Текст книги "The Laws of Murder"

Автор книги: Charles Finch

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CHAPTER TWELVE

As the cab drove to Southwark, Lenox stared out at the wet streets of the city and brooded upon the death of Jenkins, of his friend Thomas Jenkins of Scotland Yard. There were more points of oddity in this murder than most: the twenty pounds, the missing papers, the claim ticket, the unlaced boot, the wound on Jenkins’s left hand, and above all the proximity of the body to the house of William Travers-George, Lord Wakefield.

Where had Wakefield fled? And why?

The Southwark docks were immensely busy. Eighty or ninety large ships were crowded along the banks of the Thames there, some of them with barely room to turn, their complex riggings latticing the sky with shifting shapes. Lenox could smell a strong odor of fish, wood, and especially tobacco—the Tobacco Dock, lined with immense warehouses where merchants with ships that went to America could store the stuff, was nearby.

They alighted at one of the docklands’ many entrances. “There’s a half-crown if you hold the cab,” said Lenox.

The cabman touched his cap.

As they came nearer the water, Lenox and Dallington could feel its sharp breeze. Down in the water, though it was so cold still at this time of year, were the mudlarks, as everyone called them—very poor young boys, some only six or seven years old, who waded near the banks of the river, searching for coal, iron, rope, even bones, anything whatsoever that might be sold. Slightly more prosperous were the wherries that floated between the ships, tiny boats that offered quick passage to the docks for a coin or two, or ran errands for harried ships’ stewards trying to put to sea on time.

This was also the location of the Dreadnought, instantly recognizable because it loomed higher on the horizon than any other ship. She was ancient by now: In 1805, she had been one of twenty-seven ships commanded by Horatio Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar, part of a fleet that was outgunned by French and Spanish ships, of which there were thirty-three. But Nelson had been a genius. When the day was over the French and Spanish had lost twenty-two ships—the British, none. It was the greatest naval victory in the history of the world, as all English schoolboys learned. Dreadnought had been there.

Now she served a humbler purpose. She was a floating seaman’s hospital, a place where any current or former seaman could find medical care for free, if he didn’t mind close quarters and irregular doctor’s visits. It was one of the most popular charities in London.

In sight of Dreadnought, Lenox and Dallington found a small stall with a sign that said CARGO AND SHIPPING. It looked as promising as anything else. They went in.

Behind the counter was an old white-haired man with scruffy white stubble on his face, dressed in a pea coat and poring over a ledger. He looked up. “Help you?”

Lenox held up the ticket. “We were hoping to claim some luggage. For the ship to Calcutta.”

“You’ve gone three dockyards too far west, in that case,” said the man, smirking. “Not regulars in these parts, are you, chaps?”

“Lenox here sailed with the Lucy,” said Dallington indignantly. “All the way to Egypt and back.”

“Oh, begging your pardon,” said the man, with wildly exaggerated deference. “To Egypt and back you say? Has he written his memoirs? Has he visited with the Queen?”

Dallington frowned. “Yes, you’re very funny.”

“The world must know his story! Egypt and back!”

They left this derision behind with as much self-possession as they could muster and hopped in the cab again, which they directed to drive west as they counted off the docks. In the first yard had been more passenger ships, and while this looked to be full of cargo ships, there was another small stall with a similar sign. This one had a bit more enterprise; it said HELMER’S CARGO, SHIPPING, WOODWORKING.

As soon as they went in it was apparent that Mr. Helmer was also engaged in a different kind of business—five women, very plainly prostitutes, were sitting at a table playing cards. They were genial in their greetings. Helmer, apparently, was at the moment aboard a ship called the Amelia. No, it wasn’t bound for Calcutta; that was the Gunner, in slip eleven. But they wouldn’t be permitted on board either ship without Helmer. Even the ticket, which Lenox held up to show them, wouldn’t allow them that.

“Cheap buggers on the Gunner, if you were hoping to make any money on your backs,” one of them added, by way of good-bye, and for the second time in the docklands Lenox and Dallington left with gales of laughter in their wake.

The information had been good, however. Helmer was just leaving the Amelia when they arrived at it, dashing down the taut diagonal rigging between the ship and the dock, though he must have been sixty and was certainly overweight. He looked up to answer to his name.

“Yes?” he said.

Lenox held up his ticket, and for the first time there was recognition in someone’s eyes. “I’d like to claim my property.” He had decided that it was more likely the ticket was for a piece of cargo than for a berth upon a ship. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“That ship is leaving in ninety minutes,” said Helmer, his eyes hooded and suspicious. “Why on earth would you take something out of it when you’d paid handsomely to ship it, a hold in the aft?”

“Do I need to provide my reasons?”

“Well—no,” said Helmer. “But it’s unusual, you know.”

“Then you’ll have a story for the pub,” said Dallington. “Here, you can buy everyone a drink to tell it.”

Helmer cheered up considerably when he saw the half-crown Dallington was offering, and led them to slip eleven. “Captain won’t be happy, you know. But I suppose it’s within your rights.”

“What kind of ship is it?” asked Dallington.

Helmer stopped and turned toward him with frank astonishment as they walked side by side. “Isn’t it your cargo?”

“No—my friend’s. I just happened to see him and come along.”

“Which it’s a cargo ship, mostly.” He started walking again. There was a thick plug of tobacco in this entrepreneur’s cheek and a tattoo upon his forearm. Obviously he had once been a seaman, and perhaps after his ship had taken a prize he had used his portion of it to open his business. He seemed successful enough, to gauge by the prostitutes he employed. There must have been immense demand for them, ships full of men isolated for months at a time. “The Gunner takes mail, parcels, and of course goods from England. A great deal of sugar and flour and cloth. For the lads in India, you know. A few passengers, if need be. Sometimes the navy lets a few berths for its men, or the marines, if they’re chasing their ships, is what it is.”

The Gunner was a slovenly ship, Lenox could tell at an instant, with none of the trim efficiency he had come to know on the Lucy (upon which he had, indeed, spent several diverting weeks in transit). Its ropes were slack, its paint was chipping. Men idled fore and aft. It also didn’t look as if it could move very quickly, which made it surprising when Helmer said it was reckoned the fastest mailboat to India.

“They look out for her in Calcutta, you know. Most recent newspapers and such. If you’re lucky the Gunner might bring you a copy of the Times that’s only eight weeks out of date, if you’re one of them great sahibs sitting on a balcony with ten darkie servants. Admiral Fanshawe never sends his mail by any other vessel.”

“You’d think he owned the bloody ship,” muttered Dallington, falling a step behind.

“Or that someone wanted to ship their cargo with very great haste.”

Dallington considered this. “Yes, true.”

As they walked up the gangway a great number of eyes turned toward them, none friendly. Lenox had heard of mailboats whose officers and crew committed acts of piracy when chance threw a weaker foreign vessel in their path. There was a blood oath among all those on board—punishable by death for its transgression—that the secret of these crimes was to stay among them. If it weren’t for the ship’s renowned speed, Lenox would have believed it of the Gunner in an instant. She had no very great appearance of rectitude.

At the top of the gangway they were stopped by a sour-looking lieutenant, irretrievably sun– and wind-burned, past forty. “Who’s these?” he said.

“Two paying customers, what’s let a hold on this ship,” said Helmer. He had some pugnacity in his voice. “Where’s Dyer?”

“Indisposed.”

“Dispose him prompt.”

The lieutenant’s eyes grew dark, but then he saw that Helmer was patting the little pocket of his waistcoat, and understood there was money to be made. “This way.”

The appropriate, extortionate number of coins changed hands, first with the lieutenant and then with Captain Dyer, a rat-faced but well-spoken man—a gentleman’s son, at any rate, probably ex-navy, with no chance of promotion within those ranks because of lack of interest—who took the claim ticket.

“You can have it back, whatever you put in there,” he said, “but not your money. We ship in eighty-four minutes, you know.”

“Just so,” said Lenox.

They descended into the hold by a series of short ladders, the smell worsening the farther they went from daylight. Hammocks were bundled up into the rafters on the lowest level; on every side were small doors with numbers stenciled on them. Dyer and Helmer led the way toward the aft, the rear, of the ship. Numbers 119 and 120 sat on top of each other, their door divided halfway. They were two of the larger storage doors.

“Do we need a key?” said Lenox.

“Only mine.”

Dyer opened the door. Lenox hadn’t been sure what he was expecting, but something more interesting than what he saw—first, an old and very large sea trunk of wood and brass, its lock flapping open, and second, a stack of old hammocks, extras, presumably. “Dallington, help me pull the trunk out, would you.”

With the help of Helmer—who was clearly anticipating further remuneration at the end of this adventure, a hope in which Lenox looked forward to disappointing him—they maneuvered the trunk into the cabin. “Not overly heavy,” said Dallington. “Though it will be some work to get it aloft. Shall I open it?”

The young lord pulled back the lid and frowned. “What’s that?” he asked.

There was something grayish filling the large trunk to its very top edge. “Salt,” said Lenox, and felt his heart begin to race. He dropped to his knees and began to push it aside.

It took a second, two seconds, to brush away the top layer of coarse salt. At the same instant all three standing men gasped. Helmer yelped. “Is that a body?”

“It is,” said Lenox.

Helmer shook his head. “Christ, Dyer, you’ve copped it now.”

Lenox uncovered the face. “Who is it?” asked the ship’s captain.

Dallington had seen, and his eyes widened. He turned to Lenox for confirmation, and Lenox nodded. “Yes, it’s him.”

“It’s who?” said Helmer.

“Eighty-four minutes may be an overoptimistic estimate of your departure time, Captain Dyer,” said Lenox. “This is the body of the Marquess of Wakefield.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Unsurprisingly, Lenox returned home that evening much later than he had planned, later than supper, past eight o’clock. Despite the hour he heard children’s voices when he opened the door, and smiled. He guessed Toto—McConnell’s wife, and one of Jane’s intimate friends—would be visiting.

His confirmation came almost immediately; as he walked up the long, softly lit central corridor of the house he saw a young person shoot from the drawing room with unladylike verve: little Georgianna McConnell. This was Thomas and Toto’s only daughter, a beautiful child with light brown curls and wide striking dark eyes.

“Hello, George,” he said.

“Hello, Uncle, give me a candy please,” she cried as she hurtled toward his legs.

Lenox braced for the impact, and after it came patted her head as she held him at the knee. “I haven’t got any. Though I do owe you a birthday present. Five years old, was it? I wish I could have been at the party.”

“It was my birthday,” she informed him.

“Yes, I know, I just mentioned it.”

“I’m five.”

“I never, were you?”

They discussed the party for a moment in serious tones. Charles took care not to refer to her unmet wish—to ride above the city of London in a hot air balloon, something that McConnell, a worrier, would no more have permitted than a donkey in the dining room—because he knew it was still a point of sore disappointment to her. “Did you have a cake?” he asked.

“Of course I had a cake,” she said pityingly, as if he were soft-headed even to ask.

He led her by the hand into the drawing room. It was where Lady Jane spent much of her time, a light space with rose-colored sofas and pale blue wallpaper. Jane and Toto, a young woman of high spirits and high humor, were sitting close together. Both looked up and smiled, then said hello. Near them on the floor was Sophia, Lenox’s own daughter. With a feeling of deep love, almost as if he had forgotten, he perceived that she was tired, perhaps fussy, though at the moment she was absorbed in some kind of wooden toy made up of a ball and a dowel.

He picked her up and kissed the top of her head, ignoring her cry of displeasure when he pulled her away from her toy, and then set her down again. “I’ve just been with your husband,” he said to Toto.

“Have you? About poor Mr. Jenkins?”

“Poor Mr. Jenkins and more, unfortunately. But why are these girls up?” he asked. “It’s very late, you know.”

Toto looked at the gold clock on the mantel. “So it is. But I cannot hold with putting a child to bed when there’s still light in the sky. We aren’t Russian peasants. There must be some joy in life, Charles.”

“It’s been dark for two hours.”

“It’s also unattractive to be so literal.” She sighed. “Still, I do need to take George home. Jane, thank you for the glass of sherry, and the biscuits she ate. George, step to, time to go home and go to bed.”

George was standing by Lenox. “Shan’t,” she said.

Around her father—of whom she stood in awe—George was saintly. She was more comfortable around her mother, and correspondingly far more willful, possibly one of the most willful children in London, Lenox sometimes thought. Beside her parents, the rest of her loyalty in life was given over to one of Lenox’s dogs, Bear, whom she worshipped with uncritical adoration. She begged every day to be allowed to visit him. Now she walked over and lay down on top of him. He was a docile dog and didn’t mind, and neither did Lenox or Lady Jane, though these were unorthodox manners in a child. An aristocrat’s child could perhaps make her own rules, to some degree.

Toto frowned at her daughter. “You shall too, or your father will know about it.”

She was holding Bear’s ear with her small fist. “Shan’t and won’t.”

Lady Jane smiled mildly and said, “Charles, tell us about Jenkins while George rests.”

This was a clever stratagem. The child already looked tired, as if Lenox’s arrival had reminded her that it was late, and after only a moment or two of adult conversation she was half-asleep on top of the dog. Lenox lifted her carefully up and carried her out to Toto’s carriage, where Toto waved a silent but cheerful good-bye. Back inside, Sophia’s nurse was taking her up to bed.

“You know how to end a party,” said Jane as they walked back up the steps. “You must have been terribly unpopular as a bachelor.”

Lenox smiled and took her hand as they reentered the house. In the front hall he stopped at the table and looked through the calling cards on the silver rack—left by their visitors for the day, cleared at midnight—and at the stack of post next to it. Nothing very interesting. Jane, next to him, put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his rough cheek.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Just a bit.”

“I’ll have Kirk fetch something. Will you tell me what’s happened about Jenkins?”

What had happened about Jenkins—it was a story that could fill many inches of column space. “I will. Have the evening newspapers arrived?”

“They’re on your desk.”

“I just want to glance at them. I’ll be along to the dining room shortly.”

“Let’s eat in the drawing room, it’s more comfortable. Will roast pheasant do?”

“Handsomely,” he told her, and then went to look at the papers.

A glance was enough to tell him that they had been fortunate for a second straight day—Wakefield’s body had been discovered just too late, probably by half an hour or so, to make the presses. The morning papers, broadsheets and rags alike, would be full of the matter, of course—the death of one of the highest peers in the land—but the papers of this evening contained only news of Jenkins.

When Dallington and Lenox had uncovered Wakefield’s body aboard the Gunner, the whole apparatus of Scotland Yard had churned once again into motion. First there was the constable who patrolled the dockyards (Helmer made himself scarce, perhaps wishing to avoid the nuisance of any questions about his semilegal brothel), and soon a fleet of his kind followed. After only fifteen or twenty minutes Nicholson had arrived.

“Is it true it’s Lord Wakefield?” he’d said. “That’s what I was told.”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Heavens. This will mean a great deal of attention.”

“I should imagine,” said Lenox. “We would like to consult upon this murder, too, if you don’t mind.”

“Mind! I’ll pay both of you, but for pity’s sake, help me, help me.”

Nicholson smiled faintly as he said this, looking gray and washed-away, as if he had barely slept, and Lenox was reminded how much he had enjoyed working with the inspector that winter, before the opening of the agency. He was refreshingly without pridefulness, but sharp, too, and competent.

“The three of us together will crack it,” said Lenox. “At any rate let us hope this is the end of the deaths.”

“One a day might be reckoned too many by some, yes,” said Nicholson, shaking his head.

Lenox had sent for McConnell. The Yard’s medical examiner hadn’t been long in arriving, but he was a harassed and overworked fellow, and would admit himself that he didn’t have the training McConnell did. The body showed no obvious signs of violence, which was odd.

“Poisoning, do you think?” asked Lenox as a swarm of constables lifted the trunk up to the topdeck.

“I don’t think it was natural causes,” answered Dallington, staring behind them with his hands in his pockets.

“The salt to preserve his body, I suppose. The voyage to India is long and hot.”

Dallington nodded. “Enough so that I doubt the salt would have done the job.”

Lenox had shrugged. “It would have kept the smell down long enough that the ship was unlikely to turn back to London. Forty miles would have been enough, from what I’m guessing of the economic interests of the ship. Perhaps four.”

“True.”

“And very likely when they discovered the body, in two or three weeks, they would have buried it overboard. Sailors are madly superstitious about a dead body on board. They’re a breed of people that can find an omen in every seahawk, of course. A corpse is almost too ominous to conceive for them.”

“Then the body would have been gone, with a cannonball at its feet, to the bottom of the ocean,” said Dallington, “and no evidence that it was Wakefield at all. We might still have been chasing him, thinking he had absconded in the middle of the night after killing Jenkins.”

“Yes,” said Lenox. “Word to the Continent, police officers everywhere looking for him, hundreds and thousands of hours wasted. Now only one thing remains to be discovered.”

“What’s that?”

“Who paid to ship him to India?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Helmer hadn’t been able to tell them the answer to this question.

They went almost straightaway to his little stall, which was now, predictably, empty, the women who had occupied it before evidently not caring to make the acquaintance of the members of the Metropolitan Police force. Helmer, perhaps aware of his uneasy position, was now eager to help, though the prospect of a payout had gone. To Lenox’s surprise, he kept excellent records. Unfortunately even his precise ledger didn’t tell him who had let storage space AFT119.

“That’s one of the captain’s spaces,” he said.

“The captain rented it?” asked Dallington.

“No, no. It only means that it’s a standing order—that the same person ships out in that space every time the Gunner goes to India. We call those the captain’s spaces, always have. See, look here. I have a list of spaces available for the next run right here.” There was a little diagram of the ship’s hold. “The squares that are cross-hatched are the ones I’ve rented. The ones that are blacked out altogether—those are the Gunner’s standing orders, the captain’s spaces. Four dozen, say. One of them belongs to Admiral Benson, I happen to know, because I stow it up for him.”

“What does he ship?”

“Scotch whisky, crates of the stuff. Don’t know if he’s selling it or drinking it.”

“I’m sure he would appreciate your discretion,” said Dallington.

Helmer looked indignant. “Which you’re the police, ain’t you?”

Lenox didn’t answer the question, since it put him rather in a false position. “Who stows up the spaces if not you?”

“The owners.”

Dallington and Lenox exchanged looks. “We’d better ask Captain Dyer, then,” said Lenox.

“I think it’s a capital idea,” said Helmer. He was at constant pains to prove he had nothing to hide, was even willing to let them take his ledger away with them, as long as he could make a copy first. Who knew where the ledgers for his secondary, less salutary business were kept. One problem at a time. “Though he’ll be wanting to set sail. The Gunner’s nothing without she’s on schedule.”

Lenox and Dallington went back out from Helmer’s stall into the open air of the docklands. Dyer was standing on the forecastle of his ship, arms crossed, observing the constables on their business. He looked out of countenance. This was a severe disruption to his plans, of course. Lenox knew from his time on the Lucy that the forecastle was the preserve of the common sailor, but the quarterdeck of the Gunner, which the officers alone were permitted to use, was at the moment dominated by the trunk with Wakefield’s body. Its lid was open, the ivory relief of the corpse just visible above its edge.

They crossed the gangway and went to him. “You’ve brought me a pretty peck of trouble, gentlemen,” he said, smiling grimly. “Though I’m glad the responsibility is out of my hands before we ship.”

“Captain Dyer, I understand that the hold space with the trunk in it, 119 aft, is a captain’s space? Held by the same person for all of your trips.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Who?” asked Lenox.

Dyer looked surprised. “Why, Wakefield!”

Dallington and Lenox glanced at each other. “You mean to say that Wakefield let that space from you?” asked Lenox.

“From the ship’s owner, yes.”

“Is that you?”

“I wish it were. No, the Gunner belongs to the Asiatic Limited Corporation. They have nineteen ships in all.”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Dallington.

“How long has Lord Wakefield had that space?” asked Lenox.

“Six or seven voyages, so it must be a couple of years,” said Dyer. “He once or twice came aboard the ship himself to stow his cargo.”

“What did he ship?”

“I never would have presumed to ask him.”

“You didn’t feel obliged to check the contents of the trunk?” asked Dallington. “For the sake of the ship’s safety? What if it had been … I don’t know, explosives?”

Dyer looked at him oddly. “The thought never occurred to me. Anyway, I imagine he usually sent liquor, European liquor. Nine-tenths of our hold is filled with it, either for sale or use.”

“Aren’t the men tempted to steal it?” asked Lenox.

“I know the drunkenness of the our navy is a national joke, but I have a crew I can trust—a crack crew. I turn hands away. They’d drop any man who tried overboard before I could do it myself. We share out the earnings, you see. All of us are here for the money. Anything that gets in the way of it is a nuisance. Like this, for instance, with all respect to the lord.”

“The trunk came aboard this morning?” asked Lenox.

“Yes,” said Dyer.

“At what time?”

“I wasn’t here.” He spotted a passing officer. “Lieutenant Lawton, what time did AFT119 come aboard this morning?”

Lawton thought for a moment. “Fairly early, not after eight o’clock.”

“I take it Wakefield didn’t bring aboard the trunk himself,” said Lenox.

“No,” said Dyer dryly.

“Who did?”

“Lieutenant, who brought the trunk aboard?”

“Two dockhands, sir.”

“Did you know them?”

“Not by sight, sir. The usual sort.”

“There are a thousand stevedores on these docks,” said Dyer, turning back to Lenox and Dallington. “Any of them would have brought the trunk on board for a few coins. They had the correct tickets?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lawton. “We always check twice, as you know, Captain.”

How had Jenkins come by Wakefield’s claim ticket, Lenox wondered? And had he known what it was? Of course, it might have been a ticket from a past voyage, too.

“Who took the contents of Wakefield’s hold from you in Calcutta?” asked Lenox.

Dyer shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea. We’re often many leagues homeward by the time anyone collects what we’ve left, of course.”

Dallington frowned. “What do you mean? Don’t they have to come on the ship and gather their things?”

“In the Asiatic warehouse at Calcutta there’s a room the exact dimensions of our hold, and with all the same markings, too. The men simply transfer every box’s contents into its replica, and we set sail. India is a slow-moving country. They have several months—until we’re back again, in fact—before their things must be out.”

“But who would have been permitted to take away the contents of Wakefield’s box?” asked Lenox, puzzled.

“He would have had an arrangement with one of the local companies, almost certainly. The Asiatic office can likely tell you. I’d be happy to give you their address.” His eyes scanned the decks of the ship critically. “Perhaps it might persuade the Yard to let our ship leave port sooner.”

Lenox made a note on his pad to consult with them. It was slightly maddening, this whole thing—they knew more than they could have hoped when they came to the docks and also less. Was Wakefield still a suspect in Jenkins’s murder? Or had the same person killed both men? It was critical in cases like this, Lenox had learned, not to let the second murder seem more important than the first.

After they had finished speaking to Dyer and getting descriptions from Lieutenant Lawton of the two stevedores who had brought the trunk on board—which were singularly unhelpful, since nearly every man on the dock wore the same navy or black woolen jersey, and most were also “dark-haired, I think”—Dallington and Lenox went back down to the docks, where Nicholson was ordering people about.

“Are you going to hold the Gunner in London?” asked Dallington.

“For a day or two at least. This is a disaster, you know. Parliament will scream bloody murder. They don’t think the Yard monitors the shipyards well enough as it is.”

Dallington looked around at the dozens of ships nearby. “It would take more men than are in London to monitor every hold of every ship.”

“You and I know that,” said Nicholson. “This Wakefield—you know he owned a house on the street where Jenkins died?”

Lenox nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you suspect him?”

Lenox decided that it was time to tell Nicholson what he knew, and he relayed it now: Charity Boyd, what Dyer had just told them, the mystery of Jenkins holding Wakefield’s claim ticket. “I think they must be linked,” he said.

“Certainly it would seem so,” said Nicholson. He didn’t look pleased to be hearing of Lenox’s suspicions a day late. “What now?”

“I think before the city gets hold of the news, Dallington and I had better go speak to the people at Wakefield’s house. Will you come with us?”

Nicholson looked around. “Yes, why not,” he said.

“Please tell whomever you leave in charge that McConnell is coming shortly. He can tell us at any rate how Wakefield died, if not why.”