Lenox couldn’t help but think about all the food he had consumed in Leigh’s room, and vowed internally to repay him. He wondered how the mother spared that—but was too delicate to ask. Perhaps there was a kindly cousin or aunt involved. “I think I must be awfully spoiled,” he said, by way of reply.
Leigh, sitting his horse awkwardly—he really was a squib—shrugged. “By any standard we all are,” he said.
“Yes, I expect that’s true.”
“It would have been different if my father were still alive, of course. That’s how it goes, though.”
“Do you miss him dreadfully?”
They happened to be passing through a little clearing, and the bright sun had blinded both of them. Leigh lifted a hand. “I suppose I do,” he had said. “We used to go to two hills along the seaside, about a half mile apart, and signal to each other.”
“Signal?”
“Yes—a very rudimentary version of the telegraph. The kind the French still have. We each had nine little panels, and my father made us up two codebooks. Four white panels, one half white in the middle, and four blacks meant ‘end transmission,’ for instance, and there was an alphabet for spelling things out more laboriously. He was tremendous fun like that. Always had a plan. And I was his only son too—and so I think I always felt special. We would telegraph back and forth about specimens we found, and make plans for what time to meet and eat the sandwiches my mother had packed for us. In all honesty it would have been just as easy to go about together, but it was a thrill to have a secret code.”
“He sounds a top.”
“He was rather. My mother is much stricter. It’s not half so fun. She’s a good egg, but somehow it’s less … less exciting, I suppose. We never have a proper conversation. She’s always worrying at me about school, or my shirt being ripped, or writing a thank-you note to someone or other I don’t care about.”
They rode on in silence for a moment, and then Leigh spotted something and jumped down, leaving his horse, like a perfect fool, so that if Lenox hadn’t been close by to grab the reins it might have run off. He had seen a plant. He plucked it carefully out in its clod of dirt and wrapped it in a bit of butcher’s paper he had brought, which he then secured tenderly in his blazer pocket. He would plant it in his room—though that was strictly forbidden.
“If the MB is Townsend,” Lenox had said cautiously, after they resumed their slow ride, “and you found that out for certain, what would you do?”
“Leave,” said Leigh immediately.
“You want to leave anyway,” Lenox pointed out.
“Sometimes I want to chase him down with a carriage of my own,” Leigh said. “I daydream about that. In a way I would think worse of him if he were paying for my school. It would show that he has enough of a conscience to care—but not enough to pay for his crime. I would rather he were an unthinking toad than a thinking one.”
“You mustn’t kill him,” said Lenox, alarmed.
“No. Only, why should he get to prance around?”
Lenox, who had in those days been rather literary from time to time in an insufferable sort of way, said, sonorously, “‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?’”
“Yes, he is a rat,” said Leigh.
Lenox felt that Leigh had missed the point, but nodded sagely. “I reckon it’s your uncle anyway.”
“Yes, maybe, sod him.”
Passing by that grove now, Lenox felt many old Harrow memories crowding back toward him—and not the ones he groped to recall, but the ones that arrived involuntarily, and were therefore sweeter, truer, deeper. He saw St. Mary’s Church and could feel the worn bench under his bottom once more, as he sat bored through Sunday service, wishing he were outside. The way to the sporting grounds: He had walked this a thousand, a hundred thousand times with his particular chums, sometimes dreading the afternoon’s activities, sometimes excited for them.
Here was the little stretch of fence where they had sat in a row during Shells, waiting to take turns with the rifle that one of the Latin masters let them shoot at a target. A darting little lane where all the boys had gone to buy sweets from Mrs. Carmichael, who boiled them herself. The steps of Druries, one of the school’s houses, where he had once had a terrible falling-out with one of his closest friends, which had lasted almost six months, and made him unspeakably miserable at the time, though now he couldn’t remember even its faintest lineaments.
At the distinguished brick schoolhouse near the school gate, Lenox stepped down. Inside it was very handsome, finer than in his own day—fresh white paint, portraits along the walls, prominent among them Harrow’s two infinitely cherished Prime Ministers, Palmerston and Peel, among the most distinguished politicians of any age.
In the graceful entrance hall, with its black-and-white marble floor, he found a secretary taking notes. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Charles Lenox. I was a student here once.”
“How do you do, sir. Welcome back.”
“I was wondering whether the headmaster might see me. I have a rather peculiar request, involving some old school records.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The single stupidest person Lenox had ever met was Georgie Cholmondley, now Lord April, who had been at Harrow at the same time that he and Leigh had. He wasn’t bad-natured—and a fine shot—but when you conversed with him it seemed a wonder he could stand upright, he was so dull-witted. And yet he had sixty thousand pounds a year, a hundred thousand acres, and probably eight seats in Parliament at his disposal.
When Lenox saw that the associate headmaster he was taken to see—the headmaster himself being occupied in the classroom, at that moment—was named Alfred Cholmondley, he felt some trepidation.
“Are you any relation to Lord April?” Lenox said, entering a small, book-lined office and shaking the younger man’s hand.
“George? Lord, yes. My cousin. From the much richer and slower part of the family, however.”
Lenox laughed. “He’s an excellent sportsman.”
Alfred Cholmondley—pronounced Chumley—smiled. “That’s very true. He always sat a horse beautifully. I think he is the ideal lord, don’t you? Not personally ambitious—scrupulously polite—dutiful—a wonderful husband and father—not likely to gamble away the title—content with his obligations and responsibilities, never shying from them. For my own part I cannot imagine anything less appealing.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” said Lenox, sitting and accepting with a gesture the offer of a tot of whisky that Alfred made from the sideboard. “He’s a brick, Georgie. You must be an Old Harrovian, too?”
“No, I was at Westminster. But after university I found that I was in want of a profession and a place to hang my hat, and there was an advertisement in the Times that the school wanted a professor of modern languages, with very generous pay. I had spent several years in Germany and France. And I must say that it is a comfortable place to work—a lovely place.”
“Do the boys take to modern languages, I wonder? We only had the option of the classical ones, as I recall.”
“Yes, it’s new. Some rather like it. It’s an option for Fifths and Sixths. I think they find it particularly useful if they mean to have a career in the army or if they are planning to enter your own field—politics.”
Lenox smiled. “My field! Yes—well spotted, I was once in Parliament.”
“Oh, yes, we are very honored to have you back—many of the boys know the name, as belonging to two brothers from the school who have subsequently taken their place in the national dramas the newspapers deliver to us, as a consequence of their service in Parliament. I warn you that I am a conservative, myself.”
“Like your cousin! Yes—that is me, or us,” said Lenox, “though you are being too generous when you assign me a part in the national dramas to which you refer. My brother’s career in Parliament has been more brilliant than mine. I am once again a private detective.”
“And may I ask i
f it is work or personal inclination that brings you back here now?” asked the schoolmaster, in what Lenox thought was rather a neat way.
“Ah. Yes. The truth is that I am here on some business for a very old friend. A Harrow friend, to be precise.”
“Who is that?”
Lenox had cultivated the storyteller’s gift in the years he had been a detective. It was essential to have it, he felt—one of Polly’s few weaknesses, for she was more inclined to directness. He started by telling Cholmondley about his schooldays with Leigh, and then slowly built up to the events of the last year. He sketched these in vaguely, leaving room for interpretation.
The associate headmaster shook his head with good-natured consternation, hearing this story. “Dear me,” he said. “A very interesting tale.”
But anyone could see that he was undeceived. He was no fool, this fellow. Lenox decided to play his trump card, before asking his question. “I have a letter from Leigh here. It is—well, have a look.”
The associate headmaster took it and read it quickly, frowning with concentration. He smiled when he reached the end, and then looked up. “An interesting letter. Its connection to your visit here is unclear to me, however.”
Lenox smiled too, and took it back, glancing at it once more. Leigh had given it to him to allow Lenox to interview people from the Society on his own.
February 1877
With this letter, I, Gerald Leigh, the undersigned, grant to Charles Lenox authority to act on my behalf in any way he sees fit, legally, morally, etc, in all matters, though he cannot accept a knighthood for me. Please assist him.
Below this was a signature and an address, as well as the seal of the Royal Society, which was Leigh’s rightful appendage, now that he had finally consented to become a fellow.
Lenox had nearly invited Leigh to come along that morning; but his old friend had betrayed a certain diffidence, in their many conversations at the end of the winter, about the past. His whole mind was bent upon Rowan.
“It is this,” said Lenox. “I would like to see his old school records. In particular, his billings.”
“He does not have them?”
“No—he does not, and they may be of material use in the investigation I am conducting on his behalf.”
“How so?”
“Ah—that is more difficult to answer.”
“I see.”
Cholmondley studied him. He was in an odd position, Lenox knew. Among the members of their class, there was a particular secrecy attached to all things private, but above all to matters of money. Lenox, sensing that the answer might be no, said, slowly, “I suppose I can tell you one thing: The person who paid his school bills may, unfortunately, be the same person who wishes him harm.”
This blurred the line of the truth, but Cholmondley looked as if his interest was piqued. “Is that so? Rowan?”
“Not Rowan—one of Rowan’s allies at the Royal Society.”
“I see.”
“You have my word that I have nothing but Leigh’s interests at heart, Mr. Cholmondley. We may write him together, if you wish, and await his permission—or simply tell him that I have come here to do this. I will leave the letter in your possession. And honestly, what harm can there be in looking at a bill from thirty years ago?”
The associate headmaster sat motionless for several seconds, and then—whether it was Lenox’s person, his name, the letter he bore, his story, for whatever reason—nodded slightly.
The school’s record room was situated within the large basement of the same house, an impeccably clean space with long rows of shelves, lit by bright gas lamps. The archivist, Travers, was also the school’s historian and comptroller, and his office was several floors up, but he had no trouble in taking Lenox down to the basement, where they retrieved Leigh’s file.
“You are lucky in your choice of dates,” Travers said as they walked back upstairs to his office. “Anything before 1830 and it’s more likely than not that we wouldn’t have it.”
He took the file from its bound portfolio, after untying its crossed strings carefully, and then began to sift through the pages. There were ten or twelve of them.
Cholmondley’s one injunction had been “nothing disciplinary.” Lenox had assented to the condition readily. Now Travers was passing through pages of information, which Lenox guessed must have to do with Leigh’s expulsion. A shame, these. Harrow had alienated one of its finest minds, which a tenderer overseer than Tennant might have nurtured in its infancy. Even Lenox had nearly noticed that Leigh was out of the ordinary.
Travers’s face brightened when he reached one of the last pages. “What is it?” asked Lenox.
“Got it!” Travers said.
He read for a moment and then slid the sheet of paper across the smooth desk.
Record of remittance of fees
Student: Gerald R. Leigh
Term: Michaelmas 1846
House: Lyon’s
Rate: 79 pounds sterling per annum; 19 pounds boarding
REMITTED 8/8/46
Drawn on Bank of Cornwall,
account of P. Wilkins
£98.
At the bottom of the page were a stamp and then, in a scrawl dripping with loose ink, “Fees partially refunded 11/12/46. Garnished at pro rata. Student departed Harrow School 11/14/46.”
“What about the same for the year before?” Lenox asked.
“The next sheet.”
He took it from Travers and saw the same name: Wilkins.
After all this time, a name! Lenox, studying the paper, realized that he would need to go to Cornwall.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Lenox spent a pleasant few hours at Harrow, dining with the beaks at high table, then meeting the boys from his old house, enjoying their somehow simultaneously sly and ingenuous questions about being a detective. Late that afternoon he returned to London, back in time to have dinner with Lady Jane.
“Cornwall?”
“Yes, tomorrow, I think. It may mean staying overnight. But I could use the break. I’m sick half to death of the office.”
She, who knew him better than anyone, said, “Why not ask Edmund to go with you?”
“That’s an idea.”
He went round to his brother’s house after supper, and found him closeted with Lord Acton and James Hilary, discussing parliamentary matters over cigars and whisky. “Lenox,” said Hilary after they had all exchanged hellos, “put your oar in. Do you think we should call the election this year or next?”
“This year,” Lenox said confidently, sitting among them with his gloves in his hand—the old gamesmanship still in him.
It was up to the ruling party that would choose the new prime minister, an odd little wrinkle of Britain’s constitution. “Your brother thinks next.”
“He must be right, then.”
Acton shook his head. “No, I am with you. We ought to take the wind while our sails are full.”
The four men sat for some time, a little more than an hour, discussing the matter, a pleasant dip back into waters in which Lenox had once been immersed. When Acton and Hilary had gone, the two brothers remained in the firelit study, books and papers spilled across its surfaces, the remnants of a sandwich close at Edmund’s elbow.
Lenox took it up and had a bite. “I have come to see if you wanted to take a day away from work. But it may be the wrong time.”
“On the contrary—I haven’t been less busy in some while. All of the questions Acton and Hilary came to discuss concern the longer term. But a day away to where?”
“Cornwall.”
“Are you after King Arthur?”
“No—P. Wilkins.”
“Who is he?”
Leigh and Lenox had sworn each other to secrecy, these many years ago, about the MB, but now Lenox broke his oath and told his brother a little bit about the problem. Edmund listened attentively, curious about Townsend. He knew the Earl of Ashe, Leigh’s uncle. “But those candidates are now both disqualif
ied. Which leaves it to discover who on earth Wilkins was, or is.”
“Is he not a member of Leigh’s family, then? A cousin, an uncle?”
Lenox shook his head. “I don’t think so. All those years ago Leigh and I drew his family tree, looking for suspects—”
“How enterprising you were as a young detective!”
“Yes, I know! Without result, sadly. Anyhow, we studied it at length, and while I don’t remember the names on the tree, I know they would come back to me if I saw them. The name Wilkins doesn’t.”
Edmund nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I’m curious,” he said. “Is it tomorrow you intend to go?”
“Yes, if you can.”
He took down his Bradshaw’s. “What do you say to the eight thirty-three?”
“Capital! How about another splash of that whisky before I go?”
The brothers met on the platform at Waterloo the next morning at quarter past the hour. They were mirrors of each other, in their dark coats, each with an umbrella in the crook of his arm, each carrying an overnight bag.
The train ride west was beautiful, full of swooping hills and checkerboard fields, small farmhouses and outbuildings clustered away from the rails, the budding trees entangled with one another. Inside their compartment it was warm—there was a coal brazier at their feet—and they each had a flask of tea, which they sipped, comfortably, lazing back against the cushions, as the landscape sailed past. It had been quite a long time since they had so long to talk. Edmund spoke of his sons, who, after the death of their mother, had each committed to staying some while in England; his elder son, who had been venturing to make his own fortune in Kenya, had, with a maturity somewhat surprising in him, declared a desire to learn about the lands and estate that would one day be his own.
“That is something to make you feel old,” said Edmund. “For my part I still think of it as Father’s.”
“No doubt he thought of it as Grandfather’s.”
“And he of the chaps before him. Therefore everyone goes through life feeling a charlatan. Is that what you propose?”
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