Gone Before Christmas

by Charles Finch

  “We’re not the Swiss Family Robinson.”

  “Not with that attitude!” said Charles.

  “Our guests will think we’ve grown very economical.”

  Most of Lady Jane’s mind was bent upon the supper she was preparing for the twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve. In general they spent this time of year in the country, but the special session of Parliament had kept Edmund in the city, a mercy, perhaps, since he was not long widowed, and still cut a lonely figure, at least to Charles; and both his sons were out of England.

  A good many other gentlemen had been similarly detained in the city, and were either disgruntled at being kept from the country, or secretly delighted at being spared it.

  Sophia came up to Edmund, who was as familiar to her as any piece of furniture in the house, and tugged at his hand. “What does Papa want for Christmas, Uncle Edmund? We couldn’t decide at the shops. You’re his brother.”

  “That is my privilege, it’s true.” She looked at Edmund blankly, and he twisted his mouth up in a simulation of deep thought. “When he was your age he wanted a pet rabbit. Now? Perhaps a pair of warm boots.”

  “I do like a pair of warm boots,” said Lenox. “I should like a reindeer, too, so that I could ride about the city as blithely as St. Nick, you know, and never have to plan about the traffic in the streets.”

  Sophia smiled at that. “Only he can have a flying reindeer.”

  “You’re quite correct, my darling, I was joking.” He checked his watch. “Speaking of which—I’m for the Wellington barracks, if I have to navigate London traffic along the way. Care to come along, Edmund?”

  “No, no, an afternoon session.” He sighed.

  Charles, who had spent five years—years of mixed frustration and joy, for he did love politics—in Parliament, well understood that sigh. “Come, you can drop me in a taxi anyhow.”

  “Yes, gladly.”

  They took their departure of Lady Jane and Sophia, Charles promising that he would see them later that afternoon, and taking one last sip of his tea, which he had brought into the dining room with him when they came to inspect the tree.

  A footman stepped outside to hail them a cab and before long they were clambering inside it, thanking him.

  “The India bill, again?” Lenox said to his brother, once they were situated.

  “Oh, yes. Speeches of interminable length. Plates of mutton and roasted potatoes brought into the benches as sustenance. And at three in the morning still nothing resolved.”

  “At least you have a living Christmas tree to return home to,” Charles pointed out, as the cab clunked and jounced over the cobblestones.

  “Shall we trade? You have the tree, I’ll take the case.”

  “No, I’m quite eager to get to the barracks.”

  “Tell me quickly about the blood on the wall in the cloakroom at least, then,” said Edmund. “We have ten minutes, I’m certain.”

  * * *

  The blood. Larchmont had pointed Lenox toward it the way a verger in a church might gesture at a fragment of the true cross.

  It was sprayed in a light scatter against what was, as one faced into the room, the right-hand wall. There were a few strewn possessions on the bench beneath the blood. (The rest of the cloakroom was empty—evidently, according to Curbishley, Price, and Boothby, it had been that way both when they entered and when they left.) These items were all confirmed by his fellow officers as having belonged to Austen. It seemed plain that this had been the site of the attack.

  Larchmont was clearly most interested in the blood, but Lenox leaned down to the bench and examined with great care the trivia of Austen’s pockets. He pulled a notebook from his own breast pocket and wrote an itemized list:

  Rail ticket, 1:09 Charing Cross to Ipswich, 3rd Class

  Short-brimmed civilian’s hat

  Bill from Olivetti’s in the amount of one shilling sixpence

  Copy of previous day’s Times

  Copy of the army’s Gazette

  Loose matches

  One shilling, thruppence in loose change

  “Interesting,” said Lenox.

  “Is it?” asked Larchmont.

  “May I inspect the hat?”

  “By all means.”

  Lenox picked it up. “Not a lieutenant’s cap.”

  “No. He would have worn his lieutenant’s cap as long as he had on his uniform, according to his colleagues—that’s why he forgot this hat in the cloakroom and had to go back in and retrieve it. Lieutenant Curbishley remembers him leaving it on the hook, whereas his bag was on the bench with his overcoat folded over it, so it makes sense that he would have remembered the bag and the overcoat but not the hat.”

  “I see.”

  Larchmont nodded. “As for its use, it would presumably have replaced the one for the other when he arrived at home in civvies.”

  “Yes.”

  The lining of the hat had been repaired twice, Lenox noted. “A heavy smoker,” he said. “And yet no tobacco here among the items on the bench, I observe.”

  Larchmont frowned. “How do you know he was a heavy smoker?”

  Lenox tapped the front brim of the hat. “This part of the hat alone is very strongly saturated by the smell of smoke. You can tell even in this room, which has had its share of smokers inside it. The hat has been washed very recently, and yet even for that the smell has remained.”

  Larchmont looked at him evenly. “What about the blood?”

  Lenox stood up from his kneeling position. “A knife, I presume, was your conclusion?”

  “Yes.”

  Lenox thought for some time. “You’ve noticed what isn’t here? What’s missing?”

  “What?”

  “His bag.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Did he bring it back in with him, or did he leave it out in Charing Cross with his friends as he dashed back inside?”

  Larchmont looked faintly superior for a moment. “He brought it back with him into the cloakroom.”

  “His fellow officers said as much?”

  “Yes. It was light, and he was already carrying it. But that corresponds to our working theory.”

  Lenox nodded. “I can guess.”

  “Oh?”

  “I imagine that you must have concluded that he had intelligence valuable to the French on him.”

  “Oh.” Larchmont looked nonplussed. “Well—yes, we did.”

  “You conjecture that the attacker stabbed him, rifled his pockets in case any valuable document was upon his person, left what he took out here upon the bench.” Lenox gestured down toward the ticket, the newspapers. “That the attacker then forced Austen and his bag to the steam room, and from thence to some location where they could interrogate him at their leisure.”

  Larchmont nodded. To his credit he didn’t look disappointed that his theory had been laid out. “Yes,” he said. “This is why time is of the essence.”

  Lenox had never met a policeman good or bad who didn’t adore that phrase. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat, thinking. “Of course. And yet—”

  “What?”

  “Would he have been likely to take valuable intelligence home to Ipswich with him?” Lenox asked. “And if the intelligence was only in his head, why bring the bag along, if you were the attacker dragging his body down that vent, with time a factor?”

  Larchmont looked flummoxed. He took a moment to think, which was enormously to his credit. Finally, he said, “Perhaps it was just a matter of taking all precautions.”

  “Yes,” said Lenox, slowly. “I could believe that.”

  “But?”

  “Oh, nothing. Only thinking out loud.” Lenox, hands in pockets, looked at the blood meditatively. “A spray such as this—a light spray—heavy enough, but not arterial . . .”

  “The face, I supposed.”

  Lenox nodded. “That might well be right.”

  “Next steps, then, Mr. Lenox?” said Larchmont. “You have seen the room.”
>
  Lenox nodded, even more slowly this time, determined not to rush his own thinking. Time had taught him that lesson over and over.

  “Is there nothing else here that draws your interest?” he said, at last.

  “What do you mean?” asked Larchmont. Lenox knelt down, gazing underneath the sofa and the armchairs for a moment. Nothing there. As he rose, Larchmont met his gaze with a kind of level admonition. “Will you speak to me in riddles?”

  “Not out of vanity,” said Lenox, shaking his head somberly and rising to his feet. “Only because I am as puzzled as you are. And yet there is something telling in this room, something I can’t quite describe. Even to myself. Let me ruminate on the whole thing, if you would. As soon as I feel able to aver any definite opinion you shall have it.”

  “You have none now?”

  “I have ideas. But I am without great confidence in any of them. Let me go to his barracks, please, and then I will give you my full thoughts. I am due to meet my brother for lunch but I can be with you there just after one o’clock.”

  “Lieutenant Austen may be submitting to torture as you and I discuss his disappearance. Particularly if it is his mind, and not his valise, that carries the vital information the French desire.”

  “I shall not idle,” said Lenox. “I only ask time to consider the case in its full dimensions. In the meanwhile, I presume your constables are following all leads that might emerge from the steam room?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “In that case, the ninety minutes will not cost us. My own physical activity would be de minimis in relation to what they are doing. I will see you at the barracks at one o’clock, or just after, and you have my assurance that Lieutenant Austen will not be away from my thoughts in that time, Mr. Larchmont.”

  * * *

  “Did you really need it, this time?” Edmund, having listened to this story, asked, as the carriage neared the Wellington barracks—for of course the lunch in question had been theirs, the period during which the Lenox brothers had assessed and selected their Christmas trees.

  “I did,” said Charles.

  “Why?”

  “I think there’s every chance Larchmont is correct. In fact, I fear I shall have to break my promise to him—I don’t know that I can present him with a conclusion even now. Still, there are one or two incidental facts that I can’t shake. And of course I did want to come see you and the tree, catch Jane.”

  The truth was that Charles still worried about his widowed brother. It would take more urgent circumstances than these to persuade him to miss one of their meetings. “Anyhow,” said Edmund, “you are three minutes early. Punctual.”

  “The courtesy of kings.”

  Edmund laughed—it had been their father’s favorite, or at least most tritely fatherly, phrase. “Just so.”

  Christmas had always had a sacred feel about it in their family. Growing up, it had been their kind but rather stern father’s month of generosity, when he loosened himself slightly. By tradition each of the boys had received some present for which they had been yearning all year (often it was a pet, though Lenox never did receive a rabbit), an orange, and an enormous slab of Harrod’s chocolate wrapped in its magical red wax paper.

  With skill the chocolate could be made to last till mid-January.

  The senior Lenox had also by tradition visited at each of his tenants’ houses in the week before Christmas. He gave every family a goose, and along with it a gold coin for each member of the family; it was understood somehow (as far as Lenox knew it had never been explicitly stated) that the possession of these was utterly independent, so that each member of the family had their own collection; some gambled away within a night at the pub, others hoarded for years—and that even the most tyrannical paterfamilias, even during the leanest months, couldn’t confiscate their children’s or wives’ Christmas coins, or word would trickle back to the squire—it always, always did—and he would withhold the grant the next five Decembers. Such had been the tradition; date of inauguration uncertain.

  One year, to the astonishment of all, a woman named Mrs. Attlebury, who had never so much as set eyes on the sea—who had never left the town as far as anyone could reckon, much less the county—had traveled to Plymouth by post, put twenty-seven gold coins on a stile, and bought herself a nineteen-foot yacht in ivory white, newly constructed and fit for a prince of the royal blood. After two months of lessons (she had twenty-three gold coins left, being a woman of fifty) she had set sail for Bermuda. Letters still regularly returned from thence to Market House, in care of her perennially astonished cousins, who read them aloud to anyone who would listen.

  And there were Sussex pubs where you might still hear the phrase “fat as a Lenox goose.”

  Their father had been gone for many years, but Edmund had maintained these traditions, along with the habit of making Christmas a matter of the first importance in his own family. Trees on the steps of a London townhouse. And an anxious word to Lady Jane here and there about dinner in two nights: There would be hot chestnuts, correct? Treacled currants? Someone would play the piano? For these were the Lenox forms.

  “Anyhow,” Lenox went on, “the whole force of Scotland Yard is involved in the search. My own energy in this case must be mental, not physical.”

  “This poor lieutenant is doomed, then,” said Edmund.

  “Ha, ha. You’re very droll.”

  Sir Edmund Lenox grinned. “Here are your barracks.”

  “Thanks for the lift. Good luck in Parliament. I hope the mutton and roasted potatoes they bring you at Parliament are frigid, you wretch.”

  * * *

  Boothby was a tall, handsome, slender-fingered figure with blond hair smoothed down by some oil far, far more refined than beef suet. He looked dashing, a Russian officer’s idea of an officer. A young girl’s idea of an officer.

  Of the three men who had been with Austen at Charing Cross, he was the only one who had canceled his trip home. “Have a girl here anyhow,” he said, smiling apologetically. He twirled a small cigar in his fingers as he and Lenox spoke. He had offered the detective an identical one from a gold case. He’d still yet to light his own. “Rotten luck for Austen, though.”

  “Do you think Price or Curbishley could have been involved in his disappearance?”

  Boothby had a military man’s phlegm, and didn’t react. “Impossible,” he said.

  They were at the barracks, standing in an anteroom just outside of the officer’s mess, a wide hall just visible through an open door. The mess itself looked rather like the room in which you might have expected to dine at a great British country home, lined with oil portraits of former officers, heavy-laden with silver, the tablecloths of Grenadier check.

  “I take it that you were not, either, then?”

  “No, Mr. Lenox,” said Boothby again, in a tone that implied the detective was intellectually subnormal.

  Inspector Larchmont was waiting for the regiment’s colonel, who was, of course, a busy person. In the meanwhile they had permitted Lenox this assay at Boothby.

  He proceeded to ask him all the questions he would routinely pose to this sort of witness, in this sort of matter: to walk him through their travels; their lunch at Olivetti’s; what each had eaten; whether Austen had been acting unusually in any way; what exactly they saw in the cloakroom when they left their things there; when they fetched their things; and then finally what they had seen when they had gone to check on Austen.

  The lieutenant slowly relaxed. His account was very straightforward. They had spotted the blood straightaway. It had taken them longer to discover the grate that had been unscrewed and set aside.

  “Did you consider going through it and after him?”

  Boothby shook his head. “By that time a porter had been fetched, and he explained what it was and where it led. Six or seven minutes had passed, and two constables had already been dispatched around the corner to the steam room. We shone a light.”

  In the pronunciat
ion of shone—something like shawn—Lenox heard his own schooling all in a single syllable, a single redolent syllable. “I see.”

  “I would have been down the vent like a shot hare,” Boothby added, quick to make it clear that there was no trepidation involved in his decision, “but there seemed no point.”

  “Of course.” Lenox consulted his notepad. “How long until the police arrived—the police proper, rather than the Charing Cross constable?”

  “Half an hour, I would have said?”

  “And now a more general question—can you describe Lieutenant Austen to me?”

  “A first-rate soldier.”

  There was no but lurking behind that bit of praise. “Respected by his men?”

  “As well as his peers and his superiors, yes. Extremely.”

  “I take it as a matter to be stipulated that he would never sell intelligence to the French.”

  The unlit cigar twirled in Boothby’s fingers. “He would rather die. As would I. We are Grenadiers.”

  “You were close friends with him, then?”

  “Close in the sense that I would trust him with my life unthinkingly, but not close friends, no. He has no particularly close friends among the officers. He did, MacLean, but MacLean was seconded in July to a regiment in the Azores, given temporary command of it. Plum of a posting, as a matter of fact.”

  There was a slight tang of bitterness in this last comment. A posting Boothby had coveted himself, perhaps. “He and MacLean were birds of a feather?”

  “Yes. Not quite so social. Don’t mistake me—both my brothers, you know. But one will always find oneself nearer or farther to certain individuals in a group such as ours, even where the respect among the officers is unvarying.”

  “Who is your nearest friend, then?”

  “Of the men at lunch? Tom Price, certainly. But as I said, all three are my brothers and shall be forever. We were all down in the freezing mud during training together, all of us were up fifty-five hours in the final exercises, keeping each other afloat when it seemed as if we couldn’t go on. This regiment is as one. Indeed, we are assisting the Yard in the search.”