Gone Before Christmas

by Charles Finch

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Austen. I am sorry you’ve had to endure this.”

  “I wish I could be of more help.”

  She shifted in her chair uncomfortably, arching her back just slightly, perhaps as a woman carrying a child would, or perhaps—

  And it was in this moment that Lenox solved the case, or at least circled halfway closer inward toward the answer than he had until that moment.

  He attempted to keep his face impassive. “Thank you for all you have told me,” he said. His hat was in his lap, and he lifted it, rising from his own chair by the warm potbelly stove. “I’m very grateful. And as I said, I have every hope that we may find Lieutenant Austen in perfect health.”

  “I do, too,” she said.

  She didn’t look as if she believed it.

  Lenox left. On the stairwell he donned his hat. He thought of the clue that confirmed his ideas. If one wanted to be clever, one would have said: Dust, in the end all of us come to dust.

  * * *

  The confirmation of his suspicions would involve two trips, one long, one short.

  He would take the long one first thing in the morning, but at the moment he was tired.

  He stopped at a busy telegraph office and sent three wires. The first two were to friends. The third went to Larchmont.

  Strong lead STOP No arrests to make as yet STOP Searching parties may be reduced overnight if required elsewhere STOP Will communicate results tomorrow afternoon at latest STOP Best wishes Lenox STOP

  It was after seven by the time he returned home. Sophia was being put to sleep in her nursery, and Jane was in the dining room, supervising the footmen as they took apart in leaves the long dining table at which the family ate their meals, and replaced it with four small circular tables.

  “We cannot all fit around the large table?” Lenox asked.

  She had given him a distracted kiss, and now gave him a distracted wave of the hand. She was clutching a diagram upon which he saw the names of their guests. “Leave it to me, would you?”

  Feeling as dejected as the wan tree in the corner of the room, which had still yet to be decorated in any fashion, Lenox gave her a squeeze on the arm and retreated down the front hall toward his study. He tapped the bell on the front hall table, then went to his desk, where the day’s correspondence lay, ready for him.

  Kirk appeared a moment later. “Sir?”

  “What am I to have for dinner?”

  “There are potatoes, sir, and there is a fine lamb chop.”

  “Could the cook put some kind of soup together? It’s devilishly cold.”

  “Why, certainly, sir,” said the massive butler, his face troubled. He glanced down toward the end of the room. “Shall I stoke the fire?”

  “No, it’s fine. The soup can come last. Just bring me a coffee with whisky, and the chop, and the evening papers, if you would. I have some thinking to do.”

  * * *

  He was up at five the next morning. The train to Ipswich took several hours, and, according to his Bradshaw’s, the first one of the morning left Charing Cross at 5:36.

  He kissed Jane in her sleep, then stole out of the slumbering house. His carriage was waiting, per his orders from the night before, though his driver, who lifted his cap in a way that seemed to contain more fury than respect, was stony-faced as he waited for Lenox to climb in. Well, such was the lot of the carriage driver. He at least could come home and sleep away the morning after he had cared for the two horses.

  Lenox had planned to get a bite of food at Charing Cross—perhaps even at Olivetti’s—but the mucked and rutted street outside the station was crowded, for some reason, perhaps because of the surfeit of travelers on Christmas journeys, and he had to rush to his train. He carried a thin valise with a book and a few papers in it.

  On the train (in first class) he fell instantly into a deep sleep, his head against the cool window, the small but powerful heater in the carriage warming him. This was pleasant; but as a result he missed the food trolley. Before he knew it he was getting off the train into the frigid Suffolk morning.

  The sun had risen without appearing, in the way it sometimes did. There was a dense, even veil of clouds in the sky. Ipswich was on the Orwell River, and the wind positively cracked off of it.

  There were no cabs to be seen. Lenox went to the stationmaster. “Are there hansoms?” he asked.

  “If you wait awhile,” said the stationmaster, who looked toasty in his booth, mug of tea close by.

  “Do you know the residence of a Mr. Austen? Reverend Austen, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes.” He pointed at a small lane between two large houses. “One mile, over the bridge and straight down that road. Impossible to miss. Middleman House.”

  “I shall walk, then—thank you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Thank you again.”

  Lenox started his walk. Before long, though, he wished dearly that he could have withdrawn his thanks to the stationmaster: For it was not a mile to Middleman House, unless you measured your miles very long.

  Indeed, only some forty minutes later did the detective, half-frozen and absolutely starved, see a sign on a low stone wall, which said MIDDLEMAN HOUSE.

  It must have been nearer three miles than one, he thought.

  He looked over the wall and saw a rather pretty half-castle, ancient by appearance, with a pond next to it and wild, very beautiful gardens on either side of the gravel path that led from the road to the house.

  He walked the hundred or so yards up this avenue and knocked on the door, curious what would greet him.

  A woman in a bonnet answered. “Help you, sir?” she asked meekly.

  “I am here to speak with Reverend Austen. It is about his son.”

  “Please wait, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  She looked apologetic as she closed the door in his face—softly, to her credit.

  Not a home of the first welcomingness.

  Lenox glanced about him. In this stone entranceway he was at least protected from the worst of the wind. There were benches on either side of the door and, above them, elaborate sconces.

  A moment later the door opened again. A small, dark-haired man in a clerical collar, wearing spectacles, an angry and suspicious set to his face, was behind it this time. “Yes?” he said. “I’m the master of this house. What is this about?”

  “I am here to speak with you about your son, Lieutenant Allen Austen, sir,” Lenox said. “My name is Charles Lenox. He has disappeared.”

  “Yes. We received two wires to that effect—the second superfluous, obviously. What of it?”

  Lenox was taken aback, but said, without hesitation, “There are a few questions I had hoped to ask you.”

  A stormy look came onto the man’s face. “You’ve come for nothing then.”

  “I won’t take much of your time.”

  “On the contrary—you won’t take any of my time.”

  The Reverend began to shut the door. In that moment, Lenox made a decision to do something he did as rarely as possible: lie. “I’m with Scotland Yard, sir,” he said. “By law you are required to answer my questions.”

  The Reverend paused, looking at Lenox. The door was all but closed. His face was indecisive, and in that wavering moment Lenox identified his antagonist; he was a crabbed and black-hearted old specimen, who was no doubt domineering within the spheres he commanded—this house and the church, they would have been—but not for that reason necessarily domineering by nature, indeed perhaps even slightly fearful. Certainly provincial. He had no obligation whatsoever to speak to Lenox even if Lenox had been from the Yard, but it was obvious that he didn’t know that.

  Lenox’s gamble paid off. Austen’s eyes narrowed angrily, but he said, “Come in then.”

  They went down a dark hallway, which opened into what was a very fine great-room.

  Lenox was sincerely curious about the house. There was evidence all over it of wealth and ancient lineage—tapestries on the walls, enormous
hunting scenes in oils, tables of marble—but none of generosity. The fire in the vast hearth was small. By it was a comfortable chair. The Reverend’s own, no doubt.

  Two women were on a sofa set farther away from the warmth of the fire. Austen’s sisters—almost certainly.

  Lenox bowed to them, and both rose infinitesimally. They were similar in looks, with their father’s suspicious faces, though still rather strikingly beautiful.

  Four insolent footmen stood against the back wall of the room in livery, one of them leaning back in a way that would have seen him fired in many houses, all smirking.

  Austen took his chair. He made no indication that Lenox should sit.

  “Well?” he said abruptly.

  Lenox turned toward the two women. “I am Charles Lenox,” he said, introducing himself in the least rude way he could consider; it was the Reverend’s task, but Lenox could not leave it undone, as a gentleman.

  “These are my daughters Diana and Evelyn. State your business.”

  “I am investigating the disappearance of your son, sir.”

  “We have nothing to do with it,” said the Reverend. He was cutting an apple into sections for himself, and Lenox’s empty stomach felt a pitiful stirring. He hadn’t eaten since the night before. It was nearly ten o’clock. On the road between the station and Middleman House he had hoped he might find some inn or pub, but there had been none. “I haven’t seen my son since his marriage, and have no intention of doing so again—so you see, sir, he has disappeared regardless of whether you say he has disappeared.”

  The old man grinned to himself at his wit. “His wife is extremely concerned,” Lenox said.

  “Is she? Good.”

  Lenox glanced at the two daughters. They were both busy with needlework, but he could sense the keenness of their attention. “She was the cause of your falling out with your son?”

  Suddenly, as if by irresistible impulse, the daughter named Diana said, “The best thing he could have done is run away from her. Probably that is what he has done. Into some other harlot’s arms, no doubt.”

  She crossed herself.

  Lenox had known since his meeting with Mrs. Austen that she was a pretender to her husband’s class. There had been a moment when this suspicion was locked into place: Just as Boothby’s use of the word “shone” had instantly identified his background, so had Mrs. Austen’s use of “dinner” and “pardon,” in place of “supper” and “excuse me.”

  And then there had been her lack of surprise at Austen’s traveling by third class.

  Lenox’s job now was to draw the full story out of these reluctant interlocutors. “I understand that her parents were your acquaintances in society, Miss Austen?” he said, his voice innocent of implication.

  Her eyes widened. “Society! Her mother was our washing woman!”

  “Silence!” the Reverend croaked from his chair.

  “Society!” said Miss Austen again, apparently unable to help herself.

  The Reverend was furious. “Mr. Lenox, if you have further questions you may address them to me.”

  “You fell out with your son over his marriage, then?” Lenox said.

  “That cannot possibly have anything to do with your investigation. My son is no doubt in some house of ill-repute, given his tastes.”

  “You bought his commission in the Grenadiers, sir?”

  A hostile look passed across Austen’s face. “My wife died some years ago. Her family’s entail provided for his commission—by law. It was not my choice. He has not had a cent from me, nor will he ever. I do not care to know what he lives upon.”

  Lenox, thinking back to that ascetic set of rooms in which the lieutenant and his wife lived, could have answered: very little.

  So much was clear now. Lieutenant Austen, if he had defied his father, could have no expectation of further financial assistance. The quirk of his mother’s estate had granted him his commission, but every pound she otherwise possessed would have passed to her husband. As the great legal scholar Gladstone had observed, under British law the husband and wife are one person—and that person was the husband. A woman could make no will nor sign a contract; had no right to her children, or command over their education, their manner of upbringing, their discipline; she had no right whatsoever to her own income. Gradually much of this was changing, but very, very gradually indeed.

  “Do you know a Lieutenant Boothby?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “A Lieutenant MacLean.”

  “No. As I told you, I have had nothing to do with my son since his marriage.”

  The two daughters had on their faces a righteous look, and nodded as their father spoke; and yet in the younger of the two, Lenox thought he saw just a shadow of doubt.

  Behind them the door opened, and the housekeeper came in with a tray of tea and cookies. Lenox felt faint with relief.

  Austen leaped out of his seat. “Who told you to bring that in, Annie?” he roared. “Take it away.”

  “I thought—”

  “You didn’t think!”

  The housekeeper stood frozen in the doorway. “Shall I—”

  “Take it away.”

  But Lenox, though it killed him to do it, said, “I have had a long trip, and missed breakfast, sir, and would be grateful for—”

  “Take it away!” Austen roared again.

  The housekeeper turned and left, and Lenox glanced to the footmen, who were highly amused.

  “You are the church’s priest?” Lenox asked.

  Austen, who was still standing, took his cozy seat by the small fire again. “I have retired from the church,” he said in an obstinate tone. “I am a scholar of theology now. But that is my own business. We have moved on from the subject of my son. If there is nothing remaining to be said about him, I must beg you to leave us to the rest of our day.”

  Lenox tried for a moment to think of what else he might ask.

  But he was starving, and cold, and felt every year of forty-six. “Thank you for your time,” he said.

  He left the great room unaccompanied, though one of the footmen trailed him through the front hall, as if to make sure he left without stealing anything. A final insult.

  Outside again, he put on his hat and pulled up the collar of his jacket. It had begun to rain.

  So hungry that he could barely think, and with the black mood of the house still under his skin, he walked up the avenue, turned left toward town, and ventured perhaps three hundred yards before he heard a voice.

  “Sir!” it said.

  He turned.

  He had half expected it to be Austen’s younger sister, but in fact it was Annie, the housekeeper. She was bundled in a gray cloak. “Here you are, sir,” she said.

  She handed him a cloth napkin. “What is it?” Lenox asked.

  She had already turned, though. “Travel safely. Merry Christmas.”

  He opened the napkin. In it was a rough slice of bread with cheese and ham on it, and a shortbread biscuit.

  Lenox, almost weak with gratitude, called after her, “I cannot—you are very—”

  But she only waved a dismissing hand, scurrying back toward that strangely cold and merciless house through the rain, fearful, no doubt, of being caught in this generous transgression.

  Lenox stared after her for a moment, then fell ravenously to his modest meal, the cold rain falling around him, thinking that he had never eaten anything better.

  * * *

  In a Christmas tale out of one of the sentimental journals, say Household Words, Lenox’s unfortunate little tree would have been slowly coaxed back into life, gradually regained strength, tremulously soaked water into its slender outer tips, before finally bursting into lovely alpine green just in time for a marvelous Christmas morning.

  What actually happened was, it died.

  This occurred about halfway through the next day, Christmas Eve. Lenox was binding presents into the tree with string. He dropped one and, being a book, intended for Lady Jane,
it crashed through the branches heavily.

  Every single needle went with it, in a grand cascade down to the floor. All of them.

  “Hm,” said Lenox.

  Lady Jane, who was standing back a little ways, was silent for a second, then burst into laughter. She knelt to the floor, where he was crouched, and put her arms around him. “Never mind,” she said, still laughing. “We’ll put lights in it. We have Leigh’s electricity.”

  “It was never much of a tree,” Lenox said, brushing needles off of the arm of his coat.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “We can cheer it up. Leave it to me.”

  Since his return from Ipswich, Lenox had been, perhaps, very slightly changed; even at what felt like this very late stage of his life, as a father, husband, professional detective, he was not immune to such revolutions within himself. It was a sense of gratitude. Who knew if it would last—did any mood?—but that cold, strange, unhappy house had left its mark on him. To return to Hampden Lane and the embrace of his wife, to Sophia in a jumpingly bright state of mind, was to return to a sense that not all was ill with the world: and of just how fortunate he was to inhabit his generous little square of it.

  The Christmas spirit, some might call that. No doubt the first time Reverend Austen had inspired it in his years upon the earth.

  Lenox had walked back from Middleman Hall toward Ipswich, devouring the food that Annie had given him down to the last morsel. Arriving in town, he went to the train station and discovered that the next train was in ninety minutes. He set out to see the wonders of Ipswich for himself. When this was finished he had eighty-seven minutes left, and decided he would send a telegram.

  It was to Larchmont. “Hold corpses,” it read. “Lenox.”

  The teletypist, who was no doubt used to every stripe of bizarre and phantasmagoric and menacing message in his line of work, in addition to the tens of thousands of blander ones he’d sent, nevertheless raised his eyebrows slightly. “Corpses, sir? I have that correct?”

  “Yes,” said Lenox.

  “As you please, sir. Merry Christmas.”

  The wire sent, Lenox went into a stationer’s and acquired the morning papers, which he had awakened so early as to precede, a great rarity, then stopped next door and bought himself a packet of sandwiches in case the train back to London broke down.