An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

As they walked with quiet steps down the hall, Lenox’s mind was racing: Their chief suspect was dead, shot in the temple, and their surmises about him would have to be adjusted. He thought of Whitstable’s plain, honest face; thought of Grace Ammons; tried to move backward through his ideas about this whole business.

It was Jenkins who — bravely — threw open the door, all three of them pressed with their backs against the wall in case of a violent greeting, but none came. Instead an enormous, bristle-bearded fellow in a peacoat, hair black as night, barreled into the room. “Where is Wintering?” he demanded. “Tall, light-haired fellow.”

“Who are you?” asked Jenkins.

“Who are you, for that matter?” said the man, eyes glinting dangerously.

“I am Inspector Thomas Jenkins of Scotland Yard, and I repeat my question: Who are you?”

“The Yard, eh? Is Wintering here? Let me see him.”

“I am asking for the final time, before I place you under arrest. Who are you?”

The man looked at Jenkins, Lenox, and Dallington, perhaps reckoning his odds of outmuscling all three of them, and then said, “Alfred Anixter. I’m here from Miss Strickland’s Detective Agency. I want a word with Wintering.”

The three men looked at each other.

“Wintering is dead,” said Lenox. “How did you come to hear his name?”

“He was harassing one of our clients.”

“Yes, Grace Ammons. My question stands.”

Anixter looked as if he might remain silent, until Jenkins, irritated, said, “Unless you answer Mr. Lenox, we will have to consider you the chief suspect in this murder.”

That drew him out. “I was following you,” he said.

There was a pause, and then Dallington burst out laughing. “I rather like this new detective agency,” he said.

“Which of us were you following?” Lenox asked.

He nodded toward Dallington. “Him.”

“How did you know Wintering’s name?”

“It was on the door.”

“Then why not wait until we had gone to speak to him?”

“I wanted to see his face before you arrested him and hid him away. Miss Strickland has a portrait artist who can draw a wonderful charcoal likeness from a description. Takes him about six minutes. We could match it to Miss Ammons’s description that way.”

That was ingenious, Lenox thought, though he didn’t say anything. Jenkins, tone officious, pointed to a chair in the living room, “You may sit here until we decide whether we need to speak to you further.”

“Why not let me help you?” asked Anixter.

“No, thank you. Don’t think about leaving, either.”

Dallington, Jenkins, and Lenox had a brief conversation. The first thing they had to do was to examine these rooms, then speak to the residents of the building. After that they had to learn as much as they could about Wintering — as they now knew him to be.

Jenkins went downstairs with his whistle between his lips, planning to blow for a constable, who could offer immediate assistance; in the meanwhile he could send Lenox’s carriage to the Yard with word that help was required.

Dallington and Lenox went back into Wintering’s bedroom. Lenox looked down at the body. It seemed infinitely long ago that he had spoken to this gentleman at Gilbert’s. How much pain might have been avoided by detaining him then and there? If only there had been a reason to do so at the time.

“Quickly, John — you and I must search as rapidly and thoroughly as possible, for all I trust Jenkins.”

Dallington looked at him and nodded, and they began.

Fortunately the flat was small, three rooms. There was the sitting room, with a gas stove and a crimson sofa, where Anixter was sitting and tapping his foot, restless; the bedroom, where the body lay; and the kitchen, which had a small breakfast table in the corner. Lenox took the bedroom, Dallington the kitchen.

The bedroom was small and unadorned. In it were a narrow bed and a bookshelf; Lenox turned his eye to the latter first. It was crowded with randomly shoved-in volumes of The Gentleman’s Magazine, a digest for educated Englishmen (and the first publication to use the word “magazine,” French for “storehouse,” which was now becoming more and more common — although now, oddly, the word had migrated back to Paris from London and come to mean “journal” there, too). Lenox sifted through these as quickly as he could. There were no books on the shelves. Not a reading man. A few trinkets — a silver watch fob, a hinged pine box with LW carved into its top and tobacco spilling untidily out of it, a jar of loose coins. On top of the bookshelf were a number of bills and a book of checks — he banked at Barclay, Bevan, Barclay, and Tritton — and Lenox looked through both. All of the bills were invoiced to Leonard Wintering, none to Archibald Godwin. It made sense. He wouldn’t have given out this address when he used a false name.

“Lenox!” called Dallington from the kitchen.

“I’m not quite finished.”

“You had better come in here anyhow.”

Lenox went to the kitchen and saw Dallington sitting at the table there. “What is it? I’ve yet to even look at the body.”

“Look.” Dallington gestured at the small piles of paper and the other objects that covered the table in front of him, and Lenox looked more closely. There were newspaper clippings and a soft black cap. Dallington picked up a half sheet of paper. “Look at the dates that he circled.”

It was the court circular from the Times, the very one Willard Fremantle had been reading when he informed Lenox that there were parties at Buckingham the next three nights, and then the party was off to Balmoral.

Wintering had circled two of the nights: tonight, tomorrow.

With dawning interest, Lenox began to sift through the other objects on the table. “What else have you found?”

“Look at this.”

Dallington was holding a small square of red wax. Lenox took it and asked, puzzled, “What is its significance?”

“You have to open it in half.”

He did this, and saw that in the soft wax there was a perfect impression of a key for a mortice lock. He whistled. “A proper housebreaker — and tomorrow was the third party he asked Grace Ammons to get him into.”

“What better occasion to steal from the palace than during a crowded party, too? Ten to one it belongs to one of the doors at Buckingham Palace.”

Lenox shook his head. “No — look at the size of the key. It belongs to a window. I would guess they left the keys in the windows during the party, in case it grew too warm. It’s the season of unpredictable weather.”

“And look at the rest of this.” Dallington held up the newspaper clippings. “An account of the last party, the rooms that were used. The Queen’s social calendar, and here is an odd little shorthand list of some kind or another — but it’s placed with the things I think he meant to take, the wax, the cap, and this knife.”

Dallington held up the knife. It was a short, ugly, efficient object. “This looks like the kit of a serious thief. It’s hard to believe the fellow in the bedroom put it together,” said Lenox.

“We must learn more about him. Perhaps he even has a criminal record.”

“Yes, it could be.”

There was a noise in the hallway and Jenkins came in, trailed by a constable. He found them in the kitchen — Anixter stood up at his arrival, and again offered to help, an offer the three men declined in unison — where Dallington reported on all they had found.

Jenkins blanched. “Thank God somebody got to him before he could steal from the palace.”

“But who?” asked Dallington.

Almost at the same moment, Lenox said, “I’m not at all persuaded that the palace is safe even now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Arthur Whitstable described three men walking up the Gloucester Road that morning. Now two of them are dead. Who was the third?”