An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Both men looked at Lenox blankly for a moment and then simultaneously shook their heads and began to speak. It was Jenkins whose voice won out.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “there are so many places in London, so many thousands, from which it would be easier to steal.”

“Can you point them out to me?” asked Lenox. “There is great risk in entering a private residence, and no guarantee that it will hold much treasure, even at the finest address. The museums and societies keep everything of value under lock and key. By contrast, Dallington, consider the paintings we saw on the wall — or the medieval Bible stand in the East Gallery, with gold and rubies in it, with which we were allowed to remain alone for twenty minutes.”

“With guards on every side of us.”

“At a party of eight hundred, would they be such a problem? Heaven alone knows the value of the jewels in the Queen’s vaults. Think of the boy Jones, gentlemen.”

The example of the boy Jones silenced the other two men. Three decades before, Jones, a lad of not more than fourteen or fifteen, had gained entrance to Buckingham Palace, disguised as a chimney sweep. Guards caught him after only a short while, with an eccentric collection of the Queen’s personal items, garments, letters, and knickknacks, none of it very valuable.

They expelled the boy and warned him not to return. Not much later, he scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace and wandered it for hours, sitting on the throne, lying in Victoria’s bed, and stealing food from the larder. One of the wits of the age had dubbed the child “In I Go Jones.”

At any rate, the palace was not unimpeachably secure.

Jenkins rose from his seat. The light was declining into shadow outside, and he lit a lamp recessed into the wall, making the room brighter. “But then we come to Grace Ammons,” he said. “No intelligent thief would leave behind such a trail. If he merely wished access to the palace as a social matter, this light-haired gentleman could deny Miss Ammons’s story. That would be very much harder if he stole something.”

“Perhaps he counted upon her intimidation.” Lenox saw that it was a fair point, and he fell into silence for a moment, as the other two men contemplated him. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “There are too many questions — why our Mr. Smith gave his name out as Godwin beyond the shops at which he used it, whether and why he killed the real Godwin, what he wanted to do at the palace.”

“The behavior of Miss Ammons,” added Dallington, eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Until we are sure of her story we are sure of nothing at all.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Lenox softly.

It was this problem — Miss Ammons’s character, her honesty — that preoccupied Lenox all through the remainder of the evening. Soon he and Dallington left the Yard, agreeing to reconvene with Jenkins the next afternoon. (Hopefully Skaggs would have finished his canvass by then.) Lenox dined alone at the House that evening, and as he ate his chop and mashed turnips and read about the mining crisis, by the flickering candlelight at Bellamy’s Restaurant, his mind kept circling back to her, to Miss Ammons. Even as he sat upon the benches of the house she entered into his thoughts — true, not when he was trying to catch the eye of the Speaker, or as he spoke, or for any of the insensible moments after he sat down, his heart still thumping even after these many years of speeches. In the slack moments, though — for instance, when someone with whom he agreed was entering upon the sixteenth minute of a speech, every word of which the bored scribes in the journalists’ box could have written themselves — it would be Grace Ammons who returned to Lenox’s mind.

There were several important votes that evening, and he didn’t return to Hampden Lane until well after one o’clock. Even then, however, as his tired head fell to the pillow, its last conscious thought was of Grace Ammons.

In the morning it came to him.

In haste he dressed and ate, then hurried over to Scotland Yard, hoping to catch Jenkins before the inspector left for his visit to the palace. By great good fortune he managed it — the Yard’s brougham was sitting outside its entrance, horses warmed, waiting for Jenkins, when Lenox arrived.

“Mr. Lenox!” said Jenkins, surprised, when he met the older detective in the hallway. “Are we not meant to see each other this afternoon?”

“With your permission I would like another word with Grace Ammons, before you speak to her. I think I know her motives.”

“Do you, though? Perhaps you might explain them to me, if we ride to the palace together?”

It was not difficult to convince Jenkins, who agreed to wait in the carriage for half an hour. Soon Lenox found himself following Mrs. Engel once again down the small hallway toward the East Gallery, and once again Grace Ammons was waiting there. Her mood before had been fearful. Now she seemed puzzled.

“I am to see Inspector Thomas Jenkins of Scotland Yard shortly,” she said, rising as Lenox approached her, “despite my sincere desire not to involve the police in this matter. Is it necessary that you and I should speak again?”

“I’m afraid it is,” he said. “Please, sit. As for the police — once there is a death, their involvement is no longer a matter of personal discretion. I apologize, Miss Ammons.”

They took their seats on one of the couches along the wall. “How may I help you, then, Mr. Lenox?”

“I have decided that I believe your story.”

She looked lovely in the wan morning light, with her chestnut hair falling around her pale throat. “Certainly there is no reason you should not.”

“Believe you, that is, despite the barefaced falsehoods with which your story was filled.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think that for the most part your story is true — that this light-haired gentleman, this murderer, bullied and threatened you — and I think it has taken courage on your part to tell us of it. The trouble is that if you lie once, your whole story is thrown into doubt. Until we are sure of you, it is difficult to proceed.”

“I really cannot imagine what you mean,” she said.

So Lenox told her what they knew: that George Ivory had nothing to do with the Chepstow and Ely company, that he sincerely and apologetically was forced to doubt her tale of a Yorkshire youth, that, in short, it was impossible to parse what was true and what was false in her story.

She began to offer a faltering rebuttal of all this, but the truth told in her face. She seemed to sense that Lenox could read her, and changed tacks. “Whether or not you think I was lying, it is no matter. I have hired Miss Strickland to assist me in this matter, not Mr. Dallington, nor, certainly, you.”

Lenox sighed. “I had a lengthy conversation with Inspector Jenkins this morning. He plans to place you under arrest.”

“He would not.”

“Your position here is no shield, ma’am. He believes you to be in league with this fair-haired gentleman — the murderer of Archie Godwin.”

She gave out an involuntary and anguished cry. “In league with him?” she asked. “Of all people you must be the least likely to believe that. You saw how I reacted to him that morning.”

Part of Lenox’s belief in Miss Ammons’s story, that morning, had been secondhand — he trusted Mrs. Engel’s evident and sincere good opinion of the young woman — and now, looking into her eyes, he felt sure that at heart she was true. Still, he said, “It might have been a show, specially designed for me, or for Dallington.”

“I had no idea whatsoever that you were present,” said the young secretary.

“If you make a clean breast of it, I’m sure I can persuade Jenkins not to arrest you.”

She hesitated — and then said, “No, he will have to do as he sees fit. Time will exculpate me.”

Lenox admired her fortitude, and it was with a reluctant heart that he said, “He may have to arrest Mr. Ivory as well, in that case.”

“George? Why?”

“As another accomplice.”

It was here that her resolve broke. She stared at him for a moment, then said, quietly, “No, that will not do. I will tell you my story — my very shameful story — and then pray that you show me mercy, for I could not stand for any of that shame to cast a shadow over George.”