The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  His carriage trundled across the river, and as he looked back at the lovely golden stretch of Parliament, at the high clock face of Big Ben, he realized that he didn’t regret driving away from it. Good to know, he thought. He’d meant what he said to Graham. He had no desire to stand for Parliament again. Whatever LeMaire might decide, whatever a newspaper might write, he was a detective once more. That was reward enough on its own.

  Time, now, to find out who had shot his friend Thomas Jenkins.

  Fifteen minutes later he stepped out of his carriage into a bright, leafy street, and paused for a moment to study the Jenkins house, which signified, everywhere, its recent grief: Its windows were closed, even on this lovely day, there was a black velvet knot on the door, and each of the five gray alder trees on the lawn had a cross at its foot. All of this was at odds with the first spring beauty of the green grass upon the small lawn, and the tiny buds on the flowering bushes near the house’s broad porch. Lenox glanced up at the windows of the second floor. Behind one of them, he knew, was the body, which by tradition would be kept in the home until the funeral. That was scheduled for tomorrow. With a heavy heart, he went and knocked on the door.

  A housekeeper answered, and behind her, crisp and businesslike, was a woman of about fifty, with gray hair in a tight knot and a manner that suggested visitors were unwelcome. She admitted to being Madeleine Jenkins’s sister before asking Lenox rather shortly what business brought him here.

  Just as Lenox was about to answer, Madeleine herself floated into view, her face distracted, distant. She just barely made eye contact with Lenox. “Oh, hello, Mr. Lenox,” she said. “Please, come into the sitting room. How kind of you to visit.”

  “Mrs. Jenkins,” he said, approaching her quickly, “I cannot adequately express my sorrow at your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Please, sit. Clarissa, would you ask if the maid could fetch Mr. Lenox some tea? He was a colleague of … of my husband’s.”

  Lenox sat down upon a hard small couch. It was stiflingly warm in the room. All of the mirrors were covered, all the clocks stopped, further traditions to honor the dead. He hated them all, for some reason, though he understood that others might find them comforting.

  Madeleine was dressed in the habiliment that was called deep mourning, a black weeping veil, a house cap, a long black dress. It would be a year and a day before she could enter second mourning, the stage at which she might add small bits of color to her person, even a piece of jewelry, though black would still predominate. That might last another six months, and then it would be half mourning—gray dresses, or lavender, though still always with some black added at the waist or the shoulders.

  These were the forms. In truth Lenox doubted, from her broken face, whether Madeleine would ever come out of deep mourning, at least in the sense of deep anguish. She was still a pretty woman, with long dark hair and soft eyes, and by rights she might marry again within two years. But he couldn’t imagine she would. He had rarely seen a widow who looked more surprised, or more hurt. Their children were very young.

  They spoke gently to each other for a few minutes. Finally, Lenox said, “As you may know, I am helping to investigate Thomas’s death.”

  She glanced up at him. “I saw that in the newspaper this morning.”

  “I hope you don’t believe that I would ever compromise the—”

  “No, no. He trusted you completely, too, you know. He would have chosen you himself.”

  Lenox had believed this, and the letter in Jenkins’s shoe indicated as much—but it was still meaningful to hear it from her, a relief. Saddening, too, because their breach had been so pointless. “Thank you for saying so,” he said.

  “Not at all.”

  “As you may know from Inspector Nicholson, the difficulty we’ve had is that we cannot find your husband’s case files. He was working on something substantial, I believe. He left me a note—”

  “Yes, saying that you ought to consult his papers.”

  “You have no idea where they are?” Lenox asked gently.

  “I wish I did. They wouldn’t be here—that’s the only thing I know.”

  “Did he have a safe?” asked Lenox.

  “Yes, but we’ve looked in it twice now. It has a few certificates, locks of the children’s hair, and my jewelry, along with a few oddments. Nothing professional.”

  “He never brought his papers home, in your recollection?”

  “No.”

  “Did he work from home?”

  She shook her head. “Very rarely. Once in a while he sat up late in the kitchen thinking over a problem. He liked to be alone. I would make him a pot of tea and he would take his pipe and his tobacco. The kitchen fire is warm all night, and he would sit in a soft chair I keep there.”

  “Did he write while he did this?”

  To Lenox’s surprise, she said that he had. “Sometimes he asked me for pen and paper. But he always burned his notes. It was an aid to thought for my husband, writing.”

  “I take it you haven’t seen any papers he left lying in the kitchen?”

  She smiled faintly. “No. Believe me, Mr. Lenox, I am conditioned to be on the lookout for papers, for any piece of paper Thomas might have left behind. You cannot imagine how dearly I wish I could find one for you. The moment I see any kind of paper at all it is yours. It’s only that it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “You have been in and out of the kitchen recently?”

  Her smile widened, wanly. “Only two or three hundred times.”

  It made sense that she would spend a good deal of time in the kitchen, even at a time like this. The Jenkinses would have kept a single maid, Lenox imagined, and perhaps hired another in special circumstances. Madeleine would have been in the kitchen a great deal—a working wife, not a sitting room wife. “Did Jenkins stay up late any night this week or last?” he asked.

  For the first time she looked slightly surprised by a question. “Well, yes, I suppose he did. I think Tuesday. I heard him come to bed after midnight.”

  Tuesday, two days before his death. “Could I see the kitchen?” he asked.

  They walked down the narrow staircase in single file, but the kitchen itself was slightly less overheated than the sitting room; near the ceiling was a row of small windows, one of which was open to let in the breeze. Something was cooking slowly on the stovetop in a closed pot. Rabbit stew, perhaps? It smelled wonderful.

  “This is the chair?” asked Lenox.

  “Yes,” said Madeleine. She raised a hand to her mouth and for a moment looked as if she might break down, but composed herself. “That’s where he sat.”

  “Can I ask—without wishing to seem a narcissist—whether he had mentioned me recently? I wouldn’t, usually, except for the note he left me.”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said.

  Lenox stood up and looked under the cushion of the chair, then shook out its pillows. No piece of paper fluttered away from them, alas. He stood, trying to think of what would have preoccupied Jenkins down here. “Your fire’s gone out,” he said, gesturing toward the gray ashes.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ve been distracted.”

  Then he saw something. He bent down; the fire was in a small cradling grate, much smaller than the hearth itself, with brick all around it to catch any sparks. “There’s a piece of paper back behind the grate,” he said. “It’s in a ball.”

  “Is there? No, there can’t be.” She bent down to look, too, and saw the balled-up paper. “Can you reach it?”

  He could. It was charred but mostly intact. He unfolded it and read for a moment before he realized, with disappointment, that it was a recipe. “Is this your handwriting?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. He started to ball the page back up, but then she said, hesitantly, “But on the back—might that be Thomas’s? I think it might, you know.”

  Lenox turned the page over and saw, with a thrill, the heading of a list.

  Wa
kefield

  PP 73-77; New Cav 80-86; Harley 90-99; Wey 26-40

  “This is Thomas’s handwriting?” he asked.

  “Yes, do you know what, it is,” she said. Her face was eager. “Could it help?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “It could, perhaps. I hope.”

  “What do you think this code means?”

  “It’s not a code.” Lenox had seen immediately what the shorthand meant. “Portland Place, New Cavendish Street, Harley Street, Weymouth Street. These are addresses, all within a few blocks of each other.”

  And all within a few blocks of where your husband was killed, he almost added, but thought better of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On the ground floor of Scotland Yard was a long room of democratic usage. There were desks at which men could work; there was a corner dominated by armchairs and newspapers, which looked almost like the nook of some rather down-at-heel gentleman’s club; up toward the opposite end was a great urn full of tea with a tottering stack of cups next to it.

  Within the Yard everyone called it the Great Room, and it was here that Lenox met Dallington and Nicholson twenty minutes after the hour. He apologized for his lateness, though perhaps with a note of self-forgiveness in his voice—since after all he had something to offer them, the list of addresses he’d found behind Jenkins’s kitchen grate.

  Nicholson took the list and looked at it for a moment, then expressed his irritation that his men had missed it. “I’ll have a word with Armbruster. Not to mention Jenkins’s own sergeant and constables, who have been around there for a second look.”

  “What do the addresses mean?” asked Dallington.

  Nicholson shook his head, staring at the paper. “I’ve no idea, except that Wakefield himself lived in 73 Portland Place, obviously.”

  “They could be witnesses Jenkins wanted to call on,” said Dallington.

  “To what?” asked Lenox. “It’s such an unusual assortment. Why not 71 Portland Place, right next door? And what could anyone have seen at 99 Weymouth, two streets away?”

  “Shall we have constables knock on all of these doors and ask them whether they have any information about Jenkins or Lord Wakefield?” asked Nicholson.

  Lenox considered the idea. “I suppose you’d better.”

  “I’ll just arrange it, then. Back in a moment. Have a cup of tea.”

  Dallington and Lenox made their way down toward the table of refreshments, talking quietly. “I’m free,” said Dallington. “Perhaps I’ll go along.”

  Lenox thought for a moment. “Might we send Pointilleux?”

  Dallington frowned. “Do you think it’s the right time to train him, on such a sensitive matter?”

  “He’s inexperienced, but he’s bright, and I’d like to reward him for his loyalty to us. He’s made it plain that he would like to get out of the office and do some work. On top of that, whether it’s you or he who goes, the Yard will insist upon taking the lead.”

  “True enough.”

  “That would also give the two of us time to step over to McConnell’s laboratory.”

  Nicholson returned after a few moments with Sergeant Armbruster, the rather portly, worried-looking officer who had so dearly wanted hot soup for himself and his men as he was managing the scene of Jenkins’s murder. He had also conducted the canvass. Nicholson reintroduced them and said that the sergeant and his men had already visited most of the houses on the list.

  “Which ones haven’t you visited?” asked Dallington.

  “I’m not entirely certain, sir,” said Armbruster. “It will be in the report we made. I’m happy to go out again, though as I said to Inspector Nicholson, we found little enough the first time, and I generally work here, in the back offices, not out in the field. Perhaps it would be better to send a fresh pair of eyes.”

  “Sometimes it only takes a second round of questions,” said Nicholson sharply.

  The sergeant nodded quickly. “Oh, yes, sir. Did you want me to go now?”

  “I do. You can take two constables from the pool.”

  “And a lad of ours, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Lenox.

  Armbruster took out a brightly polished gold watch, whose chain was stretched taut over his belly. “Of course, sir,” he said. He looked rather dispirited, and Lenox wondered what his plans for the evening had been.

  Lenox and Dallington left the Yard not long after—Nicholson was going to read over Armbruster’s initial report again, and gave them a copy so they could do the same—and stopped into Chancery Lane, where they informed Pointilleux that he would be accompanying several members of the police force on a canvass. He reacted with a momentous wordless nod, took the information Dallington handed over, and set off at a rapid clip to meet Armbruster and his men.

  After he left, Polly appeared in the doorway of her office. She was wearing an unadorned blue dress and had her hair under a bonnet. There was ink on her fingers. “How is the case proceeding?” she asked.

  “It seems to me that we have a great deal of information and not quite enough,” said Dallington. “How has it been here?”

  “Very busy,” said Polly. Suddenly she looked tired. “LeMaire has left. And there was a new matter for me, a young governess whose mistress has accused her of an inappropriate friendship with the gentleman of the house, quite inaccurately. She was close to hysterical, the poor dear. Penniless, it goes without saying, but I felt we must assist her.”

  Dallington was moved. “By all means. Can I help?”

  Polly looked at him quizzically. “Can you spare the time?”

  When the three had met the year before—Polly had been an independent detective then, fresh to the business and full of new ideas—a friendship had sprung up between all three of them, but especially, perhaps, between Polly and Dallington. It made sense. They were of the same age, the same class. Both had been rather battered in their turn by the gossiping classes of London’s salons. Above all, they had the same wry, not altogether serious way of looking at the world. It was enough to madden some people—those who took the world very seriously indeed. Lenox wondered what Alfred Buchanan had been like, Polly’s short-lived husband. He must remember to ask Jane.

  For a while, as Lenox recalled, it had seemed inevitable that Dallington and Polly would fall in love. Indeed, there was a moment when it seemed to him that they had already fallen in love. Like most ironists, Dallington was at heart a romantic, easily moved, and there had been glimpses in his face of something like passion, which Lenox had observed when Polly was talking, or even merely when she was in the room. As for Polly, early widowhood had trained her to wear a mask, but Lenox had imagined that he detected a softness in her, too.

  Yet here they were, several months later, and the two were only colleagues—considerate of each other, particularly he toward her, but if anything slightly more distant than they had been in the first months of their friendship. Was their business the cause of this very faint separation? The struggles of the agency? Had something passed between them?

  At any rate, Lenox could see in his protégé’s eyes that at least on one side there were still feelings of love lurking beneath whatever conceptions of professionalism and respect had stilled them. He wondered if Polly felt the same way. He hoped she did. There were few men he had met finer than John Dallington, and few men who more deserved a wife’s love. Nevertheless, it was not difficult to conceive of him as one of those eternal bachelors, aging into affectionate courtliness, going home to an empty sitting room every evening. There was something proud—untouchable—in his bearing. Lenox wondered if too many doors had been barred to him, in his wild days, for him to be quite comfortable with the traditional gestures of wooing. He was like Polly, in this regard: Each had a mask of proud self-sufficiency, and underneath it a need to be loved.

  “He certainly has the time,” said Lenox quickly. “There’s nothing else we can do today on behalf of Jenkins and Wakefield, whereas it seems as if there’s a great deal to d
o here. Dallington, I’ll go to see McConnell. We can meet again here in the morning.”

  “If you’re sure?” said the young lord.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then perhaps I will stay and help Polly.”

  So it was that Lenox rode alone to McConnell’s in the waning spring light, jotting a few overdue thank-you notes as the carriage moved through the West End.

  At the door the doctor greeted him with a grim smile.

  “What?” asked Lenox, reading McConnell’s face. “The port?”

  “Yes. Poisoned. Come in and I can show you.” McConnell led Lenox up to his laboratory again, where he demonstrated the chemical test he’d used, as well as the controlled test he’d done on an identical port that he’d sent his butler down to Berry Brothers to buy that morning. “Can’t be too careful.”

  “There’s no doubt, then?”

  “None at all. The Yard’s chemists are bound to find what I did. In fact, the quantities were unusually high. The marquess must have had a copper-bottomed constitution to survive as long as he did. Have you found the fellow who poisoned him yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Lenox.

  “I can’t imagine Berry Brothers will be altogether pleased to know that their product has become … well, a weapon of murder.”

  “The manufacturers of the Webley will sleep well enough tonight, I’m sure,” said Lenox. He paused and stared at the beakers and glass bowls on McConnell’s wooden tables. “The question I have is whether Wakefield had time to murder Jenkins before he was murdered himself—or whether Jenkins knew that Wakefield was in some kind of trouble. He may even have been trying to help him. Though I doubt he could have imagined someone was poisoning the man.”

  There was a knock on the door downstairs, and a moment later Shreve, the McConnells’ butler, appeared in the doorway of the library. “A visitor, sir. He is most insistent upon his need to see Mr. Lenox.”