“You may tell the story however you please,” said Lenox. He was on guard, however; her face was so sympathetic, her story already so sad, that he was alert to the possibility that she was manipulating him. “Go on.”
“Growing up in a house that is cruel, I think children either grow to be, as adults, cruel themselves or unusually kind, even soft, perhaps. At any rate, without too much self-regard I can say that I am of the latter sort—I have always been hopelessly soft toward people. It is not necessarily a virtue, I think. One must learn to fight back, and I never did. At fifteen, a very rich, arrogant gentleman, passing through town, took advantage of me.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
“You asked me for the truth.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and paused before speaking again. “The usual sequel of such an incident—that the gentleman vanishes, and the girl finds herself with child—did not happen, in this case. In fact, what did happen at the time seemed rather wonderful, to me, childish as I was. He took me out of my aunt and uncle’s house—to Paris. That was the truth I told you, the last time we spoke. I went to Paris.”
“Would I know this person’s name?” asked Lenox.
She shook her head. “I thought him very grand when I was young, but he was not of much account. His father was a very minor squire, the son a spendthrift, shut out of much of the society to which he hoped to win admission. Paris offered him a better chance for that access than London, since the rules are looser there. He was a bad man, though generous to me. He is dead now—died two years ago, in a hunting accident. I read of it in the Times. I had not laid eyes on him for many years before that. We did have happy moments together, he and I.”
“Please go on.”
“My benefactor—as he chose to call himself—arranged for me to have a small suite of apartments in the rue de Verneuil, though he himself lived in the Crillon. He visited me every day and gave me a small amount of money and a maid. I was fifteen, fresh from Sussex. You cannot imagine the sophistication I saw around me. Really, of course, my maid was reporting everything to him, and laughing at me behind my back, and the trinkets I bought with my pocket money were hopelessly vulgar.
“My fortune changed—you may decide whether for the good or the bad—when, at a very threadbare sort of salon in the huitième, I met a woman named Madame de Faurier. She was as glamorous as you can conceive, and very warm to me initially, though ultimately as cold, in her way, as my uncle Robert.”
Lenox felt a kind of sickness—it was so clear what was coming. “I am sorry to make you tell this,” he said.
She ignored this apology. “One day not long after that salon, my gentleman did not appear. I assumed he was ill and sent word around to the Crillon. No reply. At last on the fourth day that he was absent I went to look for him, but he was gone. On the fifth day my maid ceased to come—her weekly wages not having been paid. I was frantic with anxiety, as you can imagine. I knew that my apartments were rented by the month, of which the end was coming soon, and I had scarcely enough money to buy bread. Somehow they knew at the corner that I was alone, because the butcher and costermonger immediately demanded ready money, when I had always bought my food on credit. I imagine the maid told them.
“I am more intelligent about the world now than I was then, Mr. Lenox. In retrospect perhaps I ought to have taken myself to the British Embassy. Certainly I might have fallen upon the mercy of the English church on the Auguste Vacquerie. I think of how young I looked, and imagine they would have taken sympathy on me.
“You will have guessed what happened next, perhaps. A visitor came. Madame de Faurier. I don’t know if my gentleman was complicit with her, or if he had to scramble away from the city and she merely took advantage of the situation. I suspect the former. Anyhow, I came under her protection.”
There were tears in the eyes of Grace Ammons now, and Lenox offered her his handkerchief. On some winter night Lady Jane had stitched his initials in the corner of it with green thread, and passing it across the sofa he thought of his wife, her own tender character. He felt a blackguard. “You needn’t go on,” he said. “Or you may pass over any details you wish.”
She refused the offer. “Within two months I had become a prostitute. A very expensive prostitute—that is the blessing for which I remain thankful,” she said. She looked at him with some bitterness in her wet eyes. “Have you met a prostitute before, Mr. Lenox?”
“They are common enough in my business.”
“Parliament?”
He smiled gently at her joke. “What was my business, I should say. Detection, crime.”
“My counterparts in London are not in the Seven Dials, or by the docks—but in Hyde Park. I had a small pink carriage to myself, and a thirty-minute ride in the Bois de Boulogne with me cost several hundred francs, roughly twenty-five pounds. Of that I received six pounds for myself. The rest went to the carriage, the clothing, Madame de Faurier. You may be sure that I hoarded that six pounds, however—grew wise very quickly, cajoled the gentlemen who visited me for tokens of their esteem…”
Lenox looked up at the far end of the gallery, the invaluable paintings between here and there, the intricate carpet upon which the Queen of England, Empress of India, tread nearly every day, and then back at Grace Ammons. “You are very differently situated these days.”
“I tried desperately never to entertain an Englishman. After a year or two, however, my reputation was such that certain Englishmen offered absurd sums—twice the going rate, three times—for my company, and when Madame du Faurier offered to halve these extra fees with me, I could not resist. One of those gentleman was the Earl of Axford.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. I told you that I returned to London from Paris in the position of secretary to the earl’s wife. I saw your face when I said the name. He is fond of women, true, but whatever the circumstances in which he and I met, he will always have my gratitude. After six or seven evenings together, he finally extracted my whole tale from me—and insisted that I accompany him back to England at once. He made me his household’s secretary, and I showed an aptitude for the work. The rest of my progress I related to you truthfully.”
“What did de Faurier say to your departure?”
She shrugged. “I was not a prisoner. She was extremely upset, however.”
“I ask because I wonder whether she might be involved in this business.”
The young secretary—her face still, after her story, suffused with a preternatural innocence—considered this idea and then rejected it. “I knew her well, Mr. Lenox. She would be capable of murder, I believe, but not of crossing the Channel.”
Lenox paused, thinking. At last, he said, “Then it was this fact from your history with which your blackmailer threatened you, and Mr. Ivory was the reason you wouldn’t go to the police but sought out a detective.”
Her face went lifeless at Ivory’s name, dull and shamed. Her voice remained steady, however. “Yes. I have never deserved George Ivory, but I have been selfish enough to hold on to him. It would hurt him so deeply to know the truth.”
“I am quite sure you deserve him, Miss Ammons,” said Lenox, “and I am sorry to have forced this story from you. At least you may have my word that no other human being shall hear it from me.”
“Not Jenkins?”
“He will trust me when I vouchsafe the honesty of your story.”
“Thank you,” she said and then, lowering her face out of Lenox’s sight, began to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Before he went out to speak with Jenkins, Lenox asked Grace Ammons if she knew how this man—the one from Gilbert’s, the one whom they suspected in the murder of Archie Godwin—might have discovered her secret.
“I asked him, and he laughed.”
“You did not recognize him from your years in Paris?”
“If I did I would give you his name this instant.”
“Though it meant your own exposure?” asked Lenox.
&n
bsp; “Yes,” she said swiftly. “It has been hell enough to live with his presence on the edge of my vision at every moment, and now I know that he is capable of murder … I thought he was only trying to advance his position in society.”
It raised a question: Was Miss Ammons unlucky enough to have had her secret fall into the wrong hands, or had this fellow sought out someone at Buckingham Palace who would be susceptible to blackmail? This was what Lenox asked Jenkins, after he left the palace and went to discuss the matter in the chief inspector’s carriage.
“But what is the secret?” asked Jenkins.
Lenox implied that it was a child, given up many years before—damaging to a young woman’s reputation, but not as irretrievably damaging as the story he had heard that morning.
Jenkins thought it over. “I think he found out by accident, however he found out. People talk.”
Lenox nodded. “True.”
“I liked Dallington’s idea. This is a fellow of social ambition. His fraud against Godwin allowed him to acquire the outward appearance his ambitions necessitated, and his blackmail of Miss Ammons gave him a venue in which to show them.”
“It is a plausible idea,” said Lenox.
Jenkins, with a small smile, arched his eyebrows. “Yet?”
Lenox laughed. They were sitting in the carriage outside the palace, and he said, “You had better go in and speak to her. Please handle her delicately. I would stake my life that she is being honest. If she thinks you know her secret she will be a wreck.”
“Has my discretion failed you yet, Lenox?” asked the inspector.
Funny to be sitting in this carriage. He could easily conjure an image in his mind of Jenkins as an earnest twenty-five-year-old man, chasing a particularly incompetent safecracker across King’s Cross Station. Now here he was, a man in full, headed to somewhere not far from the summit of their profession. “It never has, you’re quite right,” Lenox said. “Well, now I must go to the House—should have been there already.”
“You and Dallington will continue on the case, however? There was a murder in Camden Town last night, and I’ve drawn it from the pool.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll let you know when Skaggs has news.”
Soon after this Lenox arrived at his office and without a moment’s delay pitched himself into the work of Parliament—for there was a great deal to do. At noon he had a meeting presided over by the Home Secretary, Richard Cross, at which a dozen men, including representatives of the larger trade unions, discussed how they might accumulate enough votes to make the Public Health Act a law. The union men declared their intention to begin a campaign of publicity in favor of the act, and Cross and Lenox promised to align their party’s members behind the action.
After this meeting Lenox spent forty minutes with Graham, preparing for the evening’s debates. Each night at the Commons several subjects came up, and Lenox liked to have thoughts prepared (albeit in rough outline) on each of them, because Gladstone occasionally looked down the front benches and nodded his head at someone—calling that person up to the crease, as it were. One could never be sure who was next in line, as Gladstone saw it.
Before Graham left, he said, “I have arranged for you to have lunch with John Coleridge later in the week, by the way.”
“Coleridge? Never.”
Graham smiled. “Yes. I hoped you would be pleased.”
Coleridge was the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and widely known to be next in line for the most important judicial post in Britain, Lord Chief Justice of England, when its current occupant died. More importantly, he was extremely influential within Lenox’s party. The positions he held were not political, but he was of that small, untitled council of men, along with Gladstone and James Hilary, who determined much of England’s fate.
In this respect his power lay within his almost complete inaccessibility to all but a small handful of politicians, none of them less prominent than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He kept his opinions quiet to all but a few men, who valued them highly indeed. Junior ministers, such as Lenox, hoped for Coleridge’s notice; to receive it was seen as a mark of ascendancy, and it was in vain that both Lenox and Lady Jane had attempted to attract his attention in the past. It was nigh on a miracle that Graham had succeeded; very nearly the first step toward becoming Prime Minister, if such a thing was even conceivable.
“How did you do it?” asked Lenox.
“It is a long and uninteresting story. I will tell you it some other time, sir, but now you are late to meet again with Lord Heath. Mr. Frabbs will go with you to take notes, for Heath will certainly have a secretary there.”
Later that afternoon Lenox sat in his office again, all alone now, reading a blue book on the subject of African mining. Frabbs and the other clerks had left for the day. When there was a knock on the door, therefore, he went to open it himself and found, standing outside, his brother.
“Edmund! Come in! I’m alone, or I would offer you tea.”
Sir Edmund Lenox was cloaked in a light spring jacket, cheeks red from the outdoors. “No matter, it is a flying visit—I’m due home to Molly soon.”
“You look as if you have been in the park.”
“Indeed I have. I walked down from a call I had to make in Piccadilly. The forsythias are a beautiful yellow already, even at this time in March.”
Edmund had the same hazel eyes and short beard that Charles did, but his face, especially in the mouth, was somehow soft, as if to show that his heart was still at home in the gentler pace of the country, just as his younger brother’s aspect had been sharpened into shrewdness by years of city life. Because it was Friday, Edmund would be leaving for Lenox House that afternoon. He rarely missed a weekend there, unless urgent parliamentary business kept him in town.
Edmund’s sons were both out of the house now, the elder at New College, Oxford, the younger at sea aboard HMS Lucy, a midshipman of advancing responsibilities, nearly primed for his lieutenant’s examination; Molly came out of a naval family, full to the brim with every stripe of post captain and admiral, and her connections had clamored for Teddy to go to sea. (Many of them still looked down upon her husband, Member of Parliament though he might have been, as a rank landsman.) Still, Edmund and Molly had both spent their childhoods in and near Markethouse and had a lively acquaintance there, some solace for the deprivation of their boys’ company. Lenox generally went for a week in each season to visit, longer at Christmas. They were some of his favorite times of the year.
“Pass along my best to Molly.”
“I shall, but I have a favor to ask first.”
“Unto half my kingdom, of course,” said Lenox, smiling. “Is it something political?”
“Tangentially, perhaps. Charles, unfortunately it is time you had a quiet word with Graham.”
Lenox started to speak and then stopped. At last, he said warily, “About what?”
“I’ve seen John Baltimore. He said he told you the rumors.”
Lenox felt stung. “Have you been gossiping about Graham, Ed?”
“No, no, Charles, good gracious. It was in passing in the halls, here, but I must tell you, the same rumors have reached my ears. The other secretaries are at a high pitch of indignation.”
“I have yet to hear a single substantive allegation against him,” said Lenox, “even if I did I should not believe it.”
Edmund smiled gently. “There is no need to look at me with such fury in your eyes, Charles. Graham once returned a pair of diamond cufflinks I had forgotten at Hampden Lane for a year. It is impossible to conceive of him thieving—I would no sooner believe it of him than I would of you.”
Lenox leaned forward. “Then to what do you attribute these rumors?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is that you had better speak with him, so that the two of you can handle it together. It is beginning to do material damage to your name, Charles. At least in Whitehall.”
“Is it as serious as that?”
“I’m afr
aid it is.” Edmund checked his watch. “I must go now and catch my train. I have defended Graham wherever I hear him mentioned, but it has gone beyond my power to help him.”
Lenox nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”
“So has this business with Thomas McConnell and Polly Buchanan—they were seen lunching together today.” Lenox’s heart fell. “But he is your friend, not mine, for all that I like him, and I care much more about Graham. Now I must go, I really must. Good-bye. I’ll look in on you Monday morning.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
As the day went by, Lenox’s mind returned again and again to his interview that morning with Grace Ammons, in the discreet beauty of the East Gallery. After she had told the long tale of her past, she had taken a few moments to compose herself and had then invited Lenox to ask any further questions he had.
The first he had asked was whether her blackmailer had ever offered her a way to reach him, an address, a club.
“Never,” she had said.
“Did he say how he found you?” She shook her head. “Did you see him at either of the parties he attended?”
“I looked, but didn’t see him.”
After that Lenox had asked her, at least partially out of professional curiosity, to recount her experiences with Miss Strickland’s agency. The young secretary had been forthright on the subject: She had hired Miss Strickland as soon as she believed Dallington to be untrustworthy, and since then her agency’s protection and work had been sterling.
“Did you meet with Miss Strickland herself?”
“Of course.”
It would be an actress, someone hired for the women clients and a few of the gentlemen. “What progress has she made?”
Grace Ammons had shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“She is not in touch?”
“On the contrary, she is available twenty-four hours a day, and her people are always nearby. She also lent me a small pistol with which to protect myself.”
“What does she charge you?”
Grace Ammons had lifted her eyebrows at this—it was a forward question to hear from a gentleman. “A pound a day, and then expenses.”
An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries) Page 15
