The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

  “Where are you going?”

  “Those nuns are going to tell us what they know once and for all. Preferably this very day.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  If an alert Londoner had been asked to pinpoint the precise geographical center of his city’s aristocratic society, in that month of that year of that century of English life, after a little hesitation he might have pointed to a slender street in the West End, only six houses long and none of them impressively large. It was called Cleveland Row.

  Drop a fellow in this ostensibly unremarkable little corridor, and he was guaranteed to be within a minute’s walk of a title, of a fortune, of a beauty—and sometimes of all three united within a single body. At its east end the street opened onto the corner of St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, which were lined with the cavernous and sumptuous gentlemen’s clubs of London; at its west end it let onto the pathways of Green Park, which offered a direct approach, not three minutes’ walk, to Buckingham Palace. The Row backed onto Clarence House, where the Prince of Wales lived, and the Queen’s own chapel next to that; it looked forward to the Earl of Spencer’s chalk-colored mansion, where the great pageant of London society held its weekly gatherings.

  Cleveland Row was Lenox’s destination, as he drove away from Jenkins’s house half an hour later in a cab. (His own carriage was still in the funeral procession, now heading to the cemetery.) There were few places he felt more at home. It was a ten-minute walk from Hampden Lane, where he and Jane lived, it was half a block from several clubs to which he belonged, including his favorite, the Athenaeum, and he’d visited Spencer House only the week before.

  He had the cab stop at a sprightly brick residence with bright green shutters. He paid, stepped down, and rang at the bell. The house’s windows were glimmering with light, and after only a moment a butler answered.

  “Charles Lenox, to see Father Hepworth,” said the visitor. “Here is my card. Is he receiving?”

  “Please come in, sir,” said the butler. He gestured toward a small brittle chair upholstered in red velvet. “If you would care to sit while I ascertain whether Father Hepworth is occupied.”

  Lenox waited in the small entrance hall, occasionally peering down the red-carpeted hallway the butler had followed upstairs. Even this little room was dense with beautiful objects: a convex mirror in a burnished brass frame, a stone urn carved with cherubim (and stuffed unceremoniously with umbrellas), small paintings of religious scenes in gilt frames.

  After a few moments there was a footstep on the staircase, and when Lenox half-rose, he saw that it was not the butler again but Hepworth himself. “Lenox!” he said. “What an unexpected pleasure! Come up, won’t you? I was just about to have tea.”

  “I’m pleased I caught you,” said Lenox.

  “On the contrary, the pleasure is mine. Come along, this way.”

  The upstairs room into which Hepworth led Lenox was decorated in much the same style as the entrance hall, though the objects here were grander in scale, including a row of magnificently ostentatious reliquaries along one wall, all of them bejeweled, some of them carved, some of them painted. One of Holbein’s portraits of Sir Thomas More (a great hero to Catholics, of course—he had died rather than grant Henry the Eighth permission to divorce) hung near the fireplace.

  Catholics: It was an odd but no doubt exhilarating moment to be one of these in England.

  Of course, to some degree it guaranteed that you would be loathed—such was the tradition of the country. It had been Catholics who plotted to kill Queen Elizabeth, and before that Catholics who had so brutally slaughtered the brave Protestants who died while Elizabeth’s sister, Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, had reigned. (Nearly three centuries after it was written, Foxe’s gruesome Book of Martyrs, which depicted those deaths in horrible, explicit detail, was still one of the bookshops’ five bestsellers year after year.) The bias against them had long been unswerving, though recently it had softened somewhat. Since 1829 they had at least been permitted to vote and own land.

  More than that, in the last twenty years things had begun to change in ways that were, depending upon one’s perspective, either exciting or alarming. First, in the 1830s and 1840s, a great number of Protestants of the “high church” variety—that is, those who didn’t mind a little bit of incense in their services, or insist upon plain vestments for their priest—had suddenly darted in a mass to the Catholic Church, led by the great controversial Tractarians of Oxford University, Newman and Pusey. Reviled in London and beloved in Rome, these intellectuals had stubbornly insisted upon their decisions, even as their conversion cut them off from the society of scholars and aristocrats to which they had once belonged.

  Slowly others had followed them, one by one, forsaking society, fortune, and often even family to do so. The great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins had converted; Irishmen in search of work emigrated in more and more significant numbers to England, bringing their religion; in 1850, the pope, Pius IX, had finally reintroduced into the country proper dioceses and parishes, where there had been only uncertain and makeshift churches before. There were men in Parliament who believed the toleration of all this would lead to England’s ruin. It was a badly kept secret that Queen Victoria herself was panicked about the invasion.

  At the center of this web of Catholic life in England sat Father Dixon Hepworth.

  Of course, London had its own holy overseer—the Archbishop of Westminster—but it was Hepworth, not the archbishop, who mattered. The reason was a very British one, class. Hepworth came from an old and noble Suffolk family, and when he had converted at Oxford he hadn’t lost their love, which meant that, unlike most Catholics, he still had a place in society, even if some of the more religious houses of London stopped sending their invitations to him.

  On top of that he had charm, wit, and wealth—and despite being ordained, he knew better than to push his religion forward in the wrong situation. He was a philosophical fellow, a bit beyond fifty, bald and rather athletic, with the practical face of a man of business. He was extremely devoted to his collection of art and artifacts, but there seemed to be nothing especially artistic about him in person. He had a mistress of long standing named Eleanor Hallinan; she was a dancer in the West End, very beautiful, with no more of an eye toward Christ than a goldfish might have had. He never preached, rarely visited with the poor, and spent most of his days here, in Cleveland Row—but his power was unassailable. He presided over the city’s Catholic institutions, whether from the board or with a softer kind of influence, and the Vatican never filled a significant vacancy in the country without consulting him first. The archbishop could make no such claim.

  Lenox had known him for decades now, and liked the fellow; and if there was one man who could apply some slight pressure on a group of stubborn nuns, it was Hepworth.

  The priest was sitting on an armchair and leaned forward from its edge, face full of interest, hands clasped before him. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Have you heard of the murder of Inspector Thomas Jenkins?”

  It took just a few minutes for Lenox to describe to Hepworth the sequence of interactions he and Scotland Yard had had with the sisters of St. Anselm’s, and the absolute refusal of Sister Amity to speak to them, on the one hand, and the absolute inability of Sister Grethe to do so, on the other.

  As Lenox spoke, Hepworth’s face had slowly taken on a look of consternation. After the story was finished, he leaned back in his chair. “St. Anselm’s, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure that’s what they said? At 77 Portland Place?”

  “Yes,” said Lenox.

  Just then the door opened, and a footman came in behind a rolling table, which was topped with a silver half-globe. He retracted this when the table was between Hepworth and Lenox, revealing a teapot, a plate of sandwiches, and several piles of toast. Lenox realized how hungry he was when he saw it.

  Hepworth stood up, buttoning his blue velvet jacket. “If you
wouldn’t mind pouring your own tea, I think I can help,” he said. “Wait here for two minutes—less, probably.”

  As he waited, Lenox fell gratefully upon a stack of cinnamon toast wedges, piping hot and running with butter. When fully half a dozen of these were gone, he poured himself a cup of the light, fragrant tea, stirred in his milk and sugar, took a long sip, and sat back with a sigh of profound contentment.

  To think: In Rome there wasn’t a cup of the stuff to be found.

  Hepworth reappeared just as Lenox was pouring himself a little more. He was carrying a large leather book and accepted Lenox’s offer to give him a cup of tea only with some distraction. He sat down and opened the book, flipping through it.

  “Is anything wrong?” asked Lenox.

  Hepworth took a sip of tea and was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last.

  Lenox felt a surge of interest. “What?”

  “Only what I suspected, when I heard your story—and what this book has confirmed. The Catholic Church has no record at all of a convent called St. Anselm’s in London, on Portland Place or anywhere else.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Within the precincts of Regent’s Park there were several churches, Hepworth explained, including St. Thomas’s on Longford Street, which was the closest building to 77 Portland Place that the Catholic Church owned. There was no order of nuns nearby, however.

  Lenox was silent for a moment and then said, “The Church owns the land upon which St. Thomas’s sits, you mentioned. Would the Church ever rent a building?”

  Hepworth shook his head. “No, we buy them. They have a fair number of accountants there at the Vatican, you know—just as sharp as our fellows near the Inns, only they wear long robes.”

  “Where is the closest convent to Regent’s Park?”

  “Half a mile from Portland Place, just off Bayswater Road. It’s called Her Sisters of the Holy Heart, a Benedictine order. I know it well myself. They’ve been working in close concert with the Temperance Christians on behalf of the horses who drive the London cabs. It doesn’t sound like much, but you wouldn’t believe the bloody lives they lead, the poor beasts. They rarely live longer than a year or two. And it’s excellent for the reputation of our Church for the sisters to be working with Protestants.”

  Lenox’s mind was racing. “Might St. Anselm’s be some sort of renegade offshoot of the church?” he asked.

  “I cannot conceive that such a group would have escaped my attention,” said Hepworth seriously. “What’s more, it’s no small matter to establish an exchange with convents in other lands. Germany, you said?”

  “Yes, Germany.” Lenox thought of Sister Grethe. “But it’s possible?”

  Hepworth shrugged. “Anything is possible, I suppose. Do they advertise their presence there? Is there a sign on the gate? A cross?”

  “Nothing at all of that sort. On the contrary, it looks designed to keep people out.”

  Hepworth shook his head slightly. “It sounds like very few convents I know.”

  The light outside was waning now. Somewhere south of them, Lenox thought, the wake for Jenkins was still going on. What had he known about the various houses in Regent’s Park that Wakefield owned? And who had killed him?

  Lenox stood up. “Thank you so much,” he said. “I hope I can count upon your discretion?”

  “I’m troubled to learn of this place,” said Hepworth. “I ought to speak to someone in my Church.”

  “Absolutely. But if you could wait a day or two—three at the outside. I can send you word.”

  Hepworth nodded. “Yes. All right,” he said. “On the condition that you keep me apprised of anything you learn. Do we have a deal?”

  “We have a deal.”

  They shook hands, and Lenox left Cleveland Row with a hundred ideas in his head. He didn’t know whether it would be wiser to wait and speak to Dallington and Nicholson, or to go directly to Portland Place himself.

  In the end, he hailed a cab and directed it toward Wakefield’s neighborhood. He couldn’t resist. Still, he’d learned his lesson from his premature interrogation of Armbruster, and from Armbruster’s subsequent silence—he only intended to observe.

  Over the years Lenox had learned how to blend himself into any street in London. There was a special brand of loitering that the natives of the city, across every neighborhood, seemed to have in common. As he reached Portland Place—having been dropped a few streets shy of it, so that he could walk—he turned down the brim of his hat, turned up his collar, lit a small cigar so that he would look as if he had an excuse for idling in one place, and took up residence in a doorway across the street from numbers 73 to 77 Portland Place: Wakefield’s grand double-wide mansion, St. Anselm’s with its high black security fence, and the nondescript alabaster row house between them.

  As the sky darkened and the gas lamps came on, Lenox watched. There were subtle changes to any inhabited place, if you looked at it closely enough. Lights came on at the convent, window by window, though it was impossible to see through them because they were made of ground glass. Meanwhile, at Wakefield’s lights had already been on, but more appeared, and just shy of six o’clock smoke rose from the chimney. Lenox wondered if the new master of the house—young Travers-George—felt comfortable staying there, after the attack on the butler. It would appear so. Bold, that, particularly after the murder of his father. Lenox himself would have taken refuge in the safety of a large hotel, at least for a few nights.

  Increasingly, however, his attention was drawn to a house he hadn’t considered before—the one that lay between Wakefield’s and St. Anselm’s.

  That morning Pointilleux had said, with some confusion, that he had observed a tremendous number of visitors at 75 Portland Place, several men an hour.

  The pattern was the same this evening. Every few minutes, it seemed—Lenox took out his pocket watch after a little while so that he could start timing it more precisely—a person would arrive at the anonymous house, look up and down the street quickly, and then enter. Mostly these were men, though some were women. All were well dressed.

  It took Lenox some time to realize what bothered him about it, and then it came to him.

  Nobody knocked on the door.

  With mounting excitement he watched, still timing the intervals, as over the course of forty minutes three more men came up to the door. Little enough was happening at Wakefield’s or St. Anselm’s (as his brain still stubbornly thought of it), but there was this riot of activity between them. Could it be meaningful?

  Then he realized a second strange fact: Since he had arrived on Portland Place, more than a dozen people had entered through the front door—but not one had left by it.

  He took a moment to study the house in greater detail. It was the same height as Wakefield’s house, three stories, though half as wide. It was a town house like so many in this part of Regent’s Park, with handsome white columns in front, a well-kept air, and tall, curtained windows. These curtains were thin enough that Lenox could see someone moving behind one of the upstairs windows repeatedly, a short figure.

  Was it a party they were having? If it was, why did none of the guests knock? And was the family of the house likely to have parties on two successive nights?

  Slowly, slowly, Lenox felt his brain begin to comprehend the contours of the mystery. It was always painful, this part—knowing the answer without yet knowing it. For a long while he watched, motionless, his third cigar lit but forgotten in one hand, his other hand tensed around the pocket watch.

  Then, finally, he understood.

  His eyes darted toward the convent. Was it possible? Yes, he decided—in fact, it was probable.

  No wonder Jenkins had underlined that number: 77. Now, though, it was 75 Portland Place that held Lenox’s eye. He took in more details—the brass doorknobs, the handsome row of small green bushes lining each window. It was one of those houses at which you could still imagine them doing the old Jane Austen dances, the ones Lenox just b
arely remembered watching through the banister of the stairwell during his childhood: advance and return, hold hands, bow and curtsy, corkscrew, thread the needle, back to the start. A house that valued the old ways.

  Behind the grandeur of Portland Place was an alleyway, Lenox knew. With a purposeful stride he made his way for it. To stand directly behind one of the houses that Wakefield owned would have been too conspicuous, so he lingered at the end of the alley for a few minutes instead, trying hard not to peer too intently down it at the back of St. Anselm’s.

  Ten minutes passed, then another ten. Then it came: confirmation. It was all Lenox could do not to celebrate then and there.

  He left the mouth of the alleyway and made his way back toward the brightness of Portland Place, taking up his old spot in the doorway. He was tempted to go to Scotland Yard as quickly as he could and find Nicholson, but he forced himself to wait and watch a little while longer. A man and a woman entered the house a few minutes apart. Then there was a long period of inactivity, during which he grew restless. Why shouldn’t he walk up to the house himself, and open the door as boldly as all of these other people had?

  But caution ruled the day. Best to measure twice.

  By the time he hailed a passing cab, it was nearly eight o’clock. He directed it to Chancery Lane, where he hoped he would find Dallington and Polly still at work on Polly’s cases, and perhaps even Pointilleux. It was probably too late by now for Nicholson to be in his office, and Lenox needed to tell somebody what he thought he’d discovered.

  He took the stairs two at a time. He was energized. None of the setbacks of the case mattered any longer. When he reached the door he pushed through and was pleased to see that Polly and Dallington were in the clerks’ room, Dallington sitting upon one of their desks, Polly standing a few feet from him with her arms crossed.