The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  “Is Sophia sleeping badly?” asked McConnell.

  Lenox’s daughter was two. “She is, the poor soul.”

  “You only need to freeze a ring of milk for her to suck on. That will numb her gums. As for brandy, I’m amazed at you, Charles!”

  “Our own nurses did it for us, Jane’s and mine—as they did for you, I don’t doubt.”

  McConnell smiled. “Yes, but they lived in a dark age of physic.”

  “Dark, perhaps, but effective.”

  “Well, I cannot recommend alcohol for a child, I cannot, though I have seen chimney sweeps of eight and nine drink half-pints of gin to start the day. If you had studied the necrotic tissue of the liver of the average vagrant’s cadaver as I have, you would hesitate to drink brandy yourself, a full-grown man.”

  “I consider it one of the achievements of my life that I have never studied the necrotic tissue of the liver of the average vagrant’s cadaver.”

  “Has the child been keeping you up at night?”

  “We hear her. Sometimes Jane goes to see her, though most often it falls to Mrs. Adamson.” This was Sophia’s nurse. “To be perfectly honest, it may be she that needs the brandy more than any of us, but she’s a member of one of these temperance churches.”

  “They’re doing wonderful things in the slums, some of them,” said McConnell.

  “I don’t doubt it. Hers is called St. Luke’s, as she’s told me often enough.”

  “That’s one of the ones I mean. Perhaps I ought to speak to her. She may have come across some case suitable for the hospital, and not realized there was any place to send them.” Great Ormond Street took children to the age of thirteen, at no fee—all of them gravely ill. McConnell had only started working there recently, and Lenox had never known him happier. “In fact, is she here now?”

  Lenox was about to suggest that they call for the nurse when a sixth sense, the kind that one develops after many years of inhabiting the same rooms, living within the same beams and bricks, told him that there was someone at the front door. Even as the thought came to him the bell sounded.

  A moment later Kirk appeared. “Inspector Nicholson is in the hall, sir.”

  Lenox frowned and looked at McConnell, who raised his eyebrows. The doctor knew the Yard’s generalized intolerance of the new agency. “You’d better tell him I’m not here,” said Lenox.

  “Yes, sir.” Kirk hesitated. “Though I fear, sir, that he may have seen the light on in your study from the street. He might doubt my word.”

  “He will have to live with that doubt.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Kirk, and withdrew.

  “He’s lived with his doubts as to me, the bugger,” muttered Lenox.

  “What if it’s a case?” asked McConnell doubtfully.

  “It’s not.”

  The Yard was no closer to loving Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire than it had been in January. Nicholson had sent a note of cautious apology to Lenox; the more serious apostasy of Jenkins had produced a visit from their old friend to the office, a week after the publication of the article in the Telegraph.

  It had been a stiff encounter, with never quite an apology from the inspector, nor an absolution from the other two men (for Dallington was also there to meet him). He had hinted that the opinions he expressed in the article had much more to do with his official capacities than his private feelings. That had not been explicit enough for Lenox, who was not in a mood for magnanimity. It was a painful break; they had worked closely together for many years now, and indeed two of the early cases that had made Jenkins a rising star in the department had been solved only through Lenox’s direct intervention: that of the September Society and that of the murders in Fleet Street. In subsequent years Jenkins had repaid this debt by acting as an invaluable link to London’s entire force of police. It was this amicable relationship—based on genuine mutual respect, Lenox had believed—that Dallington had gradually duplicated as parliamentary duties drew Lenox further and further from the world of crime.

  In the past two years, however, Jenkins had seen the prospect of high office—commanding office—laid before him, and his ambition had been piqued. There had been a definite change in that time, according to Dallington. He was interfering now, less open, less secure in taking help. Then came the article in the Telegraph. If it had been Jenkins, not Nicholson, Lenox would have admitted the man to his study at this hour that evening, even though Nicholson’s betrayal was less profound. The prospect of power could deform a man.

  After less than a minute, Kirk returned. “Inspector Nicholson is most insistent that he be permitted to see you, sir.”

  “Tell him I’m not in, please.”

  Kirk lifted his eyebrows. “Sir?”

  “Tell him I’m not in.”

  When Kirk had gone, McConnell said, “How are you sure it’s not a case? Or are you overtaxed at work already?”

  Lenox’s sensitivity at this moment of his life made him wonder if McConnell knew about his lack of work—but he saw immediately that this was a mad level of assumption and said quickly, “No, no, I’m simply not in the mood.”

  Now Kirk appeared for a third time. He was a stubborn fellow, in his way. He had been Lady Jane Grey’s butler for twenty years, which was long enough that he knew he wouldn’t be expelled from Hampden Lane for a little perseverance. “Sir,” he said, standing in the doorway.

  “What on earth can it be now?”

  “Before he leaves, Inspector Nicholson wishes you to know that he has a case upon which he hopes you might be willing to consult, sir.”

  “Fine, please tell him I know it, and don’t care to consult for him.”

  “He instructed me expressly to inform you that it involves a murder, sir,” said Kirk.

  With this news, for the first time, Lenox hesitated. He stared at his brandy for a moment and then glanced up at McConnell, who was smiling faintly at him. “Would you mind, McConnell?”

  “On the contrary.”

  Lenox paused again and then yielded at last. “Oh, hell, send him in.”

  “Very good sir,” said Kirk. He shifted his considerable weight out of the room too rapidly for Lenox to reconsider the invitation.

  McConnell stood. “I’ll go, shall I?”

  “No, stay.”

  Nicholson came in, his tall, bony frame filling the doorway. “Mr. Lenox. And Dr. McConnell,” he said, inclining his head. He didn’t seem surprised to see the doctor, who had often helped Lenox with his investigations in the past. Perhaps that was known at the Yard. “How do you do, gentlemen?”

  “What brings you here?” asked Lenox.

  “I say, it’s a rotten night,” said Nicholson, glancing toward the window. Outside a heavy wind was whipping around the house. “Could I have a glass of that, whatever it is? I’ll pour it myself. I don’t want to trouble you.”

  Lenox had been prepared to welcome his guest very coldly, but now he saw in the flicker of the lamp that the hollow-cheeked inspector seemed exhausted, absolutely worn, with worry, and despite himself Lenox’s heart went out to Nicholson. “I’ll fetch it.”

  The inspector waited silently and then took a gulp of the brandy Lenox handed him. “Thank you,” he said. He paused, then went on, “There was a housebreak in Bath last week. The losses were substantial.”

  “So I saw in the newspapers.”

  “It was Anson, of course. Or so they think.”

  There was nothing Lenox could say to this.

  “At least the other five are safely away in prison. Hughes. Six arrests, you know. Not bad.”

  “No,” said Lenox.

  Here Nicholson smiled rather tiredly. “What about that seventh fellow?” he asked.

  “That may take longer,” said Lenox, his voice short. “Is the break-in at Bath the case of which you told Kirk?”

  “No, no,” said Nicholson, waving a distracted hand in the air, his eyes down. He looked up at Lenox. “It’s in London. Will you come out with me now and
have a look?”

  “You’ll have to pay my fee,” said Lenox.

  Nicholson looked surprised. “Really?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, that won’t be a problem. I have a large enough budget now. Promoted last month. Most of the money goes to informants, of course.” This was said somewhat slightingly, though it wasn’t clear if Nicholson intended it as such. “Dr. McConnell, if you want to come along we could use a doctor. I don’t suppose you have a fee?”

  “No,” said McConnell quietly.

  “Does that mean there’s a body?” asked Lenox.

  “Oh yes, there’s a body.”

  Suddenly something in Nicholson’s bearing—a kind of reserved anguish, barely concealed—brought Lenox to the edge of the seat. “What’s happened?” he asked. “Who is it?”

  “Jenkins has been murdered this evening,” said Nicholson. “Inspector Thomas Jenkins.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Lenox was twenty-two, pink-faced, new to London, and casting about for something to do with his life, one of the locally famous figures in the city had been Edward Oxlade. He was a police inspector who had recently retired. By the time of his retirement he had long graduated from his street corner to desk work, but after he left Scotland Yard he began to take one day each week to don his old bobby’s uniform and walk his neighborhood, lantern and whistle rattling from his belt, a figure of white-haired amiability—kind to children, chatty to shopkeepers, helpful to anyone in straits. He had come to be very popular, an emblem of the new London, the one that had risen since the foundation of Scotland Yard, its safety, its security, a metropolis distancing itself from the nighttime garrotings and daylight coach robberies of the wilder previous century.

  On one of the first cases upon which Lenox had consulted for the Yard, he’d had reason to call upon Oxlade very late one evening, past ten o’clock. Oxlade had greeted him sitting down, a book in hand, a blanket over his knees.

  “How can I help you?” he had asked.

  The case was a slippery one; Jonathan Charlton, a friend from Oxford whose family owned a bank near the Savoy, had heard rumors that a ring of burglars was planning to strike against it. The police were watching the bank, but Charlton had asked Lenox, who as an undergraduate had been known for his idiosyncratic pastime of collecting information on crime, to look into the matter.

  “I’m Charles Lenox,” he had said in response to Oxlade’s question. “I’m consulting on a case with Inspector Evans, and though I know it’s fearfully late, and cold outside—”

  But before Lenox could even finish speaking, Oxlade had set his book facedown on a table nearby. “I’m ready to go,” he said.

  It was that incidental act—setting his book down without hesitation—that had always remained with Lenox. There was something spirited and brilliant in it, something hearty, courageous, perhaps especially because Oxlade at that time had been a man closer to eighty than seventy. It was the act of a person with character. The act of an Englishman, one might even say, embodying the best qualities of the best Englishmen. In the end, as it happened, Oxlade hadn’t even been able to help him; Lenox had hoped he might be able to identify a man named Abraham Walters by sight, but the identification had been a mistaken one. Nevertheless Lenox had never forgotten Oxlade’s readiness to leave, without delay.

  Thomas Jenkins could have published a hundred articles in the Telegraph upon Lenox’s imperfections of mind, manner, and morals—could have stood at the Speakers’ Corner of Hyde Park reading them out loud each Wednesday—and Lenox would still, upon hearing of the inspector’s murder, have set his book facedown, ready to go. Their history was too deep for anything else.

  He felt himself trembling as he stood. “We must go at once,” he said. “Where is the body? Where did it happen? What has happened, for that matter?”

  Nicholson was in less of a rush. He went and poured himself another half-tumbler of brandy, an understandable liberty in the situation. Jenkins had been his mentor. “It happened north of here,” he said, “by Regent’s Park.”

  “Kirk,” Lenox called out loudly, “my carriage, immediately.”

  “I have one of the Yard’s outside,” said Nicholson.

  “We’ll follow you,” said Lenox. He was patting his pockets, looking for a notebook. “It’s useful to have an independent means of getting around the city.”

  McConnell, standing now, too, his face grave, said, “A medical examiner has been to see the body?”

  “Yes,” said Nicholson, “but you might as well come along. I told them to leave the scene as it was until I had fetched you.”

  For the first time Lenox paused to consider this. “Why?” he asked.

  Nicholson smiled a bitter smile. “Last week I had supper with Jenkins—on our own time. He was quite secretive about it. He said that if he should be killed or go missing I was to come to you. He also said that I was to hand over all of his notes to you.”

  “He felt that he was in danger?” asked Lenox.

  “He would say no more than I’ve told you, but he made me swear it. So it is that I am here, as you see. And that I asked them to keep the scene of the crime where it was.”

  Lenox went to his desk and picked up a small black grip that contained a few essentials of the profession—a stout knife, a calabash, and various more nuanced tools of detection, a magnifying glass, a kit to dust for fingerprints. He had found his notebook, too. “I’m ready to go. Where are the notes he wished me to see?”

  “In his office, I would imagine.”

  “At home, or at the Yard?”

  “Oh, at the Yard. I don’t know that he ever took his work home.”

  Lenox nodded. “We must get them as quickly as possible.”

  “I can send a constable when we reach Regent Street.”

  “Perhaps just to watch his office, rather than to fetch anything,” said Lenox. “I should like to look over his desk myself.”

  Kirk came in. “The carriage is ready, sir,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  After Kirk had withdrawn there was a moment in which the three men, Lenox, McConnell, and Nicholson, stood in silence, looking at one another. It was hard to say what either of the other two was feeling, but for Lenox the shock of the news, which had galvanized him into action, was giving way to the realization that this terrible information was true. Thomas Jenkins was dead. A man he had known for twenty years. One of the other men in London who had known Edward Oxlade. His wife, his three children, left to themselves. His affections for organ music and a glass of strong beer. Vanished, forever.

  Not much later, Lenox’s carriage was jerking across the cobblestones of Oxford Street. “How did he die?” asked Lenox.

  “A gunshot,” said Nicholson. “A single wound in the temple.”

  “There is no evidence of an exiting wound?” asked McConnell.

  “No.”

  “A small gun, then, something that could fit in a coat pocket,” said Lenox. “A pocket revolver, or something of the sort. Would you agree, Thomas?”

  “Likely a Bull Dog or some copy.” The Bull Dog was a Webley revolver, immensely popular and oft-duplicated in the past five years, just two and a half inches long and therefore easy to conceal. “If you extract the bullet we shall be able to confirm it, I imagine.”

  Nicholson looked at him curiously. “Even on a bullet smashed all out of shape by the barrel of the gun—and all that it hit?”

  “I’ve made something of a study of them,” said McConnell.

  Ahead of them the Yard’s carriage, empty but for the driver, took a left-hand turn. Nicholson had ridden with them so that they might speak. “Were there any witnesses?” Lenox asked.

  Nicholson shook his head. “It was on a dark corner of the park. We have two men who heard the shot and ran to the body. We’re holding on to them this evening, giving them supper, in case they can help, but I don’t think they saw much.”

  “What time did this happen?”r />
  “Just after seven o’clock. We were there by half past the hour.”

  Lenox checked his pocket watch. It was nearly ten now. “It would have been dark by then. Too bad. Were there any wounds on Jenkins other than the bullet hole?”

  Nicholson paused and then turned his head, face thoughtful. “You know, I’m not sure. I don’t know that we checked.”

  “McConnell can look,” said Lenox, writing in his notebook. There was a small lamp swinging on the outside of the carriage, casting just enough light that he could see what he wrote. “Was Jenkins out on police business?”

  “I don’t think so. He generally left the office at six o’clock, and today wasn’t different.”

  “And went home?”

  “Yes. He has three children. Lord, it’s terrible to think of.”

  Lenox looked out of the window. “Scotland Yard is in Westminster, however, and Thomas Jenkins lives—lived—in Wandsworth Road, directly due south of his offices. We are driving north at the moment, into the north of London. In other words, when he left the Yard at six o’clock this evening, he traveled nearly two miles in the opposite direction of his home.”

  Nicholson raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Perhaps it was police business after all, then. If it was I wish he had told someone.”

  Lenox grimaced. “He may have, of course. His wife.”

  All three men were silent for a moment at the thought of this woman—of her evening. McConnell then said to Nicholson, “Has she been informed?”

  “Henderson is going there now.”

  This was Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis—the head of the Yard, a former officer in the army. He was an honest, unimaginative, duty-bound fellow, with a bald head and mutton-chop mustaches. It was difficult to imagine him comforting a woman; he was the sort of fellow more at ease in a mess hall than in a drawing room.

  The carriage turned onto Portland Place, a broad thoroughfare leading directly north into Regent’s Park, lined with brick and cream-colored houses. Some people considered it the most beautiful street in London.