A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 27

Lenox awoke the next day at half-past seven and devoted the early hours of his morning to quiet thought. He ate again in the armchair in his bedroom, gazing out over St. James’s Park and savoring his final cup of coffee, and again he tried to make out the unlinked clues of the case, which sat before him like so many puzzle pieces—but each seeming to belong to a separate puzzle.

He thought it made sense, after a night of turning it over in his mind, that Exeter had come to him. Exeter knew him to be investigating the case already, Exeter would have difficulty on his own, and Exeter would rather ask him for help than fail before Barnard and the world.

After all, there had been a dozen times before when Exeter had at last consented to take Lenox’s laurels, in exchange for the pleasure Lenox drew from solving the case. However, it had never been so tense as this, and more, it had never been at a time when Lenox had received so much discouragement, though who knew from what quarter it came.

He asked Graham to fetch the book on Peru from the library and read for half an hour, imagining himself on those distant shores with only a compass and a knife; then, at nine-thirty, he put the volume down and changed from his robe into a suit and from his comfortable slippers into his beleaguered boots.

He met Exeter on the corner of Clarges Street promptly half an hour later. The great inspector was less deferential than he had been the previous evening, but then Lenox gathered that there was an invisible army behind them as they walked, waiting for instructions, and Exeter would be loath, above all men, to show weakness in front of subordinates.

They entered Barnard’s house a few moments later. Lenox felt his principles betraying him even as they passed through the doorway, but he steeled his mind with the thought of the unanswered questions that lurked within and made a silent pact with himself that he would no longer worry about whether or not he was wrong to have come. Alas, it was the sort of pact he had trouble keeping. But he was able to muster enough professionalism, amateur though he was, to spend the rest of his time usefully, seeing what he could see rather than quelling his own doubts.

The house was, indeed, empty. The maids had finished their work upstairs, and Miss Harrison was supervising the preparation of the midday meal. And if one of the servants did happen to venture upstairs, not one was willing to stay within sight, much less stop Inspector Exeter in his searches.

“I suppose that the guests have consented to let you search their rooms?” Lenox asked, as they went up the stairs to the third floor.

“No,” said Exeter. “Mr. Barnard gave me a key. Less trouble to everyone that way, he said. He just doesn’t know you’re the one looking, not me.”

“Ah.”

They arrived first at what was plainly Duff’s room, which Exeter confirmed: a well-ordered desk, a spartan wardrobe, and a bureau unburdened by any personal objects other than a medical kit. Curious, that, though there was nothing out of the ordinary in it. No arsenic, for example, though it would have been convenient. Lenox looked into each drawer of the desk and then shuffled quickly through the clothes, briskly checking the pockets of the pants. He scanned the floor, aware of his limited time, and found it bare. Then he left the room, wondering yet again about that puzzling bottle of arsenic.

But he thought better of it once he was in the hallway and, without saying anything to Exeter, he turned on his heel and went back inside. Once in the room, he searched out the four corners and at last found what he was looking for: a wastebas-ket, which had been obscured by the closet door.

“Too bad!” he said, picking it up. “They’ve emptied it already.”

“You would look through a man’s trash?”

“I would.”

Exeter shook his head, while Lenox replaced the basket and headed back toward the door. But the Inspector stopped him and pointed to the floor. Lenox turned and saw that a scrap of paper had fluttered to the ground, resting half in sight beneath the closet door.

“Excellent,” said Lenox, and picked the paper up. He held it so both men could read it together. Its bounty was small, but interesting:

£? JS?

Lenox handed it to his companion and moved quickly into the hallway and on to the next room. It happened to be Soames’s, and while it was considerably less tidy than Duff’s, with all sorts of personal oddments lying about, racing forms and suspense novels, in the end none of them were useful, so he moved, still as quickly as he could, to the next door down the hall.

Here he had arrived at Eustace’s room, and while it, too, yielded unfortunately little, it gave some idea of its inhabitant’s tastes—there were thick, strictly pressed wool clothes hanging in the closet like a battalion in formation, and there were a number of conservative pamphlets, stacked neatly on the desk, next to precisely sharpened pencils and a stack of blue stationery. No paints, which Lenox found strange. The only sign of disorder was a handkerchief, which had been lost beneath the bed and smelled of peppermint and wax.

Claude’s bedroom was as little a surprise as his cousin’s; it had all the disarray of Soames’s room without any of the attempts at tidiness. What clothes there were had been hung neatly by the servants, but evidently he had instructed them not to touch his bureau or his desk, for both surfaces were covered with half-empty wineglasses, small tokens and coins, variously used candles, discarded pieces of cloth, and scraps of paper—most of which turned out to involve gambling debts, either owed by or owing to him but predominantly the former. Either he had collected much of the outstanding money he had won or he was a poor player indeed.

Potts’s room came last, and when he entered it Lenox felt his deepest pang of shame. Here was a man he barely knew, who was seen by nobody, whom Lenox in all probability would never meet at a party, for Potts wouldn’t be invited, but who might have been anything at all, even nice and kind, at any rate quite undeserving of this invasion.

And then, the room, he thought briefly, was touching in a way. Potts had declined the help of the maids in some matters, Lenox could see, because he had obviously folded his own clothes, and taken great pains, as well, though his work was filled with imperfections. His bed had been made by a professional hand, but the wood by the fire had clearly been stacked by Potts, being different from the woodpiles in every other room—stacked diagonally in the up-country fashion that helped prevent house fires.

But Lenox, in keeping with his pact, pushed all of this out of his mind and tried to push out of his mind even that he was favorably disposed, by the nature of the room, to the self-made man who resided in it.

He looked swiftly over the desk and the bureau, finding only the small things Lenox himself might have had, a cameo of what looked like his daughter and a tinderbox, and then checked through the clothes and to see if the wastebasket had been emptied, which it had. He then scanned the floors but found nothing there.

As a last check, he looked, with trepidation, in a small valise by Potts’s armchair. Inside it were a few documents relating to Potts’s business and a silver pendant, which might have been, Lenox thought, for his daughter.

And then, feeling in the pouch on the side of the valise, Lenox’s heart fell. His hand had grasped a small bottle, stoppered with rubber, of the kind in which he knew poison was kept. He pulled it out. It wasn’t identical to the bottle that had been in Prue Smith’s room, but there was no need for it to be. That had been arsenic, not the poison that mattered.

“What is it?” asked Exeter.

“I’m not sure.”

“Better take it.”

The man’s stupidity was astonishing. “I think we might leave it here,” said Lenox.

Exeter shrugged. “Very well. He wouldn’t miss it, though.”

“He wouldn’t miss it if it weren’t important. If it were, he would miss it immediately.”

“Something in that.”

Exeter, at least in private, did not hold on to his public stubbornness and spoke agreeably when a better idea than his came along—which must have happened to him, Lenox reflected, a substantial amount of the time.

He removed from his pocket a small kit that McConnell had given him, which was comprised of a cotton ball, a small glass jar, and a pair of tweezers. He took the stopper out of Potts’s bottle, dipped the cotton in it, using the tweezers, then tucked the sample safely into the glass jar, screwed on the top, and dropped it into his pocket.

“Should we arrest Potts?” asked Exeter.

“No,” said Lenox, who was very nearly at the end of his rope. He was hungry as well.

“You’d better give me what you just took, at any rate.”

Lenox turned to him. “I shall have the results forwarded to you instantly—but I shall have it analyzed by a man who is superior to your men at the Yard and does quicker work.”

Exeter looked affronted. “What’s wrong with the men at the Yard?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Lenox. “Do you trust me?”

Exeter merely looked at him, with pursed lips.

“I assure you that doing it this way will yield faster results—within two days, you know. That may mean solving the case faster. Nobody will know that I aided your efforts.”

This had the intended palliative effect, and Exeter nodded, though still without speaking.

“Now how much time have I got?” Lenox asked, placing the bottle of liquid back in the valise and carefully setting everything as it had been.

“Five minutes,” said Exeter.

“Is that all?”

“No longer, I’m afraid.”

“Then show me the staircase to the next floor, please.”

“The next floor?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“There’s nothing there, Mr. Lenox, but flowers, like.”

“The greenhouse is above us?”

“Right,” said Exeter. “No use there.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll take a quick glance.”

The Inspector shook his head expansively, as if to say how little he thought of quick glances, but nevertheless led Lenox to an undersized stairwell at the end of the hall.

“I’ll stay down here. We have enough flowers in our garden.” Exeter chuckled.

“As you wish,” said Lenox, thankful for a moment alone.

The stairway turned at a right angle halfway up, and soon Lenox had lost sight of Exeter. At the top of the steps was, indeed, the door to the greenhouse, but just to its side was another door. A large man stood in front of it, wearing a gray suit but with the air of a bobby.

“May I open that door and look in?” Lenox asked.

“No,” said the man.

“On police business?”

“No.”

“Are you with Exeter?”

“No.”

Lenox thought for a moment, considering which tack he could take.

“Look—are you married?” he said.

“Yes.”

“There was a girl murdered here—barely twenty-four—I’m only trying to figure out who did it.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“I already know what’s in the room.”

“I doubt that, sir.”

Lenox pulled a shilling out of his pocket and held it in the air. “My brother is in Parliament.”

The man looked slightly impressed but still shook his head, no.

“Please?” said Lenox. “You’ll watch the whole time.”

The man said nothing.

“Her name was Prue.”

“I thought you knew what was in the room. Why do you want to see it?”

“There may be a clue—something vital—that nobody else would see.”

The man looked down at him steadily for fifteen seconds and then said, “Oh, all right, but you only have a moment. The guard changes over rather soon.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said Lenox.

He opened the door partway. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t what he saw—tightly bound packing crates without any visible markings. The room was large but empty, other than the packing crates. The only door was the one Lenox had opened, although, at the very edge, half of a skylight, where the greenhouse ended, peered into the corner—but it was dusted over, and tiny, at any rate.

He looked around quickly. There was nothing to see; the large man had been right.

“Mr. Lenox!” boomed Exeter’s voice up the stairs.

He looked around again, disheartened. He had felt with such conviction that this room bore some relation to the case but, if it did, it revealed none of its secrets to him.

Something—he didn’t know what—made him glance up, and immediately his dejection ended—for he saw, pushing the dust away from the skylight, a hand. Acting as quickly and as quietly as he could, Lenox drew the door nearly shut, leaving himself a sliver of a viewpoint. The hand continued to brush the detritus from the window away, but at last it was clean and a face was lowered to the glass.

“Lenox!” Exeter shouted at that precise moment—which was just like him, Lenox thought—and the face vanished as quickly as it had come. Lenox closed the door quietly and thanked the guard. He walked down slowly, though his mind was running.

“Anything?” asked Exeter, when Lenox appeared.

“No.”

But this was a lie, for in the dusty window he had seen, unmistakably, the pink cheerful face of the old athlete—Jack Soames.