An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER THIRTY

Before he went out to speak with Jenkins, Lenox asked Grace Ammons if she knew how this man — the one from Gilbert’s, the one whom they suspected in the murder of Archie Godwin — might have discovered her secret.

“I asked him, and he laughed.”

“You did not recognize him from your years in Paris?”

“If I did I would give you his name this instant.”

“Though it meant your own exposure?” asked Lenox.

“Yes,” she said swiftly. “It has been hell enough to live with his presence on the edge of my vision at every moment, and now I know that he is capable of murder… I thought he was only trying to advance his position in society.”

It raised a question: Was Miss Ammons unlucky enough to have had her secret fall into the wrong hands, or had this fellow sought out someone at Buckingham Palace who would be susceptible to blackmail? This was what Lenox asked Jenkins, after he left the palace and went to discuss the matter in the chief inspector’s carriage.

“But what is the secret?” asked Jenkins.

Lenox implied that it was a child, given up many years before — damaging to a young woman’s reputation, but not as irretrievably damaging as the story he had heard that morning.

Jenkins thought it over. “I think he found out by accident, however he found out. People talk.”

Lenox nodded. “True.”

“I liked Dallington’s idea. This is a fellow of social ambition. His fraud against Godwin allowed him to acquire the outward appearance his ambitions necessitated, and his blackmail of Miss Ammons gave him a venue in which to show them.”

“It is a plausible idea,” said Lenox.

Jenkins, with a small smile, arched his eyebrows. “Yet?”

Lenox laughed. They were sitting in the carriage outside the palace, and he said, “You had better go in and speak to her. Please handle her delicately. I would stake my life that she is being honest. If she thinks you know her secret she will be a wreck.”

“Has my discretion failed you yet, Lenox?” asked the inspector.

Funny to be sitting in this carriage. He could easily conjure an image in his mind of Jenkins as an earnest twenty-five-year-old man, chasing a particularly incompetent safecracker across King’s Cross Station. Now here he was, a man in full, headed to somewhere not far from the summit of their profession. “It never has, you’re quite right,” Lenox said. “Well, now I must go to the House — should have been there already.”

“You and Dallington will continue on the case, however? There was a murder in Camden Town last night, and I’ve drawn it from the pool.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll let you know when Skaggs has news.”

Soon after this Lenox arrived at his office and without a moment’s delay pitched himself into the work of Parliament — for there was a great deal to do. At noon he had a meeting presided over by the Home Secretary, Richard Cross, at which a dozen men, including representatives of the larger trade unions, discussed how they might accumulate enough votes to make the Public Health Act a law. The union men declared their intention to begin a campaign of publicity in favor of the act, and Cross and Lenox promised to align their party’s members behind the action.

After this meeting Lenox spent forty minutes with Graham, preparing for the evening’s debates. Each night at the Commons several subjects came up, and Lenox liked to have thoughts prepared (albeit in rough outline) on each of them, because Gladstone occasionally looked down the front benches and nodded his head at someone — calling that person up to the crease, as it were. One could never be sure who was next in line, as Gladstone saw it.

Before Graham left, he said, “I have arranged for you to have lunch with John Coleridge later in the week, by the way.”

“Coleridge? Never.”

Graham smiled. “Yes. I hoped you would be pleased.”

Coleridge was the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and widely known to be next in line for the most important judicial post in Britain, Lord Chief Justice of England, when its current occupant died. More importantly, he was extremely influential within Lenox’s party. The positions he held were not political, but he was of that small, untitled council of men, along with Gladstone and James Hilary, who determined much of England’s fate.

In this respect his power lay within his almost complete inaccessibility to all but a small handful of politicians, none of them less prominent than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He kept his opinions quiet to all but a few men, who valued them highly indeed. Junior ministers, such as Lenox, hoped for Coleridge’s notice; to receive it was seen as a mark of ascendancy, and it was in vain that both Lenox and Lady Jane had attempted to attract his attention in the past. It was nigh on a miracle that Graham had succeeded; very nearly the first step toward becoming Prime Minister, if such a thing was even conceivable.

“How did you do it?” asked Lenox.

“It is a long and uninteresting story. I will tell you it some other time, sir, but now you are late to meet again with Lord Heath. Mr. Frabbs will go with you to take notes, for Heath will certainly have a secretary there.”

Later that afternoon Lenox sat in his office again, all alone now, reading a blue book on the subject of African mining. Frabbs and the other clerks had left for the day. When there was a knock on the door, therefore, he went to open it himself and found, standing outside, his brother.

“Edmund! Come in! I’m alone, or I would offer you tea.”

Sir Edmund Lenox was cloaked in a light spring jacket, cheeks red from the outdoors. “No matter, it is a flying visit — I’m due home to Molly soon.”

“You look as if you have been in the park.”

“Indeed I have. I walked down from a call I had to make in Piccadilly. The forsythias are a beautiful yellow already, even at this time in March.”

Edmund had the same hazel eyes and short beard that Charles did, but his face, especially in the mouth, was somehow soft, as if to show that his heart was still at home in the gentler pace of the country, just as his younger brother’s aspect had been sharpened into shrewdness by years of city life. Because it was Friday, Edmund would be leaving for Lenox House that afternoon. He rarely missed a weekend there, unless urgent parliamentary business kept him in town.

Edmund’s sons were both out of the house now, the elder at New College, Oxford, the younger at sea aboard HMS Lucy, a midshipman of advancing responsibilities, nearly primed for his lieutenant’s examination; Molly came out of a naval family, full to the brim with every stripe of post captain and admiral, and her connections had clamored for Teddy to go to sea. (Many of them still looked down upon her husband, Member of Parliament though he might have been, as a rank landsman.) Still, Edmund and Molly had both spent their childhoods in and near Markethouse and had a lively acquaintance there, some solace for the deprivation of their boys’ company. Lenox generally went for a week in each season to visit, longer at Christmas. They were some of his favorite times of the year.

“Pass along my best to Molly.”

“I shall, but I have a favor to ask first.”

“Unto half my kingdom, of course,” said Lenox, smiling. “Is it something political?”

“Tangentially, perhaps. Charles, unfortunately it is time you had a quiet word with Graham.”

Lenox started to speak and then stopped. At last, he said warily, “About what?”

“I’ve seen John Baltimore. He said he told you the rumors.”

Lenox felt stung. “Have you been gossiping about Graham, Ed?”

“No, no, Charles, good gracious. It was in passing in the halls, here, but I must tell you, the same rumors have reached my ears. The other secretaries are at a high pitch of indignation.”

“I have yet to hear a single substantive allegation against him,” said Lenox, “even if I did I should not believe it.”

Edmund smiled gently. “There is no need to look at me with such fury in your eyes, Charles. Graham once returned a pair of diamond cufflinks I had forgotten at Hampden Lane for a year. It is impossible to conceive of him thieving — I would no sooner believe it of him than I would of you.”

Lenox leaned forward. “Then to what do you attribute these rumors?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is that you had better speak with him, so that the two of you can handle it together. It is beginning to do material damage to your name, Charles. At least in Whitehall.”

“Is it as serious as that?”

“I’m afraid it is.” Edmund checked his watch. “I must go now and catch my train. I have defended Graham wherever I hear him mentioned, but it has gone beyond my power to help him.”

Lenox nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

“So has this business with Thomas McConnell and Polly Buchanan — they were seen lunching together today.” Lenox’s heart fell. “But he is your friend, not mine, for all that I like him, and I care much more about Graham. Now I must go, I really must. Good-bye. I’ll look in on you Monday morning.”