“It wouldn’t have come from the Gallant, anyhow. Just the manufacturer’s mark, I suppose.”
“And what about the stencil on the lid?”
“Well, that would be quite normal—except I would have expected it to be scratched in with a knife.” Ampleforth thought of something. “Look here, draw me a picture of this trunk, would you?”
Lenox did so as quickly and well as he could, its brass handles, its rounded top. Ampleforth took it and immediately shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said.
“What is it?”
Ampleforth turned the sheet around. “If there is one thing we value aboard a ship, it is space. Well—water, but after water, space.” He started to sketch himself. “Look. A seaman’s trunk is always flat, like this, so it can be stacked. Always.”
Lenox felt a buzz of excitement, as yet still mysterious. “I see.”
“What’s more, I’ve never seen a trunk yet with just two markings on it.”
“Perhaps it could have come from a private ship, not a naval ship?”
“They have the same exact customs, when it comes to that kind of thing, a thousand times in a thousand. All their men are retired from our service. And anyhow, it says the Gallant’s name on it.”
Lenox sat back. He was deeply uneasy. It was like the board from the second murder not being wet; he had made the mistake of believing what he had been manipulated to believe, that it was a seaman’s locker he had been dealing with, first because the articles they had clipped said so, second because of the words HMS GALLANT on its lid.
“Then what kind of locker is it?” Lenox asked.
“I’ve no idea at all. I’ll tell you what, ring for my clerk. Let’s ask him.”
Ampleforth hit a bell. Meanwhile, for the first time, Lenox had the feeling of his mind meeting the murderer’s own—the planning it had taken to stencil HMS GALLANT on the box, the careful misdirection, the hideousness of the two women’s deaths, the dry board but the wet clothing—and he felt a chill of fear somewhere deep inside.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lenox, Ampleforth, and Ampleforth’s clerk spent some time discussing the trunk. Lenox asked them repeatedly if perhaps some privileged traveler aboard the HMS Gallant—a paying passenger—might have brought this trunk. But no, Ampleforth insisted, the navy was highly regulatory of onboard baggage, and had been twice as strict when the Gallant was still seaworthy thirty years prior.
But what was the purpose of the concealment?
G957, he had in his mind; the ruse of the Gallant must be designed to cover, somehow, for that G, explain it away.
He thanked Ampleforth, owed him dinner he said, then took a carriage home in a thoughtful mood. It was just past one o’clock. In his rooms there was a raft of morning mail—a note from Elizabeth asking if he was going to Lady Ledderer’s that evening, a bill from the bookstore, a close friend from Oxford who was in Ceylon and sent very funny intermittent updates about his life there. A telegram from his mother, too.
Thinking of you STOP send word if there is aught I can do STOP
That “aught” came from the previous century, and so, Lenox thought with a pang, did his parents. And while he might, they would not see the next.
As he was contemplating this, tapping the folded telegram against the table, Mrs. Huggins came in. Apparently she had been encouraged by Lenox’s praise of her work on the rugs, unfortunately. She now presented him with a long list—it ran to a second page!—of things she thought should be done around the house because it was spring.
There was nothing Lenox wanted less in the world than to have a long conference with his housekeeper assessing the “state of curtains (2nd bedroom).”
He looked at the list with at least a simulation of thoughtfulness.
“Why don’t you go ahead with the first four, and then we’ll revisit the rest with Graham,” he said after a moment.
She looked on the verge of mentioning that in Lady Hamilton’s household, orders five through nineteen would have been executed as a matter of course. But, perhaps sensing that she had already pressed her luck, she acceded and withdrew.
Lenox composed a telegram to his mother.
Huggins will be death of me STOP otherwise holding steady STOP looking forward Lenox House two days time STOP bringing doctors STOP they will not stop overnight STOP prepare Father STOP Charles
He thought that he ought to go see his brother. But there was so much to do; and in the end, he decided that he would visit Sir Richard Mayne instead.
Mayne received him curtly, but this attitude seemed to be more global in nature than in any way specific to Lenox.
“Well?” he said.
“A few things,” Lenox replied in a tone of corresponding briskness. He felt his youth. Presumably when he was older, he wouldn’t be so terrified in situations like this one. The happy anticipation of that future was of no comfort to him now, though. “The first is Nathaniel Butler.”
“Yes? What about him?”
“Multiple people have confirmed that he was in Birmingham for several days on either side of the first murder.”
Mayne frowned. “Hm. Field won’t like letting him go.”
“That’s your business, of course. The next thing is the trunk.”
“The trunk?”
Lenox explained, and Mayne’s curiosity was piqued. He wanted to know if G957 was a useful clue. “It almost must be,” he said. “At any rate, it’s among our best leads so far.”
“I’m attempting to solve the puzzle,” said Lenox.
Mayne waved an irritable hand. “We don’t talk like that here, it’s not a novel,” he said. “Just get at it. Do you need a man or two?”
Lenox, swallowing, said that that would be useful, certainly. “My plan was to go to a few shops that sell trunks. I could write up a list.”
“Have it to me by the end of the day—keep it sharpish, mind—and I will assign you a constable.”
The end of the day, sharpish. Lenox hated that half pound a week with all his heart. “Very well,” he said.
Sir Richard, perhaps remembering that he was speaking with the son of a Member of Parliament and an aristocrat, shook his head. “Sorry, Lenox. Not myself. The press. Was that all?”
“No. There was one more thing, in fact.”
“Eh?”
“It’s about the two women.”
“I should hope so.”
“Specifically where they might have disappeared from. It’s been bothering me.”
“Go on.”
“Does Inspector Field have a theory?”
“Prostitutes.” Some look of irritation must have passed over Lenox’s face, however briefly, because Sir Richard said, “What, you think it unlikely?”
“We know very specifically that their teeth are those of wellborn women. It was mentioned in the first article ever written about Walnut Island.”
“A prostitute may have decent teeth.”
“It’s not common. What’s more, the second body, what I saw of it—”
Here Lenox ran aground, though.
How could he explain that his instinct told him it was the body of a person who had a decent place to sleep, decent food to eat?
A tortoiseshell comb for her hair.
Mayne nodded. “No. I take your point,” he said. “I am inclined to agree.”
“There is an easy way to find out more. If the medical surveyor makes a venereal examination…”
Mayne turned—he was standing, pacing—and picked up a piece of paper. “I am pressing them like all get-out to examine the body. They are as slow as that hippopotamus.”
Lenox shrugged. “In that case, I think it is our task to discover where these women might have come from. Nobody has reported them gone. Nobody has written in, I assume, saying that one or both match the description of someone missing?”
Mayne shook his head. “No. But what do you propose?”
“I think we must wire the police service in every county and ask
if they are missing either one or two women.”
“The replies will be a flood—every girl who eloped to Gretna Green with the local blackguard, or went bad and came to London.”
“My assistant and I shall go through them, even if they are overwhelming in number,” Lenox said stoutly. “And if the descriptions you provide are precise, regarding height, weight, eye color, hair color, age—the comb and the ring from Walnut Island.”
Mayne hesitated, and then nodded. “Very well. It shall be done. The replies to be forwarded to you?”
“I am happy for Field to share the work, or to take it myself.”
“Leave Field to Field,” said Mayne. “You shall have the replies if you want them. Is that all?”
“For now.”
“Good day, then,” said Mayne, sitting down and looking at his papers. He glanced up at Lenox. “You’re doing good work. I thank you.”
The young detective—he could call himself that, he thought!—left Scotland Yard aloft on that compliment.
The last several months had been so frustrating, so endless, so full of self-doubt. There was every chance he might scrap this detective work yet, of course. Politics had always interested him, and he had the means and the inclination to travel. Either might make for a career, though the diplomatic corps seemed a hard road.
He would rather not join the army or the navy—the worst parts of school, extended over a lifetime.
But it gave him a coursing feeling in his veins to be on a scent, to be doing what he had envisioned doing. For the first time it all seemed worth it. Lord Markham be damned.
There was a wire waiting for him at home—briefly and irrationally he hoped it might be the first response from one of the remote constabularies of England, but that would take days, even longer, no doubt—and as he tore it open, he saw it was from his mother.
Recall now Huggins highly susceptible to cats STOP Love STOP Mother
Susceptible to cats! Lenox had only a moment to pause over this odd declaration before Mrs. Huggins herself entered, announcing that he had a guest, Mr. Rupert Clarkson.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Who on earth is Mr. Rupert Clarkson?” Lenox asked.
She did not know. “I cannot say, sir. He offers his card.”
Lenox took this. “How strongly does he smell of drink?”
“Not at all, sir,” said the housekeeper indignantly. “Over the years, I have—”
“Is he selling any variety of unguent or tonic out of a briefcase? Play straight with me, Mrs. Huggins.”
Mrs. Huggins looked scandalized. “Indeed not, sir! He appears to be a respectable person—appears to be a—”
Lenox sighed dramatically, but the card bore out this informal assessment. It was a gentleman’s card, with a gentleman’s address near Oxford Street. “Ship him in, ship him in,” Lenox said, interrupting. “But don’t immediately start offering him roast beef sandwiches or he’s liable to stay forever.”
“As you please, sir.”
“I’ll ring if there’s anything we need.”
Almost all of Lenox’s guests fell into one of three categories, distributed into about equal parts: Elizabeth, Edmund, or Someone Else, generally a friend or relative. Five or six times Lenox had hosted small dinner parties, usually as a prelude to some evening out—a ball, for instance (there was one this week), or a concert. Two had been arranged expressly as a favor to his friend Hugh, who, having been for a long while ardently and unrequitedly in love with their friend Eleanor, and being of a poetic bent, had made all the arrangements on those occasions himself.
At any rate, none of his visitors were like the Mr. Rupert Clarkson who entered the room now: ancient, apparently foul tempered, and present without explanation.
He was for some reason in high dudgeon. “You’re Charles Lenox?” he asked with suspicion, as if someone had been passing bad checks under that name.
“I am, Mr. Clarkson,” said Lenox, rising. “I don’t believe we’re acquainted.”
Clarkson stared at him very baldly, toe to cap. “You’re young.”
Lenox was sorely tempted to reply You’re old, but that would have been unkind, and he was not an unkind person, even when the situation justified it. (“That will get you shot one day,” Edmund had predicted when Charles first moved to London, in their initial conversation about his decision to become a detective. “You’ll be in a pub, on the verge of arresting a murderer, and he’ll beg you to let him have a swift half of porter, and then while you’re paying for it, he’ll shoot you.” “Thank you for that cheerful prognostication,” Charles had said. He had added with some vehemence that he wouldn’t pay for the drink; though in his heart he knew that it was true he would let the fellow have his drink, his brother had got him at least that right.)
Instead of replying, he merely waited for Clarkson to state his business.
After a moment or two, the old man removed his hat and sat down, making himself very free with one of Lenox’s armchairs. “Please, sit,” Lenox said, settling down opposite him. “Can I help you in some way, Mr. Clarkson?”
“A private detective, the papers said you were.”
“Oh! The papers!”
“That’s what they said. Were they wrong?”
Lenox shook his head. “No. It’s true.”
Lenox’s mind had done a strange little flip. It was some push-me-pull-you of regret at having appeared in the paper, but tinctured with pride, and surmounted by an immediate excitement. Could this be a case, a veritable case?
“Much experience?” said Clarkson.
“A fair amount,” said Lenox blithely.
“Well, you’re what I need. A private detective. The police have no interest. And they shouldn’t have any interest, what’s more. No crime that I can discern has been committed.”
Lenox was curious. “I would be happy to hear more.”
“What are your fees?”
“Negotiable.”
“Would a pound a day do?”
It was something Lenox hadn’t even considered, especially; a privilege, he was conscious. Hugh was fearfully poor, a situation he had no expectation of changing, since his parents were also poor, unless he found his way into some viable concern.
“At the moment, Scotland Yard has retained my services. There’s also the matter of expenses.”
Clarkson took out a billfold. He put two ten-pound notes down on the side table. “When my credit has run out from these, you will let me know.”
“I haven’t accepted the case yet, Mr. Clarkson. Would you care to tell me about it?”
“Picky, are you?”
Lenox frowned. “Yes, as it happens, I am.”
Clarkson shifted his chair, and seemed to really look Lenox in the eye for the first time. He had close-cropped white hair and wore round spectacles. His clothes were expensive and new. His watch chain was gold. A rich fellow.
“I need help,” he said.
This piqued Lenox’s sympathy. “What kind of help?”
Clarkson leaned forward in his chair with both his hands on his cane, which rested on the floor and came up to about the level of his chin. “That’s more difficult to say.”
“Start wherever you like.”
Clarkson nodded. “Very well. A word about myself. I am an engineer, a retired engineer now. I was born in Shropshire and educated in London. I married early in life, but my wife died thirty years ago, of influenza. After that loss, my business became the primary interest of my life, and I did handsomely out of it. We’re a firm that designs agricultural equipment. We possess several dozen patents. Three years ago, I retired and sold out to two young men, though I still consult with them for an annual fee.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know any of this to be relevant, but it gives you a sense of my history.”
“Did you and your wife have children?” Lenox asked.
“No,” Clarkson said. “Nor did I remarry.”
“And your problem?”
Now Lenox’s interlocutor looked less certain of himself. “It’s—well, it’s this way, Mr. Lenox. I have a house in town here and another in Dulwich, where I often spend a day or two a week. It’s a good practical arrangement for a gentleman at my time of life.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
“I often entertain friends at both—Dulwich if they like fishing, London if they like dining, as those are my two chief interests in retirement. Wine, especially. I have several congenial former colleagues who were erstwhile active in the city, too, and share one or the other of these two interests.”
Lenox nodded. “I see.”
Lenox knew Dulwich, a village north of the city, picturesque and very green, with a brook running through it. It would have taken only fifty minutes or an hour to get there, though in its rural beauty, it felt as if it were much deeper into the countryside.
“I wouldn’t have said anything odd could happen to me, at my age. I’m seventy-one, I may add. My medical man pledges to me that I have the fitness of a fellow two decades younger. The fishing, I believe—and a temperate appetite.”
“And what’s happened?” Lenox pressed gently.
Clarkson looked discomfited. “It sounds mad, but I assure you I am in control of my faculties, Mr. Lenox.”
“Nothing could be plainer.”
The older man looked relieved, and it was clear that at least some of what Lenox had perceived as ill temper was nervousness. “Well, quite.”
“And so?” said Lenox.
At last Clarkson came to the point. “About a month ago, I was in Dulwich for four nights. I returned home to London, and the house was as I had left it, with one small exception. There was a five-pound note in an envelope on my desk.”
Lenox frowned. “That was not yours?”
“That was not mine.” Clarkson looked at him sharply. “I know what you’ll say—that I’m an old man, and forgot I had left it there. It’s not true. For one thing, I am very careful about money. For another, it was not my envelope—did not come from my stationery drawer. And most important: I returned to Dulwich the next week, and there, on my desk, was the same exact thing. A five-pound note in an envelope.”
The Woman in the Water--A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Series Page 11
