The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  “And me,” said Polly, who was half a step behind him. Her face was full of concern, too—but her eyes were cast toward Dallington, not Lenox.

  “For the moment, anyhow, one of you might wait here,” said Lenox. “Or indeed both of you. Nicholson and I mean to go see Jenkins’s wife.”

  “Why does one of us need to wait here, then?” asked Dallington.

  Lenox explained that they had called in Jenkins’s subordinates. “They’ll know where he kept his current paperwork, and what he was working on,” said Lenox. “They may also know if Jenkins was meeting anyone tonight.”

  “I’ll stay,” said Dallington. “Polly, you’ve already had your evening disrupted—shall I put you in a carriage home first?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll stay with you here. I may be able to help.”

  Dallington didn’t object. “Very well, thank you.” He turned back to Lenox. “Do you have any sense of what might have happened, Charles?”

  Lenox hesitated. It wasn’t the moment just yet to disclose to Nicholson his thoughts on the Marquess of Wakefield. He felt he needed more information first. The Yard would find it difficult enough to pursue an aristocrat if they had substantial reason for suspicion. In this instance they didn’t, not yet. “Only that it relates to a current case of his,” said Lenox.

  They knew each other well enough that Dallington had observed his fraction of a moment’s pause, Lenox was sure. “How do you know?” was all that the young lord said.

  In response to this question, Nicholson and Lenox described the sequence of events that the course of the night had unfolded: the circumstances of the murder, Jenkins’s insistence that Lenox be called in (Polly looked surprised at this but said nothing), the twenty pounds in the inspector’s billfold, and finally the note in his shoe.

  “May we see the claim ticket?” asked Polly at the end of this account.

  Lenox produced it, and Dallington and Polly inspected it. “Presumably it is important enough that he didn’t want to leave it with his notes. They may offer some explanation.”

  “Or he didn’t know what it was himself, and hoped you might make the link if he … if he was murdered,” said Dallington.

  “It doesn’t belong to the luggage counters at Paddington, Liverpool Street, or Charing Cross,” said Polly.

  Lenox looked at her curiously, smiling. “Yes, I drew the same conclusion. And it’s not from any of the better hotels. They print their tickets on finer paper. But how did you know?” he asked.

  “I make a point of remembering them when I see them,” she said. “In my old firm I dealt with a great number of lost property cases.”

  Nicholson and Dallington looked impressed. As for Lenox—there had been moments, in the past few months, when he had come to suspect that Polly had the brightest future in this field of any of them. Dallington had a great deal of talent, LeMaire a methodical mind; Polly had both. She was capable of insight and of deep organization. She saw structures—like the claim tickets—in a way that Dallington did not, in a way that was invaluable to anyone looking for patterns within the flurrying indiscriminate totality of London’s crime.

  So did Lenox. “Funny you say that. I keep these every time I receive one. The book I keep of them is at the office. I was going to check it before I went home this evening.”

  Now Polly looked at him curiously, and nodded slightly. He wondered how much the past months had depreciated her opinion of him, and whether he might raise it up again. He hoped he might. “Good,” she said.

  They spoke for a few more minutes, and then Nicholson looked at his watch again and said that he and Lenox had better be going; they agreed to separate, and Lenox and Dallington, at any rate, said they would rendezvous again the next morning in Chancery Lane.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Each of the four principals of the detective agency—Lenox, Dallington, Polly, LeMaire—had dragged some of his or her old workplace into this new association. For Dallington that meant erratic hours and an aversion to paperwork; for Lenox the occasional use in his (now scarce) work of supernumeraries, chief among them McConnell. Polly had Anixter always fixed to her side, the burly ex-seaman whose brawn complemented her quick wit. Moreover, from the start of her career she’d had the idea to employ, as the need arose, a well-organized array of forensic experts, of whom all four partners now made intelligent use. It was an innovation that was valuable nearly every day for one or the other of them—the sketch artist, the chemist, the gunsmith, the botanist.

  As for LeMaire, he had brought two people along with him. The first was his nephew Pointilleux, a handsome young fellow of seventeen who served as apprentice and clerk to the office; the other was an Irish woman of fifty named Mrs. O’Neill, who had been LeMaire’s first landlady in the English capital and was now his permanent charge.

  When Lenox arrived in Chancery Lane the next morning just before eight, Mrs. O’Neill was the only person there. She was on her knees in front of the fireplace, “How d’you do, Mr. Lenox?” she said.

  “Fine, thanks, Mrs. O’Neill. Could you have the Coach and Horses send up breakfast, please? And we’d like a pot of coffee, too. I can make up the fire while you arrange it.”

  “You and Mr. LeMaire, sir?”

  “No, Dallington’s coming in.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes widened. She was generally a practical woman, but a title set her heart a-flutter. “I’ll go straight away.”

  She beat Dallington back to the office—he came in five minutes after she did, wet from the rain. “Sorry to be late,” he said, glancing at a clock on the wall. “What a storm there is outside. I should have paid attention during the swimming lessons at school, for as it stands I’m liable to drown if I go back out.”

  Lenox smiled tiredly. He had been up late. “I asked Mrs. O’Neill to get some food. I think she’s in the pantry, putting it on plates.”

  “That was sporting of you,” said Dallington, brushing the water off his charcoal-colored suit. “I’m starved.”

  “I take it you spoke to Jenkins’s team at the Yard, after we left?”

  “We did, we—”

  Just then the Irishwoman pushed her way into the room, a tray in hand—which made her attempted curtsy for Dallington a uniquely awkward one. “M’lud,” she said.

  “Let me help you,” said Dallington. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a cup of coffee more.”

  “I’ve brought you extra bacon,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Dallington. “Marvelous.”

  She looked at him critically as he poured himself coffee and ignored the bacon. Whenever he was in the office she pushed food on him, seeming to imagine that, as a bachelor, he was always more or less upon the precipice of starvation. “Are you going to eat the bacon?” she asked after a moment.

  “There’s not much else to do with it.” Dallington picked up a piece with two fingers. “Look, excellent. Lenox, shall we talk?”

  Mrs. O’Neill was deaf to this hint, however; she went to the sideboard and tidied needlessly. “The poor, brave dear,” Lenox heard her whispering to herself as she spooned extra sugar into Dallington’s coffee.

  “That’s all,” said Lenox sharply. “Thank you.”

  She hesitated in the door—but eventually departed. Lenox shifted some eggs onto his plate. There was something oddly comforting about this meeting room to him, for the first time, after Jenkins’s death. It was certainly handsome: painted a light blue, with a long oval table that had been shined to a high brightness with beeswax, and big windows overlooking Chancery Lane. Dozens of raindrops were dawdling down them, moving infinitesimally until one would decide to fall all at once in a split second, as if dashing for a forgotten appointment. A melancholy day outside. But the office, the eggs, the coffee, Mrs. O’Neill, even the rain, conspired to make things seem faintly less desolate.

  Now to capture the killer. Lenox set his mind firmly forward. “So. The sergeant,” he said.

  Dallington nodded. “Yes. Polly
and I waited. The two constables arrived first, about fifteen minutes after you left. The sergeant, Bryson, followed them by another ten minutes. He lives farthest out.”

  “Where do they all live?”

  “All of them far south.” Dallington smiled. “I had the same idea.”

  “That one of them might have been involved?” said Lenox.

  “Yes, precisely. So I did some checking. All three of them were on their usual trains at six o’clock, going in the opposite direction of Regent’s Park and therefore, of course, of the scene of Jenkins’s murder. None of them—according to Nicholson, who checked the records—had filed any type of grievance against him. And certainly all three seemed distraught.”

  “What information did they have?”

  Dallington grimaced. “Not much, unfortunately.”

  “No?”

  “The two constables hadn’t seen Jenkins all week.” It was Friday now. “And Bryson barely had either. Apparently on Monday Jenkins called all of them into the office and divided up his open cases among them. Bryson had the Bayside burglaries, and did say that Jenkins came with him to Bayswater on Wednesday morning. Otherwise he was away from the desk.”

  “And the constables?”

  “They were working on the less serious crimes individually. Taking names, gathering information. One of them’s very nearly solved a robbery in Mayfair, as he was only too pleased to tell me. I think he knew Polly and me—perhaps even wanted a job.”

  “Was it usual for Jenkins to delegate this way?”

  “I was coming to that—no. Not at all. Customarily these four work very closely together. They’re all very chummy.” Dallington lifted a corner of toast and took a bite, staring down at his notes as he chewed. “In general they go to the scene of any major crime together, and then Jenkins and Bryson conduct the case in concert, while the constables do … well, constable work.”

  “Canvassing, questioning.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “To what did they attribute the change?”

  “None of them is a fool. They all imagine that whatever made him go on his solitary way is also what killed him. They’re all raring to investigate, too. They’ve joined Nicholson’s team. Have you seen the papers this morning? Maybe out for blood.”

  Lenox nodded. “Yes.”

  The London newspapers were full of the murder, each one calling more loudly than the next for its immediate solution. Nicholson, with his amiable face and gangly frame, looked unequal, in the pictures published of him by the cheaper papers, to the task.

  “If it comes to it, so am I, I’m afraid.” The young lord shook his head. “It’s the saddest damned thing I ever saw. He was a fine fellow at bottom, I always thought. Never mind that bother he gave us in January.”

  “Did any of the three remember a file upon the desk, in the spot I showed you?”

  Dallington shook his head. “No, though they couldn’t remember the papers not being there, either. But it may be worth mentioning that Bryson, who’s been with Jenkins for two years now, said that he almost always carried his notes about London with him.”

  “His note to me makes him think he was keeping them separate on purpose—out of caution. It didn’t work, unfortunately.”

  Dallington’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Wait—why do you say that? Was the file not at his home? I assumed that you had retrieved it from his house. You should have told me straight off.”

  “It wasn’t in his study at home. No papers were, from the Yard. And Madeleine Jenkins didn’t recall him bringing any papers home. Said he never did.”

  Dallington’s face was grave. “I’d like to know where those notes are, then.”

  Lenox nodded. “So would I. I mean to go back to his office at the Yard and check again there. For the moment, however, I think we must assume that they’ve been stolen.”

  “Who would have done that?”

  Lenox sighed and took a draught of his coffee. “The man I’d like you to find, actually. William Travers-George.”

  “Oh hell, Wakefield?” said Dallington.

  “Wakefield.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mrs. O’Neill came to clear their plates soon—not quite daring to tut at the fullness of Dallington’s, for she could sense the sobriety of the mood in the room—and filled their cups of coffee again before she left. She had interrupted Lenox’s account of visiting Jenkins’s wife, or rather now his widow.

  “She was not hysterical, then?” asked Dallington.

  “No. The other way, lifeless, dull. Very polite.”

  It had been a small, attractive, clean house in the leafy southern precincts of London, with a row of five uncommonly lovely gray alder trees giving it privacy from the street. Perhaps because of these the small plaque on the brick walkway to the front door named the house TREESHADOW. Lenox, who had grown up among houses with names bestowed upon them by the length of years, rather than the aspirations of their owners, had paused and stared at this as they entered, feeling intrusive. Who could now know what Jenkins’s private dreams of stateliness had been. Certainly it was a fine house.

  “And she was no help at all?” asked Dallington.

  “Not for lack of effort. She showed us Jenkins’s study, unlocked all of the drawers in his desk, let us go through the pockets of his suits. We were very, very thorough. Thank goodness for Nicholson—he has a gentle touch, and they know each other socially, I believe.”

  “How many children? Two?”

  “Three, the third very young.”

  Dallington sighed. “I suppose the Yard will do something for them.”

  “Yes, I suppose. We might donate—the office.”

  “Or you and I, since we knew him. That might make more sense.”

  Lenox perceived underneath these words that his friend thought it might be wiser not to ask LeMaire, and even Polly, to part with any more money, which he ought to have considered himself. Briefly the frustrations of his position here returned to him, but he dismissed them. “Just so, you and I. Absolutely.”

  Dallington rapped the table with his knuckles. “Right,” he said. “What are we to do today, then, you and I?”

  “You’re free to work?”

  “Polly has agreed to take on all of my little cases.”

  “In that case I think you might try to find Wakefield. The timing of his departure is suggestive, obviously. I wish we knew where the scoundrel had taken himself.”

  Dallington nodded. He had heard all about the location of Jenkins’s death, and knew from the past years about the marquess’s reputation. “And what will you do?”

  Lenox took the small envelope Jenkins had left for him from his pocket. “I stayed up late, trying to match this ticket to the left luggage counter of a hotel or a train station. Without luck. I have seventy-odd samples, all quite distinct, but none of them match this one.”

  “How will you find it, then?”

  “I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. We need Jenkins’s notes. I might try to speak to his subordinates at the Yard. In the meanwhile someone ought to assemble a précis of the crime that has occurred around Portland Place in the last month, as well as any mentions of Wakefield that have been in the press. Something took Jenkins up to Wakefield’s neck of the woods—something attracted his notice.”

  “We can have Marseille do it.” Marseille was what Dallington called LeMaire’s nephew Pointilleux.

  “He doesn’t like that nickname, you know.”

  “He should have been born English and not French, in that case. The initial error was his.”

  “He’s from Paris anyhow.”

  Dallington smiled. “I know, it’s only a joke. I’ll try to call him by his name. Only he gets so superbly annoyed.”

  There was a knock at the door then. “Come in,” called out Lenox.

  It was LeMaire, leading McConnell, who smiled and lifted a hand. LeMaire nodded, stiffly, and said, “You have a visitor. We entered the building at the same moment.�
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  “Thank you,” said Lenox. Both he and Dallington had risen.

  “I am sorry to hear about Inspector Jenkins,” said LeMaire. “If there is any way in which I might help—please, do not hesitate to ask me.”

  “Thank you,” said Lenox again. This formal civility was awkward. The worst of it was that LeMaire wasn’t at all a bad fellow. Only a pragmatic one.

  When LeMaire was gone McConnell came in and poured himself a coffee, after asking if he might take some. “I’m due at the hospital,” he said, stirring in some sugar, “but wanted to come by. It was the bullet that killed Jenkins, I thought you ought to know. He was as healthy as an ox until the moment he died. No poison in his system, nor any alcohol, nothing unusual in his stomach. Sometimes the body throws up a surprise, but not in this case. It was a .442 Webley that shot him. Disappointingly common gun.”

  Lenox was still holding the claim ticket, and he stared surreptitiously at it as McConnell spoke, willing some idea of its origin to come to him. Nothing did, but he could feel the back of his brain working on the problem. “What about the wound on the hand?” he asked, looking up.

  “Ah. That was slightly more interesting.”

  “What wound?” asked Dallington.

  Lenox explained that there had been a cut, two or three days old, on Jenkins’s left hand. “I asked his wife, and she said she didn’t know about it, but that he had been much out of the house, not sitting to supper with his family, this week.”

  “I am all but certain that it was made by a short serrated knife,” said McConnell. “The sort carried by a sailor to cut rope and sailcloth or a cook to chop vegetables.”

  “Or a police officer, perhaps?” asked Dallington.

  McConnell thought for a moment. “I cannot see why. Of course the most likely thing is that he cut himself.”

  “We can ask his men if Jenkins carried a knife,” said Lenox. “I don’t ever remember him doing so.”

  As Dallington was about to reply, LeMaire came to the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “may I ask if this room will be free in fifteen minutes?”