Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER TWO

He stepped out into Chancery Lane and looked left and right for a cab. In that instant, at least, he could see London through Newby’s eyes — chaos. Toward the Holborn end of the street there were two carriages hopelessly wedged together, as they stood abreast almost exactly as wide as the lane, and closer to Lenox was a great congregation around the local coffee stand. The young clerks of the businesses along this avenue liked to gather here; there was a great bright copper boiler over a brass-handled smudge pot, and its hawker in his green smock was calling out “Cup and two thins, only a penny, mind!” to all who passed. Two of Lenox’s own clerks were standing nearby, eating their two thins — pieces of bread and butter, thickish ones in fact — with between them a piece of cold beef, another ha’penny.

Lenox turned up toward Holborn. What he knew and Newby didn’t, of course, was the secret regularity that existed within this commotion. Though it looked like there was a mad press at the coffee stand, every person knew his place in line, and even now one of the carriages at the top of the road was sliding forward, the other one just backward. Both would be on their way within a minute or two.

Even the swarming walkers on the pavement — the only secret there was to keep to the right and walk at a steady pace. There were men of the city who traveled four or five miles to work by foot every morning and read their newspapers the whole way without lifting their eyes, because they were so confident of their paces.

As he reached the corner, he came to a man selling newspapers, with large placards on his cart announcing the most recent news about the disappearance of Muller, the great German pianist.

The fellow tipped his cap. “Mr. Lenox, sir,” he said.

“Anything new in there, Parsons?”

“Not a mote o’ news, sir, no. ’Tis the midday edition, however.”

“Ah, well, give me one for the ride, then.”

“Much obliged, sir,” said Parsons, taking his coin.

Lenox found a hansom cab and settled into it for the westward journey, scanning the headlines.

They were all about Muller. It was this mystery that Pointilleux believed he had solved that morning — an error by which he had perhaps become a true Londoner for the first time, for seemingly every soul in the metropolis believed that they and they alone knew the answer to the puzzle that had so trialed and tribulated Scotland Yard this past week. Across every class that autumn, in the butchers’ stalls at Smithfield market, on the crowded buses full of clerks and respectable widows, in the glittering drawing rooms of Hanover Square, Muller was the only subject of speculation.

The facts were these: that on the fourth of October he had played a concert, his fifth of nine that were planned (though the promoters had already been urging him to add several more performances, based on the enthusiastic reception he had received in the city); that at the end of the final piece, the overwhelmingly popular Fantasia on “The Last Rose of Summer” by Mendelssohn, he had stood up, bowed once in his customary fashion, and left by stage right; that he had said to an employee of the Cadogan Theater, “I feel very tired — hold my visitors for half an hour,” before going to his dressing room; that, after a tentative tap on the door thirty-five minutes later, the theater owner and Muller’s own manager had opened the door and found the room empty, without any sign of violent struggle, or indeed anything out of place at all; and that nobody had set eyes on him since.

And yet it was impossible! That was what made the case so interesting, of course — the impossibility of it. For between Muller’s private room and any conceivable exit of the building there were dozens of staff, managers, well-wishers, cleaners. On an average night, the Post-Courier had calculated, in an ingenious bit of journalism, Muller had seen thirty-six people between leaving his dressing room after a performance and stepping into his carriage.

Aside from the dread possibilities of what might have befallen the pianist, his disappearance was known to be an embarrassment to the Queen and her retinue. She was part German herself, of course, Prince Albert had been entirely German, and many of their retainers were, as well. All of them had watched Muller perform on his opening night; now the Queen’s cousins across the channel were extremely aggrieved at the disappearance of one of their finest artistic exports.

Lenox had seen him play and had to admit the fellow was magical — a short, slim, swarthy, balding, unprepossessing person, and yet when he sat before a piano, suddenly transformed into the most sensitive and subtle conduit of artistic beauty. His pauses, his rhythms, gave new meaning to music that a whole audience had heard dozens of times, and thought they knew.

Where could he be?

The room showed no sign of violence; nothing was discomposed or shifted, except that Muller’s black silk evening jacket was thrown across an armchair, and that glass of wine had been emptied, as Lenox knew from a private conversation with Inspector Nicholson. In the same conversation, Dallington and Lenox had offered the assistance of their agency, free of charge, and been immediately rebuffed. The Yard was extremely sensitive, at the moment, to any implication that they might be failing in their duties, Nicholson said. It wouldn’t do.

“But of course you are failing in your duties,” Dallington had replied. “A pig with a magnifying glass would be as much use as the lot down at the theater.”

Nicholson frowned. “A pig couldn’t even hold a magnifying glass.”

“I won’t have you besmirch pigs in my hearing,” said Dallington moodily. He desperately wanted a chance to find Muller; indeed, Lenox suspected that he had been absent from the offices so much that week because he was conducting his own investigation. “Some of the finest chaps I ever met were pigs.”

“Well, as you know, I’m not on the case myself, though I would very much like to be. Anyone who finds Muller, particularly alive, is guaranteed promotion.”

“I still think you ought to come work for us,” Lenox had said.

They’d been sitting in the Two Princes, a dim pub with a bright little coal fire and very good ale. Nicholson, packing his pipe, had shaken his head. “I love the Yard. I’ll never leave, if they’ll keep me.” Both Dallington and Lenox must have looked doubtful, because he had felt compelled to add, “It’s my Oxford, you see.”

Lenox nodded. He liked Nicholson. The three had grown close earlier that year, working together on a case. “So then,” said Lenox, “can’t you ask to be put on the case?”

“I have. McKee is protecting his turf very carefully.”

“We kept a pig when I was a boy,” said Dallington, taking a sip of his dark beer. “His name was George Washington.”

“What an utterly fascinating story,” said Lenox.

“He could eat thirty potatoes in a sitting if he got a head of steam up.”

“Thirty potatoes? Really, I mean to say, you ought to tell people about this at parties.”

Dallington had looked at him suspiciously and then broken into a laugh, which Nicholson joined. Nicholson shook his head as it died down, tapping his pipe on the table to pack it more tightly. “Ah, that glass of wine,” he said. “The two stewards swear up and down that they filled it after the intermission, when Muller was already back out playing. But then where could he be?”

Lenox pondered the question as the cab moved across Grosvenor Square, in the direction of his brother’s house. Parsons had told the truth — there was nothing new in the midday paper, though there was a great deal of specious theorizing. When he stepped down from his cab he had learned no fresh information. Alas. Well, here he was: his brother. He took a deep breath, bracing himself.

Sir Edmund Lenox was two years older than Charles, and they had passed their childhoods as close as two brothers could be, first at their family home, Lenox House, in Sussex, then together at Harrow School, in London, and finally two years apart at Oxford. Their paths had diverged slightly after that. Edmund favored the country, Charles the city, and when their father died, and Edmund inherited both the baronetcy and the house, he had married and settled there. Then, however, around his thirtieth birthday, he had won the parliamentary seat of Markethouse, the village nearby, and since then he had divided his time more or less equally between London and the country. That had pleased his younger brother; for the past fifteen years, he’d been able to see a great deal of Edmund, between the time he was up for Parliament and the two weeks that they all spent at Lenox House over Christmas, by custom.

Edmund’s house in the city was the same one Lenox’s family had lived in during the season since the early part of the century, a bright, airy, wide-windowed, white-walled town house on a Mayfair side street.

Now, however, it was darkened — a black cloth wrapped around the door knocker, an unlit candle in the front window, black crepe lining the flower boxes, which ought at least to have had mums in them, at this time of year.

Lenox, a lump in his throat, reached up to the cab’s seat and paid the driver, who accepted the money with a finger to his hat and then whipped his two horses onward to their next fare.

The younger brother stood on the pavement for a moment, looking up. His brother’s dear, beloved wife, Molly, was dead, aged only forty, and though Edmund had kept his demeanor even, in the five weeks since it had happened, anyone who knew him even slightly saw how impenetrable, how implacable his grief was. He had become a ghost of himself, and Lenox had realized to his horror that it wasn’t impossible to imagine that Edmund might follow, soon, behind his wife.