A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 17

After an unsatisfying morning, McConnell aside, and an unsatisfying lunch, Lenox made his way not homeward, though in truth he wanted to, but rather to Oxley Crescent, a small neighborhood on the periphery of London. The driver of his carriage, he felt, was beginning to tire of these trips to obscure and occasionally lower-class sections of London and would have preferred to travel solely to Piccadilly Circus and back, but Lenox felt, with some sense of self-righteousness, that the driver’s purposes ranked, at the moment, below his own.

As they drove he read the Daily Telegraph, the Whig paper, and before too long they had arrived at their destination. It was a street of somewhat better repute than that in which he had found Jeremiah Jones, and also of better repute than that to which he had accompanied Claude Barnard that morning, but he could imagine that it might offend his driver’s higher feelings. His driver lived on Hampden Lane.

Lenox, however, thought it a nice quiet street, with small houses spaced close together but not in disrepair, and pleasant little gardens dotted along the sidewalk, and old women sitting on their porches or, in this colder weather, at their front windows.

It was on Oxley Crescent that Skaggs lived, and it was to Skaggs’s abode that Lenox had come, in search of a private investigator. Several cases had passed since he had been here, he thought. He knocked twice on the door of a white house with dark shutters, and after a moment a young girl appeared.

“May I help ye, my lord?” she said.

“I’m Charles Lenox. Are you the lady of the house?”

“No, my lord, I’m the girl.”

“Is Mr. Skaggs at home?”

“Just a moment, my lord.”

The door closed, and a moment later Skaggs himself appeared. He was a man in his late thirties, dressed in a brown suit, with a bald head and a fat face and a long scar across the left side of his neck. He had once been fearsome, and still could be when asked, but in truth he had been tamed by his wife in recent years and had settled down to respectability. He was the private investigator Lenox had been looking for.

“Sorry about the girl, Mr. Lenox.”

“Not at all.”

“We’ve only just hired her.”

“A significant thing to do.”

“The wife was always on about getting someone. We had our third, you see.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Skaggs. A boy or a girl?”

“All girls, Mr. Lenox. A pride and a joy, though.”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“Thank you, sir. Will you come in?”

The two men walked into a small room at the front of the house, with only two chairs and a table in it. This was Skaggs’s place of business. Lenox sat down, and Skaggs asked how he could be of service.

“Do you know of Roderick Potts?” said Lenox.

“Yes, sir. ’E’s often in the papers, sir.”

“That’s the man. I’d like you to follow him, closely enough to hear and see what you can.”

“I can do that, Mr. Lenox.”

“Excellent. Here’s five days’ wages.” He handed over nineteen shillings. “Can you begin right away?”

“Yes,” said Skaggs.

Just at that moment, a woman walked in the door, dressed in a new bonnet and an old frock and carrying an infant.

“Is this the new baby?”

“It is. Sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Lenox, it’ll only be a moment.”

Skaggs began to gesture at his wife to leave, but she paid him no mind.

“This is Emily,” she said, and offered him to Lenox. “I’ve often seen your carriage through the front window, Mr. Lenox, but never to meet. I’m Mrs. Skaggs.”

“You have my sincerest congratulations, Mrs. Skaggs.”

“Thank you, sir. It was an ’ard labor, sir, but all worth it.”

“There can be no doubt of that,” Lenox said, smiling. “But I’m afraid, if you’ll excuse me, that I must take my leave.”

“Always a pleasure to welcome you, Mr. Lenox, sir,” said Mrs. Skaggs. “Can we have the girl get ye anything?” She blushed when she said girl.

“No, thank you, but you have my warmest wishes.” He smiled. Then he turned to the husband, who was looking plaintively at his wife, still hoping she might leave the room. “Skaggs, you’ll begin soon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s staying at George Barnard’s house in Clarges Street.”

“Yes, sir, I know the spot. Straightaway.”

“Good. I’ll expect to hear from you when anything comes to light.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox bowed to Mrs. Skaggs, nodded toward her husband, and left them in a minor quarrel, which began as soon as he closed the door, about the sanctity of his place of business. On his way to the path he handed the girl, who was on the porch and seemingly daunted by her responsibilities, a sixpence. She curtsied and blushed.

Skaggs was a man who could assume either an air of respectability or an air of disrepute, which made him infinitely useful, and he had ways that Lenox did not of squirreling into situations. For a day or two, at any rate, he could ease his mind about Potts.

The other members of the house? Barnard he could never question. But he would try to waylay Soames tomorrow, perhaps at the Parliament—Lenox was to eat again with his brother, who was so rarely in town; they had agreed after yesterday’s lunch—and he felt sure that he could question Soames in a way that didn’t appear to be a questioning.

Duff would be a harder matter.

There were a few hours until he was due to have tea with Lady Jane, and no way to fill them effectively. He had done what he could for the day thus far; at least until Graham explained what he had learned from the servants about Prue Smith.