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

by Charles Finch

  A moment later the housekeeper knocked on the door. “There’s a visitor,” she announced.

  “Thank you,” said the bobby. He was clutching a piece of paper. “I come with a note from Inspector Jenkins for Mr. Dallington.”

  Lenox could see plainly upon the young bobby’s face, which was shining with excitement, that he could tell them what had happened as easily as the note could. “What is the news?”

  “There’s been a murder, sir,” said the bobby, “in Knightsbridge. A single pistol shot to the temple, it was.”

  “Who died?” asked Dallington, still holding the unopened note.

  “That was why Inspector Jenkins thought you might be interested, you see. It was a gentleman named Archie Godwin, sir.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For the first time since he had fallen ill a week before, Dallington dressed to leave Half Moon Street, and the moment Mrs. Lucas understood this fact she raced into his rooms with pans of sulfur, blocking the keyhole with cloth as they left and opening all the windows. It was the usual manner of cleansing a sickroom. The smell was dreadful even from the street three flights of stairs below, where Lenox and Dallington waited for a cab to fetch them.

  They passed the ride to Knightsbridge largely in silence, Lenox gazing out at the busy evening, angry with himself, Dallington, on the other hand, taking even breaths, trying to conserve his energy.

  Soon they came to the address that Inspector Jenkins had given in his note. The bobby, having delivered word to Dallington, was now returning to Scotland Yard with a report, so the two men traveled alone.

  It appeared that Archie Godwin had died in a hotel; the cab stopped in front of a modest, cheerfully bright hostelry, white with black beams in the old style of the Tudor coaching inns. It stood on a dignified side street, usually sedate no doubt, but at the moment flooded with activity. There were police carriages out front, which held extra lamps aloft and lit the pavement bright. Several bobbies were congregated around the hotel’s doorway, barring anyone from entrance.

  “This is the Graves Hotel,” murmured Dallington.

  “You know it?”

  “Passably well. My mother’s uncle used to stay here, my great-uncle. Very quiet place. He thought it too noisy in our house. Anything above a whisper shattered his nerves, however. He was a general in Crimea.”

  Lenox and Dallington alighted from the carriage and approached the door. There they saw, in among the bobbies, Thomas Jenkins. He had a bit of gray at his temple now and was certainly into the thin end of his thirties, though Lenox still tended to think of him as a young man. He was issuing instructions when he spotted them and strode over.

  “Lenox, Dallington,” he said briskly. “I’m glad you’re here. Lord John, in your last note to me you mentioned the incident with Godwin. I thought of you when we took in this case, naturally. Or perhaps you’re the one who can help, Lenox?”

  “Little enough, unfortunately,” said Lenox. He described their encounter at Gilbert’s Restaurant and his subsequent investigation at White’s. “I’m curious about the body you found. Is it a tall, slender man with light hair, or a short—”

  “No, no, quite the latter,” said Jenkins impatiently, eyes roving the scene. Lenox remembered Dallington mentioning that the inspector was all haste for a promotion, now that his name was commonly found in the papers. He had recently been promoted and was now one of three chief inspectors at Scotland Yard. The job he wanted—which had rotated among several men, none of them satisfactory, since the death of Inspector Exeter—was superintendent. The other CIs wanted it, too. “Bald, short, stocky. The true Archibald Godwin, I fear.”

  “Then at any rate I can provide you with a description of the man who ought to be your primary suspect. He is a shade above six foot, a handsome fellow, dressed like a gentleman, with a silver watch chain, light hair, rather an upturned nose, and a blond mustache.”

  The inspector pulled a pad of paper from his breast pocket and transcribed this capsule biography, the eager young bobby just behind him, one Lenox had never seen, doing the same. Jenkins turned toward the lad after he was finished writing and said, “Get that description around, if you would.”

  “Immediately, sir,” said the apprentice and vanished.

  Lenox went on. “I think you’ll find him in the West End, if you want to inform the peelers there in particular. He bore every mark of a gentleman.”

  “Shall we place someone inside Gilbert’s?”

  Lenox shrugged. “You might. If he is indeed a criminal, he has likely investigated my name by now and knows that I am—that I was once a detective. If so I sincerely doubt that he shall return to Gilbert’s. He will likely be wary regardless. Plainly he is armed, if we assume he is the murderer.”

  Dallington, hands in his pockets, leaning against the building for support, asked, “Where is the body? How long ago was it done?”

  “Not above seventy-five minutes ago,” said Jenkins. “He is lying upstairs, in the corridor outside of his room. His cloak and pockets were stripped of all their contents. His hat and watch and watch chain—presuming he wore a watch—are gone also. So is an overnight bag, which the bootboy carried up to his room yesterday morning.”

  “His hat!” cried Dallington. “How very odd.”

  “Could they have been stolen by someone who came across the body in the hallway? Perhaps even one of the people working in the hotel? How long was he lying there?” asked Lenox.

  Jenkins shook his head. “The sound of the pistol firing roused half a dozen people immediately. It’s a miracle that none of them saw the face of the man who did it, though they gave chase to a figure that fled down toward Gloucester Road.”

  Gloucester Road was the main thoroughfare of this area; a man might have lost himself very easily in the public houses and restaurants there, even late in the evening. Still, Lenox said, “Have you sent bobbies down to—”

  “Yes, they’re conducting a thorough canvass.”

  “Do we imagine that the murderer took Godwin’s effects in the hope of concealing his identity?” asked Dallington.

  “No,” said Lenox. “He was staying at the hotel. More likely the person wanted it to look like a robbery.”

  “Or it was a robbery,” said Dallington. “At any rate, if his effects are gone, how can you be sure that it was Godwin at all? I suppose it was his room?”

  “Yes,” said Jenkins, “and the fellow at the counter took a look and confirmed that it was the same man.”

  “May we see the body?”

  “Follow me.”

  They entered the Graves—a discreet front desk to the right, a wide stairwell straight ahead of them, and to their left a quiet restaurant, with two or three customers sitting at the bar. “You haven’t let anyone leave the hotel, obviously?” Lenox asked.

  Jenkins smiled. “Can you imagine that I would?”

  “Forgive me. I’ve been away too long. One grows fretful—and witless, I don’t doubt.”

  “No, no. We read about your case in Plumbley even here in London.”

  “Well.”

  Up the crimson-carpeted steps, lit with flickering gas lamps, was the hotel’s first floor of rooms. Jenkins turned left, nodding the three of them past a constable at his post. “The fourth door on the right was his.”

  They could already see the shape of the body, under its white sheet, lying across the threshold, protruding slightly from the open door of the room.

  Jenkins went to the body and lifted the sheet. The corpse answered exactly to the description the porter at White’s had given Lenox, a short, round, and bald gentleman, with a thin nose and a fringe of dark hair. The bullet hole was a very tidy red circle at his temple. There was no exiting wound. The poor chap.

  “A small pistol,” said Jenkins, before adding grimly, “though it has done its work well enough.”

  “Have you looked at his room?” asked Dallington, peering over the threshold.

  “It is more or less empty, but I i
nvite you both to inspect it.”

  “Before we do that, John,” said Lenox, “do you recall his address in Hampshire? I believe it was Raburn Lodge.”

  Dallington nodded. “That was it.”

  “We ought to send a telegram to them inquiring about Godwin’s movements, what brought him to the city. Return paid, with the lad who delivers it to wait upon reply.”

  “An excellent idea,” said Jenkins. “Here, write the name and the message on this scrap of paper and I’ll have one of the boys run it to the Yard’s office. They receive priority on the wires.”

  “Should we inform them that he is dead?” asked Dallington doubtfully.

  “Perhaps not at the moment,” said Jenkins. “Yet what will they think, receiving a message from Scotland Yard? It might be more humane simply to tell them.”

  “I cannot see the harm in it,” said Lenox. “He is unmarried—thankfully, one might say.”

  He and Dallington spent some minutes conspiring over the precise language of the message then, careless about length because the Yard would pay for it, and giving both of their names, too, that whoever responded might reply to all three. When they were finished they passed it to a constable to send.

  When at last this was done they turned into the room, hoping that it might offer some suggestion about the crime—about the vicious person who had rendered lifeless this body, across which they had to step to enter.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The room was capacious but plain, with windows overlooking the street. It held a large four-poster bed with a white canopy at the top, a desk whose surface was empty save for a copper ewer and a stack of writing paper, a wardrobe, and a plaid horsehair chair by the fireplace. There were no ashes in the fireplace, nothing in the rubbish bin. In truth, no sign of Godwin’s habitation here.

  Lenox went to the desk and shuffled through the writing paper to make sure that it was all blank. He peered into the ewer and shook it: empty. “I suspect this was his first day in London.”

  “Yes, the hotel confirmed as much. But why do you say that?” said Jenkins.

  “The state of the room.” Lenox went to the wardrobe. In it was hanging a single suit of clothes. It was disheveled and gave off something of an odor. “Too tidy. More than a day in London and things begin to accumulate in one’s pockets.”

  Dallington, looking ill, set himself gingerly down on the armchair. Still, he mustered enough energy to ask if the hotel had given Jenkins any other information.

  “Nothing of very great utility. He arrived this morning with one bag, and—”

  “What time?” asked Lenox.

  “Before midday at any rate, since the two women at the desk just now were not yet on duty.”

  “He must have signed the book,” said Lenox.

  “They don’t have one here. Discretion, they say.”

  “That’s a fine way to be robbed.”

  “If anyone is thieving it’s the hotel, if the rates they list are accurate.”

  Dallington shook his head. “You two don’t understand. My uncle stayed here, as I was telling Lenox. It’s full of country gentlemen who dislike the city. They’re happy to pay for the quiet of the place, and its plainness, too. They bring you breakfast in your room at the crack of dawn, no doubt a single egg boiled hard and shoved in a newly killed rabbit, or some similar countrified nonsense. They’re strict about guests. The bar is quiet. They won’t object to muddy boots. It’s Pall Mall for people who can afford Pall Mall but don’t like to stay in the din of the city. No questions from the staff, or even greetings really. The patrons know what they like. My uncle Gerald shot about forty men at the Sea of Azov and found he didn’t care for much company after that. This was where he stayed in London. I don’t think he ever tipped me once, the old sod. May he rest in peace.”

  “That sounds like Godwin,” said Lenox. He had been surveying the room and now took a lamp, went down to his hands and knees, and peered into the stygian recesses beneath the bed. “Certainly he wasn’t a Londoner.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Jenkins, then added, rather irritably, “I did look under there already. I looked all over the room. At the notepaper too.”

  “A new pair of eyes can never hurt,” said Lenox mildly.

  “Mine hurt terribly at the moment,” said Dallington, pale, pinching his brow with a thumb and forefinger.

  “John, tell Jenkins what we read of Godwin in Who’s Who.”

  In the end there was nothing under the bed, or in any of the drawers of the desk, which Lenox removed altogether and turned around, inspecting—an excess of caution that had once or twice borne fruit. He saved for last the suit of clothes hanging in the wardrobe. It was a heather gray suit, made of heavy wool.

  “It is in shockingly bad condition,” Jenkins called out preemptively when Lenox began to examine it.

  Indeed it was. The cuffs of the suit’s arms were unraveling, and there were large holes dotted along the hem of the jacket. Its distinctly unpleasant scent grew stronger in the room every time the door of the wardrobe was opened. “A gentleman’s country suit, I suppose,” murmured Lenox. “I have seen worse garments upon the shoulders of earls who were looking after their pigs. Not much worse, mind you.”

  “Certainly it could not respectably be worn in the city.”

  Lenox frowned and turned toward the doorway of the room. “What was he wearing when he died?”

  Jenkins began to speak but then stopped, nonplussed. “A suit” was all he said in the end.

  Lenox went to the body and uncovered it, despite the attendant bobby’s initial objections. “A much finer suit of clothes,” he announced to Jenkins and Dallington. “Very nearly new.”

  “We checked the pockets,” said Jenkins quickly.

  Nevertheless Lenox carefully went over the body himself, dutifully rolling its unpleasant limp weight side to side, removing the shoes, feeling the lining of the suit for padding. (In such a fashion he had once come across a large ruby on a costermonger’s corpse, its origin and the history of its acquisition still, to this day, unexplained.)

  Here Lenox did find something. The pockets of the suit were empty, but in the rolled cuff of the pants was a small ticket, evidently left there by the tailor, for delivery. It was dated to that day.

  He showed Dallington and Jenkins. “It’s not much, but at least we know he had a delivery this morning.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t simply bring up a nicer suit of clothes.”

  “I’m betting he wanted to travel lightly and knew that the suit in the closet had seen its best days. He knew he could wear the replacement back to Hampshire tomorrow.”

  “Now what?” asked Jenkins.

  “The hallway,” said Dallington and Lenox at the same time.

  “We have scanned it closely—in increasingly large concentric loops,” said Jenkins.

  Lenox felt a surge of pride: It was his method, one that he had urged the Yard to adopt. Now he employed it again, for the first time in a while.

  Unfortunately the killer had left no telling detail behind this time.

  “I take it there is a second stairwell?” asked Lenox. “The murderer could scarcely have strolled down this primary one, through the entrance of the hotel.”

  “Particularly if the gunshots attracted people right away,” added Dallington.

  “Yes—it is to the right, rather than the left. The staff use it, but it is much less trafficked than the main staircase.”

  “The killer must have been familiar with the building,” said Lenox.

  “Or done a little bit of preliminary investigation. After all, what do we make of this murder? Was it planned with forethought?”

  Lenox thought for a moment. “Obviously it is significant that Godwin was nearly never in London—yet here we find him, appearing in the city only a few days after an impostor gave me his name.”

  “Likely they will have information about his coming to the city at Raburn Lodge,” said Dallington. “I suppose
we must be patient.”

  “For my part, I wonder whether this was a long-or short-term impersonation. In the meanwhile we can hope to ascertain what he did in London. I think we might ask at White’s, John.”

  Dallington nodded. “We can go there when we are finished here.”

  “I’ll accompany the body back to the medical examiner’s,” said Jenkins, “if you two don’t mind handling that end of it. There are a great many cases on my ledger at the moment. Though this one, in such a quiet and respectable neighborhood, may attract more notice, I suppose, in the papers.”

  “Happy to help,” said Dallington.

  “Before we leave—were there any witnesses in the hotel?”

  “We have interviewed everyone once now, I believe. Let me check.” Jenkins called over a young constable and conferred with him for a moment, then returned to Lenox and Dallington. “Yes, we have spoken to everyone. The results have been disappointing. Nobody saw the murderer—they only heard the gunshot.”

  “Nobody was upon the back stair, I suppose?” asked Lenox.

  “No.”

  “We should look at it.”

  “Be my guest. But there is one witness who saw Godwin earlier this morning. Perhaps you would like to speak to him first? He is staying in the room next door. Sooner or later we must permit him to leave the hotel.”

  “Let’s see him now, then,” said Lenox.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As Jenkins led them downstairs, a different constable approached him with a report: Nobody along the Gloucester Road, or indeed anywhere in these environs, had anything useful to offer the police. It didn’t help that there was a fog that evening, thickening now to a degree of murkiness that meant cab drivers would soon start charging steeper fares, if they hadn’t already.

  There were clusters of onlookers around the door of the hotel, waiting for the body to emerge. Lenox scanned their faces. It was almost axiomatic among his peers that murderers returned to the scenes of their crimes, but there was too great an element of calculation in this death, of murder by design, to think that it was somebody who killed for the excitement of it. Worse luck. Still, he advised Jenkins to have the bobbies take the names of everyone stopped on the pavement.