“For the moment.”
“You don’t suspect him of—”
“No, no.”
Ward glanced over his shoulder. The cavernous room was empty. “A show-off. Not much account. At school they would have bullied him.”
“Where was he?”
“Eton.”
“Figures,” said Lenox.
Ward smiled; Eton was the great rival to their own school, Harrow, and they both knew it to be, as an article of faith, a place full of weak-kneed, small-beer, mutton-headed coxcombs.
“D’you know who he reminds me of?” said Ward.
“Who?” asked Lenox.
“Wimple.”
That said a great deal. Lord Wimple had been in Ward’s form at Harrow and was widely despised. He played at the sportsman but had no physical courage; often mentioned his family, though of course every Harrovian’s family was of distinction in one variety or other; and boasted incessantly about the lands he would inherit one day.
Lenox had once had a darting realization that Wimple needed to brag, he needed those lands to his name—there was some wound inside he was protecting with his self-importance. Thereafter Lenox had stopped quite hating him. Still, he could never abide his company.
“That bad?” asked Lenox.
“Perhaps not quite. Civil enough to me. I’ve run across him socially once or twice. I’ve no doubt you have as well.”
“Who are his crowd?”
“Horse people,” said Ward immediately.
“Tell me something, would Craig ever have gone into his room? Lord Vere’s?”
“Oh, yes, he usually acted as go-between for His Grace and Corfe.”
“What about this past week?”
“Especially then. Corfe has been ill—his health is the reason we stayed behind, which seems a bitter irony in retrospect for poor Craig—and the duke asked for regular reports as to his condition.”
Lenox had been writing in his notebook before he arrived, and he tapped his pencil against the table. The sound echoed in the huge room. “And Dorset—he seemed broken up that morning, after he had shot Craig?”
Ward looked at him curiously. “Yes, half mad. He couldn’t believe it was Craig. He said that over and over.”
“Has Dorset been unhappy before now, in your experience?”
“Never for a day, I would have said, before that painting went missing.”
Lenox leaned forward. “I need to ask you a very great favor.”
Ward looked at him. “Do you think you’ve solved it, Charlie?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ward stared at him. “All right,” he said at last.
“Is Lord Vere dining with the family?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to look for the painting in his room, if you could.”
“In Corfe’s?” Ward said in a tone of disbelief so pure that Lenox experienced a sense of discouragement.
“My man, Graham, can go with you. If you need an excuse you can say that I sent him to look for some papers the duke requested.”
Ward checked his watch. “It’s a pretty thin alibi.”
“Could you try?”
“You have a good reason for it, I take?”
“I think so.”
Ward nodded. “Fine then. But dinner should only be another thirty minutes. We must go now if we’re to go. Where is Graham?”
“In the anteroom.”
They got him, and Ward and Graham went. Lenox waited for them with a horrible sense of dread.
When he heard a footstep in the hall, he stood bolt upright. It was only Lady Violet, however, coming to see if he needed anything.
“No!” he called very brightly and loudly. “All’s well!”
She looked bemused. “Can I help you?”
“No! No! Is your supper over?”
He was still shouting; she was too well bred to point it out. “Yes,” she said. “Under the circumstances we have dined en famille.”
“Of course! A short supper!” Lenox shouted.
She took her leave—no doubt thinking him insane—and his heartbeat slowed to something like normal. Not an instant later, Ward and Graham walked back into the room.
Their faces told the story. On the way home, Lenox and Graham stopped into the telegram office and sent a message to Bonden, care of the Dovecote.
Not there STOP Very bad loss of credibility STOP Lenox
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
How vital it would have been to find the painting—if his suspicion about the thirteenth duke’s portrait, based on that old letter, was correct.
Fool’s gold, Bonden had been, fool’s gold.
As the carriage pulled away from the telegram office, he took out his watch, which was made of real gold, a present from his father given on his twentieth birthday.
Nearly nine o’clock. Graham sat quietly next to him. Neither spoke—the moment was tense—and Lenox coiled and uncoiled his watch chain around his finger.
This distracted habit of his with the watch chain always made him think of Theseus in the maze of the Minotaur, the story in old books from the nursery. There were different versions. In the one Lenox knew, just before Theseus entered the maze, Ariadne, the daughter of the king, had given him a ball of yarn, so that he could track where he had been as he hunted the monster.
In the oldest tellings of the story that ball was called a clew, the name for a ball of yarn in the 1300s. It was from this word Lenox and his kind had inherited perhaps the most important word in their own vocabulary: clue.
He wished desperately that he had just one more clue now, to guide him through the maze.
For what did he know? So little, really. He placed the thief in one of three categories: a) a person who wanted the painting; b) per Dorset’s original theory, a person who wanted the painting of Shakespeare and had made a mistake; c) a person who wanted the lost play.
It was the third category that alarmed him.
“You ought to turn in,” Lenox said when they reached Hampden Lane. “There will be more of this nonsense tomorrow.”
They both seemed to feel defeated. “Are you sure, sir?”
“I’m sure. Lord, I wish I had never heard of the Duke of Dorset.”
He went to his study, loosening his tie, and poured himself a brandy and soda. Lancelot, thank the angels, was out on an “evening of astronomy” with Templeton. As an inducement for good behavior, Mrs. Huggins had entrusted to the curate a bag of licorice allsorts, despite Lancelot’s vehement insistence that they would be securest in his own hands.
He almost missed the boy. He smiled, reclining in his chair and putting his feet up on the coffee table. Almost. Outside it was still quietly raining. There was a low, rumbling, dark orange fire in the fireplace, on this cold summer evening.
He missed his father.
He must have fallen asleep, because it was only the dim consciousness of a distant noise within the house that brought him to his senses. His brandy and soda, he saw, had tumbled to the carpet, and clumsily he picked up the glass and set it on the table, still half asleep. He rubbed his eyes and stretched his shoulders back. The clock on his desk told the time—past midnight.
He stood up, aching a bit, and went out into the hall.
The noise was coming from the servants’ quarters downstairs, and at that moment a young footman, Fitzwilliam, came upstairs. He had hastily donned his tie and jacket.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “There is a Mr. Bonden who—he has insisted that he had business with you. He brought a large parcel.”
Lenox was wholly awake now. “Where is he?”
“In the servants’ dining room.”
Poor Mrs. Huggins. Life was hard enough for his housekeeper, and now she would have to clean whale-oil stains out of the cambric on the chairs she kept so neatly in the room where the servants took their meals. “I’m coming down.”
Bonden was sitting at the enormous scarred table that dominated the room. Fitzwilliam had li
t a candle, but it was dark, and Lenox asked him for more. He returned with a candelabra that held six, and the room brightened.
There, leaning against the wall, next to a table with a quarter of a kidney pie left on it, was the picture—the 13th Duke of Dorset.
For a moment Lenox just stared. He was a ruddy, weighty fellow, very different from the present duke. The picture portrayed him on a marble balcony. There was a broad verdure behind him and a chapel in the distance.
He wore a jerkin.
“Where was it?”
At that moment Graham came in, dressed for all the world as if it were noon on a Sunday. “Good evening, sir,” he said.
Bonden glanced at him. “It was in Lord Vere’s room, sir. He is out for the night. Recovered from his fever, apparently.”
“We searched that room top to bottom,” said Graham, more curious than defiant.
“Not bottom. It was nailed to the underside of the bedframe.”
“Nailed?” said Lenox.
“Yes. There’s some writing on the back.”
Lenox’s heart started to thump. He turned the painting around. Its cloth backing had been roughly and recently removed. He saw what Bonden meant: four lines, written in thin white ink, one along each side of the wooden picture frame. A single splash of water could have wiped them away.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Bonden,” he said. “If you would consent to it, I would like to learn more of your craft. I could pay you for your time.”
Bonden stared at him. “Maybe,” he said, putting on his cap. “For now I’ll take the rest of my pay.”
When Bonden had gone, paid, Lenox stood there and looked at the words on the back of the painting for a long, long time.
It was what he had anticipated.
The next morning dawned sunny. Lenox’s carriage was ready at six, by his orders. On the ride across town he ignored the stack of newspapers on the seat beside him, with their increasingly frenzied questions about the duke. Instead he watched the waking city through the window, occasionally checking his breast pocket for the piece of paper he had brought.
The duke was awake, shaved, and dressed, which surprised Lenox. Even since the day before, Lady Violet (presumably not the duchess) had brought over more from home to make him comfortable. He had a sterling silver coffee set—a beautiful ancient one, covered in intricate scrollwork, upon a gleaming tray—and offered the detective a blue Wedgewood cup.
“Thank you,” said Lenox.
“There are jam rolls, too,” said the duke.
Lenox took one and set it beside his coffee. They were in a small nook near the corner of this large sitting room, the door to the bedroom closed. “I have new information.”
“You do?” said Dorset, with a hint of suspicion.
“I do. It is about the poem.”
“The poem.”
“Yes. The poem as you know it is obviously tantalizing. But from the moment I read your great-grandfather’s letter, I have suspected something else very strongly: that it is incomplete. It is a phrase he uses toward the end. The answer, he says in the letter, lies in my picture.”
The duke was leaning forward, tense, confused. “Yes? What of it?”
“My picture. Then he says, ‘In it is the part of the riddle that I have yet to solve. I hope that you have committed it to memory.’”
The duke looked dangerously frustrated. “What are you saying, Mr. Lenox?”
“Everywhere else he calls the picture of Shakespeare ‘the portrait’ or something similar. But then he says ‘in my picture,’ though it is so clear, elsewhere, that he considers himself only a steward of the portrait.”
“Lenox, for pity’s sake—”
“My suspicion has been that you only have the first half of the poem, written on the portrait of Shakespeare. That is why there is all that black paint underneath the poem—to conceal its second half. Your great-grandfather scrawled out the second stanza himself, dividing the poem for safety. Then he put the second half of it somewhere in his picture, as he kept referring to it. That is why he hoped his son would commit it to memory.”
The effect of this idea on the duke was electric. “Of course,” he said, eyes shining. “Of course. That is why the thief stole the wrong painting. It was exactly the painting he wanted.”
Lenox nodded. “I think so.”
The duke’s face had slowly assumed a look of nearly pure grief. “And now it is lost, and the thief has the complete poem to himself. I have failed.”
“No, Your Grace,” said Lenox. “I have recovered the painting.”
The duke stood up. “You haven’t.”
Lenox took the piece of paper from his breast pocket. The night before, he had reached for a piece of his cook Ellie’s scratch paper and a bit of charcoal, written out the first stanza from memory, then transcribed the second, sitting opposite the silent Bonden, tilting his head to read.
It was tricky—the letter s, for instance, looked like the letter f—but he managed it quickly. He had committed the lines to memory, but he had kept the paper, too.
“The lines were written on the reverse of the painting, underneath its backing. If I am not mistaken, for the first time in nearly a century we have the whole poem.”
The duke took the poem and stared at it, the whole poem, complete.
Forty miles from Charing Cross,
then back one further apple’s toss,
under fields of wheat-grown gold,
doth laze a buried story told.
Kent for they who wish it found,
and dig beneath the churchyard ground
behind the name my portrait gloss,
forty miles from Charing Cross.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The duke read and reread the poem for so long that Lenox almost interrupted him. It must have been a full ten minutes that he expended studying those sixty syllables.
At last he looked at Lenox. “I am in your debt,” he said.
Lenox shrugged. “It is my work.”
“No. I am in your debt. What do you make of the poem?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied cautiously. “Obviously knowing the play is in Kent helps.”
“Mm.”
“And the churchyard ground. It also makes your concern that the place might have been built over seem less likely. They don’t often get rid of churches.”
The duke nodded. He looked around at the walls, irritated. “I must get out of here as soon as possible—as soon as possible.” He studied the paper again, as if the poem would give up more on a hundredth reading. “The third line is the one that puzzles me. Behind the name my portrait gloss.”
“I have a theory there.” Lenox was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as young folks slanged it these days—but for now he was happy to discuss the poem. “I suspect it puzzled the thief, too, for a while.”
“What’s your theory?”
“If I had to guess, I would hazard that it is a pun. That would be very much in the spirit of Shakespeare, whether he wrote the poem or one of his friends did. One of his siblings, even. A fellow Stratford artist, perhaps the portraitist himself.”
“A pun?”
“The gloss is the topcoat of a painting, as you know. But as I’m sure you also know there is another common sense to the word, even more common in Shakespeare’s day—a gloss, from glossa, Latin. An explanation of a word. There is only one name ‘glossed’ in the portrait. In its gloss, if you will,” Lenox said.
“Mary,” said Dorset. “Nomen Mariae.”
Lenox nodded. “When we find the right churchyard, I would bet anything that the play is buried at the grave of a woman named Mary.”
“A Catholic’s joke,” said the duke, smiling faintly. There was a beatific relief in his face. Prison was a strange place to see such a thing, but it was there. “You must be correct.”
“Yes, Your Grace. A Catholic’s joke.”
But here it came—the other shoe, the question Lenox had been dreading
. The duke, still standing, paper in his hands, said, “I have forgotten to ask you how you found the picture.”
Lenox hedged. “It is a long story, and I would like to amass a bit more information. To begin with, may I ask, Your Grace, whether Mr. Craig’s own financial position was secure?”
There was a river breeze in the cell, carrying on it the faint damp smell—cordage, closed spaces, open waters, salt, hardtack—of seagoing.
“I do not know to any exactitude, but I paid him well. He was unmarried and without financial obligation. He could have called on me for a loan of any size. I mean that literally.”
“He knew that?”
“Yes. A Dorset is a loyal friend. What’s more, I made over a parcel of land in our possession—six acres—to him. He planned to retire there. But he could have sold it for a few hundred pounds at any time, as I made clear to him. He had the deed, free and clear.”
Lenox nodded quietly. “As I thought, then. With the motive of money excluded, it becomes easier.”
“Easier?”
“I am still lacking information myself, Your Grace,” said Lenox. “Permit me to return this afternoon. I hope to have a fuller explanation then.”
The duke didn’t look happy, but he was still too preoccupied with the poem—the quarry of a lifetime, that much closer to being captured—to care. “Fine,” he said. “In the meanwhile I’m going to tell Lord Aston that I must leave this place as quickly as possible. He will accelerate matters. There is a play to be found now.”
Lenox stood and buttoned his jacket. “Thank you for the coffee, Duke.”
The duke put out a hand. “Thank you for the poem, Mr. Lenox. I owe you more than a lunch now.”
“As I said, it is only my job.”
Soon he was outside the Tower and in his carriage, heading back to Hampden Lane.
In all of these early cases in his career, Lenox could look back and identify some vital mistake he had made. He was still learning. For instance, the Thames Ophelia had taught him to look as carefully as he could at faces; the majority of people let faces pass before them like clouds in the sky, unremarked, without separable identities.
On Dorset’s case, he had made at least this one error: He had not studied the inhabitants of the household closely enough. He knew next to nothing about Corfe, Lord Vere, who if all went to plan would some day become the 16th Duke of Dorset—just as powerful as his father.
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