The Vanishing Man

by Charles Finch

  “We have an excellent white wine from Vigny on ice, sir.”

  “Perfect.”

  On the wrought-iron fence where Lenox had been standing there was a wooden box bolted to the rails, which said in gold stencil TO INSURE PROMPT SERVICE. The waiter pointedly did not look at it, and Lenox just as pointedly did not look at the waiter but found a half-shilling in his breast pocket and dropped it clattering into the box.

  “Thank you, sir,” the waiter said.

  These boxes had shown up in all the tea gardens a few years before. The faddish thing to do was make an acronym of what the box said—to insure prompt service, “tips.”

  The wine was nicely sharp. The beautiful music continued. And the garden’s flowers were in splendid form, huge purple irises bedded among the tiny speckled white flowers that they called London Pride, though Lenox’s mother had always called them Whimsy, and the maids at Lenox House—Sussex girls—said everyone knew they were called Look Up and Kiss Me.

  After fifteen minutes or so of quiet meditation, Lenox drained his glass, stood up, and started back through the waning daylight to Hampden Lane.

  He arrived at his door and unlocked it, calling as he entered, “Lancelot, hold your blasted fire!”

  His cousin—who had the unsettling gift of pretending that nothing had occurred prior to the very instant in which you happened to be conversing—said, “Fire?”

  “You know quite well what I mean.” Lenox paused, staring warily at the boy. “How is Mr. Templeton?”

  “On Saturdays we have dancing lessons from Mr. and Mrs. Treway.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I jolly well hope you behaved yourself.”

  “We did, because Mrs. Treway had a cane.”

  Lenox frowned. That didn’t sound quite right, even for Lancelot. “Did she cane you?”

  “Oh, no. But you have to carry it if you misbehave. You look a fearful fool, and there are people everywhere, you know. Everyone being on hols. There must have been fifty people at the dance hall.”

  Lancelot was already turning away—his lair was the back garden—but he stopped. “I’ll bet you five pence you don’t know the Queen’s name,” he said.

  “Show me the five pence.”

  Lancelot pulled it out. “Now you show me.”

  “I don’t need to. Alexandrina.”

  Lancelot’s face fell. He handed over the coin. “That’s ten pence I’ve lost today on that. I was sure it was Victoria, but a boy from Marlborough had a little card about her coronation.”

  “I know for a fact that Edmund gave you four shillings, so I don’t feel badly for you in the slightest.”

  Lancelot grinned. “See you soon,” he said.

  “That always sounds like a threat when you say it, you know,” Lenox shouted after him.

  He checked his watch. It was just past seven. He decided that he would dine out as he had planned after all. Many of his friends would be at the party, including Lady Jane, their friend Hugh, perennially lovelorn, and possibly even Edmund.

  He changed and left by cab, stopping in at his club beforehand for a drink and a game of billiards. In the bar he ran into an old acquaintance from Oxford, a happy fellow named Crisp, who would lift anyone’s spirits, and they split a cheerfully banter-filled pair of games before Lenox had to beg off at about five till the hour.

  On his way out, though, Lenox saw someone he hadn’t expected at all: the Duke of Dorset, walking straight toward him at a rapid clip.

  White’s was the most exclusive club in London; in the front hall at the moment Lenox could see several people he knew, including the 2nd Earl of Munster, whose grandfather had been King William the Fourth; George Byng, one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisors; and half a dozen other illustrious gentlemen who were preparing, themselves, to scatter into the fashionable dining rooms and salons of the West End that evening.

  “Good evening, Your Grace,” Lenox said, when there could no longer be any question that the peer was approaching him specifically.

  The rigid set of the duke’s thin, aristocratic face now, his hands holding his cane behind his back, all bespoke his distress.

  “I was dining privately but heard you were here,” the duke said loudly. “I came to find you. I wanted to let you know that you are released from your position.”

  There was a gasp and a murmur. No business was to be conducted at White’s. All eyes were fixed on the duke. “Excuse me, Your Grace?” said Lenox.

  “You are sacked. You have led me into disaster.”

  Lenox was trembling. He had to act forcefully, which was not his strength.

  But when he spoke it was in a loud, strong voice. “In the first place, if you insist upon discussing such matters here, I never worked for you. In the second, if you are in any way implying that I was at fault for or complicit in your disappearance, I reject the claim outright, and suggest we go jointly to Scotland Yard right now to take it up with them.” He gestured around the room. “All of these men are my witnesses that that offer stands, and will not be withdrawn.”

  The duke’s face did not change—he was too well conditioned for that—but in his eyes was a flare of panic.

  “I am implying none of that nonsense,” he said stiffly. “I am merely letting you know that you are superfluous to my needs. It was a mistake to bring a commoner into a family matter anyhow.”

  Lenox stared him in the eye. “I was taught by my late father never to let a man feel his inferiority of rank to my own,” he said at last.

  There were more murmurs around the front hall. Lenox’s father was remembered at White’s. “I cannot pretend to care what you were taught,” Dorset replied.

  “No, I suppose that good manners are not incumbent upon one so exalted as a duke. Good evening, Your Grace.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lenox left, hot-cheeked, striding fast and unthinking across the genteel streets around White’s in his top hat and Saturday tails, furious, sick with the feeling that he had just had an experience of great consequence but couldn’t yet tell how it had gone.

  His feet took him automatically to the house where he was to dine, a trek of thirty minutes or so—and indeed word of the encounter had beaten him there. By tremendous good fortune it was Lady Jane he happened to see first, standing in the hallway and handing her light shawl to a footman.

  “Charles!” she said. “Have you been antagonizing dukes?”

  Lenox could feel his own rapid pulse, but he answered as lightly as he was able. “Just the one. Why, did you hear something?”

  “Indeed, I heard of what happened at White’s word for word.”

  “That was quick.”

  Just then, their hostess, Lady Helton, sailed into the room. She was a much-courted widow who owned this small blue gem of a house on Berkeley Square. She was a year younger than Lenox, but she had two children, a husband in the ground, and a grouse farm in Scotland to manage, and thus felt herself to be, comparatively, as old as the Ganges.

  “Mr. Lenox!” she said brightly. “I am so very glad you have come. I hope you can give us at least ten or fifteen minutes—at least—you young men being so much in demand on these nights, with the whole round to make. If only you could stay for dinner!”

  Lenox bowed, knowing that he had been as good as slapped across the face. “You are exceedingly gracious, Lady Helton. In fact I only called to offer my apologies in person, for it emerges that I must dine elsewhere. My cousin Lancelot is in London and needs entertaining. I am most deeply sorry.”

  He had been explicitly invited to dine here—and while, social plans being very flexible, it was within his right to cancel his attendance even while in her house, it was a drastic demotion to be asked to stay for an aperitif when he had been invited to supper.

  It could only mean that she, too, had heard of his words with Dorset.

  “Oh! It is quite—quite all right,” said Lady Helton, palpably relieved. “I am very, very sorry, of course, but I understand.”

 
; Lady Jane stepped forward. “And I’m afraid your footman has been too quick taking my things—I must go with him. I hope you won’t be disappointed, Livia.”

  “Oh! What!” said Lady Helton, in a suddenly flustered voice. Lady Jane was a high prize of a guest. “Jane, no! Certainly, you—you mustn’t go! Both of you must stay!”

  “I have told you we will manage by ourselves,” Lenox said to his friend.

  But Lady Jane was already gesturing to the servant for her shawl. “Nonsense. I’m sorry, Livia,” she said.

  “Jane, you had—I had thought—both of you must stay,” said Lady Helton desperately. “To dine.”

  The first thing Lenox said to Lady Jane, after the door had closed behind them, was that she of course ought to stay. She told him to shut up. They walked together through Berkeley Square, silent, contemplating, one sympathetically, the other miserably, Lenox’s social disgrace.

  “Where shall you go?” Lenox asked. There were a dozen parties that night. “I can take you in a hansom.”

  “Let’s go to Chiltern’s and call it a quit.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” said Lady Jane.

  This was a fallback for their crowd, a friend’s open-ended Saturday salon. “I say, Jane, I am lucky to have you as a friend,” he said humbly. “I know that very well.”

  “Tomorrow I am going to ask you for five pounds to go to the orphans of Surrey, so we shall see then if your tune has changed.”

  He smiled. “Put me down for ten.”

  “No, we don’t want the orphans getting too comfortable,” she said in a childing tone, then smiled back. “Anyway, I never once liked Lady Helton.”

  It was Jane’s independent-mindedness exactly—her integrity—that had made her already an arbiter of London society, at this very precocious age. But Lenox could already tell that, whatever Edmund said about the duke’s credibility, his own position was collapsed. A duke! There were not many of them, and their power was so encompassing, so unimpeachable, that even a few headlines had done nothing whatsoever to diminish Dorset’s. Lenox thought of the famous Henry Moore, Earl of Drogheda, who had been so rich that he wrote his name through Dublin in buildings, each house forming part of a letter, so that a bird high above might have read it. And nothing, still, compared to a fellow like Dorset.

  He stayed at Chiltern’s long enough to be sure that Lady Jane was comfortably situated, then went home and to bed. He had confused nightmares about Bedlam and Shakespeare—and woke, fitfully, throughout the night, as the heat returned.

  The next morning, there was a raft of correspondence on his desk. (The mail was delivered seven times daily in London, even on Sundays.) There were a few concerned letters from friends, many more “concerned” letters from assorted tattletales, and three very gracefully managed disinvitations. One of them stung. It was from an old friend of his father’s, who had asked him to his box at Goodwood for the races in July.

  There was a knock at the door. Mrs. Huggins answered it and returned with Jane, who often dropped round for breakfast. “I’ve had a letter from James,” she said, referring to her husband. “The regiment is on half-rations at the moment for ‘practice,’ he says, in case they are ever under siege. Even he abides by it. Don’t you find that appalling?”

  “Toast?” Lenox said, gesturing toward the silver tray.

  She laughed, took a piece, and bit it. “Yes. I might as well.” She was holding a newspaper, too. “Then there’s this. Someone sent it to me.”

  Lenox looked at the paper, which was one of the lowest rags, the Challenger. “Oh, botheration,” he said.

  She laughed. “Your oaths have stayed quite Sussex, Charles.”

  He didn’t look up. “I am in the presence of a lady.”

  The article she had brought was a scurrilous and one-sided account—emphatically not Lenox’s side—of the conversation he and the duke had had at White’s. It called Lenox as good as a thief, connecting him, at the end, to the missing painting.

  Lenox started reading it aloud in a very serious voice after he had finished, for comic effect. But when he was through he heard a kind of silence and looked at the doorway, where Lancelot was watching them, mouth agape.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “Aren’t you meant to be at church?” Lenox asked, frowning and not a little embarrassed.

  Lady Jane shook her head. “Lancelot, come here.”

  He stepped forward. “Yes?” he said.

  He was in short pants, a blue jacket, a gray tie, and black shoes, ready for church. For one of the few times since his arrival, he looked young to Lenox.

  “Lancelot,” she said, “you must know that the very opposite of this is true. The Duke of Dorset has behaved very badly, and your cousin Charles has behaved very well. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. “But then why—”

  “Because the duke is telling lies about Charles,” she said. She nodded in response to his shocked expression. “Yes. Dukes can tell lies. I know there is probably a boy at your school whose father is a duke, and you all think it the grandest thing going, but dukes lie all the time.”

  “Cor,” said Lancelot, looking at Charles.

  “Go to church,” said Lenox.

  “Must I? It’s an awful lot of rot.”

  Lady Jane, who was still holding Lancelot by the shoulder, patted his cheek. “On a Sunday? For shame. I will walk you out. Charles, can I have that twenty pounds you promised by the end of the day?”

  “I said ten, I thought.”

  “For the orphans, Charles.” She cradled Lancelot’s shoulder. “Take pity.”

  “Fine,” he said moodily. “I’ll send Graham across with a cheque.”

  A long Sunday morning loomed in front of him. He was to go see Bonden the next day and begin their search for the painting but didn’t quite know how to occupy himself until then. There were two small errands he could do—first, see Sir Richard Mayne, who had sent word asking him to visit, and second, check in with a friend he had at the British Library to learn more about Shakespeare, and potentially the portrait.

  Neither seemed particularly promising. Still, at around eleven o’clock he put on a tie. Before he went, he looked through the new batch of letters that had arrived. There were several of interest, so it was some minutes before he saw, to his surprise, that one bore the ducal seal of the Dorsets.

  As it happens I require your further assistance.

  You may call upon me at three o’clock.

  Dorset

  Lenox felt himself flush, fury making his skin tingle. The nerve of it!

  Without a second thought he took up a pen and a piece of his own writing paper, with its own proud seal, from the stand on the front hall table. Why, his family had been on the same plot of land since the Domesday Book. Longer than the duke’s. There was no man he need bow in humility before for reasons of birth. He wrote his reply.

  You may call upon me between five and six o’clock in the afternoon today.

  If I am home I will see you. If you are willing to tell me what you actually know, I may choose to help.

  Lenox

  He sealed the letter and pasted a twopence-blue to it, so that it would reach the duke with all haste, then dropped it in the local letterbox outside before he could reconsider his tone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In this particular mood it was harder than ever to keep the secret of the duke’s kidnapping. But Lenox did so.

  “He has no memory of it?” Mayne asked once more.

  They were sitting in the spacious, well-lit office of the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, with its view of the long avenue to Parliament. In the distance, heavy hammers worked; some tremendous bell was going to be placed in a tower right by Parliament, they said, five or six years hence.

  Lenox leaned down and rubbed his shin, wincing. “He says not.”

  “What is it?” asked Mayne, rather rudely.

  “Oh—nothing. My young cousin is stay
ing with me for a few weeks. He hit me in the shin with a cricket ball.”

  “I hope you gave him a hiding.”

  “Ah,” said Lenox, abashed. “No. I’m afraid everyone is rather soft on him. His father died when he was six.”

  “Oh. Shame.”

  Lenox nodded. He could see Lancelot’s small, confused face as he held Eustacia’s hand by the grave. “Battle against the French.”

  Mayne nodded. “Stout fellow. Died well.”

  “Indeed.”

  “About the duke, then—you two have had a dispute? The Palace has been in touch with me. They want no hint of a scandal, and they are worried there is a political element, given his high rank and his service in the cabinet. The ivory buttons and all that.”

  A cabinet minister’s servants were permitted to wear ivory buttons with the Queen’s seal on their uniforms. “We are meeting this afternoon,” said Lenox. “I am happy to reconcile with him should he apologize.”

  “Do it either way.”

  Lenox nodded ambiguously.

  They sat there speaking for half an hour or so, first discussing Dorset but then moving on to more general subjects, including a number of cases under Mayne’s purview. The commissioner consulted with Lenox in this fashion more often these days, which was gratifying.

  “Tell me something,” said Lenox, just before he left. He was standing with his hat in his hand. “What do you know about Shakespeare?”

  “I once played Ophelia in Hamlet.”

  “Did you!”

  “Yes.” Mayne looked dismal at the recollection. “I was nine, and I was the smallest boy at school. I wouldn’t do it again for a hundredweight of coal. I’ve never been able to tolerate Shakespeare since.”

  Lenox smiled. “How were the reviews?”

  Mayne brightened. “Not bad, in fact, I would have you know! We had it come happy in the wash instead of tragical—they ended up married, I think, Hamlet and Ophelia. The new king died very bloody. Gertrude, too. People liked that. I was a fair soprano then, if I say so.”

  Sir Richard smiled at himself, Lenox laughed, and they shook hands.