An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

There was so much upon Lenox’s mind now: at the forefront Archie Godwin and Grace Ammons, in the wide middle band his work in the Commons, his meetings, his evening sessions, and at the back, occasionally pushing forward for his attention, his concern over two friends, McConnell and Graham.

He took for his luncheon a quick bite of bread and cheese between meetings, and survived a meeting with the treasury minister only by gulping down a cup of hot sweet tea beforehand.

As he left the meeting he glanced at his pocket watch and, with a sigh, quickened his step. It was five minutes past five o’clock, which meant that already he was late to meet Henrietta Godwin at the Graves Hotel, and that evening he had to return to the House by seven for an important debate concerning naval matters. He felt a twinge in his back, which heralded a day or two of discomfort. Funny, how as one’s age advanced, fewer and fewer people seemed ridiculous. The hunched-over white-haired man approaching him on the street now seemed a figure of sympathy and caution. The portliness of the middle-aged, the mania of the mad — only the young, as callous in their health and beauty as beasts of the field, harts at the drinking pool, could find such complaints comic. Live to the age of back pain and one began to understand them all, Lenox thought.

But there was still youth stirring within him; he was on the trail of a murderer now, not simply an impostor, and he welcomed the fight.

As chance would have it, despite his late start Lenox beat Inspector Jenkins to the hotel by half a step. He checked his watch; 5:20. He was glad he hadn’t missed anything. Dallington wouldn’t have started without either of them there.

A bellman showed the two to a small tearoom, flooded with pink evening light, where a woman was sitting with a cup of tea, the remains of a light supper at her elbow. The plate had been pushed aside to make room for a notebook, in which she was writing intently, though when the door opened she put her pen down and looked up at them.

“Miss Godwin?” said Jenkins, removing his hat. Lenox did the same. “I am Chief Inspector Thomas Jenkins of Scotland Yard.”

She offered him her hand. “And you are?” she asked Lenox.

“Charles Lenox, ma’am.”

“Ah, Mr. Lenox,” she said, “yes. Yes, how do you do. I am Hetty Godwin. Thank you for coming to see me, gentlemen. I dearly hope that between the three of us we may find the man who murdered my brother.”

Both men apologized for their tardiness. She waved away their explanations and invited them to sit.

She was very clearly the older sister of the deceased man, was Henrietta Godwin; if he had been thirty, she must have lived ten or fifteen years longer than he had, and if someone had told Lenox she was fifty he wouldn’t have been surprised. She still had dark hair, however. She was a very thin, plain woman, with a sharp nose — in fact, sharp features in general, elbows and shoulders at angles to the world — but there was something indomitable in both her aspect and her speech. Her brother had died the day before and here she sat, far from home and in a great metropolis she might not have visited above once a year, calmly in command of this meeting already. Lenox admired her composure.

“Tell me of my brother’s death, if you please,” she said to Jenkins.

The inspector described, with appropriate restraint, Scotland Yard’s discovery and identification of the body. “We have men attempting to ascertain Mr. Godwin’s movements before his death yesterday. We know that he was in the company of a tall, fair-haired gentleman at ten o’clock, and a little while later they were with a third fellow, walking in a group down Gloucester Road.”

She frowned. “A group? Who was the third man?”

“We do not know the identity of either man — unless you know the second.”

“Not on such scant description. Is there a fuller account of this third man?”

Lenox shook his head. “Only that he was average-looking, dark-haired.”

A fretful look passed across her face. “I told him to stay at the Parchment, in Willoughby Lane. The Graves has grown too noisy. I myself shall move this evening; they are fetching my bags now.”

The Graves, whose tearoom at the moment was about as lively as a cemetery at midnight, seemed to sigh into even greater quietude, by way of solemn riposte. Here was another indication that Godwin had been a particularly retiring person, and Lenox asked his sister to confirm as much.

“Yes,” she said. “He was a member at White’s because our father was, and because he liked to spend half an hour there every year or two, but there was nothing my brother cared for less than visiting this city. We grew up quietly. Our father lived upon the land of his ancestors, which now, I suppose, must pass to my cousin Oswald.”

Lenox wondered whether this would mean she was turned out. “Archibald was unmarried?”

“Oh, yes, dear me. When he was at Oxford there was a brief affair, but the match was unfortunate, and my father stepped in. A girl from a stage show playing at the corn market. Fully half a foot taller than Archibald was, too.”

“When we came in you were making notes,” said Inspector Jenkins. “Have you formed a theory about your brother’s death?”

“Yes. I think his impostor killed him.”

A thrill went through Lenox. “His impostor?”

“For the past month, somebody here in London has been impersonating my brother.”

“Do you know what he looked like? Or his name?” asked Lenox, barely daring to hope.

“Neither of those things, no. But it was this man’s activities that fetched my brother here, and I should be very astonished indeed if they weren’t the reason that he died.”

For the first time she evinced some emotion now, a small sob into her handkerchief. Jenkins and Lenox said words as comforting as they could muster, which she acknowledged. When she had composed herself again, Lenox said, “Do you have some relation, here or in Hampshire, from whom you might seek comfort, Miss Godwin?”

“My brother was my closest friend. We spent nearly every evening together, playing cards or reading aloud to one another. I have cousins and nieces and nephews nearby, but they cannot make up for the loss. Obviously. Our father would have been distraught — I only thank the Lord that he is underground.”

It was damnable. Lenox glanced over at Jenkins and saw that he, too, felt a fresh anger at the murderer. The inspector said, “Perhaps you could tell us in more detail about this impostor. How did he come to your brother’s attention?”

Hetty took a sip of her tea, to settle her nerves perhaps. Then she spoke in a steady voice. “My brother’s tailors are Ede and Ravenscroft, and have been since he was a very small child and our father had his first suit of clothes made up. Generally he corresponds with them by letter, after a local tailor near us takes his measurements. They send us a complete catalog.

“Last month, Archie received a bill from them, though he had ordered no clothes; he generally only places his order just before Christmas, at the end of November. The bill Ede’s sent in was for half a dozen shirts, two suits, three pairs of trousers, and a few odds and ends, handkerchiefs, spats. The letter said they had sent the same accounting to his London address but copied it to Hampshire for Archie’s convenience.”

“Do you have a London address?” asked Lenox. “Or rather, did he?”

“No.”

“I thought not.”

“Needless to say, Archie wrote by first post to query the bill. The cost was substantial, but that was not the issue. My brother and I are comfortably provided for. The issue, of course, was the clear attempt at fraud that had been perpetrated in his name. The impostor hadn’t counted on Ede’s sending a duplicate of the bill, but then they’re very thorough, very professional.”

“Of course,” said Jenkins.

“My brother, too, was a very thorough man,” said Hetty. “Along with his letter to Ede’s, he wrote to half a dozen of the other merchants in London that he uses.”

“Who are they?” asked Lenox and Jenkins almost simultaneously, pens poised.

“That is precisely the list I was making when you entered. There is Berry Brothers, his wine merchant. His hatmaker is Shipp’s. His saddler is Hunt’s. His gunmaker is Mr. Parson, near St. James’s. I am forgetting one or two. At any rate, to consolidate several weeks of anxious correspondence into a brief tale, he wrote to each of them to tell them about the fraud at Ede’s, and to ask them what the last charge upon his account had been.”

“And they replied?” asked Jenkins.

“At four of the six places there had been no activity. At Berry Brothers and Mr. Parson’s, however, there were recent and, of course, improper transactions. The bill at Berry’s was particularly stiff.”

“Parson’s is a gunmaker,” Jenkins murmured, looking at Lenox.

“They do not make small arms, however,” said Lenox, “and a hunting rifle did not kill Mr. — did not murder your brother, ma’am.”

The door of the tearoom opened, and though the light, in the last fifteen minutes, had gone from brilliant to shadowy, Lenox saw that it was Dallington. The young aristocrat, making his apologies to Henrietta Godwin, sat down, after asking for a cup of hot water with lemon, and bade them continue; Lenox would provide him with the earlier aspects of the narrative after they were finished here.