Gone Before Christmas

by Charles Finch

  “I leave it entirely in your hands, Kirk,” said Lenox, to whom it couldn’t have been a matter of more profound indifference. “If you think it an occasion for the Médoc, let it be the Médoc.”

  Kirk, looking gratified, nodded. “I thought so. I really did think so, sir. Let me aerate it immediately, and I will return to apprise you of its nose.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  They had been awoken early that morning, Sophia being permitted on this single day to come into their bedroom before they were quite up; her governess helpless to stop her anyhow.

  “It’s Christmas!” she shouted in the dim room.

  “I doubt it,” Lenox had grumbled into his pillow.

  “It is!” She was jumping on the bed now. “It’s Christmas!”

  “It’s the loudest Christmas I’ve experienced yet,” Lenox muttered.

  “Come downstairs! Come downstairs!”

  This was an extremely presumptuous child—in most households in England she would have been smacked and sent to her room without breakfast or presents—but they had only one daughter, and she ruled their hearts.

  So they got up and dressed, slowly, and kissed each other happy Christmas in the dim bedroom, and followed the impatient child downstairs. It was just barely seven o’clock; a sharp white light just beginning to emerge in the sky.

  The dead tree greeted them, along with (bless Kirk’s heart) a standing pot of tea, set nearby. Lenox and Lady Jane poured themselves cups from it as Sophia sprinted to the chimney. Her stocking was there, and in a holy awe she opened the little presents from it: a comb for her favorite doll, a quince, a wooden whistle that made the sound of a steam-engined train.

  She was blissfully happy with these, and watching her made Lenox blissfully happy, though he remained very tired.

  The morning passed lazily, snow falling steadily outside. He dozed in his armchair after lunch, with a book and a pipe; finally, when it was nearing two o’clock, he thought that he ought to dress himself. Their first guests would arrive soon.

  Lady Jane was in the kitchen, supervising. Sophia was still having her nap. Lenox, who was supposed to be hiding presents in his study for a treasure hunt, was reading the newspaper in his slippers and enjoying a strong drink, his first of the week, with the feeling that he had earned it. Outside the window he could see Hampden Lane—wet rather than white with the snow, garlanded prettily up and down its row of buildings with evergreen wreaths and hangers. In windows there were trees, families, candles; the shops were shut, but many had left chalked messages of the season’s greetings hanging in their doors.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Edmund, twenty minutes early.

  “There you are!” Charles said, beating any of the harried servants to answer it. “Merry Christmas, Edmund.”

  The brothers shook hands warmly, Edmund closing the door behind him. “Slippers! You’re what I call a layabout.”

  “Come through and see the tree—you won’t believe how beautifully it has thrived, after all my naysaying.”

  Edmund beamed. “Really?”

  “Come, look.” They went. Sir Edmund’s face when he saw the tree, bare as a church in February, fell into dismay. Lenox laughed. “As you can see, we have enough wreaths to commemorate a lost ship, anyhow. Jane brought them in this morning.”

  “I say, though, I am sorry.”

  Lenox smiled again. “Come into my study—you can buy me a drink and we’ll call it splits.”

  They followed this plan, Edmund taking his whisky neat. When they were seated in front of the quietly burning fire, each with a drink, Edmund said, “What about Austen?”

  Lenox hesitated.

  If there was a soul on earth whose discretion he trusted it was his brother’s—but then, Jane’s, too, Dallington’s, Polly’s, and if he began to tell this story, the possibility of a mistake multiplied with each person who carried it.

  “His wife identified his body this morning, I’m afraid to say.”

  Edmund grimaced. Larchmont had been satisfied; a closed case, and vague hints at the machinations of French intelligence had settled his opinion of the matter for good. “That’s dreadful.”

  “Indeed. Gambling debts, if I’m not mistaken,” said Lenox, borrowing Boothby’s story—or rather, what he hoped would not be Boothby’s story. “Mrs. Austen is young, at any rate, and from what I hear can expect eleven thousand pounds for her husband’s commission, I believe, or thereabouts.”

  “Little consolation, that, Charles! On Christmas! Money! For shame.”

  “Yes,” said Lenox humbly. “You’re quite right.”

  “Well, well, what a tale of woe.” Edmund took a sip of his whisky, and in the silence emerged the shadow of his own widowhood, or so at least Charles thought. “Sophia liked her stocking?”

  “She did.” Lenox stood up. “Speaking of which—there is already one present for you in that pathetic excuse for a tree that you defrauded us into taking off of your hands, but as it happens I have another for you in here.”

  “Do you? I shall ignore that jibe then.”

  Lenox left the room, went downstairs into the servant’s quarters, and returned. “What will you say if I tell you I bought it from the baker’s?”

  “That it’s a loaf of bread.”

  “Guess again. It’s in my jacket pocket here.” There was a ring at the door—first guests! Edmund not counting as a guest. Lenox waved a hand. “Jane will see them. Any thoughts?”

  Edmund furrowed his brow. His face was tired. Late hours in Parliament—and traces of that tiredness that had never left it since he lost Molly. “A seedcake?”

  “You are very similar to Sophia—obsessed with seedcakes.” These were a Christmas delicacy. “No. Look.”

  And from his very small pocket, Lenox brought forth a tiny, minuscule, indeed perhaps the smallest kitten ever to be born. It was a tortoiseshell cat. She was the smallest of the nine the baker’s cat had littered. “Good heavens!”

  Lenox went and put her in Edmund’s hands—she fit easily in one of them—and said, “What do you think? You wanted a cat in the year I wanted a rabbit, I recall.”

  “I did, that’s true,” said Edmund, who was staring softly at the little creature in his hands. “But this one is the size of a walnut.”

  “It will grow into the size of five walnuts before long. Anyhow I saw two mice last time I was at Lenox House.”

  “Has she had her milk? Does she have a name?”

  “The name I leave to you. Milk—she has had cream, the glutton. Everyone downstairs fell in love with her.”

  “She’s a very pretty cat, it’s true. I will have to mull over the name.” He stroked the back of her neck softly. “She is dear, isn’t she,” he murmured, more to himself than to his brother.

  There was another knock at the front door. Lenox went over to his desk and took off his slippers, replacing them with his real shoes. “I suppose we’d better go out. She has a box lined with velveteen downstairs.”

  “No, I’ll keep her in my pocket,” said Edmund.

  Suddenly the study door burst open. With the freedom of the day, Sophia, woken from her nap, had decided to intrude upon her father’s private library.

  “Hello Uncle Edmund!” she said. Then, in that flat tone lacking a question mark in which children so often asked questions, she said, “May I please have five seedcakes, father, may I.”

  “It’s not Christian in you to want so many, my dear. Two will do.”

  “Two,” Sophia said ruminatively. “What about four?”

  “What about one?”

  “Two will be perfect,” she said. Suddenly she noticed that Edmund was holding the kitten. “I say, what a nice cat!”

  “Yes, it’s mine,” Edmund said, smiling.

  “May I please pet it?”

  “You can name it, if you like. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Nicholas,” said Sophia immediately.

  “It’s a female,” said Charles.
>
  “No,” said Edmund, “I think it’s a fine name. Nicholas. We’re too hidebound in naming things, I say. Come and pet Nicholas, my dear, but be gentle. She’s only a little particle of a thing.”

  * * *

  The party was loud and happy; the treasure hunt was a disaster; the tree, in having the presents unbound from it, began to lose its structure, shedding whole branches, which was a cause of much hilarity. In an enormous silver bowl there was Jane’s famous hot punch (the secret ingredient was cherry liquor, Lenox happened to know, though she acted very secretive about it even with him) and, as the day went on, it gradually emptied and people grew very jolly indeed.

  Sophia made an appearance and ate a seedcake, much feted, before returning to the nursery. The rest of them broke open their own seedcakes—Lenox’s dear friend Graham found the bean in his, which made him the King of Twelfth Night.

  “Much honored, I’m sure,” he said, nodding at the applause, smiling in his quiet, private way.

  Dallington, who had returned from West Bromwich late the night before, said, “Since the King cannot serve in Parliament, you must quit and come work for the agency.”

  “Regretfully declined,” said Graham, and there was a laugh throughout the room.

  Jane’s friend Matilda Ludlow played songs on the cottage piano; Lenox’s friend Leigh astonished them by producing a burst of flame from an empty wineglass using only the salt cellar; Lenox’s very old, dear, frail, and white-haired friend Lord Cabot proposed a toast to the Queen’s health; and, in general, it was very much like many other Christmases, in that it was uniquely warm and tender and also warm and tender in the way that those other Christmases were.

  And—though perhaps it was the punch—Lenox, surrounded by friends and family, thought that perhaps, after all, this holiday did produce the best in each of them. Why was that? Why, at the coldest time of year, did they return to the warm parts of each other, the parts they could forget in the haste and noise so much of the time, when they were lesser friends, lesser brothers, lesser partners to each other? What spirit made this room so happy? It was a mystery; a mystery beyond even the ken of a very great detective.

  As it drew on toward evening they exchanged presents. Lady Jane excelled in this particular art—each of their guests had some small, perfect object bestowed upon them. Lenox himself, less gifted in that direction, did enjoy one moment of triumph.

  It was Polly’s present.

  “Mine is smaller than anyone else’s,” she said, reaching into the tree to untangle an envelope with a silver bell attached to it, her name painted on it.

  “The blame isn’t mine, there,” said Lady Jane. “Your husband sent that over this morning.”

  Polly glanced over at Dallington, who remained poker-faced. She opened the envelope and studied it, frowning, before her eyes widened—her first look not at Dallington, but at Lenox.

  “Venice!” she said.

  When he had sent those three wires after first meeting Mrs. Austen, one of them had been to Dallington in West Bromwich.

  Strongly advise trip to Venice for honeymoon in January STOP Polly at wits’ end STOP listen to a fellow who has been married you fool STOP you can both be easily spared from agency since I am best of three of us STOP all regards Lenox STOP

  Dallington had taken the advice, booking the trip for the sixth of January.

  Polly immediately began to throw out objections—chiefly that the business would fall to pieces—but she was grinning, and the objections fell away. She shone with happiness at the prospect of their vacation. Lenox felt unbecomingly pleased with himself.

  It was at around 5:40 that Kirk, who from the flush in his face was either very pleased with the reception of the wine he had chosen or had been partaking of it himself, whispered that Lenox had a message.

  Lenox, who had just been finishing his pudding, frowned. “A message.”

  “By private messenger. A young lady, sir.”

  Lenox went to his study and found a letter.

  Dear Mr. Lenox,

  Thank you for your assistance during this time. I am sorry that the result has not been happier, but you were most kind in your sentiments—I shall not forget your kindness to me. My plans involve emigration; should any new information come to light about my husband’s last days, please contact me by my friend William Saunders, who will provide me a home in Canada, I hope.

  Thank you again.

  Abigail Austen

  Lenox sat for some time with the note in his hand, the chatter of the party a background noise.

  He thought of the rum fate of all the people he had met in this fleeting case. Those two sisters perched upon their sofa, judging the world, with who knew what in their minds. The Reverend. Austen, who would be on a ship for the Azores in two days. Mrs. Austen, who thought she was being subtle with her deceitful reference to Canada, and showed by mentioning this William Saunders, which Lenox had no doubt that Austen had settled upon as his false name, perhaps didn’t entirely appreciate the danger in which she remained. Boothby, so elegantly in catastrophic debt; the stationmaster at Ipswich with his comically wrongheaded sense of distance; Polly, Dallington, Sophia, Graham, Leigh, the Duke and Duchess of Marchmain, all of them, Kirk, Jane, Cabot; Larchmont, with his large family and the beef suet in his hair; the colonel of the Grenadiers, probably sitting up late over regimental papers.

  The sheer numerousness of humans. How fortunate he was among them.

  He tore Letitia Austen’s letter into small pieces, but remained at his desk, wondering what life she would build alongside her husband as Mrs. William Saunders, with their eleven thousand pounds. There were small portraits of his mother and father hanging on the wall nearby, painted on ivory, and he looked at them.

  What serious, decent, loving people they had been! Dead now these twenty years and more.

  He wondered how he would be remembered twenty years after his own death.

  From the top drawer of his desk he took his book of checks and wrote a draft on his account for three hundred pounds. That would be three times her annual salary, more than enough for permanent escape. He folded it in a piece of paper, then put this in an envelope and wrote on it Annie, Housekeeper Middleman Hall, Ipswich, Suffolk, then added, underneath, to be delivered by hand to recipient only, which would cost another threepence.

  Money well spent, that.

  He glanced out the window. Snow! It had begun to stick at last, turning the streets a single color, erasing under its whiteness the modernity of life, returning the world to its most basic shapes.

  He stared for a while, contemplative but not wholly unhappy. At last he stood up. His guests would be eating the oranges Lady Jane had ordered. He sealed the envelope, put it in the rack of letters to go out the next morning, and went back to the party, forgetting almost immediately, amid their jolly chatter and the music of the piano, this melancholy interlude, and instead plunging back into the company of those he loved, happy, content, a little inebriated, and certainly overfull, just as one should on Christmas: as fat as a Lenox goose.

  Turn the page for a preview of

  Woman in the Water

  Coming in February 2018

  Chapter One

  For a little more than an hour on that May morning in 1850, the only sound in the flat in St. James’s Square was the rustling of newspapers, punctuated occasionally by the crisp shear of a pair of sharpened scissors through newsprint.

  There were two men at the highly polished breakfast table by the window, three stories above street level. One was in an impeccable gray suit, the other in a ratty brown smoking jacket. Both were too intent upon their work to glance out from this high vantage at their panoramic view of the soft spring day; the shy sunlight; the irregular outlines of the two nearby parks, lying serene within the smoke and stone of the city; the new leaves upon the trees, making their innocent green way into life, on branches still so skinny that they quivered like the legs of a foal.

  At last Charles L
enox—the one in the shabby smoking jacket—threw down the last of his newspapers.

  “Ha! Done,” he said. “You’re as slow as a milk train, Graham.”

  There was a teapot on the table, and Lenox poured himself another cup from it, adding a spoonful of sugar from a small silver bowl. He took a satisfied bite from a piece of cinnamon toast whose existence he had previously forgotten, and which had been prepared by the discreetly well-dressed man sitting opposite him, his valet, whose name was Graham.

  “It’s not speed but quality of attention that matters, sir,” Graham said. He didn’t look up from his own newspaper, the second to last of a towering pile.

  “What a lot of nonsense,” replied Lenox, rising and stretching out his arms. “Anyway, I’ll get dressed while you finish. How many have you got so far?”

  “Nine, sir.”

  “Ten for me.”

  Graham’s pile of clipped articles was much tidier than Lenox’s. But he did look up now—as if tempted to say something less than entirely respectful—and then gave his familiar slight smile, shook his head, and resumed his study. He was a compact, sandy-haired person, with a face that was gentle and temperate, but looked as if it could keep a secret.

  There were few people Lenox cared for or trusted more.

  When the young master of the house emerged again, he had changed out of his ratty brown jacket and into a handsome suit of his own, a heather-gray two shades lighter than Graham’s and perhaps thirty times as expensive. Such was life in England: Lenox had been born to a family of aristocrats, Graham to a family of tenant farmers. Yet they were true friends. Graham had been Lenox’s scout throughout three years at Balliol College, Oxford, and had moved to London with him as manservant seven months before—seven months, for Lenox, of exhilaration, missteps, uncertainty, and novelty.

  Why? Because as the rest of his class from Oxford were settling into the usual pursuits, Lenox was trying, against the better advice of nearly every soul he encountered, and so far with absolutely no success at all, to become something that did not exist: a private consulting detective.