed them.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
In June the citizens of London’s leafy western precincts scattered off toward the country, the sea air of Devon, the rolling downs of Yorkshire, where they found slower days, longer evenings, earlier cocktail hours. But Lenox and Lady Jane remained in London for the first weeks of the month, primarily so that he could go to work every morning, and on the month’s first Saturday night they had their friends for supper. Toto was at her father’s house with George; McConnell, though, had remained through the weekend, busy doing rounds at the children’s hospital in Great Ormond Street, and he came early to sit in Lenox’s study and drink a glass of hock.
The windows were open, allowing in a breeze and the noise of voices and footsteps from the street. “Have you seen anything of LeMaire since he started the new firm?” McConnell asked.
“Not a sight. Pointilleux still dines with him every week, and says he’s happy with the bargain he struck. I’m sure it’s remunerative, at least.”
“Are you sure the nephew isn’t spying?”
“Very sure. For one thing he’s the most literal human I ever met. For another we gave him a raise in pay, and a great deal more responsibility than his uncle is willing to give him. He has a whole pile of newspaper cuttings with the articles in which his name appeared after the Portland Place business. Keeps them in his top drawer, thinks none of the clerks know about it.”
The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery Page 25