An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries)

by Charles Finch

  “Good,” said Lenox, perhaps rather too sharply.

  The next two or three days were exceptionally busy ones for Lenox, who spent most of them on the benches of the House or closeted with Graham and a small host of important politicians. Disraeli’s unexpected willingness to compromise had changed their plans for the new session, and at the same time they were plotting out the map to see where they could gain seats in the next election. They also had to select candidates—or grant approval to those who had selected themselves—for a handful of by-elections, out-of-season contests that occurred when a Member died or, on occasion, inherited a title that pushed him up to the House of Lords. Lenox himself had first won Stirrington at a by-election, though by now he and his old friend Brick had handily won several regular contests.

  He told Jane about his lunch with McConnell, but something held him back from informing her, quite yet, of his trip to the Surgeons’ Club and his discovery there that the doctor had deceived him. Perhaps it was because Lady Jane was already so loyal to Toto that he didn’t want to finalize her bias.

  “When you look him in the eye it is difficult to imagine him straying,” said Lenox.

  It was rather late at night, and Lady Jane had been writing letters at a small table in his study, keeping him company as he sat and worked. Now they were together upon the sofa.

  “Everyone I see now mentions it to me.” Her voice was terribly sad.

  “What does Toto say?” he asked.

  “The fight has gone out of her.”

  “Out of Toto?” he asked, skeptical.

  “For the moment anyhow. She scarcely leaves the house, I believe. At least George is some consolation to her—but she is redder-eyed than I ever saw her before, that much is certain.”

  Gradually the conversation shifted to more cheerful topics. Lady Jane was planning a supper in two weeks, at which Disraeli was to be among the guests, along with James Hilary, Lord Cabot, and several other political figures. Mixed in would be some of her particular friends, selected because they had no political interest whatsoever, and therefore could lift the party beyond the threat of workplace boredom, fizzy as yeast in a loaf of bread. For a long while they debated which of these friends might sit where.

  “I cannot see the Prime Minister sitting next to Jemima Faringdon,” said Lady Jane, pursing her lips.

  “Is it because she could not tell you whether he was a Tory or a brand of face powder?”

  She laughed. “I don’t think she’s as foolish as that. Certainly there is no face powder she could not identify by name, for beginners. But perhaps she would be better going in with Lord Cabot. He admires a lovely woman, and she enjoys flattery.”

  “True enough—and yet Disraeli himself is known as an admirer of young women.”

  They talked on like this for a while longer, until at last, yawning, she said she thought she would retire. “Can you come up?” she asked.

  He sighed and stood up, walking back toward his desk. “No, I must stay awake and review a memorandum Graham has written, I’m afraid, about the Irish question, blast it to hell. Oh, and if you would tell the housemaid I need more candles—I find I’ve run out.”

  “Already?” she asked from the sofa. “Have you been eating them?”

  “It has been many nights of work,” he said.

  Her face turned sympathetic, and she came across the room on soft footsteps, embracing him when she reached him and kissing his cheek. “You poor dear,” she said. “Yes, I’ll have them sent in right now. But don’t be too long coming up to rest.”

  “No, I won’t,” he said: just as capable of misleading his wife as McConnell, apparently.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two mornings later Sophia was having a friend to visit her nursery, a young gentleman, not grown far above two feet, by the name of William Dean. He was the son of the vicar of Hampden Lane’s small church, St. Paul’s. Lenox—as he had promised himself he would—went to visit his daughter.

  It was a clear morning, a breeze coming through the cracked windows. Sophia was intent upon a small wooden horse, while Master Dean, unaccustomed perhaps to the strict demands of a London social call, was staring at the wall and drooling.

  “How old is this child?” Lenox asked Miss Emanuel.

  “Nearly eighteen months,” she said.

  “I have never understood this strange tradition that has us dress our small boys in martial clothing. This one seems to be wearing a regimental jacket.”

  “I think he is very fine,” said Miss Emanuel.

  “Yes, as if he could lead a battalion into Waterloo on horseback.”

  The nurse laughed. “Leave the poor child alone.”

  Lenox smiled and tousled the boy’s hair, then bent down to give Sophia a kiss, catching as he did the clean, sharp scent of Pears soap on her skin. “Good-bye, Miss Emanuel. I shall be rather late this evening, I expect, but I will visit you again in the morning.”

  He had found when he woke up that morning that he was not quite ready to consign Archie Godwin—the false Archie Godwin—to the past. On his way to Parliament after visiting the nursery, Lenox asked his carriage driver to stop in at Charing Cross. When they arrived he went into Gilbert’s. The owner, a small, harassed, efficient Italian, granted him a few seconds of time. His answers were terse. He did not remember a tall, light-haired gentleman; he did not remember Lenox; on the other hand he did remember the lady. When Lenox heard this his hopes surged.

  “The one with the black-and-white striped umbrella?”

  “Yes. She comes in every month.”

  “Curious.”

  “It is not curious at all,” said the Italian indignantly. His English was excellent, though accented. “In fact, the majority of our customers stop in upon strict schedules, clockwork regular.”

  “She comes upon the same date every month?”

  “No, but always a Wednesday, and always the same time, morning.”

  “And she always leaves in time to catch the 8:38?”

  The owner shrugged. “She does not confide to me where she is traveling, Mr. Lenox. She asks for tea and toast, sometimes for an egg.”

  “How long has she been coming to sit here?”

  “Fifteen months, maybe eighteen.”

  “Do you know her name, or her occupation?”

  “I do not.”

  “Has she ever been in the company of—”

  “Never in any company at all.”

  “When she comes in again, would you give her my card?” asked Lenox, pressing an additional one—he had already presented it upon his arrival—upon the owner.

  “Yes, if you wish. Though it won’t be for three weeks.”

  It was a promising clue to the woman’s identity that she had a schedule at Gilbert’s. A monthly visit by train from Charing Cross—parents in the country, or perhaps a beau?

  After visiting Gilbert’s Lenox went into Charing Cross Station itself and straight up to the ticket booth, to ask if there was a woman who bought the same ticket every month, possibly on the 8:38 to Canterbury, at around the same date. This, however, was a bridge too far. None of the several men he met, nor the stationmaster, could help him. He did manage to get the name of the 8:38’s usual conductor. This gentleman was commonly to be found in the engineers’ and conductors’ tearoom until 8:15 each morning. Lenox decided he would come back to see the man, who might much more easily remember a regular passenger than a ticket broker would.

  It would be so much better should she write to Dallington again, their mystery subject—but he held out very little hope for that.

  That evening Lenox went to Dallington’s rooms for their weekly supper. In general they traded meals at their respective clubs, but the young lord was still ill, though well enough for conversation, he assured Lenox in his note.

  In person he had a cough, and still little enough color in his cheeks, but he did look marginally better—at least, he had contrived to stand up and put himself into a suit of clothes. (At the
ir lunch Lenox had asked McConnell to look in on Dallington, and apparently the doctor had prescribed nothing more than rest when he came by two mornings before.) On the sideboard was a meal, ordered up by Mrs. Lucas from the chophouse, beef broth and crackers for Dallington, a beefsteak for Lenox. After they ate they shared a pot of strong tea.

  The new cases Dallington had received were dull, and after dismissing them the two gentlemen began to discuss past cases instead.

  “The cleverest murder I ever saw was in ’61,” said Lenox. “A gentleman named Harper murdered the tax inspector—or collector, I can’t recall which it was—for assessing a tax upon him for the keeping of a dog.”

  “Where was the cleverness in that?”

  “Harper did the inspector’s job for the next month. Claimed to be the victim’s brother-in-law, said that the inspector had fallen ill. They swallowed it entirely at the office and let him take the man’s round. Only instead of turning in the money he collected at the end of the month, he kept it all and fled on a Friday evening, a much richer man than he had before the whole thing started. And with his dog. It was Tuesday morning before anyone thought to look for him. He had even collected his victim’s wages.”

  “Nobody in that whole month noticed the inspector was missing? A wife? A friend?”

  “He was unmarried—a young man—and Harper went to his lodgings, posing as his brother-in-law again, and said the inspector had been called back to Manchester to care for his ill father. He paid the landlady out till the end of the week, and she found a new lodger immediately. She kept the inspector’s possessions in her basement, thinking he would call round for them, though as you can imagine he never did.”

  Dallington shook his head. “Ingenious. What became of Harper?”

  “We spent months searching for him. At first we thought he must have returned to Devon, where his people lived, and then we thought he might have gone overseas.”

  “And?”

  “We never found him.”

  Dallington whistled. “He got away with it.”

  “He’s survived fourteen years somewhere upon the face of the earth. Personally I imagine that he settled somewhere with the money and built a new life. By all accounts he was a stable person, no outward signs of madness. It’s often the way. I still have hopes we might catch him, though everyone concerned has become old and gray.”

  Dallington sighed. “Even the best in our profession cannot hope for total success,” he said. “Outside of the yellowbacks at any rate.” These were the crime books, often based on true stories, that sold on the street for a penny or two, bound in loud yellow cloth. “I have never known Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s detectives to fail.”

  “Nor Inspector Bucket,” said Lenox, smiling. “Though he never received a sequel to test his wits a second time, as in my opinion he ought to have done.”

  “Perhaps all of us ought to cosign a letter to Miss Strickland, informing her that popular fiction may have misled her.”

  “All of us?” asked Lenox.

  “Oh, you know, the usual crowd of investigators: Audley, LeMaire.”

  Lenox knew the names, though both men had popped up only after he had left the profession. Hearing them gave him an idea. “Do you think our mysterious young woman might have gone to one of them, after she came to us?”

  Dallington frowned. “She might have done.”

  “She seemed desperate for help, certainly. Though perhaps our meeting gave her enough of a fright to silence her.”

  “There are more than a few private investigators, though.”

  Lenox nodded. “Well, there are scores of cheap and dubious ones. There are only a very few with any reputation among the upper classes, however. Think of her writing paper, the hand in which she wrote, her diction. Clearly she is a woman of some position. That she approached you is perhaps proof enough of that.”

  Dallington laughed weakly. “I cannot say that a woman spending time in my company has always vouchsafed her good breeding.”

  “But really,” Lenox said, “to whom might she have gone, if she could not go to the police? You, Audley, LeMaire. That is the list, is it not?”

  “Even Audley has a very middle-class clientele,” said Dallington. “They go to LeMaire if they want the old Vidocq touch. He’s not especially skillful, but for some the accent makes them feel they’re getting a bargain.”

  “I’ll go around to both tomorrow,” said Lenox.

  “Why should they tell you anything?”

  “I’ve no wish to poach a client, only to get one back—and the information about Godwin, the man calling himself Godwin, could be of use to them.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The engineers’ and conductors’ tearoom at Charing Cross lay toward the back of the station, far from the crowds of travelers queuing near the platforms. Its door was made of frosted glass and had the word PRIVATE stenciled in large black letters upon it. The roving ticket salesman who had pointed it out to Lenox hadn’t wanted to at first, until a coin persuaded him; evidently these engineers and conductors valued their solitude. Well, too bad.

  Lenox knocked. The door opened a few inches, and a fat round face, with a magnificent dark toothbrush mustache appended to its upper lip, appeared. “’Lo?”

  “How do you do? My name is Charles Lenox, and I—”

  “Ticket office to the left,” said the face, and then the door slammed.

  Lenox knocked it again. The door opened. “I am in some difficulty, and—”

  “You can’t imagine how little I care, sir.”

  “I wish you would address a perfectly civil inquiry with a greater respect.”

  “If wishes was horses then beggars would ride,” said the man immediately.

  “I’m looking for the conductor of the 8:38 to Canterbury, Padden.”

  “Who, what, Padden? Should have said so straightaway, daft of you not to. Can’t think why you weren’t clear from the start. George Padden!”

  “Not in!” called a voice.

  “You’ve a visitor!”

  The door then closed in Lenox’s face again, but he heard footsteps, and soon enough it reopened, and a thinner, paler face appeared. Its bearer was extremely tall. His face was impassive. “Yes?”

  “Let me begin—”

  “Sir, we have ten minutes now and again for a cup of tea. Otherwise it’s tramping up and down a train all day, soot in your clothes, and a vagrant sleeping off the back porch as thanks. Say your piece quick, please.”

  “I’m worried about the safety of one of your regular passengers, a young woman who takes the 8:38 to Canterbury once each month. She might well have taken it several days ago on a Wednesday.”

  The conductor frowned and then, after a beat, sighed. “You’d better come in,” he said.

  The room was cozy, with a great silver-plated urn at one end, crowded around at its base with chipped blue and white cups and saucers. There was a bowl of sugar off to the side, and a whole jar full of spoons. Every surface in the room, tables and chairs and sofas, was covered in periodicals and newspapers. A few conductors and engineers lounged peaceably, drinking their tea—or, in the instance of the man who had first greeted Lenox, something that looked like a glass of beer—and reading, one of them drowsing underneath a crumpled paper. There was a bright fire in the grate, making the whole room sleepy and warm. An enormous clock stood at the center of each wall, no doubt to keep them to schedule.

  More civilly now, Padden offered Lenox a cup of tea, which he took—it was rather a cold morning. He spooned a quick shower of sugar into it and stirred. “Lemon, milk?” Padden offered.

  “Go on, then, if you have milk,” said Lenox.

  Padden pulled a pot of milk from its spot on the only windowsill in the room, where it must have kept reasonably cold. Lenox took a sip of the tea. It was excellent, very strong. Padden, glancing at his pocket watch, invited Lenox to sit down in the corner of the room. “Tell me more, then,” he said.

  As minimally as he coul
d, Lenox explained who he was, that he had acted on Dallington’s behalf in meeting this young woman, and how she had been scared away. He also described her appearance, at least as accurately as he could recall it.

  When he had finished speaking, he looked at Padden expectantly. “Well?”

  The conductor leaned back in the chair, his long legs crossed. “I know the young woman you’ve described.”

  “Was she on the train recently?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  With a skeptical rise of his eyebrows, Padden said, “If I did know it, I’m not sure I’d give it straight to you. As it happens I don’t know her surname. I heard her Christian name once.”

  Lenox’s heart fell. “Can you tell me anything about her? Any detail at all? What station she leaves the train at, with whom she might travel, any distinguishing marks of apparel?”

  “You said you were a Member of Parliament. Do you have a card?”

  “Of course.” Lenox took one from the thin silver case Jane had given him three Christmases before. “At your service.”

  Padden took the card and inspected it, then looked up. “If you don’t mind, I’ll look into your story for myself and call upon you in the next day or two, should I find that all’s in order, like.”

  Lenox nodded at once. “I understand, though I would appreciate your haste. The matter may be pressing.”

  “Yes,” said Padden. “She was more agitated than I’d seen her before.”

  At the other end of the room Lenox’s first friend here—the man with the pink face and the toothbrush mustache—folded his paper. “Right, chaps,” he said. “The 8:29 to Clapham Junction waits for no man, unless I should stumble and fall into the tracks and have my head stoved in by a train. Which it’s very possible, clumsy as I am, and if it happens be generous when they pass the hat for the widow Parker. None of your ha’pennies, I want to hear a rattle of crowns, or I’ll haunt you proper.”