A Beautiful Blue Death

Chapter 48

Lenox arrived home in his new boots and went into his library. There he carefully tidied his desk and pulled out a last books he had forgotten to ask Graham to pack. Then he gave the room a last good look and shut the doors.

Graham waited in the front hallway. After Lenox had looked here and there to make sure things were in order, and even gone up to his bedroom, the two men left for Paddington, where they caught the evening train to Markethouse.

Graham had sent their luggage forward the day before but had brought the morning papers, which he read, while Lenox gave another effort to De Rerum Natura, which he had detested at school, where he had been forced to learn it by rote, but now thought he ought to try again.

Faithfully, he read a great deal of the volume, laying it aside only when evening began to overshadow the landscape and the train drew into Sussex, the part of the country he recognized the best. For half an hour he looked out of the window, his thoughts strumming quietly along.

When they were close to Markethouse, Graham said to him, “Have you looked at the Daily Telegraph today?”

“I flipped through it earlier.”

“The business section, sir?”

“Well, no.”

Graham raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

“Tomorrow,” Lenox said, waving a hand.

“There’s an article just here, sir, which might be worth looking at.”

“I’m not really in the mood.”

But Graham insisted in his quiet way. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, sir. Perhaps you might.”

Lenox took it reluctantly and scanned the headlines, then turned inside, where he read the agony column and the notes on London crime. Finally, keeping his promise, he turned to the financial page. He read the long stories and even glanced at the smaller ones, so that the most remote names of people and companies in the news would be stored away in the attic of his mind.

But the article that truly grabbed his interest was what Graham had pointed out, a very short column of print at the bottom of the last page. This he read again and again, with his brow furrowing, clutching the paper close to his eyes, for the light had all but failed.

He scarcely took his attention from it even when Graham and he left the train and stepped into the waiting carriage. And in the carriage he doggedly studied the little corner of the paper until at last, halfway through their journey to Lenox House, which was a good twenty minutes from the station, he threw the whole thing down and buried his face in his hands.

“Sir?” said Graham.

“By jove, what a fool I am, Graham,” Lenox said. “You were absolutely right. Give me a kick in the trousers if I don’t listen to you again.”

“What is your opinion, sir?”

Lenox read it aloud, as much for himself as Graham.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the nation’s money was in good hands for two weeks: Mr. George Barnard’s. Most readers will say that this has been true for some time, to which the Telegraph replies that we mean the statement literally. After the series of assaults on the mint, which police now think was done by members of the Hammer Gang, quick-acting members of the government, including Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone, consulted and decided that the money due to be released for circulation would be best concealed in a strongroom in Mr. Barnard’s house. There it resided safely until Tuesday, when it was released under supervision into popular use. Indeed, £19,100 was lost, though Mr. Barnard attributed this to assaults on the mint, saying the government was lucky not to lose more and the preservation of the remainder of the money was due to their quick action. The missing amount was coinage stored in one crate. The Spectator adds that while £19,100 would be a large amount for most individuals, in matters of government it is insignificant, bearing in mind that the total sum of the gold successfully stowed away was approximately £2,000,000.

“Odd, I agree. What do you see in it, sir?” Graham asked.

It had been less than a week since Claude Barnard’s guilty plea at the Assizes, and during that time something had bothered Lenox. He was certain in his conviction of the lad’s guilt, and certain of Eustace Bramwell’s death, but in the back of his mind he realized that there were dark spots in his understanding, and he had worked his mind over them ceaselessly, if quietly, like a stream wearing away a stone.

“There was a second plot line in the Smith/Soames case, Graham,” he said, “running with a faint pulse beneath the actions of the cousins. Oh, to have missed it!” He pounded his fist on the seat. “And now the footprints will be gone.”

“May I ask what you mean, sir?”

Lenox, though, was already lost in his thought. “How far back… ?” he muttered, and then, a moment later, he shook his head, and said, “Very possibly.…”

He spoke again a few minutes later, at the beginning of the long driveway to the house, which ran for some miles through a dense grove of trees. “You know, Graham, I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that I’m clever.” Graham said nothing but gave that same small raise of his eyebrows. “I ought to have paid closer to attention to Barnard.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Yes, of course. The immediate obfuscation—the insistence that it was suicide—and then the exchange of bright young Jenkins for bull-headed Exeter, and finally our odd breakfast together and his insistence that I stand at the edges of the case. Stupid me, I ignored it—took it for his usual ill grace.”

“What was it, sir?” Graham asked.

Lenox sighed. “It was he who stole the money, Graham. I have little enough proof, but I know it in my bones. He stole the nineteen thousand and who knows how much else?

“You remember, of course, the men who attacked me. I think you were right to begin with. When that man muttered Barnard’s name, it wasn’t because Barnard’s a public figure.”

“I agree, sir. As I said before, they did not seem like men who read the society pages.”

“Exactly. You had it all along—he sent them. I also believe he organized the original attacks on the mints. The hammer tattooed above the man’s eye—of course I see it now; he was in the Hammer, the gang that runs out of the Rookery. No wonder that’s where the chaps led you. I should have seen it before—daft of me. Led by a fellow named Hammersmith, who controls most of the organized theft in East London. Some of its more powerful members have that tattoo as a mark of loyalty. It’s considered an honor in those circles.

“Why attack me? It was absolutely necessary that I stay away from the case. Barnard could handle Exeter; he couldn’t handle me. But why attack the mint? It was too well guarded. He could guarantee bad guards occasionally, because he runs the mint, but it was too risky. So Barnard himself suggested keeping the gold in his strongroom. Newton Duff mentioned to me when we met that Barnard had initially wanted no guards in his house; he felt he could guard it alone. Is there anything more transparent? I say again, I have no proof, but I feel utterly certain.

“And then the sum! Nineteen thousand pounds. A clerical sum, a sum that would be missed but not thoroughly investigated. A sum a gentleman could live off of for years and years, but not a sum so ostentatious as to arouse much curiosity. I wonder, Graham—how many times has he stolen such a sum? How many times has he squirreled away a few hundred pounds, then a few thousand pounds, as his status rose? All the time, mark you, serving so well as to be above suspicion.”

Graham began to speak, but Lenox held up a hand. “No, Graham. I know it. Everything tells me. The great mystery of George Barnard’s money—I’ve got it. Nobody has ever known, not even the men who always, always, know such things.”

The carriage slowed to a stop as they arrived at the door. “I can’t prove it yet,” said Lenox, “but I will.”

He didn’t open the door to the carriage for a moment.

“It is quite possible, sir,” said Graham.

“It is beyond possible, Graham. It is a certainty. And you should take more pride in it—you were the one who forced me to read this and who followed those thugs to the Rookery.”

“What will you do next?” Graham asked.

“I must track down the men who attacked me; I am certain now that it was Barnard who sent them. Claude would have mentioned it, you know, if he and his cousin were responsible for the attack. And Eustace, I would guess, would have thought his plan too clever, estimated his own intelligence too highly, to resort to such things. His plan was already working. Barnard is the only answer.

“But he has gone a step too far. He should have left the money alone, after I began to look into his household.” With a look of determination, Lenox said, “Yes, he will regret that. He should have laid low.”

Only then did he step out of the carriage and greet his brother, his sister-in-law, and his nephews.