A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 33

Lenox saw, peering down into the darkness of the servants’ stairs, that it was indeed Soames sprawled across them.

At this moment Barnard stepped away from McConnell and Lenox and said in a loud voice, “Please, everybody, return to the party.”

Nobody obeyed his instructions, but Barnard walked through the crowd nevertheless, presumably to find further help, perhaps in the shape of Inspector Exeter.

Lenox acted quickly. He asked a footman for a candle, and when he received it he scanned the area. There was no blood anywhere except on those stairs across which Soames was laid. He looked at the foot of the stairs for anything dropped or tracked but found nothing. Then he shone the candle over the walls and saw only a certain amount of blood, which could be assumed to have come from Soames himself. It appeared that no clue was to be found.

“Can we move him?” said Lenox, when he was done looking.

“Yes,” said McConnell, “but it will be wet work.”

Lenox beckoned to one of the footmen and instructed him to clear the largest table in the kitchen and cover it with a white sheet. The footman walked downstairs quickly to fulfill the request, and Lenox stepped out toward the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I fear I have bad news. A friend of ours—Jack Soames—is dead, but we need space, please, to give his body the treatment it needs.”

Whether this broke the spell or people were galvanized by the news, the crowd broke out into a high buzz, and people began to walk loosely here and there, seeking out special friends, no doubt talking to each other about Soames’s financial downfall and perhaps speculating about suicide, though it was the farthest thing from McConnell’s or Lenox’s minds.

The doctor, with the help of the footman who had prepared the kitchen table, gingerly lifted the body and asked Lenox to close the door behind them. The three men stepped down the narrow staircase and went to the right. Standing in the kitchen, alone, was Miss Harrison.

“Not in my kitchen,” she said.

“Ma’am,” said Lenox, “with all due respect, we must place him here.”

“Not in my kitchen,” she repeated. “Henry, stop helping them.”

The footman looked at McConnell in confusion.

“Henry,” the doctor said, “stay with us, and if you lose your job you can come work for me at ten pounds more a year. Miss Harrison, I am sorry to say this, but we have little time to accommodate your willfulness. Consult your employer, if you truly wish.”

That said, he and Henry placed the body on the table, while Miss Harrison vanished down the left hallway, her skirts flying behind her.

“What is it, Thomas?” said Lenox.

McConnell gingerly unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt, removed the suspenders, and revealed Soames’s chest, which, though stained with blood, still jutted out proudly, as if in elegy of his former athletic greatness.

“Henry,” said the doctor, “bring me a basin of hot water and take another white sheet and tear it into short strips.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lad, and ran off to do so.

“A knife, I think, not a bullet,” said McConnell.

A little breeze of fear passed through Lenox’s mind as he remembered the knife the two men in the alley had shown him. But he ignored it and said, “Yes. We would have heard a bullet.”

Henry returned with the basin and the cloths, and McConnell cleaned the area around the wound with expert care until they could see three long, jagged red cuts, all in the region of the heart, now cleansed of the gore that had matted his chest.

“How long a knife?”

For lack of a better tool, McConnell had taken his pen to lift back the edges of the wounds. “Fairly long, six inches or more, I should say. Somebody was below him, I think, and thrust upward, through his ribs.”

“Below him on the stairs; it makes sense,” said Lenox.

“Exactly.”

“All three wounds are the same?”

“No, these two are alike,” said the doctor, pointing to the lower two cuts. “The third wound came after death, or near the end, and was only a glancing blow.”

“How big a man?”

“It wouldn’t matter. He had leverage. Even a strong woman could have done it, if she had taken him by surprise.”

“How long ago?”

“Ten minutes at the most, I should say.”

“Who screamed?”

“A maid found him, and Barnard asked for my help. She was the one who screamed.”

“Did you see him after we left each other?”

“No, alas. I couldn’t find Potts or Duff either, for that matter.”

“I hope Edmund saw something.”

“Yes.”

“Could anyone else from the party have seen anything? Anyone who wasn’t purposefully looking?”

McConnell shook his head. “No. Nobody was even near the hallway. Somebody lured him there, I suppose.”

“It must have been someone he knew. No witnesses, then?”

“I don’t think so.”

He turned to the footman, who was standing a little way off. “Henry, explain to me how the servants were stationed tonight. It seems absurdly dangerous for someone to commit a murder here if there were servants coming up and down the stairs all the time.”

“Actually, sir, with respect, that would have been the best place. The servants’ quarters was going unused, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were set up in a room just behind the dining room so the food could be served hotter and quicker. And then, it’s a narrow staircase, so there would have been delays, like, Sir.”

“How did you cook in there?”

“An extra oven. And we served drinks from there, where they were cooling under ice.”

“Who came up with that idea?”

“Mr. Barnard, sir.”

“Who would have been out in the main hall, closest to that door, among the servants?”

“One man outside, in case of late arrivals, sir. Several at the entrance of the ballroom, though that’d be facing the dance floor. Nobody was departing yet, sir, and near everybody had come.”

“Damn. Smart of whoever did it—a deserted place in a crowded house, and an easy escape through the downstairs.”

“Lenox?”

“Yes, Thomas?”

“What motive occurs to you?”

“I’m not sure. Might it have been to cover up Prue Smith’s murder?”

“I suppose,” said McConnell, though he sounded unconvinced.

“Thomas, keep guard over the body, and see if you can find anything else. Henry, ask the servants what they saw, say the police would like to know, and then tell them you think it was self-murder.”

“Suicide?”

“Yes. Do you both understand?”

The two men nodded, and Lenox nodded back.

“Now let’s look through the pockets,” Lenox said. He and McConnell systematically went through all of Soames’s clothes, finding only the usual things—handkerchief, a pocket watch, and a little money. No key, because he was staying here with Barnard, and no personal objects.

Lenox sighed. “Still, I think we’re close,” he said. “I have to see my brother.”