An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As Lenox ate his breakfast, constables from Scotland Yard were spreading out across London in every direction, armed with a description of the man they suspected of the murder of Archibald Godwin: tall, light-haired, dressed well, platinum watch chain, trimmed whiskers and mustaches, an “arrogant” bearing and gentlemanly accent, possibly though not probably in the company of a nondescript dark-haired gentleman of average size. They conducted interviews at West End hotels, restaurants, and clubs and revisited the places they positively knew that he had been — the tailor’s, Parson’s, Gilbert’s.

Lenox knew that this was a unique moment in the case. If the Yard didn’t meet with immediate success, its overseers were unlikely to commit similar manpower to the investigation in the next days, even if this murder, by virtue of its affluent geography and affluent victim, had more press attention than the average gin-mill killing in the East End.

Between eleven and two o’clock, Lenox had meetings, but between two and the session that evening, he was free, and he decided to conduct his own small search.

The Oxford and Cambridge Club stood on Pall Mall, a wide building coated in the same cream-colored paint as all the rest in its row. Lenox climbed the wide steps up to the front doors, one of which was swung open.

“Good afternoon,” said the porter.

Lenox didn’t come here often — he more often visited the Athenaeum, down the road — but always felt welcome. He handed over his hat and his light coat and made his way upstairs to the library.

He had felt sure that the O&C, as members called it, would stock the college directories — each student at Oxford or Cambridge belonging to one of these constituent colleges, and thus to the university. (Lenox himself had been at Balliol, a quick stroll down Broad Street from Archie Godwin’s college, Wadham.) He was not wrong. There was a whole wall of the leather volumes, the Oxford set bound in dark blue, the Cambridge in light blue, all of the most recent vintage.

Here he found the directory for Wadham, 1875, it said on the spine, which meant it couldn’t be more than a month or two old. (He still wasn’t used to living in such a modern-sounding year: 1875! It gave one pause. Three-quarters of Victoria’s century had passed now. As vaguely, as indefinitely, and as certainly as a lighthouse flashing across a fogged channel, the year 1900—so madly advanced, so futuristic — stood on the horizon.) He pulled the book down and took a seat at one of the desks in the center of the room.

There was an inkwell close to hand, and a stand full of paper embossed with the club’s sigil. Wadham, he wrote as a header upon one sheet, and then settled back with the book.

It was no difficult task to find Archibald Godwin’s name. Lenox began looking in the class of 1862 and finally alighted on his quarry in the class of 1865. Underneath each name was a terse biographical sketch. Godwin’s repeated the details of his entry in Who’s Who, down to the Chepstow and Ely.

Slightly chilling to think that in the next issue of this book Godwin’s name would appear in the necrology.

Each class at Wadham had roughly fifty members; Lenox was willing to wager that if the fair-haired friend was from Oxford, he was from Wadham, a famously insular college.

It was easy to rule people out. Many were propping up, in small backwaters, England’s imperial edifice, local wallahs with twenty native servants, who even upon retirement would never be quite fit to live in England again — the heat got into their blood, or so it was said. Another half dozen were professors at the two universities, and outnumbering them two to one were the religious men, scattered across the parishes of the isles. Before he had started trying, Lenox had rid himself of thirty names.

Now came a greater challenge. Could Arthur Waller, of Swallowtail Lane, be the man? Or Anthony Brinde, who lived not three blocks from Lenox himself? Still, there were names to cross off the list. The head of a large tin concern in Manchester was not likely to moon about London for weeks on end, buying guns in another man’s name.

Lenox finished with eleven candidates he viewed as strong, most of them Londoners. Then, with a dutiful sigh, he pulled down the volumes for the matriculating classes on either side of Godwin’s year and did the same task.

An hour later he stood up, having covered three sheets of club paper with names, addresses, and occupations. In all there must have been nearly fifty.

It was a job for someone with more time than he had.

Fortunately he knew the man. Lenox put the books away and nodded to the old gentleman who had been sleeping underneath his copy of the Times for the last hour, before waking up with a flustered start and feigning deep absorption in an advertisement for women’s headache tonic. Then he went downstairs to the club’s telegraph office and sent a wire.

Two hours later, as Lenox was sitting in his office at the Commons, this wire produced its recipient in person. “Fellow called Mr. Skaggs!” said Frabbs rapidly, poking his head around the door, then beckoning the visitor inward.

When Lenox had been a detective, he had often used Skaggs — a large, bruising man, once a fearsome boxer, now tamed into domesticity by a lovely wife and three children — as an auxiliary investigator. Though he was a physical specimen, his skills of detection were, in fact, primarily cerebral.

“How do you do, Mr. Lenox? Back in the game, based on your message?”

“It has been some time! I hope you’re well?”

“Quite well, quite well, sir. Lord John Dallington hires me every so often, and then of course I get a number of lesser cases on my own.”

There was a small ruby ring on Skaggs’s left hand; Lenox suspected this self-accounting of modesty. “Does the Yard ever ask for your help?”

“They haven’t yet, sir.”

Lenox sighed. “I’ve told them they ought to. At any rate — are you free for a day or two? I’ve a job for you.”

“Delighted for the work. Though my rates have gone up.”

“I would be surprised if they hadn’t, seeing that it has been, what, four years? But the job — let me tell you about it.” Lenox offered a quick outline, omitting the role that Grace Ammons had played in the affair, and then described in close detail the man they were all seeking. Finally he handed over the list he had made. “I would like you to rule out as many of these men as possible.”

“An achievable goal, sir.”

“Ideally I would like you to find our man — or a candidate I could lay eyes upon myself.”

“Of course, sir.”

“In most cases a glance should be enough. How much time do you think you need?”

Skaggs read through the addresses on the pages Lenox had handed him, then said, “Why don’t I check in tomorrow evening?”

“That will do splendidly.”

“Here, or Hampden Lane?”

Lenox laughed. “Here, unfortunately. If I am in the Commons you can leave word with Graham, or write me a note — or wait, since there are frequent breaks, and possibly I could step out during a lull in the debate.”

“Very good, sir.”

“We might even scoop the Yard, Skaggs.”

Skaggs smiled. “Touch wood.”

It was still shy of suppertime, and Lenox decided he would call on Jenkins, to see what progress the police had made. First he went to see Dallington, however; the young lord was fitter today, after sleeping late into the morning, and came along willingly. Lenox told him about his researches into the graduates of Wadham College.

“I cannot imagine one Oxford man murdering another in cold blood.”

“Then you are missing out on a whole class of villains you might study. Nobody goes bad faster than a gentleman, and we know that it was a gentleman who stole from Godwin, defrauded him. Murder is not a very long chalk further.”

Dallington shook his head. “No, but the kinds of friends Godwin — someone as quiet as Godwin — would have made at Oxford… do you not imagine them all curates, or perhaps butterfly enthusiasts, dipping toast into weak tea? This daring adventurer you’ve described — I cannot credit Godwin with such an interesting companion.”

Lenox laughed. “We shall see if I am wrong soon, anyhow. Skaggs has always worked quickly.”