Текст книги "The Laws of Murder"

Автор книги: Charles Finch

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For the rest of that afternoon, as Lenox and Dallington continued their search for Wakefield’s friend and compatriot Francis (or was it Hartley?), this was the subject they discussed: the missing papers, a mystery that was easy to overlook because it was bookended by two murders. Were they merely hidden somewhere by the inspector, who had evidently been in a mood to take precautions? Or had they been stolen? If they had, was it from Jenkins’s office or from his person? In fact, was it possible that he had been murdered for the papers?

“They might have contained the information that would send Wakefield to prison,” said Dallington. “Or to trial, at any rate.”

“I’m not sure,” said Lenox. “We’ll have to see what McConnell says.”

“About what?”

“Wakefield’s body. I’ll be very curious to learn how long he’s been dead. Whether, for instance, he was dead at seven o’clock last night, when Jenkins was shot—or whether he might have killed Jenkins himself and then been murdered.”

Dallington considered this. “A marquess,” he said. “I cannot imagine he would commit such a crime himself, and so close to his own house.”

“He would if he were desperate,” said Lenox.

Dallington nodded. “Yes. If he were desperate. Which he might have been, after all.”

“Who do you think killed these two men?” asked Lenox.

Dallington smiled. “It was you who taught me the principle of parsimony, Lenox, I believe six or seven years ago now. That the simplest path between events is the most likely.”

“And what is the simplest path between these events?”

“I think it was this Francis fellow, whoever in damnation he might be. That’s why I wish we could find him.”

Unfortunately the afternoon saw this wish go unmet. The two men checked in at the Cardplayers Club in Old Burlington Street, where several exceedingly drunk young men in the front hallways were boasting to each other about old darts victories, but there was no member called Francis or Hartley there. (The porter knew Dallington by sight, though he wasn’t a member.) After that they checked several of the clubs along Pall Mall. They weren’t quite sure how else to proceed. Who’s Who had nothing to offer them, but all that really told them was that Francis wasn’t a Member of Parliament or a bishop, neither of which scenarios had ever seemed particularly likely. It would be a boon to detectives all across England if Who’s Who began to expand its scope, as rumor had it doing. There was also no Francis or Hartley who was contemporary with Wakefield at school or at university, according to a quick scan of the old directories at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. The business directories of London contained several men named Francis, but none of them were under the age of fifty.

At six, thoroughly frustrated, Lenox and Dallington split apart. Dallington was going to continue the search; Lenox wanted to speak to McConnell. They were due to meet Nicholson at eleven thirty at York’s Gate but wanted to talk over their evening’s work first, and so they agreed to meet again at eleven o’clock at Mitchell’s. This was a restaurant near Regent’s Park, which Lady Jane was fond of saying served the worst food in London. Still, it was handy, staying open until midnight to accommodate the post-theater crowd.

Lenox ran McConnell to ground at the enormous house where he and Toto lived in Grosvenor Square. He was red-eyed, as if he had been squinting, and his tie was off. He answered the door himself.

“I thought it might be you,” he said. “Come in. I’ve been working on Wakefield since you sent word for me.”

“You can’t have his body here?”

McConnell led Lenox up the fine light-filled front staircase, in the direction of his lab. “No, no. I went and consulted on the autopsy. The Yard isn’t usually so rapid with its autopsies, but this time they brought in Dr. Sarver—from Harley Street, you know, very eminent fellow—and it was done in a proper operating theater. They were kind enough to give me some of the stomach tissue.”

“A profound kindness indeed,” said Lenox, though the wryness in his voice was lost on the doctor, who merely agreed. When he was working his absorption was such that he sometimes lost his sense of humor. “Did they decide what killed him?”

“It was certainly poisoning. We all concurred upon that point. After that it is less clear, though I have a theory of which I feel pretty confident.”

“What is it?”

“Come in, and I’ll tell you.”

McConnell conducted his scientific studies in a beautiful two-story library on the east side of the house. Toward the far end of the lower story were several long and wide tables full of faultlessly organized bottles of chemicals, alkalis, acids, rare poisons, the dried leaves of exotic plants. The middle of the room was dominated by a set of armchairs, which were always scattered, when McConnell was working, with leather volumes randomly pulled down from the bookcases.

These bookcases were in the gallery on the second level, which contained row upon row of scientific texts. One reached them by a very narrow winding staircase made of marble, with cherubim cut into its sides.

McConnell’s career had been proof, in its way, of the limits of money. It was Toto’s family’s enormous fortune that had allowed him to stock this laboratory, this library, but for all the years he’d had it, the pleasure he got from his work there had never equaled the pleasure he derived from his work as a practicing physician. This had been his vocation before his marriage, but her family had been too great to welcome a doctor into its midst and had been adamant that he give up his position. In the decade between that forfeiture of his career and the last year, when he had started working at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, McConnell had never seemed quite himself—no matter the luxury of his laboratory. It gave Lenox a sense of relief to know that his friend, who was inclined to drink in low times, was once again content; as for Toto’s family, McConnell now quite sensibly ignored their protests. Toto herself was a willful person but more significantly a loving one. She had come to accept the new job for what it was: the best of outcomes for her husband’s happiness.

McConnell led Lenox to the tables, where a glass bowl was full of a dark red liquid. “This is wine,” he said.

“While you’re working?” asked Lenox.

McConnell smiled. “When I boarded the Gunner and saw that there were no markings on Wakefield’s body, no wounds, the first thing I looked at was—”

“His hands,” said Lenox, who had known the doctor’s methods for a long time.

“A good guess, but no—his gums. They can often tell us something about a poisoning. As they did this time, though not in the way I had expected. On both his upper and lower gums, very near the teeth, there were thin, steel gray lines. It was a textbook example of the Burton line.”

“What is the Burton line? What poison does it mean?”

“That’s what’s so interesting—I would never have expected to find the Burton line on the gums of an aristocrat. It indicates an exposure to lead.”

Lenox frowned. Lead. “Is that so unlikely?”

“Yes, it is. He was not a painter—they will go on using lead in their paints, no matter how they are warned—and he was not a metalworker. Fortunately they gave me this tissue sample.”

“What did you find?”

“Something called litharge of gold. It’s very definite confirmation that Lord Wakefield ingested lead. And I would be surprised if it hadn’t caused his death.”

“Why would he have ingested lead? Doesn’t it taste awful?”

“I told you before that lead poisoning is no longer very common. It is nevertheless famous enough that I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The reason is that for twenty centuries or so, since the Romans began the practice, human beings, idiots that we are, adulterated our wine with lead. More specifically, with this litharge of gold, which is in fact not gold but a brickred color. It sweetens sour wine and makes the flavor of it more even, or at least that’s the conventional belief. Unfortunately it also kills you. Though I should say that first it drives you insane. Nearly every mad Roman emperor was probably suffering in some measure from lead poisoning. It’s only been in the last seventy years or so that we’ve persuaded people to stop using lead in their wine and port. The benefit to the public health has been dramatic, genuinely significant.”

“So he was poisoned by wine?”

“I believe so, based on his stomach tissue. And for the first time in two millennia you can feel fairly sure that it can’t have been accidental.”

“Wouldn’t it have tasted bitter, this wine, if it were full enough of lead to kill him just like that?” asked Lenox.

“Ah, I should have been more clear. The line I described on Wakefield’s gums doesn’t indicate simply that he was exposed to lead. It indicates that he’s suffered from chronic exposure to lead. I believe someone had been poisoning him slowly for many weeks, perhaps even for months.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was following this illuminating discussion with McConnell that Lenox finally returned to Hampden Lane after his long day, to find Lady Jane and Toto together with their daughters. When Toto had gone he ate a quick bite and then sat in his study, thinking. Lady Jane stayed with him there to keep him company, reading next to the fire at the end of the room, occasionally closing her eyes to drowse. Lenox, for his part, was wide awake. His mind was working, working. Eventually he pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and began to write up his notes from his day’s activity.

A slow, methodical poisoning—it stood in stark contrast to the brutal and instantaneous method of Jenkins’s murder. Lenox wondered what Wakefield’s habits of drinking had been. According to his butler he had generally eaten lunch at the Beargarden and supper at the Cardplayers. It would be necessary to inquire there about his drinking habits—indeed, they might even have his bills, showing what he drank and when. Lenox jotted down a word to remind himself to check this.

“Why would the lead have suddenly killed him just now, so soon after Jenkins’s death?” Lenox had asked McConnell in the laboratory. “I mean to say, if the poisoning had gone on for weeks, mightn’t he have died at any moment?”

McConnell shook his head. “By the time he died, he would have been inured to the taste of the lead in his wine, I expect, and whoever was poisoning him could have increased the dosage enough to kill him outright. His body would have been so toxic at that stage that any little extra amount would have pushed him over the edge.”

“A brilliant method if you have the time,” said Lenox. “I’m surprised I’ve never come across it. An ideal means for a wife to kill a husband, I would have thought.”

Replaying this conversation in his mind, Lenox looked across at his own wife and smiled. “Jane, if you had to kill me, how would you do it?”

Without opening her eyes, she said, “I’d have elephants stomp you. That’s how they do it in India.”

“It seems unnecessarily harsh.”

“You shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.” She opened her eyes and looked across at him pointedly, but couldn’t keep a straight face, and laughed. “I could never kill you. What on earth do you mean by asking, Charles?”

“If I weren’t me and you weren’t you, I suppose I mean.”

“Thank goodness that’s not the case.”

“But if it were? Would you poison me?”

“I don’t want to think about it. This sort of thing never came up when you were in Parliament.” She looked up at the clock on his mantel. “It’s late, too.”

He stood up from his desk and went across the room to give her a kiss on the forehead. “You ought to go up to bed.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I have to go out again.”

“Do be safe.”

“I will, I will. You have my word.”

She squeezed his hand and stood up from the chair, her copy of Middlemarch under her arm. She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

After Jane had gone to bed Lenox sat at his desk again, ruminating about the case. He felt as if there were too much to do. He mustn’t lose track of Jenkins. That was crucial.

At ten forty, tired, he departed Hampden Lane in the carriage, his horses apparently again in full health. He stopped in front of Mitchell’s, where he saw Dallington just about to enter. “John,” he called from the carriage.

Dallington turned. “Ah, there you are.”

“Let’s go to Wakefield’s instead. I’ll explain on the way what McConnell has told me.”

“Right-o.”

It was too late to expect Wakefield’s servants still to be awake, and the house was mostly dim, so when Lenox rang the bell it was with the expectation that there would be a wait of some time. Instead the door opened almost immediately. Wakefield’s butler, Smith, was still dressed for his job.

He bowed slightly. “Your Lordship, Mr. Lenox, how do you do. Can I help you?”

“We had a few more questions we wanted to ask you, and perhaps the other servants.”

“By all means, sir—though I should say at the moment Lord Wakefield’s cousin is here, Mr. Theodore Murray. I have been attending to him.”

“What is he doing here?”

“I am given to understand that he is arranging Lord Wakefield’s business matters,” said Smith quietly. They were standing in the front hallway. “In preparation for the new Lord Wakefield’s arrival tomorrow—my employer’s son. He has been informed of his father’s death and is coming to London by an early train.”

This was the Earl of Calder, at Cambridge, Lenox recalled. “We needn’t come all the way in,” said Lenox. “We are primarily curious about His Lordship’s daily habits, and you might just answer our questions about those.”

“His daily habits, sir?”

“His meals, for instance. You mentioned that he often ate out.”

“Not breakfast, sir.”

“He ate breakfast here every morning?”

“Yes, sir, in his rooms. He took two pots of tea and four eggs, poached on toast. It was a very regular thing with him, sir.”

“And his lunch? His supper?”

“I don’t think His Lordship ate either meal here more than a dozen times in the year I’ve been working for him, sir. He was very constant at the Beargarden and the Cardplayers.”

“Did he return home in between? Did he have a glass of wine before he went out?”

“He sometimes returned home between lunch and supper, sometimes not, sir. As for a glass of wine—no, his preference before supper was for ale. We always keep a great supply of it from Hatting Hall, where they make it themselves. It’s very strong.”

“Do you know if he drank wine at supper, at his club?” asked Lenox.

“I couldn’t say, sir. He didn’t generally drink wine, though I know that he was fond of port, Lord Wakefield. He had it by the case from Berry Brothers. He kept it in his rooms.”

Lenox looked at Dallington. Port—that could be it. “Could we see the bottles of port he drank?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to fetch it, or would you like to come up to his rooms for yourselves?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather we went up.”

Wakefield’s rooms were tidy and as impersonal as the rest of the house, with the exception of his desk, which was covered with loose snuff, chits of paper, all manner of debris. Smith, observing them take in the state of the desk, said, “We were under orders not to disturb it.”

“Did Nicholson and his men look through the desk?” asked Dallington.

“Oh, yes, sir, very thoroughly.”

Near the fireplace in the second of the two rooms Wakefield used for himself was a stand of liquor, and there on top of it was a bottle of ruby port. Lenox opened it and sniffed it. “Could I take this?” he asked.

Smith looked doubtful. “Perhaps if you could ask Mr. Murray?” he said. “Only I know that port is very expensive, sometimes, sir.”

Lenox had a small glass phial in his valise. “Here’s a bargain for you—I’ll take a thimbleful and leave the bottle.”

“Oh, in that case—yes, that should be fine, sir.” As Lenox shook the bottle hard (McConnell had told him the litharge of gold might sift down to the bottom) and then took his sample, Smith went on, saying, “You can see, under here, sirs, where he kept the rest of the case.”

He opened the cabinet to reveal a wooden crate with an open top, which must have held six bottles once. Now it held two. Dallington pulled it out and inspected it. “It’s stamped with Berry Brothers’ seal on the side, right here,” he said.

Lenox closed the phial, put it in his valise, and took the crate from Dallington. He held it under the lamp to look more closely. “Look,” he said to Dallington, “an invoice.”

Glued to the underside of the box was a sheet of paper. Lenox pulled it off and read it. His eyes widened, and he looked at Dallington. “What?” asked the young lord.

“Look at the order.”

Dallington took the sheet of paper. After a moment his eyes, too, widened. “We need to take this as well,” he said to Smith.

“As you please, sir,” said the butler. “It was only that I didn’t want anything that the heirs … that might be of value.”

Not much later Dallington and Lenox walked out along the street, passing the convent as they strolled toward Regent’s Park. It was not quite eleven thirty. “I’m disappointed in Nicholson and his men that they missed the invoice,” Lenox said.

“It was glued to the underside of the box, in fairness.”

Soon they met the inspector at the gate, where he was waiting, and together they took up their chilly post. They stayed until twelve thirty, but there was never any sign of Francis.

Softening the disappointment of this, however, was that invoice, which they showed Nicholson before they went their separate ways—for it gave the address of the person who had bought the potentially fatal port that Lord Wakefield had spent his last weeks of life drinking: one Andrew H. Francis, of Mornington Crescent.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning at the offices of Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire, the four principals of the agency gathered for their weekly meeting. Though they had been awake late, Lenox and Dallington were the first two to arrive, as if in accidental obeisance to the order of their names upon the brass plate outside the office’s door. They sat and were halfway through a cup of tea by the time Polly and LeMaire entered the room, each with a polite hello.

It was the loveliest day yet of 1876—the sweet o’ the year, as Shakespeare had called this time in April. The sun shone a mild gold through the lightly shifting trees, and the streets below, still wet from a cleaning, sparkled brightly. The mood of the city on mornings like this one was somehow brotherly, amiable, ineffably unified. Through the windows of their second-story offices it was possible to see the small conversations that took place on every city street—the cabman calling down a joke to the fruit seller, the banter between a nurse pushing a pram and a constable swinging his whistle. Sometimes Lenox loved London very much indeed.

Polly seemed tired. Anixter was speaking to Pointilleux in the next room, loudly enough to be overheard, and as she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Mrs. O’Neill had made she looked testily toward the door. Lenox watched concern fall across Dallington’s face.

LeMaire, meanwhile, had a large sheaf of papers. He set these down on the table in front of himself.

“New business first, then?” said Dallington, when Polly sat down. “Charles has a case that we’re working on together, as you both know. Polly, I hope you’ve been able to manage without me?”

“Somehow,” she said, though she smiled to reduce the bite in this reply.

“I have a piece of firm business first, if you would not mind,” said LeMaire.

“You do?” asked Dallington. “What about the order of the meeting?”

It was usually LeMaire who was most conscientious about sticking to the schedule by which these meetings always ran. “My patience is not long at the moment,” said LeMaire. From his sheaf of papers he pulled a newspaper. “I wonder if you have seen the Telegraph this morning.”

“No,” said Dallington.

From her eyes, Lenox could tell that Polly had. It wasn’t fatigue in her eyes, it was worry. He hadn’t—he’d woken late and quickly absorbed the main headlines of the Times on the way here, but the other papers were arranged in a neat half-moon on his desk, awaiting him. “We are mentioned,” said LeMaire. “Not as favorably as might be wished.”

Lenox’s heart fell. LeMaire had slid the paper across the table in the general direction of the other three, and Lenox took it.

Former MP Takes Hand in Jenkins Investigation

Hon. Charles Lenox making personal search for murderer

Interference feared detrimental to inquiry

Quickly he ran his eyes over the text of the article. One paragraph stung particularly:

Ironically, it was Jenkins himself who warned the Telegraph, in an on-the-record interview shortly before his death, that “London criminals have more than enough to fear from Scotland Yard already, and London citizens more than enough protection. The firm is a reckless venture.”

It was a new quote, one that hadn’t appeared in the previous article. Lenox passed over it as best he could and finished reading. “There is no mention at all that I’m a member of a firm,” he said when he was done. “Nor that our services have been retained by the Yard.”

“That’s not fair,” said Dallington.

LeMaire’s eyes widened slightly, as if Dallington’s incredulity at this unfairness did him no very great credit. “Did you expect it would be?” he asked.

Dallington took the paper and looked at it for fifteen or twenty seconds, then offered it to Polly. She declined it. “There’s no mention of all of Charles’s past successes,” said the young lord. “Nor ours, for that matter. We must write a letter.”

LeMaire sighed heavily. “If the three of you choose to write a letter, of course you must.”

Now, for the first time, Polly looked alert. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh!” said Lenox. She had gotten there more rapidly than he had. “LeMaire, surely not.”

Dallington looked up and down the table. “What?”

LeMaire nodded, his face set with forbidding determination. “I must leave the firm at the end of April,” he said. “That will give me time to conclude my open business here. I will pay my quarter of the rent through the end of May, which should be ample time to let this space and find a new one, should the three of you wish to move into smaller premises, but I must ask that my name be taken off the firm’s letterhead at the end of the month.”

“This is hasty,” said Lenox. “It’s only been three months. All businesses struggle at the start.”

LeMaire shook his head. “I have very great respect for all three of you, but I do not believe the business is viable. The idea was good—but, if I may speak frankly, three cannot support four, and when, in addition, the fourth brings only negative attention to the firm … no, it is not sustainable, Mr. Lenox, I am sorry. I have the greatest respect for your achievements of the past, as I say.”

There was silence in the room. LeMaire lifted his cup of tea and took a sip from it, meeting their gazes levelly, awaiting their replies.

It was Dallington who spoke first. He stood up. “Good riddance, then,” he said. “Best of luck, and all that, of course. For my part, I think we’ll be better off without you.”

“Since I account for thirty-eight percent of the firm’s receipts I cannot agree,” said LeMaire. “Mrs. Buchanan accounts for twenty-nine percent. You for twenty-two percent, Lord John. Nearly a quarter, I will grant you.”

LeMaire had the politeness to stop there, but nobody needed to do the math for Lenox. Eleven percent, and that included the cases that somehow Lady Jane had arranged for him. He felt his face get red. What a mistake it was to have left Parliament. He wished the earth would open up and swallow him.

“I really do think we just need a little bit more time,” said Polly now. “And I think the first thing we need to do, by hook or by crook, is to arrange some kind of favorable press. I don’t care if we have to pay someone for it.”

“I cannot see it helping, unfortunately,” said LeMaire.

Polly persisted. “Why not agree to reconvene this meeting in two months’ time, at the start of June? If you feel as you did, you can leave with immediate effect, and with no hard feelings.”

“With immediate effect, anyway,” said Dallington shortly.

“I really do think things will look up,” said Polly, ignoring Dallington and focusing on LeMaire.

LeMaire opened the door and called out something in brisk French. After a moment his nephew came in. LeMaire invited him into the room and closed the door behind him. “Pointilleux, what are they saying about us, the people in our profession that you’ve met in London since you came to live with me? My nephew attends a great many professional luncheons, you see, as part of his training.”

Pointilleux thought for a moment, raising his eyes, and kept them there as he said, in his methodical way, “They say the firm is run very bad. They say the firm is four chickens without even one head. They say it is all some jokes, they say it is … I don’t search the word in my brain … incompetentente.”

“‘Incompetent’ is the word in English,” said Lenox.

“Incompetent,” Pointilleux repeated brightly, pleased to have learned something new.

LeMaire raised his hands, as if his case were made, and then stood. “I will speak with Mrs. Buchanan about the financial arrangements of my departure, since she has the business head among the remaining partners—no offense to either of you, rather take it as a compliment, please, Mrs. Buchanan. Otherwise, I hope when we meet it will be as friends, despite this unpleasant conclusion to our professional association. Do any of you wish to ask me anything?”

There was silence, and after a beat the Frenchman bowed and left the room. None of the three remaining partners looked at each other.

There was still one surprise left in the meeting, however. Pointilleux, who had been sitting in a chair near the door, placed some feet back from the table where the principals always sat, rose. “For my part, I would like to stay,” he said. “I have observe you all very closely, and though I respect my uncle, I think the firm will be nevertheless a”—here he groped for the correct phrase in his brain, and apparently found one from the West End stage posters he must have seen—“a marvelous hit for the ages.”

Now they did exchange glances, and then Dallington said, speaking for all of them, “We’d love to have you, of course.”

Pointilleux smiled and said, “Excellent,” then left the room.