A Beautiful Blue Death clm-1

by Charles Finch

  Lenox thought of all this in passing and thanked his lucky stars that there were papers to go through. A young clerk named Throckmortin was assigned to help him. The lad seemed very censorious at first of the interruption to his usual schedule, but only until young Morgan Waring told him to look sharp, because he was taking a special interest in Lenox’s progress.

  The room in which the records were stored was dark, with only a few small high windows, and though it was clean there was a smell of mustiness in the air. It was a large room, as well, brimming from floor to high ceiling with paper, and after his initial excitement Lenox was daunted by the task ahead of him.

  He spent from three until six, combing through documents relating the financial history of the Pacific Trust. From what he could gather, it was a company devoted to trading overseas commodities in Europe at favorable prices. Like the East India or any of these companies, it was relatively sound. Since the Bubble Act, all such companies had needed a royal charter, which was only stingily given. But what the Trust did wasn’t of interest to Lenox. He was looking only for a name.

  He worked diligently but unsuccessfully. It was difficult work because the order of the papers shifted from alphabetical to chronological seemingly at random, and even the now-attentive clerk was flagging by 6 P.M. So Lenox sent his coachman around to Fortnum & Mason for a basket of supper, which he and Throckmortin shared in the dim quiet of the hall of records, seated at a small table. There was a tureen of soup, and then a side of roast beef, which they ate with a fine claret as complement.

  Throckmortin was supporting his parents, he told Lenox, and hoped for advancement. His ultimate aim was to become head clerk at a large financial firm. Lenox listened carefully while they ate their dessert, a large buttery peach tart, and then the two men began their search again with renewed vigor.

  Ten minutes later, Lenox found the first relevant document. It was dated from several years ago, but it had either been misplaced or filed according to someone’s cryptic system. He shouted happily when he scanned it and asked the young clerk to help him on a few points so he could be sure. The clerk confirmed his suspicion.

  “Just as I thought, just as I thought,” Lenox said.

  And then, his fortune suddenly reversed, a second document presented itself only twenty minutes later that again revealed what Lenox had suspected.

  “Shake my hand, young man,” he said, “shake my hand. We have done good work—very good work—and you have served the City of London this evening more so than even you usually do, I think.”

  “Proud to, Mr. Lenox,” said the clerk. “I shall always be happy to work with you.”

  Lenox then left, with cheerful salutations, and Throckmortin cleared the last work from his desk and went home to his mother and father, who were worried and had overcooked the dinner.

  Perhaps it is worth relating that the next day, though busy, Lenox remembered his young friend and sent his mother two fine legs of lamb and a case of his own favorite port for Mr. Throckmortin, Sr. And though it would take many years, the clerk’s final words were prescient, for he would help Lenox in the case of the Queen’s amulet, which had further implications than at first it seemed to, and rang through the court at its successful conclusion.

  Chapter 43

  Lenox rode back home through the streets of London, just after eight. Yes, it all fit, he thought. The leaf, the candle, the alibis of the suspects, the peculiar use of bella indigo, the stories about Soames’s finances, the windowsill, the knife, the wax on the floor, the newspaper articles, and the relative safety of the mint’s gold. There was one thing he hadn’t figured yet, and that was the identity of the men who had attacked him. But no doubt it would come to him in due course.

  He sat by the fire, smoking his pipe, and played with the pieces so they fit exactly in his mind. He sharpened the edges of the impression that he had and tightened the case. It might pass in court—it might—but he would have to hope for a confession, because he had little doubt that good lawyers would be involved. Yes, well, it was nearly time to call in Exeter, but he owed somebody else his first allegiance.

  “Graham?” he called, and the butler entered the library. “Graham, will you ask Lady Jane to step over? I would visit her, but there are a few things I want to show her, and I must wait for my brother to return.”

  “Yes, sir,” Graham said.

  A few minutes later, Lady Jane walked into the library, tugging at the fingers of her gloves and smiling.

  “Charles, how are you? I’m due at the Duchess’s, you know.” She was wearing a gray evening dress.

  “Can you give it a miss?”

  “I can certainly be late. Why?”

  “Will you sit down?”

  “Of course,” she said, and came to the couch. “I came over for tea this afternoon, you know, but you weren’t here.”

  “Would you believe I was performing the offices of a junior clerk?”

  “Your excuses to avoid seeing me are becoming a trifle overblown, I think.”

  He laughed. “I suppose. But I would do it again; I’ve solved the thing.”

  Lady Jane reacted in an unexpected way to this news: she turned pale and didn’t speak. At last she said, “Oh, Charles, I am grateful.”

  “Of course. I asked you over because I have to wait here for Edmund, but I wanted to tell you right away.”

  “Thank you, yes, of course. Oh, what a relief.” She sighed. “Well, who was it?”

  “May I walk you through the case? I’m only coming to it myself.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Lenox put his fingertips together and puffed on his pipe, which he kept between his back teeth. He narrowed his eyes, looked into the fire, and waited a few moments to speak.

  “Very well,” he said, at length. “Let us begin with the most remarkable fact of the case.”

  “By all means,” said Lady Jane.

  “Usually, when there are two murders, either the killer is a maniac or the second murder is committed as cover for the first.”

  “That doesn’t seem particularly remarkable.”

  “It wouldn’t be, if that were the case here. But instead I’ve come across something unique in my experience. The first murder was designed to cover for the second, the murder of Jack Soames five days afterward.”

  “I don’t really understand, Charles—only a little.”

  “I didn’t either, you see. I didn’t tell you, but in the days immediately after Prue Smith’s death I was at a loss: everywhere I looked was a dead end, every string I tugged on was limp. I exhausted the honor roll of normal motives, and each of them was empty.”

  “I could tell,” Lady Jane said. “That was why I decided to spend some time with George Barnard.”

  “Is that why? I’m sorry I drove you to it.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It was only after Jack’s death that I began to make headway—and then things came quickly, as they do in most murder cases. In other words, I could only begin to solve Prue Smith’s murder after Jack was dead, sadly enough. I wish it weren’t so, but it is.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Lady Jane. “But then who did it, Charles?”

  “I’m coming to that—forgive me if I go slowly; I am piecing it together still. Very well. Let me proceed.

  “It appeared immediately that the list of suspects was short. Bella indigo is extremely costly and, though I kept this to myself, there is a still more persuasive reason that limited the list of suspects: It took McConnell a full day to identify it, and he’s an expert. Only someone with real expertise, or at least an aficionado’s knowledge, would have used it.”

  “Or somebody who knew such an aficionado.”

  “Ah, correct; you’re quicker than I was there. Well, I asked Barnard’s housekeeper—and also asked Graham, as a separate corroboration—to identify people with access to Prue Smith during the relevant time. The list was short: Duff, Soames, Eustace Bramwell, Barnard, Roderick Potts, Claude Barnard, and o
f course the house’s servants.”

  “It seems as if you passed over the servants?” Lady Jane said inquiringly.

  “I did. I discounted them because of the cost and obscurity of bella indigo. Just before Soames’s death, I began to think of going back to them, particularly to the young man who was engaged to Prue Smith, but then a fresh trail emerged. Therefore it was down to these several people.

  “Roderick Potts could not have committed either murder. He was watched at the time of Jack Soames’s death, which made him extremely unlikely to have killed Prue, but I couldn’t discount it—until this morning. I had forgotten that Potts is a very fat man, in somewhat poor health. It took quick light feet and an agile body to walk down the stairs quietly, kill someone quite physically, and then, too, to sneak through a window. Not conclusive—but combined with all the facts, fairly near it.”

  Through this explanation Lady Jane listened patiently.

  Lenox leaned back and chewed on his pipe before continuing. “After Potts we have Duff. I suspected him from the start, I’ll admit. That the bottle of arsenic was his seemed at once damning and yet impossibly easy. And just this morning he paid me a visit, which, depending on one’s perspective, either exonerated him entirely or made him my first suspect. I think if I had not had something like an epiphany, I should have followed his trail—but it was unnecessary. And something else occurred to me as well. I told you of the valuable possession secreted in Barnard’s house; Duff was there to protect it. So he told me, and it would be such an easily discovered lie that it had to be true. Well, if he had murdered two people to steal it, and then stolen it, even Exeter would think of him first. No, I think it would be improbable even if I hadn’t solved the case.

  “We are left with four people: Jack Soames, Claude Barnard, Eustace Bramwell, and our acquaintance, Lady Jane, George Barnard. Exclude Jack Soames, and we are left with three names. You may call me the stupidest man on earth, if you please, because I should have narrowed it to these four straightaway, and even when I did I picked out Soames. Surpassingly feeble of me. My only excuse is that the motive was so strangely inverted.

  “Now, who did it? I’ll tell you—”

  But the revelation would have to wait at least a few minutes longer. Sir Edmund, again in his unattractive attire of the morning, had burst into the room, out of breath and very evidently bearing news.

  “Charles… Charles,” he said, panting. “I saw him… he looked up… I hid myself out of his sight… where I could see.…”

  He stood up, having been bent over, and collected himself. Lenox, too, had stood, and now clapped his brother on the back. “Excellent! Excellent!” he said.

  “I was—”

  “May I guess?”

  Edmund looked surprised. “Yes, of course.”

  “A man came into the room, moving very quickly, and knelt to the floor.”

  “Why, yes!” Edmund was wide-eyed.

  “He looked under the bed and then ran his hand across the floor, several times.”

  “Yes, right again!”

  “Then he stood up, much disconcerted—he may have even stood there for a moment—and then ran out as if struck by lightning.”

  “Why, Charles, are you making a fool of me?”

  “Oh, Edmund! Not for all the world.”

  “Do you know who the man was, then?”

  “Why, I imagine I do. Was it Claude Barnard?”

  Edmund looked at him with amazement. “Yes—yes, it was.”

  Chapter 44

  The three old friends were seated on the two leather sofas in the middle of Lenox’s library, with Graham in attendance. It was bitter cold outdoors, with a high wind, but there was a large bright fire inside and the room was pleasantly warm.

  Edmund and Lady Jane sat opposite Lenox, who had tapped his foot restlessly throughout the evening and stood up every few minutes to tidy something on a bookshelf or tend the fire. Both were used to seeing him this way at the end of a case, slightly nervous, slightly dogmatic, checking and rechecking the facts he knew.

  Still, Edmund was disappointed, and after a moment of silence, he said sorrowfully, “I suppose my work has gone for nothing, then. Oh, it’s all right, Charles,” he said, when Lenox put his hand out. “It was interesting nevertheless. Top-notch.”

  “Gone for nothing? Edmund, don’t be mad. It was unkind of me to steal your story, but I was too excited by it. As for your work going for nothing, I’ve spent the last hour figuring out how to make any of it stand up in court. Gone for nothing? I don’t think all the papers in a year could have brought me better news. To have your corroboration—absolute corroboration, in a way.”

  “Really?” said Edmund, slightly cheered.

  “Yes! Absolutely indispensable, dear brother.”

  “It was rather thrilling.”

  “Nothing, literally nothing, short of a confession, could have helped me more. I was hoping you would see something exactly of the kind when I sent you out.”

  Edmund was now recovered and turned to Lady Jane. “Oh, Jane,” he said—for of course he too had grown up with her—“you would have been surprised to see me out there! Completely in disguise!”

  Lady Jane, who had been taking in Edmund’s attire, made a bit of a face and said, “I say this as one of your oldest friends, Edmund. You don’t look your best.”

  “I daresay—but all worth it.”

  She smiled, then turned to Lenox and said, “It was Claude, then?”

  Edmund nodded, but Lenox put up a finger. “No,” he said. “No, not exactly.”

  Now Edmund, who, poor soul, had endured many ups and downs in the past minutes, said, with some confusion, “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Claude, you may remember, has the airtight alibi of your witness at the ball, Edmund.”

  “I could have been wrong,” said Edmund.

  “You weren’t. Claude didn’t kill Jack Soames.”

  “Drat,” said Edmund.

  “Claude poisoned Prudence Smith in cold blood, but his first cousin, Eustace Bramwell, murdered Jack Soames, also in cold blood, on the evening of the ball.”

  During the silence that ensued, Lady Jane and Edmund sat very still, while Lenox, who, truth be told, had a touch of the dramatic in him, went to his desk, took a pinch of shag from his cigarette box, and relit his pipe before returning to sit.

  “Separately?” said Edmund, at last.

  “No, in utter concert, to the extent that each of them had an airtight alibi for one of the murders, which did throw me off the trail for a while—and if it had been left to Exeter, I think the Yard would have missed it altogether. Exceedingly clever lads, and a clever plan. I’ve seen things of the sort before—the Von Olhoffen brothers. Usually one is the mastermind and persuades the other.”

  Lady Jane was still silent, and Lenox realized that he had briefly forgotten why he first became involved in the case.

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” he said.

  After a pause, she said, “No, I thank you.”

  “It is better to have it solved.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  For a time all three were silent. At last, Lady Jane spoke again.

  “How did you figure it out?”

  Now, with both Edmund and Jane still sitting and Graham standing by the door, Lenox rose to pace the room as he answered the question.

  “It was very obscure—very. But as I was explaining, Edmund, by this morning I had narrowed it to the two cousins and their uncle.

  “And then, as usual, a series of small and large things began to draw together in my mind. I found a leaf, a rare leaf, with no business being there, quite near the sill of Prue Smith’s window, where Eustace escaped after murdering Soames, and later I remembered that at our first meeting I had seen bunches of sprigs and leaves in his pocket. You see that with many botanists: out collecting, I supposed, and thought little of it then. But it returned to me.”

  “That might have been Barnard, though,
” said Lady Jane. “You remember he took me to the botanical gardens.”

  “Yes, you’re right. It complicated things. But the other clues sorted out that confusion.”

  “What other clues?” Edmund asked.

  “There was the candle. I noticed immediately when I first went over that Prue Smith had an unused candle in her room. Graham, remind me what the maid told you?”

  “She said, sir, that candles are meted out very stringently by the housekeeper.”

  “Exactly. That was more than useful, it was significant. It was only because you found that out, Graham, that sometime later, when I happened to see Claude with his cuff unbuttoned and saw a small burn on his forearm, I started to wonder.”

  “Prue and Claude must have fought,” Graham said carefully. “The spots of wax on the floor. Sir,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Exactly. McConnell and I found spots of wax on the floor of Prue Smith’s room. I think now she died because she had overheard Claude and Eustace discussing Soames and confronted Claude, with whom she was close. During their fight perhaps they struggled, and tipped things over—including, as Graham agrees, the candle, which left wax on the floor and burned Claude. Perhaps she was holding the candle to give them light. At any rate, the two young men must have seen this to be a clue—the mangled candle—and replaced it. They, of course, could have all the candles they wanted, living upstairs.”

  “But if they were having a fight,” said Edmund, “wouldn’t poison be a rather roundabout way of killing her?”

  “You’re right,” said Lenox. “I think Claude must have persuaded her to hold her tongue for a little while. I would guess she said yes reluctantly, and gave them enough time to poison her.