A Beautiful Blue Death clm-1

by Charles Finch

  But people granted that Barnard’s house was unique in one way: He could seat two hundred at table and then afterward comfortably admit several hundred more to his own vast ballroom, which sat in the center of the first floor—above, among many other areas, Prue Smith’s bedroom. It was three hundred feet across, with light-colored wood floors. The walls were full of gold columns and huge paintings, and the ceiling was painted with the transit of Venus.

  The ball would follow the usual form. Several weeks before, the women guests had received a white card, listing the dances on one side and with blank slots on the other, to fill in a partner’s name for each dance. It would be mostly quadrilles and waltzes, but while most balls had a four-person orchestra, people expected Barnard to have about a dozen musicians.

  The dinner before the ball was a peculiarity, for some people sought the tickets eagerly while others cared for them not at all; at any rate, there was no consensus on their value though to be sure the lack of any invitation at all, to dinner or dancing, would have been devastating.

  To the dinner were invited the circle of which Barnard would have liked to consider himself a member: Lenox and Lady Jane’s circle, whose de facto leaders were the Duchess Marchmain, Jane herself, and Toto, representing the three generations in descending order.

  Barnard was a peculiar case. Great politicians were of course invited everywhere, but it was not clear whether he was of the first rank of politicians. Men of tremendous wealth were occasionally invited, though Barnard was unwilling to class himself with that group. But he was connected, by threads more numerous than strong, to enough of the correct people that he was sure to be invited many places and was sure to have his own invitations accepted. That is, to put it more briefly, some combination of money, birth, and power were united in him that was impossible to classify and was neither enough to disbar him from the first tier of society nor to include him fully in it—for whatever one takes that first tier to be worth.

  Of one thing there was no doubt, however, and that was that fashionable London would appear tonight en masse, and when Lenox’s carriage pulled into Clarges Street he saw that it was but one of three dozen, making the street quite impassible and in some respect exhilarating, full of the excitement preceding a large well-organized party.

  After some deft work by the driver and a gradual movement of the carriages, Lenox and Lady Jane were able to step onto the unfurled red carpet that led to the front door of Barnard’s house and, with just a few moments to spare, make the dinner table on time.

  The people were of great interest and variety: the men belonged to the upper echelons of art, politics, science, and scholarship and the women were all either beautiful or matriarchal, with very few exceptions. The men wore dinner jackets and shining shoes and the women wore beautiful dresses, usually in gray or blue, with an occasional splash of red.

  This was also a time when the symbolism of flowers was in great vogue, and all the young girls carried bouquets with private meanings. Violets meant modesty, and the girls with violets tended to look rather pinched and censorious; ivy meant fidelity, and the girls with ivy looked very happy; forget-me-nots meant truest love, and these girls looked the happiest. They all had pocket dictionaries of these meanings, and when two lovers had different dictionaries, flowers were often thrown tearfully into some poor man’s chest, to be followed by explanation and reconciliation.

  For the fun of it, Lenox had once asked Toto what his favorite flowers meant, and she had very excitedly scanned her book. “Snowdrops,” she had said. “Hope, or consolation.”

  Dinner was served.

  Lenox, like all Harrovians since time immemorial, had been forced to read Satyricon in his day, and he remembered well the delicacies at Trimalchio’s feast: the dormice dipped in honey, the roasted boar with pastry sucklings at its breast, the hollow side of meat which, when carved, released live birds into the air.

  Barnard had not elected to serve such exotic fare, but his banquet was no less complete. There were to be a dozen courses, and in due time they arrived: warm onion soup, bubbling with cheese; delicate strips of hare with cranberry sauce; roasted chicken and a blood gravy; plain English mutton under a blanket of peas and onions; a broiled beefsteak in pastry; a light salad of pears and walnuts; sliced apples dipped in chocolate; a towering white cake decorated with whipped cream; a plate of thinly sliced cheese; a bowl of chestnuts and walnuts; and, last, coffee—all accompanied by what Lenox had to acknowledge was a remarkably good selection of wines, from champagne to German summer wine to dark claret to a light Bordeaux. It was the sort of supper that people would talk about for quite a long time—just as Barnard intended.

  Lenox sat with a group of men and women he knew, though McConnell was far to his left and Lady Jane far to his right—two seats to the left of Barnard himself, in fact. Lenox spoke for most of the night with James Hilary, a young politician barely out of his twenties, and Lord Cabot, his old friend, who was too busy eating to be truly coherent but who uttered, from time to time, some authoritative word on whatever subject was at hand.

  Hilary was a good sort. He was one of the people who had been working with the Royal Academy to ban certain poisons, and while Lenox couldn’t get anything from him on that subject he spoke very fluently about Parliament.

  “I expect our side will be in the ascendancy for some time, Mr. Lenox,” he said, during the fifth course.

  “Do you now?” asked Lenox. “Why?”

  “As fewer boroughs become rotten, and the number of people who vote their conscience increases, we must by necessity grow. We are the party of the public. It was more difficult to be so when the public had trouble voting for us, because Lord So-and-so of So-and-so decreed otherwise. No offense, Lord Cabot.”

  “None taken,” Lord Cabot said.

  “You may be right,” said Lenox.

  “I was speaking with Eustace Bramwell before dinner—a most ardent conservative, belongs to my club—and even he acknowledged it.”

  “You belong to the Jumpers?”

  “Yes, indeed, Mr. Lenox. But how would you know the Jumpers?”

  Lenox laughed. “Do you mean because I’m so old? I still hear of things, now and then. How well do you know young Bramwell?”

  Hilary had laughed too, good-naturedly. “Not well. He and his cousin Claude are rather friends, sometimes thick as thieves, and they belong to the half of the club I don’t know much about. Just as in Parliament, however, I expect my half of the club will eventually outlast.”

  Lord Cabot here made one of his rare comments. “Damn silly club, if you’ll excuse me saying, Hilary. Don’t see why you can’t come to the Travelers more. Your father does.”

  “We’ve got good food and good fellows at the Jumpers,” said Hilary. “But I do come to the Travelers, now and then. I’ve got a constituency to work for, though. And to be honest, I feel a bit rubbish that my five hundred miles were only to Germany, when both of you pop round to Jupiter every few years.”

  He laughed again, and so did Lenox and Cabot, and the conversation, intertwined with the food and the wine, floated along.

  All through this chatter, however, Lenox kept his eye on the residents of the Barnard house. Sir Edmund had been invited only to the ball, not to the dinner—it was thought likely that he would decline the invitation altogether based on his neglect of prior invitations—and Lenox couldn’t very well pull McConnell away from his seat, so he was forced to observe the men he suspected on his own, and increasingly his attention was devoted to Soames, down at Barnard’s end of the table.

  Soames, unfortunately, was quite flushed and appeared to be drinking too much and eating too little. His dinner jacket was ill-fitting, or perhaps had merely been hastily donned, for he was usually a well-dressed man. His discomfort seemed to be palpable, and he only spoke intermittently, Lenox noticed, without truly entering any of the conversations around him.

  It had taken two hours—and an effort akin to rowing ten miles—to go through
all the courses, but at last people put their forks aside, took their final sips of water and wine, and began to light their cigarettes and wander into the maze of drawing rooms that surrounded the ballroom. Only then could Lenox pull Mc-Connell aside and say to him, “Keep an eye on Potts and Duff if you can, Duff especially,” before the two men joined Lady Jane and Toto, who were waiting intently to begin dancing.

  Just as the band began to play, however, Barnard himself approached Lady Jane and to their quiet amusement asked her to have the opening dance with him. She could not but agree and Lenox was left to the side, where he smoked a cigarette and watched his friends dancing and, with slightly more focus, also watched Soames walking unsteadily around the room.

  Chapter 32

  Supper had lasted until nine, and the ball had commenced an hour later. It was now eleven, and the chatter on the couches and the clack of shoes on the dance floor were growing steadily louder, as the flow of guests into the party reached its crest. Sir Edmund had come, looking not altogether disheveled, and Lenox had set him the task of watching the two nephews, Eustace and Claude.

  Lenox had originally intended to watch Claude himself, but he had begun to feel more strongly by the moment that the murderer was Soames. Thus he devoted his entire attention to his prime suspect. He must have murdered Prue Smith, Lenox thought, because she had tripped over him while he was angling after the gold—and while she couldn’t know what it was, he would have been on edge and more likely to overreact. In particular because this would be his first time, really, as a criminal. How had he cadged an invitation to stay with Barnard?

  Soames was dancing with a succession of women, but he had grown redder and drunker and visibly less in control of himself, and after a last waltz he had sought rest at one side of the ballroom and taken a glass of champagne to cool himself.

  Lady Jane and Lenox stood on the other side of the ballroom. They had just finished a dance together.

  “What was that business with Barnard?” Lenox asked, with an eye on Soames.

  “Strange, wasn’t it?”

  “There are probably worse things than dancing with Barnard, but at the moment I can’t think of them.”

  “Don’t be mean,” Lady Jane said. “I suppose he needed a woman and saw that I met that description, in some modest way.”

  “You look lovely.”

  “Thank you, Charles.”

  “Have you danced with Edmund?”

  “Of course! Not half so much twirling as you frightened me with, although he stepped on my foot once. I think he was trying to spy on somebody.”

  “He’s a zealous assistant.”

  “Tell that to my poor ankle. But listen. If he’s going to spy on somebody, I will too.”

  “I won’t have it—listen to me this time—it might be dangerous.”

  “What about Barnard?”

  “No! We’ll do fine, McConnell, Edmund, and I. Would you like a glass of water?” A waiter was walking by with a tray.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “How can it be so frightfully warm when it’s so cold outside?”

  She sipped the water he handed her and continued to fan herself. At that moment McConnell came toward them.

  “Hot as anything, isn’t it?” he said.

  “I may step out in a moment,” said Lady Jane, “if you care to join me. I’d like a breath of fresh air.”

  McConnell smiled. “I would, you know, but the boss might object.” He nodded at Lenox.

  “I’ll get Toto to take me then.”

  “She’s with Mary, just over there.” He pointed to one of the couches that ringed the dance floor and Lady Jane walked over to it.

  “Soames is acting strangely,” said Lenox, when the two men were alone.

  “You suspect him?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Brave of him to come at all, if he’s gone broke.”

  “Very brave, if he’s not guilty of murder. If he is, I shan’t know what to think.”

  McConnell smiled again. “You do get wrapped up, my good friend.”

  Lenox looked away from the dance floor for a moment. “I think I should stop doing it if I didn’t.”

  Just at that moment the host came toward them, bearing three glasses of champagne on a tray he had just swiped from a waiter and smiling broadly.

  “McConnell! Lenox! A toast!”

  “As you say,” said the doctor, though Lenox kept silent. Why on earth did Barnard want to toast with them? In all likelihood he was drunk.

  At any rate, the three men tipped their glasses and threw down the champagne.

  “First-rate,” said McConnell.

  “Of course, of course,” said Barnard. “Are you having a pleasant time?”

  “Very pleasant, aren’t we, Lenox?”

  “Indeed. Thank you, Barnard. One of the must delicious suppers I’ve ever eaten.”

  “I’ve got a new cook. From France, but he does English dishes quite nicely, doesn’t he? And then that salad—I’d never had the like before, and I daresay no man in London had either, don’t you think?”

  He had stepped closer to them, and at that moment, forced to respond to Barnard, Lenox lost track of Soames.

  “Anyway,” said Barnard, after half a minute, “dance, drink, and be merry!”

  He raised his empty glass in salute and walked off.

  “Damn,” said McConnell. “I lost both of them.”

  “I lost Soames, too.”

  “Split up, shall we?”

  “Yes. But keep an eye out for Soames above the nephews. He may be planning a theft.”

  “As you say.”

  The two men walked away from each other. Lenox’s heart had begun to beat faster, and his pace increased as he walked around the edges of the ballroom, praying for his eyes to alight on that familiar visage.

  He wended his way through six drawing rooms, each of them impossibly crowded, making sure not to miss a single person as he searched out Soames. Doing his best to nod and smile at everybody without getting caught in conversation, he got to the end of the house, went back through again to double-check, and then nearly ran to the dance floor and walked briskly around it, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

  Some plan must be afoot, he thought at last and, as surreptitiously as he could, he began to creep upstairs toward the room that contained the gold.

  He scarcely knew what to expect—perhaps the man guarding the room would be dead? If he was, Lenox didn’t think he could ever forgive himself. He hoped McConnell had come upon Soames but thought it more unlikely by the moment.

  The second floor had been dimly lit but deserted. Now he was cautiously stepping up the next staircase to the third floor. He had followed the advice of his friends, and now, with a feeling of absurdity, pulled a small gun from his pocket, which he had had as a souvenir from the Plymouth case. If he needed to he could handle it, but he left it half-cocked.

  Suddenly he heard a rustling from one of the rooms and paused on the middle of the stairway to the third floor. The noise seemed to be coming from the second room on his left. He approached it slowly and at last cocked the gun altogether, though he kept it by his hip. He counted to three under his breath, and then opened the door suddenly, with the pistol raised slightly though not enough to be conspicuous.

  He had stumbled upon two young people he knew, if not by name then by face, a young girl and a young man. He was holding her hand and whispering to her when Lenox interrupted them.

  “Sorry,” Lenox said.

  “No, no—got lost, you know.…”

  Lenox withdrew, closing the door behind him, and heard the sound of stifled laughter from the room. Again his nerves heightened; he was on the third floor and walking slowly toward the staircase he had gone up only the day before. But it was dark this time, almost dark enough that he couldn’t see anything at all.

  He reached the bottom stair and steeled himself against any possibility. Then he took a deep breath, lifted his foot—but at that moment he heard a
piercing scream. It came, without any doubt, from the first floor of the house.

  He raced downstairs, concealing his pistol as he did. When he was on the second floor, he began to walk down quietly, but he needn’t have; the commotion was a hundred yards away, in the hallway leading from the front door to the ballroom. As he got closer, he could see that it came, more specifically, from the head of the stairwell leading down to the servants’ quarters.

  His first thought was for Lady Jane, but as he glanced around he saw her with Toto, sitting on a sofa, looking concerned but not, like the majority of the party, pushing toward whatever spectacle had aroused their interest.

  This left him free to push toward it himself, and with the best manners he could muster he parted the crowd until at last he arrived at the epicenter—where he saw McConnell leaning over into the darkened stairwell and Barnard hanging over him, while several footmen kept the crowd at bay, to its chagrin.

  McConnell looked up, for just a second, and turned back—but in that second Lenox must have flickered on the edge of his vision, for the doctor turned around again and shouted, “Charles!”

  Lenox pushed his way past a footman and toward McConnell and Barnard.

  “What is it?” he said.

  They were both examining something, but not until Barnard stepped aside did Lenox see what it was—a body, a male body, slumped on the stairs to the servants’ quarters, stripped of its jacket, with a pool of brilliant red blood staining the pure white shirt. Still, the face remained obscured.

  “Who is it?” said Lenox.

  McConnell stood up, cupped his hand, and whispered in Lenox’s ear. “Soames.”

  Chapter 33

  Lenox saw, peering down into the darkness of the servants’ stairs, that it was indeed Soames sprawled across them.

  At this moment Barnard stepped away from McConnell and Lenox and said in a loud voice, “Please, everybody, return to the party.”

  Nobody obeyed his instructions, but Barnard walked through the crowd nevertheless, presumably to find further help, perhaps in the shape of Inspector Exeter.