The Woman in the Water--A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Series

by Charles Finch

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As in most country houses, the dogcart at Lenox House was in perhaps eight times greater use than the carriage. But the carriage was here: now painted a glossy maroon, Lenox arms on the door, easing down slightly earthward on whichever side it was stepped into. Four black horses, groomed and beautiful, ridden out every morning by Hitchens and his stableboy two by two, were ready to pull it.

  Lenox and Graham went together to pick up Sir Riley Callum, the consulting surgeon Courtenay had recommended. He stepped from the train, and Lenox’s first thought was that in looks there was virtually nothing more you could have asked of him: his white-haired head might have been the model for a marble bust, and he stood marvelously erect, a man with delicate papery skin and keen gray eyes that seemed to survey and anatomize the world with bloodless precision.

  They might as well have taken the dogcart for him, though. He was closeted with Lenox’s father for about ninety minutes, spoke briefly with Lenox’s two parents, politely but firmly declined Lenox’s company on the return trip to the train station, and left.

  Lenox was in the ballroom, vast and empty, sitting with his legs up in a window and staring at the clean-shorn hedges of the formal gardens, when his mother came down. “Nothing to be done, he says.”

  Lenox stood up. “That’s all he said?”

  “He concurred with the opinion of the other doctors your father has seen.” She bit her lip. Her arms were crossed. “No surgical options.”

  “None?” said Lenox, stunned.

  “He offered some palliative advice. Though your father won’t stop smoking his pipe, of course.”

  “No,” Lenox said in an indistinct voice. More plausible that the sun should stop rising in the east. He looked up at his mother. “Shall I cancel Dr. McConnell?”

  “Hadn’t you better? Your father will see him, but there doesn’t seem much point.”

  He didn’t, though. Something in his mother at the moment she said that—well, he had never known her bright, lively face so drained of life. He decided he would keep the appointment.

  What a mystery one’s parents were! Lenox would have said that his mother was by far the better equipped for this kind of loss—she was so universally beloved by her friends, so interested in life, so alive herself—and yet he saw now that in fact he had been exactly wrong. His father would have borne the loss of his mother. He would have been shattered, but he also didn’t have quite so strong a sense that his life was important. Perhaps it came of being the steward of a title and of land. If it had been she who received this diagnosis, Sir Edward would have known that his loss was only personal and, however inwardly bereft, carried on.

  But for Emma Lenox, all of life was personal. The way she teased, her easy gift for being in a room—all these warm traits would be adrift on cold waters without her husband, Lenox saw for the first time.

  The next morning, Graham and Lenox sat in the carriage again. They were, as usual, discussing the crimes in London. The first thing they did was stop into the telegraph office—very new—to see if anything had arrived from Mrs. Huggins, who was under strict orders to forward anything from Scotland Yard, regardless of expense.

  Nothing there, however.

  As they waited on a bench near the small train station, with its pink shutters pulled back so that the newsagent and the small tea shop looked appealingly open, inviting, Lenox said, “I’ve been thinking about the letters.”

  Indeed, he had read them over and over, until he had made copies because he was afraid he would rub the newsprint too much to read.

  “Have you, sir?”

  “Is he really trying to commit perfect crimes, do you think?”

  Lenox’s valet was never one to reply before thinking, and he sat for some time, pondering the question. For his part, Lenox valued these silences, which often allowed questions he had to resonate in his own mind.

  “Why do you ask, sir?” said Graham at last.

  “Because!” Lenox burst out. “Think about every article you and I have clipped in the last seven months. What did they all have in common?”

  “Sir?”

  “None of them was a perfect crime! No—they were all driven by money or anger. Every single one.”

  “And yet he has written these letters, sir.”

  “Come at it from another angle. Why has he killed women? They are infinitely scarcer—men pass in and out of London all the time, men are passed stupefied by drink in every corner of the city. Slit a man’s neck and walk away. That is the perfect crime.”

  “On the other hand, that very fact suggests an obsessiveness, sir. He has chosen two women of similar health and appearance.”

  A loose conflagration of birds burst from a tree nearby, in ragged unison. “True,” said Lenox. “But what about these lurid flowers, the Thames ‘Ophelia,’ showy, literary, guaranteed to attract the press’s attention. Sheer misdirection. He has already done it once: the HMS Gallant.”

  Graham, who looked less convinced, said, “Perhaps, sir. You think there is some base motive involved here, then, and all of this is—window dressing, sir, I suppose you would call it.”

  Lenox reflected on the question. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “What’s funny is that you are right about the two women. I retain in my mind the same image of the murderer I had after the first letter.

  “Perhaps both things are true—that he is the arrogant, misused person of the letters, and also that he is acting out of some other motive. Because the letters are too convincing. They are too well in character to be false, to be truly false.”

  Just then a whistle sounded, and around a curve of poplar trees the train appeared, chuffing black smoke. The few souls on the station’s platform stepped forward, as people waiting for trains always do a moment or two early.

  Lenox stood up. He had the certainty in his breast that they were getting closer and closer—from Sussex!—than the police were in London.

  It was odd. Almost for the first time since Oxford, he believed that perhaps this was what he was meant to do, after all. Some combination of reasoning, psychological insight, and curiosity (some combination of qualities that he couldn’t even name, strictly) made him fit for this work, and perhaps for no other.

  Youth is dramatic, his mother would have replied to that. He smiled faintly to himself, though visibly enough that Graham looked at him, at a slant.

  Only four people stepped off the train at Markethouse. It was clear which one of them was the doctor from London—for one thing, he stepped from the first-class carriage, while the rest bundled out of third, and for another, he wore a high white collar and a cravat and carried a leather medical bag, while the rest immediately set about offering proof to any interested party that they were in an advanced state of inebriation.

  “Dr. McConnell?” said Lenox, going forward with his hand outstretched. “Thank you for making the journey. I’m Charles Lenox.”

  “Delighted to meet you,” said the doctor, extending his own hand and smiling. “A very pleasant journey, too, all in all.”

  “Here’s the carriage to shoot us along. Can my valet take your bag?”

  “This? No, it barely weighs a thing.”

  Lenox’s first impression of Thomas McConnell was that he liked him enormously. It was hard not to. He was tall and extremely handsome, with strong features and hair that he wore in a fringe below his collar. His eyes sparkled with intelligence and interest, and he emanated goodwill, amiability, a readiness to be pleased. For a doctor to retain his decency seemed nearly impossible—death, paraded before you every moment, in all its dull spangled variety. Yet here was a person who had, one felt.

  His accent was fairly English now, slipping home to Scotland here and there for certain words. On the way to Lenox House (Graham sat on the box with the driver, rather than inside the carriage), he listened attentively as Lenox described the little he knew of his father’s case. He also accepted the report of Sir Riley Callum, which had arriv
ed that morning by mail.

  The doctor read this carefully. The trip was a short one, and they were turning past Carter at the gatehouse when McConnell closed the report. “Does your father seem to be in good spirits?” he asked, his face serious and attentive.

  “I think so.”

  “Mm.” The doctor tapped his door where his hand lay, thinking. Then he turned to Lenox. “In any case, I will spend some time with him.”

  “You do not think of cutting today, then,” said Lenox, his heart sinking. He had hoped that McConnell would dismiss Callum’s report as pessimistic.

  “It is almost always impossible to say without seeing the patient,” Dr. McConnell said gently.

  They drew down the avenue; the clouds above were black, ominous, and as they went inside, the first drops of a heavy rain began to fall on the marble steps leading into Lenox House.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Lenox remained in Sussex another thirty-six hours, half of that Saturday and the full of the subsequent Sunday, not leaving until the last train from Markethouse to London, the 9:39. He was hesitant to leave, but wanted to have a week in the city—Scotland Yard at work, Mayne in the offices—in order to move forward with the case.

  A month was a short time; he repeated this to himself morning, noon, night. June 2.

  On the second afternoon, he and his father rode out again. They rode farther than they ever had together, though not farther than Sir Edward and Edmund, who had rambled all across the county over the years.

  Beneath the downs under the village of Somerton was a small creek, and after a hard hour’s riding, they stopped there and let their thirsty horses drink and recover.

  His father was stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and soaked his arms and neck in the stream, too. There was a contented look on his face. He dried himself with a broad piece of cloth tied to his saddlebags, then took out some figs, cheese, and bread, which he divided between them. Charles accepted the victuals gratefully, famished. At the house his mother would be having a hearty tea, but he wouldn’t have traded spots.

  After they had caught their breath, Lenox’s father said, quite unexpectedly, “I wonder whom you think of marrying.”

  “I? I don’t have anyone in particular in mind, sir.”

  His father nodded. “You’re very young. I only wondered.”

  “Not twenty-two anymore,” Charles replied, smiling.

  “No indeed.”

  There had been a young lady at Oxford, the daughter of a don, named Cynthia, and he wondered if this was what his father meant. He had introduced his parents to her; at one time, when he was in her father’s grand bookish musty Norham Gardens house every afternoon, he had thought he would certainly marry her.

  In the end, she had married rather beneath herself, to a fellow named Allerton. He was one of the handsomest chaps who had ever drawn breath—utterly decent, too, but extremely stupid. She hadn’t cared; nothing could have been clearer. She treasured him. Beauty, Lenox had learned: there was a force in the world. This fellow’s beauty had mattered more than Lenox’s openhearted affection.

  He could give himself a pang very easily thinking of Cynthia. (The wedding was only eight months in the past; the silver tea set he had given them hadn’t had time to tarnish.) She was modern, with a slim, beautiful figure. But if he looked just beyond the middle distance of his emotion, to whatever far-off place he was journeying toward, he knew that it hadn’t been she who got away.

  Because his thoughts had turned to Cynthia, it surprised him when, a moment later, his father said, “And is Lady Elizabeth well? She likes London life?”

  “She has been to see the hippopotamus.”

  “Half the cabinet has, too,” said his father. “Appalling waste of time.”

  “So I told her.”

  There was a fractional pause, and for a passing second Lenox thought his father might mention his son’s career—or his ambitions to travel, which he seemed to dislike just as strongly, another dilettante’s choice.

  But all he said was, “Shall we ride back?”

  “If you think the horses are ready.”

  “Oh yes. Clarence had another few miles in him when we stopped, and he’s the older of the pair.”

  They set off in loud, happy silence.

  That question was the closest his father had come to mentioning his condition, Lenox reflected as they rode. Then there was a fence to jump and the thought was chased from his mind. He was conscious, however, to remember each of these moments; and it was a queer feeling to know that he was doing so.

  McConnell had been a more delicate, interested, and thoughtful party than Sir Riley Callum, who was perhaps overburdened by his own greatness and had seemed irritated at the disadvantage in which it placed him (a knight of the realm!) that mere money had drawn him four hours across the country.

  But the result was the same. A slight shake of Lenox’s mother head after the two-hour visit, and he felt as if he had been leveled by a gust of wind.

  Charles had returned with McConnell to the station, Graham on the box. He liked the Scot, who seemed, now, sober and respectful, but not overplaying the role. “He will have a very fair quality of life,” the doctor had said.

  “Right until the end?”

  McConnell had pulled out a pad of paper. “I could prescribe a medicine, but look—you live in London. Have you seen Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup?”

  “Yes.”

  It was advertised widely—a colicky baby’s best remedy. McConnell was writing the name down. “It is essentially pure poppy. There is nobody on earth whose pain it wouldn’t relieve.”

  “Poppy.”

  “The most jaded denizen of the filthiest opium den would find relief from it,” McConnell said lightheartedly—attempting to be lighthearted.

  “Thank you,” said Lenox.

  “On the bottle they dose by weight. You can extrapolate.”

  “Amazing that this is the best modern medicine can do,” Lenox said.

  McConnell shook his head angrily, in a way that implied he agreed. “Yes,” he said.

  But Lenox had only, with this idle comment, been delaying the question he dreaded asking. “When will he need it?”

  They were halfway through Markethouse, every bump in its road familiar to Charles. “In five months,” said McConnell.

  “And is there some other expert, some physician who perhaps could—?”

  “There is not,” said McConnell sympathetically but firmly. “The growth is too large, and the symptoms all indicate that the disease is present in other regions of his body.”

  Lenox nodded. “Very well. Thank you.”

  “I will be in touch every two weeks. If there is some surgical option that could provide relief at the end, I will be happy to return—more than happy. You needn’t bother about the doubled fee. That’s my secretary. He’s on a salary, but he gets a gleam of gold in his eye.”

  The carriage had stopped. Lenox looked at his watch. “It is still thirty minutes until the next train. I shall wait with you.”

  McConnell shook his head. “Please, go back. Thirty minutes will be enough to find my way around the town. I like a small town. I grew up in one.”

  They shook hands and the rangy doctor strode off, bag at his side. His immense good health and handsome face seemed somehow not like a rebuke to his patients, but a form of love for them, faith in them.

  Lenox watched him go down Cowman’s Lane—he didn’t turn back, a final gracefulness—and then tapped the door of the carriage to indicate that they could return home.

  How silly it had seemed, the handsome carriage; the vanity of it; the vanity of the world. Those were his rather muddled thoughts after dropping the second doctor at the station.

  He had been so sure he could fix it. Arrogance.

  Still, it was good to have the following days with his parents. Edmund was arriving soon, and Lenox had been setting his mind to the next five months. He wished to be here as often as possible. Af
ter June 2, he would, one way or the other, spend most of his time at Lenox House.

  After midnight on that Sunday evening—so at the outset of Monday, really—Lenox and Graham arrived at Charing Cross. It was a rainy night in London, heavy fog.

  To his surprise, his brother was waiting for them there. He lifted a hand and smiled. “There you are,” he said. “To the minute.”

  “Goodness, Edmund,” said Charles. “What on earth brings you to meet us?”

  “Oh?” Edmund took one of the small bags that Graham and Charles had divided between them, having declined a porter. “Just a thought that I would.”

  They took a cab back to Lenox’s flat, which was slumbering—he had offered no advance notice of the timing of his return—and together made up a bickering fire, then settled comfortably with two drinks. Graham had retreated to the back part of the flat to unpack.

  “How do they seem?” Edmund said.

  Charles reflected for a moment. “Father seems himself. Mother a wreck.”

  “And the doctors are in agreement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Five months.”

  Charles nodded. “Or six. Thereabouts.”

  “October,” said Edmund.

  The strangest look came over his face. It was one of those moments when a hundred roads forward fall away. From now on, like their father, he would be concerned with the health of trees on their land, the happiness of their tenants, the expense of fixing a wall four centuries old.

  But it was also infused by a purer grief than perhaps Charles had experienced, he saw. He realized that even this week he had still been looking for his father’s—approval, perhaps, or respect. For Edmund, his father was closer to an equal. He needed nothing from Sir Edward before his death; what a keen edge that added to his sorrow, and what a keener one it took away.

  Charles was quiet. At last, he said, “Molly will go with you?”

  “Oh? Yes, and the boy.”

  That was their son, James. “I say, get Molly to draw.”

  This was rather elliptical, but Edmund nodded straightaway. His wife—a person of the country—had rather fewer attainments, in French or pianoforte or whatever you liked, than most of the women they knew. But she had an innate gift for likeness in drawing. Her small line drawings, often made in half distraction at a party and left behind, were unerringly alive, and whenever Charles was next in whatever home they had been in, he would find that Molly’s scrap of paper had been framed and placed in some honored place.