An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER NINE

Two mornings later Sophia was having a friend to visit her nursery, a young gentleman, not grown far above two feet, by the name of William Dean. He was the son of the vicar of Hampden Lane’s small church, St. Paul’s. Lenox — as he had promised himself he would — went to visit his daughter.

It was a clear morning, a breeze coming through the cracked windows. Sophia was intent upon a small wooden horse, while Master Dean, unaccustomed perhaps to the strict demands of a London social call, was staring at the wall and drooling.

“How old is this child?” Lenox asked Miss Emanuel.

“Nearly eighteen months,” she said.

“I have never understood this strange tradition that has us dress our small boys in martial clothing. This one seems to be wearing a regimental jacket.”

“I think he is very fine,” said Miss Emanuel.

“Yes, as if he could lead a battalion into Waterloo on horseback.”

The nurse laughed. “Leave the poor child alone.”

Lenox smiled and tousled the boy’s hair, then bent down to give Sophia a kiss, catching as he did the clean, sharp scent of Pears soap on her skin. “Good-bye, Miss Emanuel. I shall be rather late this evening, I expect, but I will visit you again in the morning.”

He had found when he woke up that morning that he was not quite ready to consign Archie Godwin — the false Archie Godwin — to the past. On his way to Parliament after visiting the nursery, Lenox asked his carriage driver to stop in at Charing Cross. When they arrived he went into Gilbert’s. The owner, a small, harassed, efficient Italian, granted him a few seconds of time. His answers were terse. He did not remember a tall, light-haired gentleman; he did not remember Lenox; on the other hand he did remember the lady. When Lenox heard this his hopes surged.

“The one with the black-and-white striped umbrella?”

“Yes. She comes in every month.”

“Curious.”

“It is not curious at all,” said the Italian indignantly. His English was excellent, though accented. “In fact, the majority of our customers stop in upon strict schedules, clockwork regular.”

“She comes upon the same date every month?”

“No, but always a Wednesday, and always the same time, morning.”

“And she always leaves in time to catch the 8:38?”

The owner shrugged. “She does not confide to me where she is traveling, Mr. Lenox. She asks for tea and toast, sometimes for an egg.”

“How long has she been coming to sit here?”

“Fifteen months, maybe eighteen.”

“Do you know her name, or her occupation?”

“I do not.”

“Has she ever been in the company of—”

“Never in any company at all.”

“When she comes in again, would you give her my card?” asked Lenox, pressing an additional one — he had already presented it upon his arrival — upon the owner.

“Yes, if you wish. Though it won’t be for three weeks.”

It was a promising clue to the woman’s identity that she had a schedule at Gilbert’s. A monthly visit by train from Charing Cross — parents in the country, or perhaps a beau?

After visiting Gilbert’s Lenox went into Charing Cross Station itself and straight up to the ticket booth, to ask if there was a woman who bought the same ticket every month, possibly on the 8:38 to Canterbury, at around the same date. This, however, was a bridge too far. None of the several men he met, nor the stationmaster, could help him. He did manage to get the name of the 8:38’s usual conductor. This gentleman was commonly to be found in the engineers’ and conductors’ tearoom until 8:15 each morning. Lenox decided he would come back to see the man, who might much more easily remember a regular passenger than a ticket broker would.

It would be so much better should she write to Dallington again, their mystery subject — but he held out very little hope for that.

That evening Lenox went to Dallington’s rooms for their weekly supper. In general they traded meals at their respective clubs, but the young lord was still ill, though well enough for conversation, he assured Lenox in his note.

In person he had a cough, and still little enough color in his cheeks, but he did look marginally better — at least, he had contrived to stand up and put himself into a suit of clothes. (At their lunch Lenox had asked McConnell to look in on Dallington, and apparently the doctor had prescribed nothing more than rest when he came by two mornings before.) On the sideboard was a meal, ordered up by Mrs. Lucas from the chophouse, beef broth and crackers for Dallington, a beefsteak for Lenox. After they ate they shared a pot of strong tea.

The new cases Dallington had received were dull, and after dismissing them the two gentlemen began to discuss past cases instead.

“The cleverest murder I ever saw was in ’61,” said Lenox. “A gentleman named Harper murdered the tax inspector — or collector, I can’t recall which it was — for assessing a tax upon him for the keeping of a dog.”

“Where was the cleverness in that?”

“Harper did the inspector’s job for the next month. Claimed to be the victim’s brother-in-law, said that the inspector had fallen ill. They swallowed it entirely at the office and let him take the man’s round. Only instead of turning in the money he collected at the end of the month, he kept it all and fled on a Friday evening, a much richer man than he had before the whole thing started. And with his dog. It was Tuesday morning before anyone thought to look for him. He had even collected his victim’s wages.”

“Nobody in that whole month noticed the inspector was missing? A wife? A friend?”

“He was unmarried — a young man — and Harper went to his lodgings, posing as his brother-in-law again, and said the inspector had been called back to Manchester to care for his ill father. He paid the landlady out till the end of the week, and she found a new lodger immediately. She kept the inspector’s possessions in her basement, thinking he would call round for them, though as you can imagine he never did.”

Dallington shook his head. “Ingenious. What became of Harper?”

“We spent months searching for him. At first we thought he must have returned to Devon, where his people lived, and then we thought he might have gone overseas.”

“And?”

“We never found him.”

Dallington whistled. “He got away with it.”

“He’s survived fourteen years somewhere upon the face of the earth. Personally I imagine that he settled somewhere with the money and built a new life. By all accounts he was a stable person, no outward signs of madness. It’s often the way. I still have hopes we might catch him, though everyone concerned has become old and gray.”

Dallington sighed. “Even the best in our profession cannot hope for total success,” he said. “Outside of the yellowbacks at any rate.” These were the crime books, often based on true stories, that sold on the street for a penny or two, bound in loud yellow cloth. “I have never known Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s detectives to fail.”

“Nor Inspector Bucket,” said Lenox, smiling. “Though he never received a sequel to test his wits a second time, as in my opinion he ought to have done.”

“Perhaps all of us ought to cosign a letter to Miss Strickland, informing her that popular fiction may have misled her.”

“All of us?” asked Lenox.

“Oh, you know, the usual crowd of investigators: Audley, LeMaire.”

Lenox knew the names, though both men had popped up only after he had left the profession. Hearing them gave him an idea. “Do you think our mysterious young woman might have gone to one of them, after she came to us?”

Dallington frowned. “She might have done.”

“She seemed desperate for help, certainly. Though perhaps our meeting gave her enough of a fright to silence her.”

“There are more than a few private investigators, though.”

Lenox nodded. “Well, there are scores of cheap and dubious ones. There are only a very few with any reputation among the upper classes, however. Think of her writing paper, the hand in which she wrote, her diction. Clearly she is a woman of some position. That she approached you is perhaps proof enough of that.”

Dallington laughed weakly. “I cannot say that a woman spending time in my company has always vouchsafed her good breeding.”

“But really,” Lenox said, “to whom might she have gone, if she could not go to the police? You, Audley, LeMaire. That is the list, is it not?”

“Even Audley has a very middle-class clientele,” said Dallington. “They go to LeMaire if they want the old Vidocq touch. He’s not especially skillful, but for some the accent makes them feel they’re getting a bargain.”

“I’ll go around to both tomorrow,” said Lenox.

“Why should they tell you anything?”

“I’ve no wish to poach a client, only to get one back — and the information about Godwin, the man calling himself Godwin, could be of use to them.”