A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 43

Lenox rode back home through the streets of London, just after eight. Yes, it all fit, he thought. The leaf, the candle, the alibis of the suspects, the peculiar use of bella indigo, the stories about Soames’s finances, the windowsill, the knife, the wax on the floor, the newspaper articles, and the relative safety of the mint’s gold. There was one thing he hadn’t figured yet, and that was the identity of the men who had attacked him. But no doubt it would come to him in due course.

He sat by the fire, smoking his pipe, and played with the pieces so they fit exactly in his mind. He sharpened the edges of the impression that he had and tightened the case. It might pass in court—it might—but he would have to hope for a confession, because he had little doubt that good lawyers would be involved. Yes, well, it was nearly time to call in Exeter, but he owed somebody else his first allegiance.

“Graham?” he called, and the butler entered the library. “Graham, will you ask Lady Jane to step over? I would visit her, but there are a few things I want to show her, and I must wait for my brother to return.”

“Yes, sir,” Graham said.

A few minutes later, Lady Jane walked into the library, tugging at the fingers of her gloves and smiling.

“Charles, how are you? I’m due at the Duchess’s, you know.” She was wearing a gray evening dress.

“Can you give it a miss?”

“I can certainly be late. Why?”

“Will you sit down?”

“Of course,” she said, and came to the couch. “I came over for tea this afternoon, you know, but you weren’t here.”

“Would you believe I was performing the offices of a junior clerk?”

“Your excuses to avoid seeing me are becoming a trifle overblown, I think.”

He laughed. “I suppose. But I would do it again; I’ve solved the thing.”

Lady Jane reacted in an unexpected way to this news: she turned pale and didn’t speak. At last she said, “Oh, Charles, I am grateful.”

“Of course. I asked you over because I have to wait here for Edmund, but I wanted to tell you right away.”

“Thank you, yes, of course. Oh, what a relief.” She sighed. “Well, who was it?”

“May I walk you through the case? I’m only coming to it myself.”

“Yes, of course.”

Lenox put his fingertips together and puffed on his pipe, which he kept between his back teeth. He narrowed his eyes, looked into the fire, and waited a few moments to speak.

“Very well,” he said, at length. “Let us begin with the most remarkable fact of the case.”

“By all means,” said Lady Jane.

“Usually, when there are two murders, either the killer is a maniac or the second murder is committed as cover for the first.”

“That doesn’t seem particularly remarkable.”

“It wouldn’t be, if that were the case here. But instead I’ve come across something unique in my experience. The first murder was designed to cover for the second, the murder of Jack Soames five days afterward.”

“I don’t really understand, Charles—only a little.”

“I didn’t either, you see. I didn’t tell you, but in the days immediately after Prue Smith’s death I was at a loss: everywhere I looked was a dead end, every string I tugged on was limp. I exhausted the honor roll of normal motives, and each of them was empty.”

“I could tell,” Lady Jane said. “That was why I decided to spend some time with George Barnard.”

“Is that why? I’m sorry I drove you to it.”

“Not at all.”

“It was only after Jack’s death that I began to make headway—and then things came quickly, as they do in most murder cases. In other words, I could only begin to solve Prue Smith’s murder after Jack was dead, sadly enough. I wish it weren’t so, but it is.”

“Yes, I see,” said Lady Jane. “But then who did it, Charles?”

“I’m coming to that—forgive me if I go slowly; I am piecing it together still. Very well. Let me proceed.

“It appeared immediately that the list of suspects was short. Bella indigo is extremely costly and, though I kept this to myself, there is a still more persuasive reason that limited the list of suspects: It took McConnell a full day to identify it, and he’s an expert. Only someone with real expertise, or at least an aficionado’s knowledge, would have used it.”

“Or somebody who knew such an aficionado.”

“Ah, correct; you’re quicker than I was there. Well, I asked Barnard’s housekeeper—and also asked Graham, as a separate corroboration—to identify people with access to Prue Smith during the relevant time. The list was short: Duff, Soames, Eustace Bramwell, Barnard, Roderick Potts, Claude Barnard, and of course the house’s servants.”

“It seems as if you passed over the servants?” Lady Jane said inquiringly.

“I did. I discounted them because of the cost and obscurity of bella indigo. Just before Soames’s death, I began to think of going back to them, particularly to the young man who was engaged to Prue Smith, but then a fresh trail emerged. Therefore it was down to these several people.

“Roderick Potts could not have committed either murder. He was watched at the time of Jack Soames’s death, which made him extremely unlikely to have killed Prue, but I couldn’t discount it—until this morning. I had forgotten that Potts is a very fat man, in somewhat poor health. It took quick light feet and an agile body to walk down the stairs quietly, kill someone quite physically, and then, too, to sneak through a window. Not conclusive—but combined with all the facts, fairly near it.”

Through this explanation Lady Jane listened patiently.

Lenox leaned back and chewed on his pipe before continuing. “After Potts we have Duff. I suspected him from the start, I’ll admit. That the bottle of arsenic was his seemed at once damning and yet impossibly easy. And just this morning he paid me a visit, which, depending on one’s perspective, either exonerated him entirely or made him my first suspect. I think if I had not had something like an epiphany, I should have followed his trail—but it was unnecessary. And something else occurred to me as well. I told you of the valuable possession secreted in Barnard’s house; Duff was there to protect it. So he told me, and it would be such an easily discovered lie that it had to be true. Well, if he had murdered two people to steal it, and then stolen it, even Exeter would think of him first. No, I think it would be improbable even if I hadn’t solved the case.

“We are left with four people: Jack Soames, Claude Barnard, Eustace Bramwell, and our acquaintance, Lady Jane, George Barnard. Exclude Jack Soames, and we are left with three names. You may call me the stupidest man on earth, if you please, because I should have narrowed it to these four straightaway, and even when I did I picked out Soames. Surpassingly feeble of me. My only excuse is that the motive was so strangely inverted.

“Now, who did it? I’ll tell you—”

But the revelation would have to wait at least a few minutes longer. Sir Edmund, again in his unattractive attire of the morning, had burst into the room, out of breath and very evidently bearing news.

“Charles… Charles,” he said, panting. “I saw him… he looked up… I hid myself out of his sight… where I could see.…”

He stood up, having been bent over, and collected himself. Lenox, too, had stood, and now clapped his brother on the back. “Excellent! Excellent!” he said.

“I was—”

“May I guess?”

Edmund looked surprised. “Yes, of course.”

“A man came into the room, moving very quickly, and knelt to the floor.”

“Why, yes!” Edmund was wide-eyed.

“He looked under the bed and then ran his hand across the floor, several times.”

“Yes, right again!”

“Then he stood up, much disconcerted—he may have even stood there for a moment—and then ran out as if struck by lightning.”

“Why, Charles, are you making a fool of me?”

“Oh, Edmund! Not for all the world.”

“Do you know who the man was, then?”

“Why, I imagine I do. Was it Claude Barnard?”

Edmund looked at him with amazement. “Yes—yes, it was.”