A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 46

McConnell had arrived and heard the entire story from Lady Jane. Graham had a note from Exeter saying he was on an excellent trail and had no time to come over. The four friends spoke quietly in the library about Claude, who was now more calmly sitting in the back drawing room, locked in by the door and the windows.

“You had better let him sleep in one of the bedrooms,” said Lady Jane, “and then take him in tomorrow. There’s a blizzard.”

Lenox hesitated at first and asked if he would do the same if Bartholomew Deck had murdered Prue Smith and Jack Soames. But gradually the other three convinced him to do the generous thing. It was the last night Claude would spend comfortably for some years.

So Lenox relented and allowed the young man his hot water bottle and soft bed, locking the guest room door from the outside, and the next morning, though he refused to eat with the lad, had breakfast sent to him upstairs. He could only imagine his guest, sitting in an armchair in the luxurious bedroom, eating the last truly good meal of his early life.

Exeter’s hot trail had gone cold and he finally came over, where he heard the story, promptly said he thought it was something “very much of the sort,” bemoaned the lax morals (perhaps correctly) of the young “aristos, who never had to earn a pound,” and took Claude into custody. Claude had pressed his suit himself and neatly tied his tie. He looked very somber, but also somehow relieved.

The next matter was to find Eustace. He was not at Barnard’s house, where McConnell and Lenox first looked. Nor was he at any of the several clubs he belonged to. They went back to Barnard’s, then, and asked to be let into Eustace’s room. It still seemed occupied, but the possessions in the room had thinned out since Lenox last looked there, and finally the ever-charming Miss Harrison reluctantly told them that Mr. Bramwell had left with a trunk, saying he was on a trip home for a few days to check on his mother.

Lenox and McConnell stood for a moment in the entryway of the house, talking, after hearing this news and walking downstairs. They thanked the housekeeper and stepped outside onto the freshly coated sidewalk.

“I suppose we shall have to follow him up there,” said Lenox.

“Yes,” said McConnell. “He can’t know anybody’s after him.”

Lenox paused at this and then cried out, as fast as he could, “Come with me, come with me—there’s no time to lose!”

Without asking for an explanation, McConnell leaped into his carriage, which had four horses at Toto’s insistence, and beckoned Lenox to follow him.

“Where?” he said, when they were both in.

“The head of the river!” shouted Lenox, “and fast as can be!”

“A ship?” said McConnell, as they rattled quickly along the cobblestones.

“Yes, yes, a ship!” said Lenox. “Oh, how stupid I’ve been! How stupid, all through the case! To underestimate such an intelligent man! Oh, I shall never forgive myself, Thomas!”

“But how do you know that he’s on a ship?”

“A full trunk? To visit the North for a few days? No, no, no. And the trains out of England leave too irregularly and too slowly, but there is a ship every day, and we could scarcely hope to catch a ship as we could a train! Everything indicates it, Thomas. He must have followed Claude to my house and realized the game was up.”

They arrived at the dock very quickly and ran through the small building where people bought tickets, waited, and said their goodbyes. Yes, there was a ship, the man at the ticket counter informed them, bound for Egypt, and then on to Asia, and yes, there were still berths available.

They ran to the dock, and Lenox scanned the deck of the ship while McConnell looked at the passengers still on dry land.

“Nothing,” said the doctor as the crowd thinned out, and Lenox, too, saw nothing.

“Last call!” the captain shouted out, and at the same moment McConnell yelled and pointed. “There he is!”

It was Eustace Bramwell, standing on the foredeck of the ship, unmistakable, dark-haired and wearing a gray suit. He hadn’t even thought to hide in his room until they had gone, so sure had he been that Lenox wouldn’t decipher his plans. There was a yelp behind them, but their eyes remained fixed on Eustace.

Lenox ran over to the captain. “We need to get on,” said Lenox. “There’s a criminal on board!”

“Are you the police?” the captain asked.

“No, but we’re surrogates,” said Lenox.

“Sorry. Ship’s off limits.” He prepared to walk up the gangway himself, but a last passenger streaked toward it, while McConnell reasoned without avail to the captain.

The last passenger anxiously handed his ticket over. He had absolutely no luggage.

“Third class,” the captain said, tore the ticket, and pointed up the gangway. He managed to resist the implorings of Lenox and McConnell, even forcibly repelling them once, and after five minutes of waiting for more passengers, he himself went up to the deck of the ship and cut her loose.

Lenox stood there, then, feeling hopeless, while McConnell walked off to make futile contact with the police, but then he saw something. It was the last passenger, who had rushed onto the ship without luggage. The man’s eyes were firmly focused on Eustace, and he only looked back at Lenox once. When he did, he pointed at Eustace and made an inquisitive face. Lenox nodded; yes, that was the murderer. He knew he was sealing Bramwell’s fate but he nodded anyway.

The man was dressed in a pitch-black suit. After Lenox’s nod, he walked slowly toward Eustace, stopping a few feet away and gazing intensely, hatefully, at him. It was James, the footman, Prue’s fiancé. And Lenox saw with clarity the inevitable course of events. He waved McConnell back to him as the ship slowly began to move and told him not to make any further effort. He pointed out James and Eustace, feet apart, and told the doctor what he knew would happen.

He sent word to Egypt to look for Eustace but expected no results. And six days later, when the ship docked in Cairo, he was no more surprised—when the captain remitted the following message to the English authorities, which was then repeated in the papers—than he was surprised that the sun rose in the morning.

Very little is known of the death of two men who were sailing with the HMS Britannia on a course for the Far East. On the first night of the voyage, they washed overboard very late at night, according to the captain. One was a first-class passenger, the other in third class. Authorities believe the man from first class to be Eustace Bramwell, one of the two murderers in the Jack Soames case, which was so ably cleared up by Inspector Exeter before more life was lost. The incident is believed to be an accident.…