A Beautiful Blue Death clm-1

by Charles Finch

  He was on the sofa in his library. Graham stood back, but Lady Jane was perched on the edge of the sofa next to him. Word had somehow worked its way to the next house when Lenox came staggering home, and Lady Jane had rushed into the library and said, “Graham, move out of the way!”

  There were very few people from whom Graham would have accepted such a command at that moment, but she was among their ranks. She had been able to do very little in the way of providing Lenox with physical comfort—he had, he thought, a broken rib, but other than that only bruises, albeit painful ones—but she hadn’t left anyone in the room in doubt of her opinion of the two men who had done it. She thought that they were beasts.

  “Where did they come from?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did they try to rob you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?” She patted his hand sympathetically.

  “I think it must be in connection with the case.”

  “About Prudence Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Charles, I am sorry. Be done with it this instant. Please, let’s let the man you so dislike do it all, and perhaps he will turn up the person who did it, but please don’t do anything further!”

  “I fear I shall have to.”

  “Charles!” She leaned toward him, her hands in her lap and a look of concern on her face. Lenox thought she looked beautiful.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but I have to finish, now more than ever.”

  “Why, because two cowardly men hurt you? Please, stop your investigation.”

  “It may have been Exeter himself who put them up to it.”

  “It couldn’t have been, Charles. He’s a policeman.”

  “Yes, but I daresay he caught wind of me trolling around the edges of the case and wanted to warn me off. I made him look a fool with that forgery last week. I tried to beg out of going to the Yard to put it all down officially, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I’m nearly sure of it.”

  “Then report him!”

  “That’s not how it’s done. But don’t worry, my lady, I shan’t get into any more trouble if I can help it. I’ll equip myself with a rifle or something and wave it around, and nobody will come near me.” He made an effort to laugh and winced as he did.

  “Oh, don’t joke, Charles, it’s not in the least bit funny to us, you know.”

  She looked at Graham, nodding, and he nodded too.

  At that moment there was a knock on the outer door, and Graham excused himself to answer it. After a few seconds he announced Dr. and Lady McConnell.

  “Oh, Charles, you poor dear man!” said Toto, bursting through the door and kissing him on the forehead. “Are you dying?”

  “Not at the moment, at any rate.”

  “Thomas will make you better,” she said, and promptly pulled her aunt away—Lady Jane was her cousin in fact, but Toto had always called her aunt—to the set of chairs on the other end of the room, and forgot about Charles entirely.

  “Did Graham send for you?” Lenox asked McConnell.

  “No, your neighbor did.” He gestured at Lady Jane. “She sent a note.”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “I am still a doctor, for all that, Charles. Lift your arm.”

  For perhaps five minutes, McConnell gently pushed his fingers into Lenox’s ribs and stomach and over his waistcoat, checking twice in each case. He then sat in a chair facing the couch, pulled his flask from his hip, and took a sip from it.

  “Gin?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” said Lenox.

  “Your ribs aren’t broken, though one of them is badly bruised.”

  “I thought as much, more or less.”

  “How much advice will you take?”

  “The maximum amount that will not result in any impediment to my work.”

  “None, in other words.”

  “You are, for all that, the doctor, Thomas. Have you no advice that fits those parameters?”

  McConnell laughed. “I do, I suppose. You must eat soon and then sleep, without delay. Sleep as long as you can. Don’t have Graham wake you up.”

  “I shan’t.”

  “And move about gingerly.”

  “I shall—or, at least, I shall as far as I can.”

  “Then you’ll be all right, in the end. Who was it?”

  “Two men. At the behest of Exeter, I should imagine.”

  McConnell took another sip. “Do you have any proof?”

  “No. One of them said, Leave it to the Yard, but that might have been a message from the murderer, or Barnard, or even somebody who wishes me to abandon detective work altogether.”

  “In that case I should probably do things much as I have been,” said the doctor, “but I might carry a revolver.”

  “I don’t like to.”

  “Give it a miss, then. But I would.”

  Lenox sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, after all.” He noticed for the first time that McConnell and Toto were dressed for the evening. He was wearing a dinner jacket and she was wearing a blue evening dress. “Where are you going?” he said.

  “To dinner at the Devonshires’.”

  Lenox sat up. “I was to attend, as well. It had slipped my mind entirely.”

  “No doubt they’ll forgive you. Although not as readily if you hold Lady Grey back with you.”

  “No, of course not. She and the Duchess have become near friends.”

  “Quite right. And Toto adores them both, or so at least she tells me.”

  McConnell laughed tiredly and took another sip from his flask. A stud in his shirt had come loose, but Lenox left it to the doctor’s wife to find it. She seemed to sense that her husband was finished, for she patted Lady Jane quickly on the hand and stood up to join the men.

  “Charles, old dear,” Toto said, “have you been a good patient?”

  “A reasonable one, I think.”

  “And shall you keep Aunt with you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Oh, good,” said Toto.

  But Lady Jane looked at her young friend firmly. “I shall stay here for supper, at any rate,” she said. “Toto, apologize to Mary, and tell her I’ll play a hand of whist after Charles and I have finished, if she likes.”

  Toto looked extremely cross.

  “It will do no good for you to stand there like an angry cat,” said Lady Jane. “Run along.”

  Toto gave her cousin a grudging hug and once again kissed Charles on the cheek, McConnell nodded his farewell, and then they were gone.

  “You needn’t have stayed,” said Lenox to Lady Jane.

  “Of course I shall. I’ve told Graham to bring supper into the library.”

  He smiled. They ate very simple food—cold sliced tomatoes, mashed potatoes, and milk—as they had when they were children together. They ate over the side table, laughing and talking the entire time, as outside it began to snow once more.

  Chapter 23

  As he left Lenox’s house, McConnell had apparently slipped a dram of sleeping powder to Graham, who had in turn given it to the patient. The next morning, as a result, Lenox arose at nine o’clock, which, though it might have seemed like the crack of dawn to Claude Barnard, was quite late for the detective. He had slept off much of his soreness, though his ribs were still tender and the cut on his face had swollen. But he had slept well and felt fit for a reasonable day’s work. A sort of terror at the memory of the glinting knife stirred somewhere deep in him, but he ignored it.

  It had, after all, snowed the whole night through, and there was a fresh white coat over the city. Lenox’s bedroom had a broad window with a very comfortable armchair by it, close enough to the fire for warmth, and he ate breakfast in that chair, wearing his robe and slippers. He had only just gotten used to the old snow, which was conforming to the habits of the city’s walkways, and while this new coat was lovely to look at, as he sipped his hot coffe
e and ate his toast, he knew it would only add to the difficulty of getting about.

  He sat with his final cup of coffee long after he had put the discards of his breakfast to the side, on the tray on his night table, sipping slowly, snug in his chair, and with the prospect of a long day ahead of him. Occasionally he preferred to give himself half an hour before he started out, and so he did this morning. After last night, he thought it would be all right.

  But eventually he stood up, put the cup and saucer next to the tray, and dressed. He asked Graham for his overcoat with the fringed collar, which was his warmest, and lamented again his poor choice of boots, which would no doubt be in tatters after half an hour. Then he put them on.

  When he was outfitted, he stepped downstairs. As he arrayed his clothes and his person to his liking in front of the mirror, Graham spoke to him.

  “Sir, I was hoping I might have another afternoon off. I have an aunt to visit.”

  “An aunt?”

  “Yes, sir. In London.”

  “Not in Abingdon?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But you’ve never visited her before.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Inventing aunts now! That’s scarcely polite, Graham. What would your real aunts think?”

  There was a slight, almost invisible smile on Graham’s lips, the sort of thing only somebody who knew him well would spot.

  “Is it a girl, Graham?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox started. “Who?”

  “My aunt.”

  Lenox laughed. “Go ahead, of course. Keep your secrets from me.” Turning back to the mirror, he touched the cuts and bruises on his face, which were pretty bad looking, then laughed and stepped outside to his carriage.

  He directed the driver to Parliament. There was to be a vote that day, and speeches beforehand, of course, and he hoped to catch Soames on the way in. He knew the man well enough to detain him for a few moments and knew also that Soames so little liked the life of a backbencher that he might even agree to sit for a while.

  He went again to the members’ entrance, facing the river. On the walkway on either side of the door were two awnings, one green-striped and the other red-striped, the green for the Commons and the red for the Lords. In summer they retreated under their awnings and sat outside with cool drinks.

  On this day he went inside, nodding to the doorman, who recognized him, and again faced the choice of going right, to the rooms of the House of Lords and the Queen Empress, or left, to the rooms devoted to the House of Commons. He took a left.

  At lunch he had simply gone to the first room, the dining room, but now he went past it. Down here, where there was a whole series of rooms overlooking the Thames, were the places that various members sat in between sessions, to broker deals or talk with their friends or simply have a drink.

  There was a large empty library, followed by a periodical room with all the day’s papers and journals, and a smoking room, with a billiard table in it and several men waiting about, talking listlessly.

  Past that was a refreshment room, which was abandoned now but would be filled that evening with people after a pint of ale or a glass of shandy. Then there was a tearoom, which was more populated, for many people were having a late breakfast, and finally there was a large chamber with many comfortable couches, and waiters here and there, which didn’t have a name but was closer to a clubhouse than anything else. It was the room with a door to the hall that led into the House of Commons, and he decided to wait here, where Soames was most likely to pass before he went into the chambers.

  He retired to a large leather sofa and read the Pall Mall Gazette for half an hour.

  While he was carefully reading a report on the conditions of London slums, Soames came along at last, walking side by side with Newton Duff. They had evidently come together from their host’s house; Soames seemed to be talking at length about a horse named Adagio.

  Duff, who looked as if he was sorry he’d ever heard of horses—or of Soames, for that matter—said a cursory goodbye and stalked toward a group of less frivolous members. Lenox wondered briefly whether a man as smart as Newton Duff could make the error of leaving a bottle that led back to him at the scene of a murder. Yes, he thought—but before Lenox knew it, Soames turned, temporarily at a loss, and saw him.

  “Charles!” he said. “Hallo, old chap.”

  “Jack,” said Lenox. “Good to see you.”

  Now Soames was of a specific type among the English gentry, not altogether a good type or a bad one, but rather one who lived on the periphery of these categories, half in and half out.

  He had earned the title of captain some years past, in the army, and he was known to his friends by and large as Captain Jack, or Soaps to his close friends. But he was a gentle man, not at all militant. He had earned his rowing blue at Oxford, in the years before Lenox’s time, and his ability with an oar was by all accounts prodigious. He had secured a place in Parliament shortly after coming down, out of a pocket borough belonging to an old oarsman who had admired the young Soames, and from then on he was received throughout London, but in a way he had never quite equaled his early promise, and his life now, though happy enough, was marked, among those who knew him, by the peculiar sorrow of unfulfillment.

  He was the sort of man who stayed at his club much of every day, playing billiards or cards as people floated through the room, eating good meals and making much of himself, encouraging talk of days in the old crew or the old regiment, but without any particular present glory to balance it; he was quick, in the way that men of the clubs are quick, but like them he had lost, whether by drink or lassitude, the ability to focus his efforts over a long time or on a large subject. Gradually his interests had begun to turn to the turf; he was now considered an authority on horses and could tell you of this trainer or that jockey. But serious men, some of whom had looked up to him twenty years earlier, no longer took him seriously.

  Lenox felt a deep sorrow, in a way, to know that he was in financial trouble, for whatever his decline, Soames was an institution of a sort, and, moreover, his family’s money had all been entailed upon an elder cousin, who was unlikely to let it leave his pocket.

  But still, all in all, he was a good man and tried to do his duty in Parliament, even amid talk that he would be replaced. His only committee work now happened to involve the mint.

  “How are you, Charles?”

  “Aside from this,” said Lenox, pointing to the cut on his face, “quite all right.”

  Soames laughed. “Have you been boxing?” he said.

  “Rather against my will.”

  “Have a cigarette?”

  Lenox accepted, and gestured toward a pair of armchairs. The men sat down. A waiter came by and asked if they’d like a drink. Soames declined, but Lenox asked if he wouldn’t join him in a glass of hot wine, early though it was, and Soames said that perhaps he would after all.

  They had been talking of horses, the expert having found a more willing listener in Lenox than in Duff. But in the lull when Soames took his first sip, Lenox said, “And what is this about the murder?”

  “You ought to know, from what I gather.”

  “Why?”

  “You were around that evening, weren’t you?” Soames said.

  “Ah, but Barnard asked me to step back.” This was not a lie.

  “He did? Tough bird, Barnard. Good man, but tough.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “The girl?” Soames shifted uneasily in his seat. “I daresay it was one of the servants. One of them started to cry during supper two nights ago, just for an example. Never seen anything like it. Probably felt guilty.”

  “Perhaps the fiancé?”

  Soames looked away. “Perhaps,” he said.

  “I hear there are two nephews there?”

  “Both horrid, old man, really horrid. One of them is a sort of Casanova or something, and the other disapproves of me, I rather think.”

 
Lenox gestured to the waiter for another glass.

  “Thanks, Charles,” said Soames, watching his cup as it was filled. The wine steamed and smelled of lemon and cinnamon. “Cold out, you know. Got to endure a day of these things on the benches, now. The wine will make it pass. They’re asking me to show up more often, you see, even though I don’t know much.”

  “Is there anything at the mint, right now?”

  “Oh, no, not really. I only help Barnard, you know. That’s why I’m staying with him. Close work.” He blushed and didn’t say anything else.

  “I really am curious,” said Lenox, “about what happened to the girl. Spectator’s interest, you see.” This was closer to a lie.

  “I haven’t really got any idea.”

  “What about Duff? He’s a hard one.”

  “Duff? Do you think?”

  “Why not?”

  “You may be right. In fact, if I were an inspector, he should be where I started.”

  “Really?”

  Soames took a sip and then put the glass down unsteadily. “Oh, yes. Can’t think why it didn’t occur to me before, actually.”

  “Perhaps we’re overstating it.”

  “Nothing of the sort.” Soames coughed. “Just as a parlor game, of course, it would have to be him.”

  “Just as a parlor game.”

  “Well, of course, none of us could have done it, you know, in reality.”

  “Of course.”

  “Suicide, I have no doubt.”

  “That’s how it will end,” said Lenox. “But as a parlor game—”

  “Oh, Duff.” Soames finished his wine. “All the characteristics. Dark chap.”

  “Dark as midnight.”

  “Yes.”

  “But then, why not you?” said Lenox, smiling. He hated to, but he did.

  Soames stared for a moment, but then laughed. “Indeed, why not? Only, in a game, you know, it’s the mental part of the thing, the motive. I’m not too likely.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Maybe as a surprise ending.”

  “You mean, where Duff seems like the man for it but it turns out to be you?”

  “Yes,” said Soames, and laughed. His face was red. “But in real life—”