A Beautiful Blue Death clm-1

by Charles Finch

  “This is my son, Mr. Lenox. John.”

  “How do you do, John?”

  “What do you say?” Exeter said, addressing the boy.

  “Thank you, sir,” the boy said.

  Lenox’s and Exeter’s eyes met. Lenox offered his hand, Exeter shook it, and the detective and his son walked away. Climbing back into his carriage, Lenox thought, Ridiculous, in a way. But as they drove, he couldn’t help feeling a little moved.

  Their second stop was at the Clark Lane storefront of Mr. Kerr, travel agent.

  “Mr. Kerr!” Lenox said, walking in. It was a dusty room but well lit and cluttered with papers, itineraries, and maps.

  “Ah. Mr. Lenox.”

  “Yes indeed, Mr. Kerr.”

  “Come to plan a trip?”

  “Just so, Mr. Kerr.”

  The elderly man laughed sourly. “Don’t see the use. You never go anywhere; I never make any money!”

  “Why, Mr. Kerr, I did in fact go to Moscow, only a few years ago.”

  “Nine.”

  “Well, work will come up, Mr. Kerr.”

  “Not for me, with such clients!”

  “Ah! Now there you’re incorrect, if you’ll excuse me saying so. One word, Mr. Kerr: Persia. What have you got?”

  “What’ve I got? Empty promises! What about France?”

  “Well, well, I had to cancel. But Graham came by with fifty pounds, did he not?”

  “Aye, aye,” said Mr. Kerr, begrudgingly but slightly mollified.

  “Excellent. Now, what have you got in the way of Persia? I was thinking of a four-city tour, if you can manage it, with a native guide. I may go off the beaten path a bit.…”

  The conversation began to grow concrete, and very slowly Mr. Kerr pulled out the proper maps and said that yes, perhaps he knew a man who was familiar with the Persian countryside. Gradually, as he always did, Lenox drew the grumpy old man out, until by the end they were equally excited. Often people told him he should go to a different agent, but Lenox liked their ritual and stubborn Mr. Kerr’s gradual acceptance of Lenox’s good cheer. And then he had one quality that Lenox judged him for beyond all others: Mr. Kerr, too, loved to plan trips. He had found his métier by being the sort of dreamer Lenox was when it came to travel.

  Lenox left an hour later with several papers in hand and promises to return after the New Year to plan things more specifically. Who knew if he would get to Persia—but as he planned, he always believed that this time he really would.

  On the way home, he asked to be dropped at the end of Hampden Lane and walked happily up the street with a little arrangement of flowers in his hand. They were forget-me-nots, and he left them with Kirk, along with a note that said, Thank you for everything, and see you soon!

  He then walked back to his house, next door, still gratefully warm of foot, and walked up his own stoop contentedly. He received a telegram when he came in.

  Claude Barnard had just pled guilty to charges of murder at the Assizes, saving himself a trial, and received twenty-five years in prison, commuted from hanging on the strength of Lenox’s private advocacy of compassion to the judge.

  It may as well do to explain his fate now, as his cousin’s has already been determined. Claude did in fact receive 200,000 pounds, his shares and Eustace’s, when the board of the Pacific Trust voted again—despite the public’s futile insistence that Jack Soames’s memory be honored by his last vote. The cousins had arranged that ownership of their joint stock would transfer to the remaining cousin upon the death of one, or, upon the death of both, would be split equally between their families.

  The money tantalized Claude for the first year in prison, when he could only spread a pound here and there for better meals and a private room. But gradually, after the passage of some years, he grew content with his lot and even wrote a treatise, “On the English Prison,” which was well received, for there was only a dim memory of his crime and ample evidence of his contrition.

  Then, in his tenth year in prison, Claude began to distribute his money among charities he chose quite carefully. When he was released after nineteen years for good behavior, he had given away all but forty thousand pounds. There was conjecture that he was trying to pay his way out of his memories, and this may well have been true, but the orphans and troubled women who received the money looked for very little motive, and even if he was guilty of assuaging his guilt with his gild, it didn’t change the fact that he did an immense amount of good.

  He was forty when he again became a free man. He took small but comfortable rooms in an obscure part of the city and traveled to warm climates in the winter. At forty-five he wrote another treatise, called “On the Alteration of Man’s Will”; it is not too much to say that it became a minor classic in its time and was still occasionally being dusted off, even after his premature death, of drink, at fifty-three.

  Lenox saw him only one more time, on the streets of London. It was on a warm sunny day in June, near the entrance to Hyde Park. Claude seemed unable to speak, and when Lenox said, “I’m glad to see you’ve turned your fortune to the benefit of the city,” Claude merely nodded and then ran off very quickly, stooped over, carrying a number of books under his arm.

  Chapter 48

  Lenox arrived home in his new boots and went into his library. There he carefully tidied his desk and pulled out a last books he had forgotten to ask Graham to pack. Then he gave the room a last good look and shut the doors.

  Graham waited in the front hallway. After Lenox had looked here and there to make sure things were in order, and even gone up to his bedroom, the two men left for Paddington, where they caught the evening train to Markethouse.

  Graham had sent their luggage forward the day before but had brought the morning papers, which he read, while Lenox gave another effort to De Rerum Natura, which he had detested at school, where he had been forced to learn it by rote, but now thought he ought to try again.

  Faithfully, he read a great deal of the volume, laying it aside only when evening began to overshadow the landscape and the train drew into Sussex, the part of the country he recognized the best. For half an hour he looked out of the window, his thoughts strumming quietly along.

  When they were close to Markethouse, Graham said to him, “Have you looked at the Daily Telegraph today?”

  “I flipped through it earlier.”

  “The business section, sir?”

  “Well, no.”

  Graham raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

  “Tomorrow,” Lenox said, waving a hand.

  “There’s an article just here, sir, which might be worth looking at.”

  “I’m not really in the mood.”

  But Graham insisted in his quiet way. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, sir. Perhaps you might.”

  Lenox took it reluctantly and scanned the headlines, then turned inside, where he read the agony column and the notes on London crime. Finally, keeping his promise, he turned to the financial page. He read the long stories and even glanced at the smaller ones, so that the most remote names of people and companies in the news would be stored away in the attic of his mind.

  But the article that truly grabbed his interest was what Graham had pointed out, a very short column of print at the bottom of the last page. This he read again and again, with his brow furrowing, clutching the paper close to his eyes, for the light had all but failed.

  He scarcely took his attention from it even when Graham and he left the train and stepped into the waiting carriage. And in the carriage he doggedly studied the little corner of the paper until at last, halfway through their journey to Lenox House, which was a good twenty minutes from the station, he threw the whole thing down and buried his face in his hands.

  “Sir?” said Graham.

  “By jove, what a fool I am, Graham,” Lenox said. “You were absolutely right. Give me a kick in the trousers if I don’t listen to you again.”

  “What is your opinion, sir?”

  Lenox read
it aloud, as much for himself as Graham.

  The Daily Telegraph has learned that the nation’s money was in good hands for two weeks: Mr. George Barnard’s. Most readers will say that this has been true for some time, to which the Telegraph replies that we mean the statement literally. After the series of assaults on the mint, which police now think was done by members of the Hammer Gang, quick-acting members of the government, including Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone, consulted and decided that the money due to be released for circulation would be best concealed in a strongroom in Mr. Barnard’s house. There it resided safely until Tuesday, when it was released under supervision into popular use. Indeed, £19,100 was lost, though Mr. Barnard attributed this to assaults on the mint, saying the government was lucky not to lose more and the preservation of the remainder of the money was due to their quick action. The missing amount was coinage stored in one crate. The Spectator adds that while £19,100 would be a large amount for most individuals, in matters of government it is insignificant, bearing in mind that the total sum of the gold successfully stowed away was approximately £2,000,000.

  “Odd, I agree. What do you see in it, sir?” Graham asked.

  It had been less than a week since Claude Barnard’s guilty plea at the Assizes, and during that time something had bothered Lenox. He was certain in his conviction of the lad’s guilt, and certain of Eustace Bramwell’s death, but in the back of his mind he realized that there were dark spots in his understanding, and he had worked his mind over them ceaselessly, if quietly, like a stream wearing away a stone.

  “There was a second plot line in the Smith/Soames case, Graham,” he said, “running with a faint pulse beneath the actions of the cousins. Oh, to have missed it!” He pounded his fist on the seat. “And now the footprints will be gone.”

  “May I ask what you mean, sir?”

  Lenox, though, was already lost in his thought. “How far back… ?” he muttered, and then, a moment later, he shook his head, and said, “Very possibly.…”

  He spoke again a few minutes later, at the beginning of the long driveway to the house, which ran for some miles through a dense grove of trees. “You know, Graham, I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that I’m clever.” Graham said nothing but gave that same small raise of his eyebrows. “I ought to have paid closer to attention to Barnard.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Yes, of course. The immediate obfuscation—the insistence that it was suicide—and then the exchange of bright young Jenkins for bull-headed Exeter, and finally our odd breakfast together and his insistence that I stand at the edges of the case. Stupid me, I ignored it—took it for his usual ill grace.”

  “What was it, sir?” Graham asked.

  Lenox sighed. “It was he who stole the money, Graham. I have little enough proof, but I know it in my bones. He stole the nineteen thousand and who knows how much else?

  “You remember, of course, the men who attacked me. I think you were right to begin with. When that man muttered Barnard’s name, it wasn’t because Barnard’s a public figure.”

  “I agree, sir. As I said before, they did not seem like men who read the society pages.”

  “Exactly. You had it all along—he sent them. I also believe he organized the original attacks on the mints. The hammer tattooed above the man’s eye—of course I see it now; he was in the Hammer, the gang that runs out of the Rookery. No wonder that’s where the chaps led you. I should have seen it before—daft of me. Led by a fellow named Hammersmith, who controls most of the organized theft in East London. Some of its more powerful members have that tattoo as a mark of loyalty. It’s considered an honor in those circles.

  “Why attack me? It was absolutely necessary that I stay away from the case. Barnard could handle Exeter; he couldn’t handle me. But why attack the mint? It was too well guarded. He could guarantee bad guards occasionally, because he runs the mint, but it was too risky. So Barnard himself suggested keeping the gold in his strongroom. Newton Duff mentioned to me when we met that Barnard had initially wanted no guards in his house; he felt he could guard it alone. Is there anything more transparent? I say again, I have no proof, but I feel utterly certain.

  “And then the sum! Nineteen thousand pounds. A clerical sum, a sum that would be missed but not thoroughly investigated. A sum a gentleman could live off of for years and years, but not a sum so ostentatious as to arouse much curiosity. I wonder, Graham—how many times has he stolen such a sum? How many times has he squirreled away a few hundred pounds, then a few thousand pounds, as his status rose? All the time, mark you, serving so well as to be above suspicion.”

  Graham began to speak, but Lenox held up a hand. “No, Graham. I know it. Everything tells me. The great mystery of George Barnard’s money—I’ve got it. Nobody has ever known, not even the men who always, always, know such things.”

  The carriage slowed to a stop as they arrived at the door. “I can’t prove it yet,” said Lenox, “but I will.”

  He didn’t open the door to the carriage for a moment.

  “It is quite possible, sir,” said Graham.

  “It is beyond possible, Graham. It is a certainty. And you should take more pride in it—you were the one who forced me to read this and who followed those thugs to the Rookery.”

  “What will you do next?” Graham asked.

  “I must track down the men who attacked me; I am certain now that it was Barnard who sent them. Claude would have mentioned it, you know, if he and his cousin were responsible for the attack. And Eustace, I would guess, would have thought his plan too clever, estimated his own intelligence too highly, to resort to such things. His plan was already working. Barnard is the only answer.

  “But he has gone a step too far. He should have left the money alone, after I began to look into his household.” With a look of determination, Lenox said, “Yes, he will regret that. He should have laid low.”

  Only then did he step out of the carriage and greet his brother, his sister-in-law, and his nephews.

  Chapter 49

  It was now nearly a month later. Lenox had grown accustomed to living in Lenox House again and felt happy, pottering about during the days and sleeping well during the cold nights, back in the heart of his family, back in his childhood home, reading quietly and eating well and resting his mind. He had made a bargain with himself that he would only begin to think about Barnard when he went back to London, which wouldn’t be for some time.

  One Sunday at midafternoon, he had just come back from a long walk through the grounds. He had taken to doing this every day. He would walk past the thickets of old trees at the end of the park, which he greeted like friends, and then across the stream that divided the park from the wild acres of the property, where he and Edmund had played as children. After perhaps three miles, he would reach several large rented farms at the south end of the estate, which buzzed with activity even through winter. Horses grazing, vets examining the pregnant cows and dogs herding the rest of them, rows of chicken coops where the farmer’s wife went every afternoon to find a new batch of eggs. It was a life he loved. He would watch for a while and then turn around and head for home.

  Back now, he paused briefly in the parlor to warm his face and hands at the great hearth. His feet, of course, were quite warm enough, thanks to Mr. Linehan.

  It was a large solid house, divided into two wings and shaped like an L. In the older wing were the great hall, where the family portraits were, and the chapel where the family had been that very morning. But the bedrooms there, because they were small and medieval, went unused. They all slept in the new wing.

  Lenox was staying in his old room, which Sir Edmund reserved for his use alone. It was attached to a good-sized study, where he kept a few duplicates of his favorite books, histories of the Roman Empire and journals on English archaeology, plus pictures and papers from university, which he sifted through now and again. It also had a desk and a small fireplace, and he had his morning tea there, writing letters in his robe and
slippers before joining the family for breakfast.

  Warmer now, he leaned his walking stick against a wall before going off to search for his brother. He would probably be in his library, where he usually stayed when his family was gone, and Molly had taken the boys over to town to see a play. The two brothers were alone in the house.

  Strange to think of it as Edmund’s library; it had always been their father’s, where the young Edmund and Charles had gone, in season, to be chided, praised, or punished, from their earliest years to their time at Harrow and then Oxford. But now it was cluttered with the things of the ninth baronet, blue books from Parliament, letters, and a portrait of Molly. All that really seemed the same were the old desk, the family books, and the small diamond-shaped windows at the back of the room.

  Lenox and his brother had always been affectionate and spent a good deal of time together. But during this visit, sitting here together late at night, they had talked much more deeply than ever before. They discussed their family; they were the only people who remembered their parents as they did, and it was nice to talk about them together. They talked, at last, about Edmund’s real role in Parliament, which his modesty had concealed for so long. Lenox told his brother about old cases, which he had never bothered to mention, and they conspired over small matters of the estate.

  Now, when Charles knocked, Edmund was there and invited him to sit down.

  “I’ve just been for a walk. I was wondering, do the Adamses still rent Darrow Farm?”

  “Yes, indeed. Do you remember old Adams?”

  “Remember him? He terrified us both for years.”

  The brothers laughed. “Yes,” said Edmund. “I’m afraid he’s dead, but his son keeps the farm up. He makes a very good living out of it, too.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Do you remember—?”

  They launched into a nostalgic conversation about the former tenants of the farms, which spread into a discussion of the masters at their grammar school, and it was nearly time for dinner when they had stopped.