The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  Clemons inclined his head. “We have been so honored, madam.”

  “I take it my wife has hired your services?” asked Lenox.

  “I have,” said Jane. Lenox could tell from her businesslike demeanor—there were few women in England as fiercely determined, when she set her mind to a thing—that she had no interest in his opinion of the project. “They’ll be here several hours, and at least until this case of yours is finished they’ll leave a rotating service of men at our doors and in our back garden. Mr. Clemons has assured me that they’re all armed to the teeth.”

  “With safeties on their firearms,” said Clemons quickly. “They are professionals, Mr. Lenox—primarily ex-servicemen.”

  “They’re putting bars on the windows, too,” said Jane. “Here, come and say goodnight to Sophia—unless you need anything else, Mr. Clemons?”

  “No, madam, thank you.”

  As they climbed the stairs, Lenox said, “You’ve acted very quickly.”

  “About three months too slowly, in fact. I ought to have done this the moment you started that agency.”

  “Are you quite angry at me?” he asked.

  She had reached the top of the stairs, and she turned, her face dark. “I am, yes. But I love you, more the fool am I, and nobody will come into our house to hurt any of the three of us—you may be absolutely sure of that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Lenox arrived at the office the next morning with the first light. He wanted time to sit quietly and gather all of his thoughts about this perplexing case, and his uncluttered office, with a pad of paper and a full inkwell, seemed the place to do it.

  When he arrived, however, it was to find the office inhabited: by Pointilleux, asleep with his head on his desk in the office’s large main room, where the four clerks’ desks faced each other. He was surrounded by towering stacks of worn cloth-bound books. Quietly Lenox peered at the binding of one and saw that it was a record of London property transactions.

  “Good morning,” Lenox said gently, standing a few feet back so as not to startle the lad.

  Pointilleux rose bolt upright in his chair, blinking rapidly, and then, seeing where he was, shook his head and pushed the wavy hair from his forehead. “I apologize. I am extremely fatigue—I have fallen asleep.” He shook his head again. “I think I must acquire a cup of tea.”

  Lenox, who could sympathize very well with the feeling that it was vital to acquire a cup of tea, went over to the small portable stove they kept in the corner of the room and lit the flame. (Another innovation of Polly’s, that.) He spooned three tablespoons of black tea, the Bengalese kind they kept in the pine teabox on Dallington’s insistence, into a large earthenware teapot. It had an ugly pattern of lilies on it, a relic of Lady Jane’s own kitchen, actually. Suddenly the office didn’t seem such a bleak place to Lenox—the tea, the teapot, Pointilleux. For no good reason at all, he felt a sense of optimism. They would make it.

  At that moment there was a footstep on the stairwell, accompanied by a telltale metallic clatter, which sounded like the milkman. Lenox met him at the door just as the water started to boil and took their standing order with a smile and a word of thanks, two bottles of half-skimmed.

  When he and Pointilleux both had their cups of tea, Lenox asked, “Were you up late, or did you fall asleep early?”

  “I lose track of the hours. But I think I have discover something for you.”

  “On the canvass with Armbruster? Or here?”

  “The canvass is not very effectual, I must tell you. There was a difficulty that Colonel Armbruster—”

  “Sergeant Armbruster,” said Lenox. “You’ve promoted him several steps and into a different service.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Armbruster,” said Pointilleux, “the error is mine. Sergeant Armbruster was sad to be doing such work beyond his normal working hours. He was not conscientious of the job very high. Several of the house we do not knock on the door, because they are dark, and because he has knocked on these doors before and talked to their … their…”

  “Residents?” offered the older detective.

  “Yes. Their residents.”

  Lenox could remember Armbruster’s unhappiness at missing his supper, on the night of Jenkins’s murder. He didn’t seem a very determined fellow; it was easy to imagine him cutting corners to get home a bit earlier. What odds then that he had glided his way past some important clue, or witness?

  “Go on,” he said.

  “After we are finish the canvass, therefore, I go back and observe the houses for my own satisfaction. I observe several things. For instance, I observe that at 75 Portland Place, next door to the house of Lord Wakefield, there are a tremendous amount of men coming and leaving, five or six an hour.”

  “What time of the day was it?” asked Lenox.

  “Six o’clock.”

  “There might well have been a party. What else did you see?”

  “At 80 New Cavendish Street, where we have not knock with Colonel Armbruster, there is a very great … you would say, row. Argument.”

  “Did you hear its subject?”

  Pointilleux shook his head. “No. Except, as I get closer, I see a small sign in the window—To Let, Inquire Jacob Marshall, 59 Abbot Street. It was then I realize that I have seen this sign elsewhere, three times. At”—Pointilleux looked at a scrap of paper on his desk—“80 New Cavendish Street, at 90 and 95 Harley Street, and at 30 Weymouth Street. Jacob Marshall.”

  Suddenly Lenox realized, from a very faint sparkle of triumph in Pointilleux’s eye, that the lad had stumbled onto something he considered significant. “And now you’re looking at London property records,” he said.

  Just then there was another footstep on the stairwell. Lenox glanced at the clock on the wall—it was scarcely past seven—and was surprised when the lock of their office door turned. It was Dallington and Polly. They were red-cheeked and laughing, though they came up short when they saw Lenox and Pointilleux in conference. Dallington was carrying a large parcel.

  “Hello!” said Dallington, only momentarily nonplussed. He looked very happy. “We thought we were getting a very early crack, but nothing compared to you two. We came in to work on the cases, though I think we’ve beaten back the worst of the workload I left poor Polly—Miss Buchanan—with. Is that a pot of tea that I spy? And look, I’ve brought croissants!”

  Dallington opened the box he was carrying. Polly, who was removing her gloves, said dryly, “He only bought sixteen, so we had better cut them each in half to be sure we have enough.”

  But she looked happy too. Lenox went to the teapot and poured out two cups for them. “Something to eat, just what the doctor ordered for Pointilleux. He’s been here all night.”

  “I do not deem these croissants,” said Pointilleux, who had stood and was inspecting the box.

  “They jolly well too are croissants!” said Dallington indignantly. “This one has jam!”

  Pointilleux gave a look as if to indicate that this fact was a point in his favor, rather than the young lord’s, and appeared to be on the verge of saying so when Lenox interjected. “Let’s get back to the case,” he said. “Dallington—Polly—do you want to hear the details, or continue with your own work?”

  They both wanted to hear, which meant telling them not only of Pointilleux’s description thus far of his activities, but also of the attack on Smith the previous day. Dallington was startled to hear the news and asked a great number of questions. At last, Pointilleux was allowed to continue.

  “Jacob Marshall, then,” said Lenox.

  “Yes,” said the Frenchman seriously. “Jacob Marshall. I visit his office in Abbot Street, but find nobody present. So I decide to investigate of my own. I borrow these volumes from the library of the French Society, and return here.”

  “What did you find?”

  The triumphant gleam came back into Pointilleux’s eye. “What I find is that every single house on the list of Mr. Jenkins—of Portland Place, of We
ymouth Street, of New Cavendish Street, of Harley Street—is the property of one man: William Travers-George, the Fifteenth Marquess of Wakefield.”

  Lenox raised his eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

  Pointilleux had a sheet of paper. “I have checked double and triple. I am sure.”

  “By jove, you’ve done splendidly,” said Dallington.

  Lenox was staring into his cup of tea, thinking. “Wakefield owned all of those houses,” he said, more to himself than to any of the three other people in the room.

  Dallington was still offering congratulations to Pointilleux. “Shake my hand. If you don’t want to call them croissants, we shan’t, upon my word.”

  Lenox still had Jenkins’s original list in his pocket. He took it out and looked at it for a moment. “Look at this,” he said.

  “What?” asked Dallington.

  “Look at the list again.”

  He held it out for the others to see, and all four of them gazed down at Jenkins’s handwriting on the singed paper.

  Wakefield

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

  Lenox pointed out what he meant with a finger. “Look at the number 77,” he said. “Jenkins underlined it. I missed that the first dozen times I looked at the paper, I think.”

  “Why has he underline it?” asked Pointilleux.

  “I’m not sure—but Dallington, do you remember what’s at 77?”

  “What?”

  “The nunnery.”

  Dallington raised his eyebrows. “A witness there, perhaps. Someone he was working with.”

  Lenox nodded. “We must go back and see what they know, and I don’t care if they’ve each taken a thousand vows of silence.”

  “If you give me half an hour to finish helping Polly, I can go with you.”

  “You’re more than welcome,” said Lenox, “but it’s not necessary. I can fill you in later. In the meanwhile, Mr. Pointilleux, you have certainly earned the right to accompany me, if you like.”

  The boy’s eyes flew open with excitement. “Of course!” he said, and he stood to get his coat, turning this way and that to look for it.

  “I wonder what Jenkins was onto,” Lenox said to Dallington. “It’s a dark business.”

  “Yes,” said the young lord.

  Lenox shook his head dourly. “What’s more, after all this I have a terrible feeling I know where his papers have gone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  At just after eight o’clock, Lenox and Pointilleux left Chancery Lane. It was a bright morning; passing down the street was a long double line of schoolboys in matching navy jackets, each carrying a slate board with a piece of chalk tied to it. The last two little fellows in line had crimson armbands with the word “Dunce!” written on them—a common enough punishment, though Lenox thought the exclamation point unnecessarily mean-spirited. Still, it was preferable to the bin, a device many London schools still used despite the efforts of the reformers to ban them. These were the cramped dome-shaped wicker baskets in which idle students might be enclosed and then raised to the ceiling by a system of levers and pulleys. They would be gone soon enough, he imagined. Lenox would have shot anyone who tried to put Sophia in one.

  Their first stop was the offices of Asiatic Limited, where an elderly clerk named Bracewell assisted them, after they showed a letter from Nicholson with the official seal of Scotland Yard imprinted upon it in black wax. Bracewell could find the records for the Gunner—at the name he looked up at them sharply, perhaps contemplating the money his concern was losing every day that she was in dock—but it would take some time to find out who was permitted to retrieve Lord Wakefield’s goods in Calcutta.

  “Two to one, sir, it is the Pondicherry Limited, which distributes nearly every piece of cloth and bottle of liquor we ship. Nevertheless I am happy to check. If you return tomorrow morning someone will have the ledger in question.”

  “Thank you,” said Lenox.

  “My pleasure.”

  This job done, they hailed a cab, and Lenox directed it to Portland Place. Pointilleux looked extremely focused. After they had ridden some blocks, he said to Lenox, “Still you do not prefer to tell us where Mr. Jenkins’s papers have gone?”

  Lenox shook his head. “I want to be sure first. We must go see Nicholson. Or I must, I suppose.”

  “I am happy to come, too.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  When they arrived at 77 Portland Place, Lenox stepped out of the cab and stood still for a moment, looking at it with fresh interest. It must once have been a normal London residence, a low-slung brick house, rectangular in shape. The nuns of St. Anselm’s had made it extremely secure—a fence that reached as high as the roof, bars over every window, heavy padlocks on the black gate in front. He wondered how long they had been there.

  As they crossed the street toward 77, dodging an omnibus, Lenox saw a woman standing out front: Sister Grethe again. Behind her in a small lodge near the door was another woman, who must have been the same porter Armbruster had encountered on his canvass.

  Lenox approached the gate with Pointilleux behind him, and automatically Sister Grethe pulled a card from the folds of her habit—the same one Lenox had seen before.

  “No, thank you, no,” said Lenox, waving it away. He pointed behind her. “We need to speak to the porter.”

  Sister Grethe turned and looked at the porter, then gestured in her direction questioningly. Yes, Lenox indicated. The sister went and knocked on the porter’s door, and soon the woman came down. She was young and heavy, with thin, downturned lips that gave her a no-nonsense look.

  “Good afternoon,” said Lenox. “My name is Charles Lenox. I’m assisting Scotland Yard in the investigation of the murder of Lord Wakefield, who lived two doors away. We believe several of the residents of the convent might have valuable information—might have witnessed something.”

  “The sisters are at prayers just now.”

  “So you told my colleague on the evening of the murder. They don’t stop often, I suppose?” said Lenox with a smile.

  “They’re right pious, yes,” said the young woman suspiciously.

  “May I ask your name?” said Lenox.

  “Sarah Ward.”

  “Miss Ward, it’s urgent that we speak with the sisters. Or at a minimum with some representative who can tell us when we might have a conversation with each of them individually.”

  “They ain’t to be bothered,” said the porter.

  Sister Grethe was watching this exchange dumbly. Lenox felt a growing irritation. “In this case I’m afraid I must insist.”

  The young woman looked uncertain, and went on hemming at the notion—but at last she said she would try to find someone.

  They waited a very, very long time. “Why can this sister not be help to us?” whispered Pointilleux eventually.

  “She only speaks German. And she’s taken a vow of silence.”

  To Lenox’s surprise, Pointilleux turned to her and said something in German, in a lively tone. Sister Grethe merely stared at him. He tried again, and she handed him the same card Lenox had already seen, then turned back to the street.

  Pointilleux read the card. “She behave as if I speak to her in strange language, but my German is excellent,” he whispered unhappily.

  “Do you know the term ‘vow of silence’?” asked Lenox.

  “I am French. I know about my church more in my little toe than every Englishman put together in their head.”

  Finally Sarah Ward emerged. Behind her, in a dingy habit, was a middle-aged woman. She looked as if she had been sleeping, not praying. “May I help you?” she asked.

  Lenox introduced himself and asked her name—she was Sister Amity, she said—and then asked whether they might interview the sisters of the convent, beginning with Sister Grethe, to whom his assistant would be happy to speak in German.

  Sister Amity looked alarmed. “Absolutely not!” she said.

  “But if you only
—”

  “Should you choose to address your impertinences to us again, we will be forced to contact the police! Now—good day!”

  Lenox frowned. “I’m afraid then that we, too, will be forced to return with the police—for we really must speak to all of you. You may have been witnesses to a crime without knowing it, and your house was the property of a murdered man.”

  “We have a long lease signed upon it,” said the sister.

  “Did Lord Wakefield often come by?”

  “Absolutely not. Nor should you, if you have any sense of decency. Good day.”

  With that, Sister Amity turned and went back into the house. Sarah Ward gave them a gloating look and returned to her lodge. Sister Grethe continued to look at them without any change in her expression, which irritated Lenox so profoundly by this stage that he had to stop himself from slamming shut the gate as they left.

  They would return with Nicholson. It was all they could do.

  The carriage rolled through the bright morning toward the Yard. Lenox was in a brown study, absorbed in a deep contemplation of the details of the case, until finally Pointilleux said, “Can you not tell me where the papers are, of Inspector Jenkins?”

  Lenox looked at him. “Not just yet. I may be wrong.”

  Nicholson was at Scotland Yard when they arrived, reading through the results of the canvass upon which Pointilleux had accompanied Armbruster and several other men the evening before. He looked fatigued. “We’ve had the new Lord Wakefield’s solicitor in already this morning, to inquire about our progress,” he said.

  “That’s no good,” said Lenox.

  “Why is it not?” asked Pointilleux.

  Lenox looked at him sternly. “If you have questions while we are speaking to Inspector Nicholson, please save them until you and I are alone.”

  Pointilleux raised his eyebrows in surprise, then nodded. “My apologies,” he said.

  “Nicholson, I wonder if you could send for Armbruster. I wanted to ask him directly about the canvass.”