Nor had he and Frost been able to establish any definitive link between Rowan and Middleton. And both men had a great, great deal of other work to draw their attention away.
Thus Lenox and Leigh were in the bizarre position of knowing that a man who had held them at gunpoint might be restored without comment to his prominent life, and the esteem of civic opinion.
“He has not even been unnamed as president of the Society,” Lenox told McConnell.
“Has he not?”
“Duties suspended temporarily. We could not wish for a better ally than Mr. Bartram—though perhaps a more prestigious one.”
McConnell shook his head. “How mad it is.”
The trial was to begin in a week. Lenox’s hope was that the eye of the journalists must finally be drawn, the case too thrilling to ignore. But it was a slender reed.
They found Leigh at home in Hampden Lane. There was a small, dark room toward the west side of the ground floor, never of much use to anyone, which had gradually become his personal study in the last months. He popped his head out and greeted them cheerfully.
“Hullo!” he said. “Come in here a moment, would you?” The little room had a small yellow lamp lit, playing lazily over the book-covered wooden desk, and there was a comforting aroma of dry tobacco—a little ship’s room, within the airy house. “Sit, if you would.”
The months Leigh had been in London had been special ones. Friendship had always been very dear to Lenox; to have a friend so close at hand, and one who loved Jane and Sophia too, who was excellent company but never obtrusive. Occasionally he had asked if he was in the way, but had gracefully accepted their word that he was not, and soon become a thoroughgoing member of the little household.
As for he and Lenox, they had spent many afternoons of the dawning spring in long walks together, prolonged lunch hours for the detective. Even in the densest block of the city, Leigh could spot a bird or a little shoot in the concrete, and name it, give its history—a naturalist to his bones. It reminded Lenox of their old walks at school. There was a fine joy in learning things like the ones Leigh taught him, which he never otherwise would have known.
All of this left Lenox’s decision to investigate the MB a little uneasy in his mind—but only, he thought, defensively perhaps, because the result had been so personal. He remained unsure of how to disclose what he had learned to his friend.
In the study, Leigh handed Lenox and McConnell each a small pamphlet bound in plain brown paper. He had a stack of them. Lenox frowned. “What is that—have you taken to tracts? I am happy with the church I attend.”
Leigh laughed. “No. A solution to a more earthbound problem.”
Lenox opened the pamphlet and read through it, first with some confusion, and then with a growing sense of—of what? He was impressed; satisfied; and relieved. Also slightly overawed.
He and McConnell had apparently apprehended the document’s meaning at the same time, because McConnell looked up just then. “Goodness me, Leigh,” he said.
The scientist glanced at Lenox. “Charles?”
“We need to go and see Rowan.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But I wanted to wait until I spoke to you.”
“Has anyone else seen this?”
“Only Bartram. He helped.”
“I can’t imagine the effort this must have taken.”
Leigh shrugged. “I enjoy work.”
“But what about the microbe?”
Leigh smiled. “The microbe has been taking care of itself for quite a while. Anyhow I find that my interest in it has waned, somehow, since this whole sordid business began.”
McConnell looked alarmed. “I hope that isn’t true. Your work is indispensable.”
“The cemeteries are full of indispensable men, they say. In fact I find that I have a very great yen to return to Cornwall.”
“Cornwall?” said Lenox.
“I’ve been daydreaming about the birds and plants of my youth. Birds especially. I remember them very vividly. I can’t imagine there is much left to discover there—but then, I don’t pine for that particular glory, and it would give me pleasure to conduct my own investigation. Count eggs, track mating patterns. Who knows what I might find. It has been quite a time since I was in England for long.”
Lenox said, guardedly, “Have you heard from there recently? Cornwall?”
Leigh smiled, looking at him directly. “Yes, this morning. From an old family solicitor.”
McConnell, unaware of the import of this last interchange, said, “Shall we go to Newgate and visit Mr. Rowan?”
“Yes,” Leigh said immediately. “It is only fair to show him the pamphlet.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lenox ate supper with Dallington that evening. They dined at a small private club without a name, in an unmarked house near Holland Park. There were only three rooms there, a library, a dining room, and a card room, only two servants and a cook, and fifty or so members—a place of profound superfluity, for it was the refuge of a group of gentlemen who felt that the great London clubs to which they belonged occasionally became oppressive in their social demands, and yet probably the favorite club of every one of its members. In the drawing room, filling out a racing form, sipping sherry, and being politely ignored, was the Prince of Wales.
Lenox had joined the year before and rarely wanted to dine anywhere else now, partly for its peaceable calm, partly because more than a quarter of the place’s budget went to the cook, who had been stolen with bald wickedness from the Carlton Club, which had previously been reckoned to have the best food of any London clubhouse. He and Dallington began their supper with an exquisite leek and potato soup; it came in small silver tureens, immured within curves of crusty hot bread.
“My goodness, this is delicious,” said Lenox after he had taken a spoonful.
There was a pleasant twilight in the windows. “Eh? Oh, yes—quite good, quite good,” said Dallington.
Lenox eyed him critically. “I wish you wouldn’t talk so casually. This might be the best soup I’ve ever eaten.”
Dallington smiled—a real smile. “Short of writing a poem to the potatoes I’m not sure what I could do to satisfy you. This is why I never want to eat here.”
“It’s not the potatoes that make the difference, it’s the celery root.”
Dallington shook his head. “There is nothing I hate more on this earth than a connoisseur.”
Lenox laughed. “Fair enough.”
Dallington laughed too, but then, without any intermediate phase, the brief moment of sunniness passed. A shadow came over his friend’s face. Lenox saw his hand go to his watch chain. He realized—not a detective for nothing—that in all probability that was where he kept a lock of Polly’s hair, just as she would keep his in her necklace. The traditional exchange. By all the signifiers such as this one they were a happily engaged couple: Upon the fourth finger of her left hand was a ring, set with a diamond. In Lenox’s day the women’s engagement rings had been, without exception, of pearl and turquoise, but according to Dallington this was the new vogue, the diamond. Lenox thought it garish, though he kept the opinion to himself (and Lady Jane).
And even beyond these outward signs, the affinity between Polly and Dallington still seemed evident, every time the three of them were together.
Why, then, was his friend so sad, so low?
Lenox began a new plan of diversion. “We saw Rowan this afternoon. I have something to show you.”
Interest flickered in Dallington’s eyes. “Oh?”
Lenox took a copy of the pamphlet from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Have a look.”
Dallington accepted the little typeset document, and soon his face had on it the same absorption that Lenox’s own must have when Leigh showed it to him.
The book tracked Rowan’s scientific career. It was a startlingly comprehensive piece of work. For the first time, reading it, Lenox had really grasped the tenacious forcefulness of Leigh’s brain. His f
riend had gone back to the papers Rowan had submitted for consideration at Eton, back to the age of fourteen—obscure depths, indeed—and through to the most recent autumn bulletin of the Royal Society.
In nearly every one of these publications of Rowan, he had discovered some heretofore-unknown plagiarism. Case, after case, after case. Rowan’s glittering reputation, founded upon a series of lies and thefts.
“Good heavens,” said Dallington, when he was halfway through.
“Yes. Quite something, is it not? He consulted experts across every field. Many of Rowan’s findings were taken from German sources, it seems. Leigh keyed in on them after he discovered that Rowan had spent a year at Göttingen.”
“I am amazed,” said Dallington, skimming now. “It has the scholar’s art about it.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And you showed this to Rowan?” said Dallington, looking up across his mostly full tureen. “How did he react?”
Lenox smiled faintly. “Ah.”
When Napoléon had ordered the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, it was said, he had done worse than commit a crime—he had committed a blunder.
So it had been with Rowan, that afternoon. Lenox had never watched a man’s identity disintegrate so wholly and completely before his eyes as Rowan’s had, while Leigh stared impassively on from across the scratched, rickety table in his cell.
Rowan had looked up after some time with the pamphlet, bone pale. “You’ve murdered me.”
Leigh had tilted his head, staring with a cool, scientific interest. He said nothing. Lenox replied instead. “Since it is just the three of us in this cell, Mr. Rowan—why did you murder Middleton?”
But Rowan’s thoughts were no more on Middleton than they were on an insect he had mounted to a piece of board fifteen years before. He was still staring at Leigh. “Have you given this to anyone else?” Leigh didn’t reply. “I have money. I’ll admit to the crimes—just don’t show this to anyone.”
Still Leigh didn’t answer, and Rowan, searching in his face, must have seen the truth. His eyes widened slightly and then he collapsed backward, his fine, handsome head buried in his hands.
“You might have had a perfectly happy life,” said Lenox. “I cannot understand it, Rowan. In time you probably would have become the president of the Royal Society on your own merit!”
At last Rowan looked at the detective—but from a very great distance, as if he was not quite real. “My own merit,” he had said.
“Yes! You have all the qualities of a man of science.”
Rowan had stared at him, and Lenox had seen, in his face, some old fury for success, which had driven him into desperate action. Then his attention was gone, back on Leigh. He was still hoping to bargain with him.
But Leigh had stood up: And it seemed as if it was obvious to both of them, Lenox feeling strangely like an interloper, that Rowan had faced the only judge who actually mattered.
An account of this strange meeting took Lenox and Dallington through the arrival of a tender saddle of mutton, with crisped potatoes in a mountain over it. “What of the criminal charges, then?” asked Dallington, taking one or two.
“I’m not sure. Leigh has given the pamphlet you’re holding to Lord Baird, at the Royal Society. I am hoping to convince him to give it to the courts reporter at the Times, too. A genuine ‘scoop,’ as they say in that line of work.”
“It will strengthen your explanation for the crimes he committed against Leigh.”
“Yes, I think so.”
The conversation moved on to other subjects. After the mutton was cleared away came a plate of hard sweet biscuits. Lenox dipped them into his wine, a napkin in his left hand to catch any drops, as was the form, and savored their soft crunch. For his part, Dallington ignored them, as he had ignored most of the food. The succession of wine glasses too had come and gone from before him without his attention.
Lenox nearly said something—but his friend seemed so fragile, in spirit and body, that he held himself back.
Afterward they were walking in the quiet spring evening, through the lovely verdure of St. James’s Park. Dallington moved slowly along the stone pathways; he had a cane; his gait was one of studied evenness, as if he couldn’t bear to reveal that he had a limp, though it meant walking far more slowly.
After a block or two, he stopped, leaning against a railing. He was out of breath, but feigned a pebble in his shoe, running a finger inside of it very deliberately to prove his word. Lenox looked away, keeping his face as close to neutral as he possibly could.
Then Dallington stumbled forward, unsteady on his feet. He righted himself quickly. But it had been one humiliation too many, and they walked on in a violent silence, Lenox’s few conversational gambits met with barely disguised contempt.
They were near the gates of St. James’s Park when suddenly Dallington stopped. “There’s something I must tell someone, or I shall go mad.”
Lenox looked at him curiously, careful to keep his voice temperate. “What is it?”
“The night of Labrenz—the night I discovered him.”
“Yes?”
“I had been taking laudanum.”
“Laudanum.”
“Yes. It is an occasional vice of mine. I was feeling sorry for myself—and angry at you—angry at Polly—and I sat in my little alcove, the new one I chose that night, which is how Labrenz must have thought the coast was clear—and had several drops of the stuff, over a cube of sugar, dropped in a glass of wine.”
“What does it do to you?”
Dallington looked for the words. “It makes the world seem nicer.”
“Was it why you fell?”
“That’s just what I don’t know.”
There was tremendous anguish in Dallington’s face. Lenox, feeling that he had never wanted to choose his words more carefully, said, “You prevented a very serious crime—a crime against England. You ought to be proud.”
“I remember falling. I remember being pushed, for that matter. But I don’t know if it would have happened, had I been twenty percent sharper.”
“John.”
“And it is this I can’t live with.”
“Listen to me. It may feel that way, but I assure you—it means nothing. Nothing! You have suffered a serious injury, and you have suffered it protecting something important. As I say, you ought to be proud.”
But the words were meaningless, and Dallington said, more to himself than to Lenox, “How can I marry Polly when she doesn’t know the truth?”
Lenox hesitated, and then said, “Well, have you used laudanum again?”
“No. Nor will I ever. And yet—everything they have ever said of me, you know.”
“Don’t be absurd. It doesn’t. And Polly will say so, too. Tell her.”
Dallington shook his head. “No. I can’t.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Every day in that first two weeks of April, a different parcel—often several—would come to the house at Hampden Lane, addressed for Leigh. They contained ever more mysterious contents, nets, wooden cages, oscilloscopes and microscopes, weather gauges. All of them went into Leigh’s ad hoc study, where they piled up as he sorted them with tender care into a pair of enormous trunks.
“A person would think you were setting out for the jungles of the Amazon,” said Lady Jane critically one day, as Leigh opened a package containing several blank logbooks.
“I learned a long time ago that it is all the jungles of the Amazon, Lady Jane, looked at in the right light.”
“What nonsense.”
Leigh smiled. “Yes, probably.”
He had another project upon which he was working, too. One day Lenox came into the house and Leigh was measuring the doorway. “What are you doing?” he asked his old friend.
“Nothing.”
“Come now, you must answer that question in a man’s own house.”
Leigh smiled. “Well, it’s a surprise.”
Lenox frowned at him. “I don’t
want anything that you doubt might fit through this doorway.”
“In fact it will be invisible.”
“Eh?”
Leigh smiled, in his sphinxlike way, and walked off, humming.
As Rowan’s trial approached, word seeped out into London that he was, in all likelihood, going to be convicted. It was hard to say what had prompted the change—the sudden escalation of the newspaper coverage, perhaps, or alternatively Rowan’s eviction from the rolls of the Royal Society.
Frost and Lenox were often closeted together, going over their case notes in hopes that they might help the Queen’s Counsel in his prosecution of the case. Lenox was set to testify. So was Leigh; the thing keeping him in London—except, except, Lady Jane kept saying, he certainly did seem fond of Matilda Duckworth’s company.
“What bothers me,” Frost said one morning in the coffee room at Scotland Yard, “is Middleton.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like a tidy case. You and Leigh have survived. Middleton—we still don’t know the circumstances of the meeting they had, the one that led to his death. Did Middleton object to something Rowan asked of him? Or did he simply know too much? Was it the Farthings who shot him, or Rowan? I would like to know.”
Lenox looked troubled. “We may never.”
“Yes, and that’s why I say it bothers me.”
In fact, the case held a few surprises still.
On the sixteenth of April, a day when the whole world seemed green, Lenox was working at the offices at Chancery Lane. Dallington was in his office, door closed, and Polly was out with Anixter, tracing a necklace that had been pawned by the impulsive daughter of a wealthy yeast merchant, who had used the money to elope to Spain.
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