A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 8

Lenox’s stationery was plain white, with his address printed at the top in dark blue. When he woke up the next morning, he took a piece of it from his bedside table, wrote in a quick hand, Prudence Smith could neither read nor write, and put it in an envelope without signing it. On the envelope he printed the name MCCONNELL and then rang a bell to fetch a servant, whom he asked to take the letter to his friend’s house on Bond Street.

That done, he lay back in bed, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the time: seven-thirty He would have to hurry to make breakfast with Barnard.

He thought as he dressed about the shocking moment when Jane’s maid had discredited the suicide note entirely. The idea of murder had clicked from probability to truth. At the same time, he thought, there was a closed household to deal with. Five guests; even more servants. Although there was the open window. And the unused candle, which troubled him. How often were candles changed? He should ask Graham. Or better yet, ask Graham to find out from one of the servants at Barnard’s house.

It was funny, he thought; his first case had revolved around a candle, too. He had been only twenty-two and had gone to visit a family friend, Lady Deborah Marbury, to pay his respects after her son’s violent murder. John Marbury had been discovered shot, slumped over the table at his club, and Deborah had been sure it was his friend Hawkins, whom she thought rather a bad influence.

The details from the paper, mixed with the sorrow of his father’s friend, had rankled Lenox. Slowly he had begun to nibble around the edges of the case, going to the club where it had happened (and where he was a member), asking around a bit about Hawkins. The deeper he went the more perplexing it got. Hawkins appeared to be innocent. For one thing, Hawkins had been facing young John Marbury across the card table, but the wound indicated that the bullet had come from the roof across the street.

He solved the case by looking through the card room at the club, where he found, tucked beneath a curtain, three half-used candles and an only slightly used fourth one. One detail that policemen had found puzzling was that Hawkins had had three candles. He had explained he needed them to read his cards by, but it was a well-lighted room. Then he had added a fourth candle, and almost immediately Marbury had been shot. The fourth candle was the signal. A single candle wouldn’t have done, because the brightness wouldn’t have shown across the street. There had turned out to be gambling debts. If the game had gone the right way, the fourth candle would have stayed underneath the table.

Lenox had anonymously given his findings in a sheath of papers to the police at Scotland Yard. The case had been instantly settled, and since then Lenox had been fascinated by detective work. People reached him only by word of mouth. He was an amateur—and because he worked for free, not needing to do otherwise, he attracted many poor clients. On the other hand, because he was from one of the oldest and most respected families in England, he also attracted the rich and the noble, who expected him to have the discretion of a friend.

What had made him think of all this? The candle.…

At ten minutes before eight, he stepped into his carriage. Graham ran out to catch him and handed him a note that had just arrived. It was from McConnell:

Only one apothecary in London sells bella indigo. Nos. 4 and 9. Penny Farthing Place. Fellow named Jeremiah Jones.

Lenox thought this over and put the note in his pocket, then asked the driver to go.

It was a bright sunny morning, but cold, and the snow still crunched underfoot. He arrived at Barnard’s house a few minutes after the hour and greeted the housekeeper amiably, though he received little reward for it.

In the hallway was a young man, perhaps recently down from university or still there. He had on glasses and wore his hair slightly longer than most men of his age. But he was dressed well, in a blue morning suit with a carnation in the buttonhole, and clearly felt at home in the house.

“How do you do?” said the young man.

“Very well, thank you.”

“I’m Claude. I’m staying here with my uncle, you know.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Claude. I’m Charles Lenox.”

They shook hands.

“It seems impossibly early to me,” said Claude.

“It’s already past eight,” said Lenox.

“I like how you say already, as if eight were a particularly late hour.”

“It’s not early for me, I must say.”

“It damn well is for me.”

“You’re younger.”

“And may it stay forever so. Still, I must see a man about a thing. Good to have met you,” he said, and bounded down the steps to the street.

“You too,” said Lenox, and followed the impatient housekeeper into the breakfast room, adjacent to the formal dining salon. It was a small octagonal room looking out over the back garden, with a circular table at its center, where George Barnard sat with a nearly empty cup of tea at his elbow, studying a pale blue orchid.

“Charles, sit down,” he said, without looking up.

“Thank you,” said Lenox.

“This is a beautiful flower, don’t you think?”

“Indeed I do.”

“I mean to give it to Lord Russell’s wife this evening.”

“Are you dining with the Prime Minister?”

“I am,” Barnard said. He looked up and smiled. “But breaking my fast with no less a friend.”

It was an odd thing to say. Barnard went back to his flower. There was a pot of tea, and Lenox, in the absence of an offer, poured himself a cup.

The window by which they sat overlooked a small garden, full of banks and rows of flowers less fantastically unusual than Barnard’s orchids but beautiful nevertheless, and Lenox stared into it until his host saw fit to speak. The moment came at last, after eggs and bacon had been served and Lenox had eaten a good deal of them.

“I’m getting a new man in here,” Barnard said, to open their conversation.

“Are you?”

“To replace Jenkins.”

Lenox’s heart fell. “Why?” he said.

“Incompetent. Getting a man named Exeter. Jenkins insisted that it was murder. Nonsense, I told him. The girl was probably jilted. Happens all the time.”

“It was murder, George.”

Barnard paused and looked him in the face. “I disagree.”

“Do you feel no responsibility to the girl?”

“I do. But I think your facts are wrong. You’re only an amateur, Charles.”

“That’s true,” Lenox said.

“And Exeter seems to be leaning toward my theory on the matter.”

“Exeter.” Lenox sighed.

“I want the plain facts, Charles, and I don’t think you’ve got them. Due respect. Bringing Toto’s failure of a husband in as a witness. No jury would believe a drunk. And Exeter’s a good man. Jane has no need to worry. Tell her it will be solved. Or, better yet, I’ll stop by.”

“No, I can tell her.”

“As you please.”

Lenox stood up. “All the same, George, you won’t mind if I look into a few of my ideas?”

“Not at all. But in the end, we’ll see what the Yard thinks of it.”

“Of course.”

“Have you had enough to eat?”

Lenox took a last sip of tea. “Delicious, as always,” he said. They drifted out into the main hallway, where he saw a familiar face.

“Mr. Lenox, sir, how do you do?”

“Very well, Inspector Exeter”—for it was the sergeant himself—“though this matter weighs on my mind. We must do our best for her.”

“Aye, well said, Mr. Lenox.”

Barnard said, “You know this man, then?” Lenox nodded. “Look here,” Barnard went on, addressing Exeter, “you’ll figure this out straightaway, won’t you? I’ve no doubt you’re as incompetent as the rest of them.”

“No, sir,” Exeter said. He glanced at Lenox with a sort of uneasiness.

“Sure you are. But on this one you suspend your usual stupidity, all right?”

“Yes, sir. It’s in good hands, sir. You can trust me.” He smiled weakly.

Barnard turned his attention to Lenox. “I hope you’re coming to the ball next week?”

“Of course.” The ball was an annual event at Barnard’s. Of the winter balls it was the best known, and while during the season there would usually be several such affairs on a single night, nobody dared to throw one opposite his.

“Farewell, then,” said Barnard. He looked intently at the flower even as he said it, and Lenox was left with the inspector from Scotland Yard.

Exeter was a large man, with black bushy eyebrows, a matching mustache, and thick pink features. He wore a full uniform wherever he went, and his helmet drooped over his eyes. He swung a blackjack around by its leather hoop seemingly without cessation, excluding the times when he put it to other use, most often when he dealt with what he called the lower orders.

London’s police force was barely thirty-five years old. Sir Robert Peel had organized the first Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, when Lenox was a lad, and as a result the men who joined were called either peelers or, more likely, bobbies. Its powers were new and uncertain, and Exeter represented both the good and the bad in the institution: the better chance of public order, and the risk of the abuse of the power needed to maintain it.

When he entered the force, Exeter had recently retired from the military and had chosen to become a beat man, walking the streets at night and taking the word beat for each of its several meanings. A quick series of retirements and deaths within the Yard had seen him promoted beyond his ability, and hard work had allowed him to rise even higher. He was now one of the half dozen most prominent detectives on the force, and also among the least naturally talented or intuitive of his rank.

There was no point, for Lenox, in trying to tell himself that he did not dislike Exeter. The man was a snob toward those beneath him, and a cloying sycophant to those above, unless they happened to come under his power, when he dropped all pretense of respect and became merciless. And yet, thought Lenox, I don’t envy him, having to deal with a man like Barnard. That beastly talking-down to. He thought guiltily that he was glad he could afford—literally—not to put up with a man like Barnard. If only Exeter had been slightly more intelligent.… But then, he thought, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

The housekeeper brought Lenox his hat and his coat, and as he put them on he said a final word to Exeter.

“If I may give you one piece of information, Inspector—the girl was murdered.”

“That sounds like an opinion to me, Mr. Lenox.”

“It is not, Inspector. Good day.”

And he walked out through the heavy doors, trying to imagine a way in which he could solve Prue Smith’s murder without access to any of the suspects, for he knew he had probably entered the house in a professional capacity for the last time during this case.