The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  Behind Shreve was a bobby. “Is one of you Mr. Lenox?” he asked.

  “I am, yes.”

  “Inspector Nicholson sent me here to look for you. You’re to come with me at once. There’s been another attack at Portland Place.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lenox looked at the doctor. “I know we’ve asked too much already, but if you could—”

  “Of course,” said McConnell.

  The three men went outside to Lenox’s carriage, which was waiting in the weak warmth of the spring sun. The bobby knew nothing of the circumstances of the attack, not even whether there had been another murder or not. He had just been told to come and fetch Lenox. The drive didn’t take long, and as they pulled into Portland Place Lenox looked anxiously through the window and after a moment said out loud that he thought there wasn’t another corpse; there was a single constable at the door of Wakefield’s house, not the whole circus that would gather in the event of a death.

  He was right. Inside the house Nicholson was talking in a low tone to a young man. Both looked up at the arrival of Lenox and McConnell, and Nicholson said, “Ah, here’s Mr. Lenox now. He’s been working closely with us to investigate your father’s death. Lenox, this is the … well, the Marquess of Wakefield.”

  The young man stuck out his hand. “Joseph Travers-George,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance. I know that Scotland Yard are doing all they possibly can to get to the bottom of all this. Rotten business.”

  The new marquess spoke emotionlessly, as if he were thanking Lenox for his assistance with a banking transaction, not a criminal investigation. This squared with the upbringing he had no doubt received, an emphasis on stoicism, and then his father had been no prize. Whether or not it was seemly, not all deaths were mourned equally.

  Still, it seemed odd. Lenox felt a breath of interest in the back of his mind. Some enormous proportion of a detective’s education could be reduced to a single Latin phrase of two words: cui bono. Who benefits, as it was most often translated into English, though Lenox associated it more strongly with money than that translation would imply—who gains, perhaps. Who is enriched? It was easy to say this to a young constable at the Yard, of course, but it took the grind of years to really impart that knowledge to a man, case after case in which some sordid crime led back to a few thousand pounds, a few hundred, even just a few. Cui bono. It was the phrase that entered Lenox’s mind as he shook the hand of the former Earl of Calder. This young chap had inherited one of the largest fortunes in England two days before, and one that he couldn’t have expected to descend to him for many years, given the rude health of his father.

  There was every chance that he was a mere bystander to the circumstances. But the alternative was not impossible, either.

  The lad was only twenty, but you could see his middle age coming pretty plainly; he was already overweight and slightly too red, with a globe of a stomach and limp light hair. He looked as if he would grow short of breath easily. Nevertheless he was very well dressed, in a suit tailored by some excellent master of the craft, for it made his shape as close to youthful as it was ever likely to be, unless he decided to stop eating for six months, or took a sudden fancy to exercise and cold baths.

  Lenox introduced McConnell and then said, “There’s been an attack?”

  Nicholson nodded, lips pursed. “Yes. On the butler, Smith, poor fellow. He’ll survive, but it was a nasty piece of work. He’s resting upstairs, but you’d better let him tell you himself. He’s fit enough to talk.”

  Smith was in a guest bedroom on the third story of the house. There was a constable posted outside his half-open door. The room was neutral, irreproachable—like much of the rest of the house, without any evidence of Wakefield’s personal taste. “Will you live in London?” Lenox asked the new young marquess as they walked toward the room where Smith was recovering.

  “No, no. I’ll finish at Cambridge and move to Hatting. This isn’t a family house. My grandfather bought it not thirty years ago. I mean to let it as soon as I can.”

  The light was low by Smith’s bed, but Lenox could see that he was bare-chested underneath his blankets, and that there was a long bandage across his torso. He looked pale. The cook, a pretty woman, was sitting by his bed, and didn’t rise when the men entered, a breach of normal convention that showed, perhaps, the seriousness of her concern for her colleague.

  “How do you do, Smith?” asked Lenox. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that you were attacked. You’ve seen a doctor?”

  “Yes, sir. He was not overly concerned.”

  “Nicholson said you wouldn’t mind telling us what happened?”

  “No, sir.” Smith struggled to sit up a little straighter against his pillows, and the cook quickly helped him. There was a strong smell of beef broth in the room; he had been eating, anyhow. “How much would you like me to tell?”

  “All of it, if you don’t mind doing so a second time.”

  “Not at all, sir. This afternoon I was preparing the second-largest bedroom for the inhabitation of Lord Calder—excuse me, Lord Wakefield.” The young inheritor nodded his forgiveness of the slip, himself probably still unused to the new name. “There was a noise in the hallway, and I knew that the other staff were all in the basement. Or thought they were. I went out to see what it was, just in time to see somebody walking into the master bedroom—that which was Lord Wakefield’s, you understand.”

  “Where we found the port?”

  “Yes, sir, precisely.”

  “Please, carry on.”

  “I went down the hall. The door to the master bedroom was ajar, and I called out to ask who was there. There was no response, so I pushed the door open and saw two men coming toward me.”

  “Two men,” said Lenox slowly. “What did they look like?”

  “Both of them had their faces concealed,” interjected Nicholson.

  The butler nodded. He looked pale, thinking of his attackers. “They had dark scarves around their mouths,” he said, “and caps on.”

  “What else were they wearing?” asked Lenox.

  “Nothing distinctive, sir. Dark trousers, dark shirts.”

  “Eye color?”

  “I cannot recall, sir. I was very taken aback when I saw them, as you can imagine.”

  “Might one of them have been Francis—or Hartley?”

  “Inspector Nicholson asked the same question, sir. The answer is that I cannot be sure. I don’t think so, but it all happened very quickly.”

  “What happened, exactly?” said a voice behind Lenox. It was young Travers-George.

  “I asked them who they were and what they wanted. They didn’t answer. I had been cleaning the furniture in the blue bedroom, so I was holding a tin of polish and a cloth. I dropped them as they approached and started to back out through the door, but they caught me and took me up. One of them held me with a knife at my throat while the other looked through the room, very quickly.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He looked through all of Lord Wakefield’s effects. He didn’t take anything. I don’t think he took anything, that is.”

  “Did he mention the port, or seem to look for it?”

  “He didn’t mention it, though he did look carefully through the liquor stand, sir.”

  “And so how did you come to be wounded? And how did they leave?”

  “I heard footsteps in the hallway, sir, and I suppose I panicked. I cried out for help. I jerked out of the grip of the man who was holding me. I must have taken him by surprise, because he stumbled backward and slashed out at me. The knife caught me across the chest.”

  “Thank God it wasn’t the throat!” said the young cook. Her name was Miss Randall, Lenox recalled, a quiet soul with a heavy Lancashire accent and dark ringlets of hair. “It was me in the hallway! I might have got him killed!”

  “There, now,” said Smith to her, patting her hand. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt yourself.”


  “Did you see the two men?” Lenox asked the cook.

  “They came barreling out past me quick as you like,” she said, her eyes wide at the memory. “Terrible huge men.”

  “Did you get any better look at what they were wearing, or what they looked like?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “The same, sir. They left great horrible smudges all over the floor.”

  “Footprints?” said Lenox quickly. “Where?”

  Nicholson shook his head regretfully. “They’ve already been cleaned.”

  “We had the young lord coming, sir, we didn’t want it a mess,” said Smith apologetically, and then added, “Your Lordship.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” said the young man.

  Nicholson said to the butler, in a grim voice, “You’d better tell Lenox what they said on the way out, too.”

  “What was that?” asked Lenox.

  Smith looked hesitant but then said, “They mentioned a detective.”

  “Nicholson?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” said Smith. “The one who had been looking through the room—not the one who’d been holding me, you see, sir—stopped for just a moment and said, ‘Tell that detective to keep his nose out of it. Tell him a man with a wife and daughter should know better.’”

  Lenox felt his heart freeze. He looked at Nicholson, who shook his head and said, regretfully, “I don’t have a wife or a daughter. I fear they meant you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A panic descended on Lenox. It was the newspapers, he thought—his name appearing in the newspapers that morning as a consultant on the investigation. But why wouldn’t they warn the Yard away? Why not Nicholson?

  “Are you certain that’s all they said?” he asked. “A wife and a daughter? They didn’t mention any other person?”

  They hadn’t, according to Smith.

  “And that was all they said to you?”

  “Yes, sir. That was their final word. They left me alive, thanks be, and then must have bolted past Miss Randall on their way out.”

  Lenox excused himself and ran from the room, scribbling a note that he handed to his driver, which asked Jane to take Sophia and go to her friend the Duchess of Marchmain’s—Dallington’s mother, who also happened to have one of the largest and best-guarded houses in London, with a vast staff.

  When he returned he found that McConnell was checking Smith’s wounds; finding them to be still damp, he dressed them in fresh bandages, but didn’t seem concerned about the butler’s prognosis. “Ugly, but not serious,” he said. “No major blood loss. You’ll certainly be sore for a few days, I’m sorry to say, and there may be some slight scarring. But your recovery should be uncomplicated.” He came over to Lenox and said, in a softer voice, “What can I do to help? With Jane, I mean?”

  “Thank you, Thomas. You could go and tell her to get to Duch’s house, or yours, anywhere really. I doubt there’s immediate danger, and I did send a note—but you might beat it there, and I would feel more comfortable knowing she and Sophia were safe.”

  “Of course,” said McConnell. “Instantly. The wounds look painful, but they really aren’t dangerous—not enough to keep me useful here.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course. Good luck.”

  As McConnell bade good-bye to everyone in the room, Lenox pulled a chair over to the bed and soon with a greater sense of urgency was leading Obadiah Smith once more through the questions he had about the assailants, their dress, their accents, their hands, their footwear, their height. Painstakingly he amassed slightly more information than he had before. They’d both had lower-class accents. That would seem to discount Wakefield’s friend Francis as one of them, though he could have shammed an accent quite easily: Indeed it might have been savvy to do so.

  When this conversation was concluded they left Smith to rest, the loyal Miss Randall sitting with large worried eyes trained upon his pale face.

  Downstairs in the lovely, impersonal hallway of his father, the new marquess thanked Nicholson and Lenox. “When do you expect to have this business wrapped up?” he asked.

  “It’s impossible to say, My Lord,” answered Nicholson, his tone careful. “It could be hours or it could be years. We try not to hold out false hope. But in this case I’m optimistic that we might come to a solution within the week.”

  “Excellent. The sooner it’s out of the papers … well, I’m sure you understand.” Travers-George hesitated. “It was port wine that killed him?”

  “Yes, sir, we believe so.”

  “Are you familiar with a friend of your father’s named Francis?” asked Lenox.

  The lad frowned. “I’m not familiar with any of my father’s friends, blessedly,” he said. “Our relations were not close. We didn’t see eye to eye on several important matters pertaining to the family’s estate. Thankfully those matters are in my hands now.”

  Thankfully! “What matters?”

  Travers-George shook his head. “They cannot be of material interest to your investigation. Family affairs.”

  “What about the name Hartley? Does that ring a bell?”

  “None whatsoever. I’m afraid I really will be of very little use in sketching out the details of my father’s personal life, unfortunately.”

  “A final question, then. Did you know that he kept a hold on the Gunner, which shuttles between London and Calcutta with mail and goods?”

  “The ship where he was—was found?” For a moment there flickered into the son’s face a slightly more human aspect, as if it were just occurring to him that his father was gone not merely in name but in flesh. “What was he shipping?”

  “We’re still trying to discover that information,” said Nicholson.

  “I didn’t know that, no. I can refer you to Robert Barker, of Prowse Street. He manages our family’s investments—including my father’s. Although I cannot guarantee that my father did not keep some of his income apart.”

  “Thank you very much for your time,” said Nicholson.

  “I’m at your service,” said the new Lord Wakefield. He looked very conscious as he said this that the reverse was the case. Lenox could very nearly see his self-confidence expanding to fill his new, illustrious place in society—only faintly blemished by his father’s conduct, a blemish that his own sober deportment could efface very quickly. “You may find me here at any time.”

  Out on the pavement Nicholson and Lenox paused. “What do you make of it all?” asked the man from the Yard. He was pulling a pipe and a packet of shag from his pocket, and soon he had lit up and was drawing the smoke into his lungs, then exhaling it with a great sigh of relief. “Strange business.”

  “Do you really think the case will be solved within the week?” asked Lenox.

  Nicholson smiled ruefully. “It’s best not to antagonize a fellow who could have your chief apologizing for you inside of ten minutes, if he wanted to. A lord and all.”

  Lenox understood. “Of course. I only ask because in truth I’m as puzzled as ever.”

  “Today’s attack seems straightforward to me. Francis, or his proxies, wanted to fetch the port before we found it—and possibly any letters they could find on Wakefield’s desk. Perhaps even the parcel with the gun in it, I suppose.”

  “Why did they wait until two days after the murder?”

  Nicholson shrugged. “Access to the house. There have been officers and visitors in and out since the day of the murder.”

  “So they chose to enter in broad daylight?”

  “It was bold, certainly. Misguidedly bold, it would appear, since they didn’t get the port and we have some clues as to their appearance. What I’m curious to know is who Wakefield was mixed up with.”

  “Did you ask the neighbors whether they had seen anything of the two attackers?” asked Lenox.

  “Yes, and they must be the blindest godforsaken neighbors in the whole of London, because again we came up nil, damn them.” Nicholson sucked on his pipe angrily.
“Though in fairness it’s not as if the two men burst out of the house with drawn knives. They only needed to lower their scarves from their faces to their necks and they would seem like any other pair of fellows on foot in the city.”

  It was a chilly night, the moon slender and shrouded, and soon they parted. Lenox told Nicholson that he meant to look into Asiatic Limited—something about that hold on the Gunner still made him uneasy—and Nicholson said that he would call on Robert Barker, of Prowse Street. The fact was, though, both men felt rather stymied. A gunshot in Portland Place, a body stuffed in a trunk, poisoned wine, and now this attack upon a servant: It ought to have been simple, with such a surfeit of incident, to decipher the links between Wakefield’s death and Jenkins’s death. Instead it was one of the most difficult cases Lenox had encountered in his career. Whether that was luck or cunning remained to be seen.

  He arrived back at Hampden Lane with his heart beating more quickly than usual, wondering whether he should send Jane and Sophia and the servants down to the country for a little while, shut the house altogether, and take a room at the Savoy himself.

  He was ruminating on this idea as the carriage turned into his street, and to his surprise he saw that his house looked busy inside and out. For a moment—one of the worst of his life—he thought they might be the police, that it might be a crime scene, but then he saw that they were workmen.

  He mounted the steps of his own house as a stranger might, passed on either side by men who were busy with—well, with what? Some were carrying parcels, other tools. Several were propping up a tall ladder.

  “Jane?” he called as he entered the house.

  He found her in the dining room, consulting with a gray-haired gentleman in a suit. “Charles,” she said, “there you are. This is Mr. Clemons—shake his hand if you like, yes—he’ll be making our house secure.”

  “Mr. Clemons,” Lenox repeated.

  “Yes, Mr. Lenox.” Clemons passed him a card. “We’re a security firm.”

  “Security?”

  “They installed Duch’s safe,” said Jane, “and they work with the Queen. Haven’t you worked with the Queen, Mr. Clemons? Have I got that correct?”