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

by Charles Finch

  Finally he stepped away from the door and found a glass of champagne in the drawing room; he stopped there for a moment and looked around, the familiar paintings and surfaces enlivened by all the fresh eyes he saw glancing at them with subtle assessment.

  In the corner of the room Toto and McConnell were speaking to Dallington, and for a moment Lenox shifted his watchfulness to them, trying to analyze what he saw. He hadn’t spoken to Thomas. Jane had visited Toto that very morning, though, and reported that she seemed happier—and less inclined to confidence in her older cousin, quick to dismiss the subject of Polly Buchanan, as if her weeks of unhappiness had all been a simple miscalculation on her own part.

  They looked happy, to be sure, but there had been so many moments in the past years when the two of them had seemed to achieve a lasting happiness, not least when their daughter, Georgianna, had been born. He studied them—and suddenly his skepticism vanished, and he did feel that something had changed in them, in their animated faces. It was a sensation, nothing logical. In the past he had seen goodwill and love between them, but never an ease of togetherness such as this, a sense of quiet accord, of quiet warmth. There were the beginnings of lines at Toto’s eyes—she was past thirty now, though he would always think of her as so young—and Thomas’s hair was more gray than dark. Yet in the happiness of their eyes he saw a renewal of youth. It was love.

  He realized, with gratitude, what his own face must look like as he stood beside Lady Jane.

  Dallington must have seen Lenox staring, for he begged out of the conversation with the McConnells and came over. “Do you have a moment to speak?” he asked. “I know it’s not an ideal time.”

  Lenox looked at his pocket watch. “There are twenty minutes until dinner. Why?”

  “I was busy today. I learned something new. It will only take a moment to tell you—but I would rather do it in your study. I could smoke a cigarette there, too.”

  “Yes, I’ll follow you,” said Lenox.

  The study was dim, and a great deal of superfluous furniture had been shoved without ceremony into its various corners. Dallington sat upon the arm of a sofa that belonged more properly to the yellow drawing room and lit a match against the sole of his shoe, then touched it to the end of the cigarette in his mouth. “I saw Miss Buchanan today. She’s been as busy as we have.”

  “What has she found?”

  “She’s quite ingenious, Lenox—she has lessons to teach me. It’s a thoroughly modern outfit she’s building. The moment a case comes in, she has a team of people, specialists in different tasks. One of them is a financial investigator. His only work is to look into the money. How many times have you and I tried to parse a bank record or a receipt without success?”

  It was true. “Innovative.”

  “Yes, that’s the word for it. Anyhow, she discovered something about the Godwin family that seems significant to me. It’s about their mother.”

  “Paget, was she called?”

  “Yes. Apparently Winthrop Godwin lost nearly all of his fortune by going to law. He was especially unfortunate in a suit he brought against his father’s land agent. For the last years of his life, he was living on the interest of the money his wife had left behind—a substantial fortune.”

  “Did that money come to Archibald and Henrietta?”

  “There’s the rub. When she died, Abigail Paget—Abigail Godwin—hadn’t predicted that her husband would squander his fortune, and she had left the money to the heirs of her heirs, in effect her grandchildren, in equal distribution. According to Miss Buchanan’s financial expert, this was because the Godwin money and the Godwin land was entailed upon the male heirs.”

  Suddenly Lenox understood. “Shall I guess what else he discovered?” he said.

  Dallington smiled. “Please.”

  “That by the terms of the will, all the money in trust was to be released to Henrietta upon Archibald’s death, should he die without children.”

  “Close enough. The exact provision was that if her own children should live ‘beyond childbearing age,’ defined as forty-five in a woman and seventy in a man, the money should come to them outright.”

  “How old is Henrietta Godwin?”

  “She turned forty-six last year,” said Dallington. “Archie, of course, has thirty-eight years to go until he turns seventy. Imagine that, a child at seventy! His mother had a higher opinion of his virility than I do, I must say.”

  Lenox shook his head. “Funny, how even in these crimes with the noblest purpose—revenge, regicide—there is so often an element of money.”

  “Polly—Miss Buchanan—also agreed with us, that the murder was a convenient snare with which Godwin could entrap Wintering. It served more than one purpose.”

  “We still don’t know what happened between Wintering and Godwin. Perhaps we never shall, quite.”

  Dallington pointed at the carriage clock on Lenox’s desk, whose face was visible in the moonlight. “We had better go back.”

  “Yes. I want to see this Miss Buchanan—she seems an interesting young woman.”

  “Ever so interesting,” said Dallington, then must have realized the ardor in his voice, because he laughed and said hurriedly, “and likely to take away all of my own business.”

  They emerged from the study just in time to see Kirk come to the doorway where the drawing rooms and the front hall met; there he rang the bell for supper.

  Lady Jane, rather daringly, had decided not to proceed to the dining room in the usual way—couple by couple, in order of seniority, down to the very juniorest and most negligible souls in the room—but to lead the way out herself and invite all to follow. This she did, with Dallington’s mother by her side.

  Word had apparently spread that this unorthodoxy (soon to be fashion, no doubt) was to be practiced, and in pairs and threes the men and the women, their faces half-scornful but also rather excited, began to follow. In the middle of the pack, evidently believing it to be a great lark, was Disraeli, accompanied, unsurprisingly, by two of the most beautiful women in the room, Jemima Faringdon and the Queen’s cousin Lady Louise Dietz.

  Some habits die hard; the last pair out of the room were Grace Ammons and George Ivory, late replacements for a couple that had canceled, suggested as guests by Lenox to Lady Jane. Lenox bowed to Miss Ammons as she passed, and shook hands with George Ivory, a tall, straight-backed, very handsome fellow, with wavy blond hair and gentle green eyes. His manners were beautiful, simple, and appropriate. Grace herself said thank you, too, though in an extremely formal voice.

  There were several small round tables in the dining room. Disraeli and Princess Helena—who had just arrived, taking all the breath out of the room, lovely in a sapphire green gown—were at Lenox and Lady Jane’s own table, along with the Duchess of Marchmain, Toto, McConnell, and a few others. As Lenox sat, he recalled Disraeli’s friendly manner in Parliament a few weeks earlier, as together they passed the Dwellings Act without respect for their different party affiliations. What a sly fox! Yet there was a strange modicum of pride in the whole saga—pride in Graham his friend, pride in having ascended high enough to irritate a Prime Minister.

  Lady Jane had felt no such pride; as they were dressing for supper, earlier that evening, he had told her about LeMaire’s visit.

  “Disraeli did that?” she asked, shocked.

  “Apparently. I took fifteen minutes to call upon John Baltimore afterward, and he nodded his confirmation, though he didn’t speak it out loud.”

  She had gone white with anger. “What an infamous thing to do.”

  “Such is political life. We cannot treat him differently tonight.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Nevertheless, Jane, unlike the Godwins, would have her revenge. As they sat down in the dining room, Disraeli busy with Lady Dietz’s whispering inquiries, she was in the kitchen. Footmen poured wine; the other tables stole glances of Princess Helena.

  At last she came out, at the head of a long line of serv
ants bearing dishes. She walked to the Prime Minister and, putting a hand on his shoulder, said, “I know you are a gourmand, Mr. Disraeli. This first dish is our chef’s special favorite, and mine, too. You must tell us how you like it.”

  “Delighted, of course,” said Disraeli, smiling—a smile that vanished when he saw, placed in front of him, a large plate, heaped uncommonly high with stewed onions.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The spring passed into the summer then, the gentle pitch of the days and the particular pleasantness of the weather making it one of the finest seasons anyone could recall. In April there were a dozen engagements a day announced in the Times. By June half of the couples were newly married already.

  In July the Godwins went to trial.

  Neither had spoken more than a few words in the intervening months, and though they hadn’t seen each other neither believed for a moment, as Jenkins would pretend, that the other had betrayed them. Their bond was the stuff of newspaper natter; reporters had finally followed Dallington’s footsteps across the west toward Hampshire and discovered at least some of what he had, as well as paying local men and women for stories about the Godwins, which, as time passed, grew more outlandish in dimension.

  A small amount of real information did trickle in. Jenkins went up with a warrant to investigate Raburn Lodge and found Archibald Godwin’s personal study suspiciously empty of papers and correspondence. Desperate, he brought in a team of constables who combed the house over—which they did with success. A locked wardrobe in the nursery proved to be, in fact, a concealed work desk, and it was evident that Godwin had used this place to plot his crimes. Among other things there were dossiers on several dozen members of the staff of Buckingham Palace: the footman who was having an affair, the cook who had stolen a chest of silver plate from his last employer and then concealed the fact, various points of pressure on the personal lives of people close to the Queen.

  There was no file on Grace Ammons, unfortunately. Had he taken it with him, believing her to be the easiest member of the palace staff to compromise? Nor was there any link that Scotland Yard could find to Leonard Wintering. In the end it was impossible to charge Archibald Godwin with Wintering’s murder, with the blackmail of Grace Ammons (for which she was grateful, in fact), or even, realistically, with the murder of Joseph Thayer, the vagrant. True, he had been in Godwin’s room at the Graves; true, Arthur Whitstable would testify that he had seen Thayer in the company of Wintering and Godwin; true, Thayer was wearing a suit Godwin had ordered from Ede and Ravenscroft. None of this evidence was more than circumstantial.

  They came to trial, therefore, upon weaker charges than Lenox would have liked. Archibald Godwin was charged with the offense of high treason, which had been defined by the Treason Act of 1351—he had “compassed or imagined” the death of the Queen. (To plot the death of the monarch’s spouse, eldest son, or chief heir was the only other time this charge could be leveled.) Treason was exceedingly hard to prove, even under the law that had been updated in 1848. Lenox would have preferred—as would have Jenkins—a plain old charge of murder. The crown also charged Godwin with attempted murder and a host of smaller offenses, all the way down to breaking and entering. His barrister made it clear that he would contest them vigorously.

  Henrietta Godwin’s crimes were more vexing still to punish. What had she done? Had a mad brother? Carried a key that anyone might have placed in her purse? She had never been anywhere near Buckingham Palace. It wasn’t illegal to carry a small pistol, though it was unusual. Nothing at Raburn Lodge implicated her in her brother’s plans. Out of desperation the prosecutor charged her, too, with high treason. Jenkins wasn’t hopeful.

  The first day of the trial was, as it could not help but be, in such circumstances, a circus, with crowded galleries, milling press outside the doors, and an unusually large contingent of guards and officers on behalf of the Queen. (The Queen herself was visiting Wales.) Parliament had risen for the summer, and Lenox was free to attend the trial; he and Dallington sat several rows behind the defendants. Lenox appreciated the company, which was by no means a foregone matter—for Polly Buchanan was there also, not on the face of it as an interested party, merely as a spectator, for her guise as Miss Strickland remained intact. At the recesses Dallington would excuse himself and speak to her when he could.

  “She has a sharper eye for legal matters than I do,” he said once when he returned.

  “Oh?”

  “She told me what the word ‘malice’ means for the first time. It can be expressed or implied, do you know.”

  “How interesting.”

  Dallington missed the sarcasm in Lenox’s voice. “Yes, isn’t it! And then there’s mens rea. She has a great deal of material on that, yards of the stuff.”

  Soon Lenox himself had the opportunity to know her better, too—for as the days passed, the ranks of the hot, dusty courtroom grew thinner, as fewer and fewer of the press and the public found themselves able to tolerate the lengthy disquisitions and inactions of a courtroom trial. Eventually the three—Polly, Dallington, Lenox—began to sit along the same particular bench each morning. Throughout the day messengers would come in with notes for Polly, which she would answer directly or fold into a pocket. Presumably they were to do with her detective agency. Though these notes represented a direct competition to his own business, Dallington thought them very funny.

  By the second week of the trial the Godwins still had yet to speak, and there were only a few dozen consistent attendants at the court.

  One of them was an old, stooped, white-haired man in a clerical collar, extremely thin. His vestments were of thick black cloth, but he always sat, motionless, in the very first row of the courtroom, never leaving his seat even during a recess. “Who do you think he is?” whispered Polly to them one morning before the proceedings began.

  “Father Time,” said Dallington. “No, I’m not sure. Lenox?”

  Lenox smiled sadly. “I’ve wondered myself for some days. I think if we introduced ourselves we might find that he is Wintering’s father.”

  Dallington and Polly, both struck by the idea, in unison turned their heads to look at the man again. Then Polly stood up. “I’m going to speak to him,” she said.

  Before either man could respond she was walking toward the front row. “She’s an unorthodox young woman,” said Lenox.

  “Yes, it’s wonderful,” said Dallington, his eyes following her. “Yesterday she told me women should be allowed to vote. Who knows, perhaps she’s right.”

  “It won’t happen in our lifetimes,” said Lenox.

  Polly had sat now beside the old man and was speaking with him, a hand upon his forearm. At one point she looked back toward them and nodded almost imperceptibly: Yes, it was Wintering. Lenox considered the curate’s back, his small church near Stoke, his white hair. What pain fatherhood could bring! Families were so strange—the Godwins, with their gnarled sense of duty to one another, or the Winterings, a thousand winters upon the same land and now brought to this, their last heir dead, his father alone in a London courtroom.

  Upon her return, Polly said, “He has agreed to have lunch with us.” Then she added, whispering, “I think he is very poor, however. He is staying at a hostelry the Church of England owns in Camden and walks to the court each morning.”

  He was a funny old soul, exceedingly gentle, with a pleasure in anything mildly funny. Forty years before he himself had been to Wadham, and he and Lenox reminisced about Oxford together. When the subject turned to the trial, however, he was, while polite, almost wholly silent—impenetrable. Soon, uncomfortable, they directed the conversation elsewhere.

  Most days thereafter they took him to lunch, always at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, so that no bill would appear; they told the elder Wintering that Scotland Yard paid for these entertainments, an explanation he seemed to accept.

  What brought him to court each day? They wondered to each other. Even after Polly befriended him, Wintering sat alone in th
e front row. Was it forgiveness? Dallington speculated. Curiosity? Lenox, the only father in the group of three, thought he understood: It was, no matter how unhappy a situation, the curate’s final chance of closeness to his son.

  Somehow the old man’s presence lent a moral force to the trial that it might not otherwise have had, if it were just about the attempt upon the life of the Queen. After all, she was alive, and Leonard Wintering had involved himself in the matter, taken his own risks. It was on the curate’s behalf, more and more, that Lenox felt himself hoping that the Godwins be found guilty.

  On the day when the verdicts came in, the courtroom again filled to capacity. The judge very quickly handed down his first ruling: Henrietta Godwin was innocent, and free to go.

  There was a murmuring at this. It was expected, but still newsworthy. She had almost certainly been intending to murder the Queen, after all. The judge added that he could not reasonably preclude Miss Godwin from remaining in London, but that he advised close police observation of her comings and goings until such time as she returned to Hampshire.

  Finally, at this, she stood and spoke. “I will return to Hampshire this afternoon, my lord,” she said. “With my brother, if God is good.”

  God was not good—not by the lights of Hetty Godwin—for the next news that the judge delivered was of Archibald Godwin’s guilt.

  This, too, had seemed the most likely outcome. He had offered no plausible defense for his presence in the Queen’s bedchamber, or for firing a gun at her. It was the sentencing that interested the pushing multitude of newspaper writers at the doors of the courtroom. The judge sighed and then spoke.

  “The court views crimes such as Mr. Godwin’s in a very, very grave light—yet we find, regrettably, that there is little precedent for harsh sentencing in cases such as this one. Mr. Rhodes, in ’58, received just five years in prison. The majority of Her Majesty’s would-be assassins have begged off of their charges on the plea of mental illness.

  “We considered placing you into prison, Mr. Godwin, for a term of ten years.” Henrietta Godwin made a terrified, involuntary little cry at this. “But that won’t do—you are too well situated, too financially secure, for prison to be an uncomfortable experience. Sadly, in this country money can buy comfort even for those guilty of very heinous crimes. Nor can we transport you to Australia, as we might have chosen to do in older—some would say better—days.