A Death in the Small Hours

by Charles Finch

  They came into a small room, papered dark blue, full of portraits of old members—many now snoozing in the House of Lords, solid ancient Tories, no longer the fire-breathing rascals of their youth—and sat at table, which was laid out for supper.

  Dallington rang a small bell. “Are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?”

  “One, perhaps.”

  “That’s more like it—just one, there, no, not to the top, apologies. Ah, and here’s the waiter. What would you like to eat, Lenox, guinea fowl or beef?”

  “Guinea fowl.”

  “For two, then, and bring all those things you bring, too, please, potatoes and carrots and mustard, if you don’t mind.” The waiter, who was terrible at his job but too stupid to blackmail any of the men he served, and received therefore a princely remuneration, smiled, nodded, and left.

  “A poisoning?” said Lenox, too curious for preliminary chatter.

  Dallington retrieved a small notebook from his jacket. “I’m glad you’re here, in truth, because I have my suspicions but I can’t confirm them.”

  “Tell me the details.”

  “The victim is a solicitor in Belsize Park, Arthur Waugh. He—”

  “How did you come by this case?”

  Dallington smiled. “Inspector Jenkins didn’t like the look of it.”

  “Ah—the old story.” Lenox had received cases in the same way, once upon a time. Scotland Yard’s men couldn’t always devote the time or resources to an investigation that an amateur could. It gave him a pang that they went to Dallington now, though he tried not to show it. “Go on, then.”

  “This Waugh was apparently a rotten apple. His first wife died five years ago, and it seems almost certain that he killed her, but all of the servants swore up and down that she had fallen down the stairs. It couldn’t be disproved.”

  “He married again, I take it?”

  “Yes, and it’s she that I suspect, Florence Waugh. Four evenings ago, after supper, Arthur Waugh fell ill. Before supper he had had a toothache, for which he took a dose of laudanum, but he often did that.”

  “It was his usual prescription?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “About an hour after he went upstairs to bed his servants heard him crying out for help, and called for the doctor. By the time the doctor arrived Waugh was comatose.”

  “How much of the laudanum was missing?”

  “Precisely what I asked. The answer was that much more than usual was gone, certainly much above his usual dose. So his wife and servants all confirmed.”

  “Separately?”

  Dallington laughed. “You taught me one or two things, Charles. Yes, I asked each of them separately. I don’t believe it was the laudanum, though—I think his assailant drained half the bottle in the sink to try to make it look that way. Waugh was in rude health and certainly not suicidal—pigheadedly in love with life, from the sound of it, if anything—and he had been taking laudanum for years without incident.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  Dallington turned a page in his notebook now. “You anticipate me again. I spoke to him this morning and he believes that it was antimony poisoning. That or arsenic, though arsenic is much more difficult to come by, arousing suspicion as it does when one tries to order at the chemist’s.”

  “Does it? How do you know?”

  “I tried it on, once, to see what they would say. On a different case.”

  Lenox was impressed, as he had been repeatedly at these suppers, with the younger man. There was a doggedness there that the outward flair of personality concealed. “I take it there was skin rash?”

  “You’ve seen antimony poisoning before, then?”

  “Oh, several times. There was an ironmonger in Fulham who killed his son with it, I’m sorry to say. The woman he wanted to marry refused him because he had a child and she had no great longing to be a mother. An appalling thing. What did this Waugh look like?”

  “There was a red rash all over his hands and arms, but Florence, his wife, said that it had been there for days.”

  “And the servants?”

  “They hadn’t noticed, but it’s not conclusive. His vomiting and headache might have been from an overdose of laudanum.”

  “Would she have had access to antimony?”

  “I canvassed the chemists in the neighborhood but none of them, including the one she frequents, remember her buying anything unusual at all.”

  “Of course it would have been the easiest thing in the world to disappear onto a crowded omnibus and go to the other side of London.”

  “Exactly.” Dallington sighed. “So you can see—I feel strongly that something nasty is afoot, but it looks so hard to prove.”

  There was a noise at the door; the waiter had returned with a heavy tray, and set out a variety of dishes and pots in front of them, all appetizingly fragrant and warm on that cool, wet night. He fixed a few more logs onto the fire in the hearth and withdrew. Dallington poured from the bottle of wine without any objection from Lenox.

  “Shall we eat, then, and I’ll give you the rest of it afterward? In the meantime tell me of Sophie. Does she roll around on the floor yet? Has she got any children her own age she plays with?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  When their cigars were lit and their glasses of port poured, Lenox and Dallington sat back. The older man spoke. “What was her motive, though, this Florence Waugh? Why do you suspect her? You still haven’t said.”

  “It’s just a sense.”

  “Has her behavior been suspicious?”

  “On the contrary, she has been just as one would expect—grieved, bewildered.”

  “I take it, then, that Arthur Waugh was not as cruel to her as he was to his first wife.”

  Dallington shook his head. “No. She has a great deal more money than he does, all under her own control, and their acquaintances implied to me that it shifted the balance of power toward her.”

  “I wonder if you’re too influenced by the circumstances of his first marriage. After all, she stands to gain little enough from his death monetarily, and she loses a husband whom, however you may view him, she chose to marry. Mightn’t you look elsewhere for your killer?”

  “Where, though?”

  Lenox frowned. “Who are the other inhabitants of the house?”

  “There are a butler, a parlor maid, and a cook. All of them have been with Arthur Waugh since he moved into the Priory, which is what he calls the house.”

  “They predate her, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all three swore that the first Mrs. Waugh fell to her death?”

  Dallington’s eyes were screwed up tight in concentration. “Tell me, what are you getting around to?”

  Lenox shrugged. “I’m not certain myself, to be honest.”

  “What would any of the servants stand to gain from Arthur Waugh’s death, if it comes to that?”

  “I don’t know. I would only say—and from this very comfortable chair, with a glass of port at hand, which is not the same thing as being in the mix of things as you have been—that he seems perhaps to have had a complicated relationship with these three people. The butler, the maid, and the cook.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me ask you a question: Did Florence Waugh fall ill, after supper?”

  “In fact she did, though her complaint was very mild. She hadn’t eaten much.”

  A thought formulated in Lenox’s head. Slowly, he said, “Perhaps there’s another angle to look at it from, in that case—what if she was the target?”

  Dallington whistled. “You believe the servants were trying to kill her? And made a hash of it?”

  “Perhaps they mixed up the meals, yes. Or perhaps they were trying to kill both Waugh and his wife! Could they have stood to gain from the two deaths in conjunction? Are they remembered in Waugh’s will, perhaps, and is he the automatic recipient of anything she leaves behind? He’s a solicitor—it should be
written up somewhere.”

  Dallington was writing furiously in his small notebook. “You’re a pip,” he said. “I hadn’t considered any of that.”

  Lenox shrugged. “It may be a blind alley, of course, but when there is a large sum of money attached to the scene of a crime, it’s often as well to look at the money from every angle.”

  “First thing in the morning I shall go and look at Waugh’s will, and Florence Waugh’s too.”

  Lenox smiled. “Not a late night here, then?”

  “D’you know, when I’m on a case I find that I never come here other than to dine with you. Funny, that.”

  The waiter came in then and cleared away the table. The rain still lashed violently at the windows, while inside the two men smoked their small cigars.

  “It’s nearly ten,” said Lenox with a sigh. “I suppose I had best be off home, soon. Have you any other case at present?”

  “I don’t. Have you heard of anything?”

  “Nothing, no. Ah, but I tell a lie—my uncle has written from Somerset, complaining of vandals in his village. You know how it is in places like that. If they find themselves sixpence shy of the usual tally in the church collection they cry out for Scotland Yard as if Jack the Ripper has moved in above the local pub.”

  Dallington laughed. “Are you going to look into it?”

  “No, no. I’m far too busy in Parliament. There will be an up-and-down vote on the naval bill in three weeks’ time, among other things. I can’t chase about after a gang of bored schoolboys on their hols.”

  Dallington smiled gently. “And yet you miss it?”

  “Can you tell so easily? I don’t mind confessing that I rather do. I’d be curious to clap eyes on this Florence Waugh. For one thing, how did she grow so rich? Is there a dead husband in her history?”

  “No. I asked, in fact, and verified her story. Her father was a brewer in Birmingham and brought her to London after he retired. Died two or three years ago, and entailed all the money very specifically upon her and her heirs. Unusual, you see.”

  “Quite so.”

  As his carriage rolled him over the cobblestones toward home, the rain somewhat abated but still steady, the night fearsomely cold for so early in September, Lenox thought about his old profession. He had had cause to renew his endeavors in detection twice: once for a friend, once on board a ship bound for Egypt, when of course no member of the constabulary was close to hand. Those cases had been a few years apart, years that had seen him married and, now, a father. In truth he was out of the game.

  His meetings with Dallington always filled him with a strange blend of regret and pride. Lenox’s father and brother had both taken the family seat in the House, and served with great distinction—in fact his brother was one of the Prime Minister’s leading confidants at the moment—and he was pleased to join their ranks. Many members of his small social world had looked upon his work as a detective as folly, more embarrassing than admirable, and though he had put a brave face on the embarrassment he was glad to be distanced from it. There again, he knew Jane was happy, too, for his change of career, though she didn’t mention it. It meant an end to the knives and beatings and guns he had encountered through the years.

  He also loved politics, but for all his pleasure in the long debates and the hushed hallway conversations of his present life, Lenox had never quite felt as viscerally engaged with Parliament as he had with crime.

  The house on Hampden Lane was quiet when he returned, dark but for a flicker of light in two upper windows. Lenox entered quietly and found that his political secretary, Graham, was sitting in the hallway, waiting for him. Graham was a small, sandy-haired man, deeply intelligent; he had for many years been Lenox’s butler, but after trying and failing to find an enterprising young man to manage his political affairs, Lenox had given him this unorthodox promotion. So far it had worked beautifully.

  “Have you been at the House?” said Lenox.

  “Hello, sir. I thought I might catch you here. Yes, I was down with Frabbs, going over the bills for the new session.”

  “I haven’t missed a meeting, have I?”

  “No, but something has arisen.”

  “What is it? You look grave.”

  “You mistake me, sir,” said Graham. “I’ve good news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Mr. Hilary and Mr. Gladstone have invited you to open the speeches this session.”

  Lenox’s eyes widened. “Is this a rumor? Or a confirmed fact?”

  “Mr. Hilary’s secretary”—James Hilary was the young and ambitious Secretary of State for the Colonies—‘has confirmed it for a fact.”

  Lenox whistled, taken aback by the news.

  It was a signal honor, usually assigned to a member of the cabinet. In such a speech Lenox could lay out his own political philosophy, like Burke or Fox or Palmerston before him, and address the great issues of the day. The House would be full. His party would be reliant upon him, and all of the papers would print the speech in its entirety.

  It felt like an enormous responsibility, but even as he thought as much he realized that he was ready for it. He had been in Parliament for years now, working his heart out, and there would likely never be a time when he knew more or felt more deeply passionate.

  “In the past,” said Graham, “men who have given their party’s opening speech—”

  “I know,” said Lenox.

  Graham soldiered on. “They’ve become prime ministers, sir, cabinet members, been elevated to the House of Lords …”

  Lenox smiled. “Not much to live up to, then. I suppose I had better get to work.” He turned toward his study, forgetting, for the moment, that he had intended to look in on his sleeping daughter and wife.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next day, the skies having cleared, brought instead a new kind of downpour: one of visitors. First there was James Hilary, who substantiated the news.

  He was a young man, very handsome, with blond hair and a riding stick under his arm, having apparently come by horse through Hyde Park, on his morning exercise. “I gave the speech three years ago, you know—fearful bother, hours upon hours of preparation—and once I stood up and began to declaim the thing it all seemed wrong, but there you are.”

  “You did a very fine job, as I recall.”

  “Ah, well, who can say. Do you know what you want to speak about, chiefly?”

  “Poverty, I think.”

  “Oh?”

  It was the single issue that most interested Lenox, but he knew that Hilary, ambitious and powerful, would have a list of other subjects he might want raised on behalf of the party, so Lenox added, “And other things, of course, education, the navy, Ireland …”

  “Ah, the general approach. Very sound. Listen, I’ll leave this here.” It was a black leather dispatch bag that bore the royal seal. “I want you to sketch yourself in on its contents before you write your speech.”

  “What are its contents?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Lenox understood that to mean they involved state secrets. He nodded. “Thank you, James.”

  The next visitor was a Tory member, Bottlesworth. He had a large, conical head, which tapered toward a magnificently hairless crown, and small round spectacles. There were also several chins gathered around his neck. Both sides of the aisle credited him with tremendous perspicacity, though as far as Lenox gathered the man only ever spoke about eating.

  “The great matter is sustenance,” he said when seated, hands carefully steepled before him—when they weren’t darting out for one of the cakes the housekeeper had placed on the table in Lenox’s study. “I tell you this as a member of the opposition party, quite freely, you see, because I feel that in the end we are all pulling in the same direction. I hope we are, anyhow.”

  “Hopefully,” said Lenox, and smiled.

  “What you’ll find,” Bottlesworth went on, a picture of seriousness, “is that a half pint of porter is not enough to sus
tain you. There, the great secret of oratory, at your feet! You will need at least a pint of porter, perhaps even a pint and a half, and I have known great men, very great men indeed, to take two pints of porter, ere they speak before the House. Which is to say nothing of sandwiches, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I needn’t mention to a man of your experience and wit the importance of sandwiches.”

  “No.”

  “Horseradish and roast beef I find to be too upsetting to the insides. Perhaps you will have a stronger constitution than I do, though I very much doubt it.” He laughed at the idea that Lenox’s constitution might exceed his own, eyes screwed shut with merriment and spectacles bouncing. When he had recovered, he said, “What I find is that a gentle ham sandwich, even a tomato sandwich, answers capitally. You see the picture?”

  When Bottlesworth had left, carrying in a handkerchief the scones that the butler had thought to bring in just before the Tory’s departure, there was almost immediately a third ring at the door.

  It produced another member of Parliament, this time from Lenox’s own party. This was Phineas Trott; and where Bottlesworth found assurance and strength from victuals, Trott—a flustered, red-complected gentleman, who was thought to own more horses than any other claimant in Warwickshire—found them in hunting and the Lord. He, too, took a place upon the red couch near the fireplace.

  His approach was direct. “What these speeches want in them is more of Jesus.”

  “D’you think so?” said Lenox.

  “I do. Country sports and Jesus—all of our problems could be solved by one of the two, Mr. Lenox.”

  “Not the Suez question?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Education?”

  “Country sports.”

  “What, you want the coal miners’ children to go hunting?”

  Trott frowned. “No, that wouldn’t do. Perhaps they could go beagling, though.” His face brightened. “They’ll certainly want Jesus, I can promise you that.”