Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

When they finally picked up Muller’s trail, it was nearly midnight.

They were deep in the recesses of the famous Jermyn Street Baths: Dallington, Lenox, Pointilleux, their lanky friend Nicholson from Scotland Yard, Thurley, the manager from the theater, and a friendly waddling constable named Cartwright who had never made an arrest before. (Out of his hearing, Dallington had made some rather cruel guesses as to why that might be, mostly to do with Cartwright’s weight and almost supernatural stupidity — but he had been the closest constable to the entrance of the baths.) Poor Polly, though she had worked herself three-quarters to death on the case, had been barred admission from the inner rooms of the house, as a woman. Instead of going with them, she had taken up a post in the front hall and started writing out a list of journalists for her assistant, the hulking ex-seaman Anixter, to go and collect.

When Lenox had arrived at the theater earlier that day, he had spotted Dallington, and the young lord — looking fresh, as he always did, whatever exertions he subjected himself to — came straight over.

“There you are.”

“You’re close?” said Lenox.

“Yes, old Greville broke.”

“The theater owner.”

“He’s in a state. Did you know that was a wig, that tearing fine head of hair he had? Underneath it he’s only got a grizzled bare pate, I can tell you, and right now he’s weeping in the box at the Yard.”

Lenox, whose own close-cropped brown hair was still blessedly full, but nevertheless thinner than it had been when he was on Dallington’s side of thirty, said only, “What did he tell you?”

“You were right on two counts. First of all, that woman was Muller’s lover, not his sister. His sister really was in Paris, is in Paris, I suppose. Second, it all came down to the chandelier. Muller couldn’t have known about it — nor about the passage above his room.”

“And?”

“We told Greville he would hang for the murder if he didn’t come clean. That flustered him. I’m no admirer of Broadbridge, but he can certainly put the fear of Jehovah into a chap.

“According to Greville, it all happened at intermission. Muller came offstage and told him, immediately, that he had a problem. Well — the problem was a dead woman.”

“Poisoned, though?” Lenox asked.

“Eh?” said Dallington.

“Nothing, nothing. Go on.”

“Greville has never sold more tickets at a higher price, and he made a quick calculation. It didn’t count on Muller running. He’s greedy. He told Muller about the chandelier and the passage. I suppose he thought that nobody would miss a German woman without a single friend in London, and that they might go on selling tickets together for another week at least, and deal with the problem then. Only Muller did a runner.”

“And now you’re on Muller’s track?”

“Actually we’ve come back here because we lost it,” said Dallington. “At this moment Polly is asking Greville where Muller could possibly be — what he knows in London. We already asked him, and we’ve chased down every place, without finding any fresh sign of him. We want to see if Greville can think of anywhere else Muller might be.”

“Which places did Greville already give you?”

“Muller’s hotel, the York, though of course that’s been torn into a billion pieces. Two restaurants, Thompson’s and Wilson’s. A pub called the Earl of Thomas, where he liked to have a glass of port alone before his concerts; Green Park, where he took his morning walks; and the music shops on Lillard Street.”

“No sign of him at any of them.”

“None. We asked pretty forcefully at the music shops in particular.”

Lenox frowned. “No, he wouldn’t go there if he had any intelligence, which I think we can assume he has. It’s funny, though — Thompson’s and Wilson’s are in very different directions, and neither is close to the theater.”

“So?”

“Is there a bookshop nearby?”

“Hatchards.”

“Yes, of course, that’s right. Give me fifteen minutes to get there and back — don’t leave.”

Hatchards, with its sober hunter green exterior and comfortable interior, was the best bookstore in the West End. A bookseller nodded at Lenox and asked if he could help.

“Where is your travel section?”

“At the rear of the store, sir. Let me show you.”

The shop carried a shelf’s worth of guides to London in foreign languages, including three in German.

The first of these was useless, but in the second, Lenox saw with a little thrill, two of the restaurants recommended with the highest number of stars, three, were Thompson’s and Wilson’s.

He confirmed that the third guide didn’t have the same offerings, then bought the second one, which was by Karl Baedeker, and ran back to the theater with it, heart beating quickly.

He found Polly and Dallington speaking to Nicholson and interrupted them. “Look here,” he said.

“Oh, hello, Lenox, welcome back,” said Polly, tiredly but sunnily. “We’ve just heard that LeMaire is still at the York. Out of ideas.”

“Oh, good. But look — Thompson’s and Wilson’s.” He stabbed at the page with his finger. “Every German I’ve ever met has traveled out of a guidebook.”

Dallington’s eyes widened. “Yes!”

Polly nodded slowly. “So what do we do?”

“Muller knows a very small section of London. I think we can cover it all today.”

And indeed, in the course of the afternoon and evening they had several tantalizing glimpses of him. No, he had never eaten at the Florence, as far as the manager of that restaurant could remember — but the highly touted tobacconist the next street over had had a German fellow answering to Muller’s description in the shop twice. Moreover, he had bought the same kind of cigars that Thurley (enlisted as an aide) remembered Muller smoking.

What had he been wearing? Where had he come from? The tobacconist couldn’t answer, but a little ways off, at Thompson’s again, Lenox pressed the manager there for every detail of Muller’s visits. Had he ordered dessert? Cheese? Coffee? The manager admitted that he hadn’t ordered coffee, which led him to recall for the first time that perhaps Mr. Muller had mentioned that he liked a refreshing walk before he took his postprandial coffee, when declining it at the restaurant.

It was this that led them to Frank’s, the most heartily recommended coffeehouse in Baedeker’s book. It was owned by a German and carried the latest editions of the German newspapers, apparently.

It was the proprietor here who inadvertently gave them the clue that sent them to the baths.

“He would have been in later in the evening, probably,” Polly was saying, pressing him. “Around ten o’clock.”

“Ah, there I lose you. I am generally at the Couch Street Baths after six o’clock.”

“Couch Street? Is that where the Germans go?” Lenox asked.

Mr. Frank, who spoke excellent English, said, “The working Germans, sir.”

The working Germans. Muller, by contrast, was well-off. Lenox looked in Baedeker: There were two pages, there, dedicated to the wonders of the Jermyn Street Baths …

And indeed, these were the most luxurious baths in London by a wide margin — not a place to Lenox’s taste, but many people swore by it, and after they had raced there and located the manager, he told them that yes, a small German man with a mustache and a receding hairline did come in. When? Generally very late — eleven, or twelve. Was that uncommonly late? Not at all. They didn’t close until four in the morning, of course, and only for an hour or two then.

It would have taken a very dim person not to perceive that they were after the missing German pianist, and, having put two and two together, this manager grew extremely agitated and excited.

“Is he here? Is he here?” he asked, a brilliantined forelock of hair falling down upon his forehead and quivering there as he repeated the question, and then offered vehemently his utmost assistance, whatever he could do at all, the reputation of the baths, gentlemen (“and Mrs. — ma’am,” he added, to Polly).

The small company, impatience mounting, retreated to a nearby chophouse, before finally returning to the baths at half past eleven.

“I wonder where LeMaire is now,” said Dallington as they went in. “Probably China.”

“Hopefully far from here, if we’re correct,” said Polly. “I want the glory for ourselves.”

It had started to drizzle, and Dallington said maliciously, “I hope he’s stuck out in the rain somewhere.”

The baths were spectacular, Lenox had to admit as they walked through. They were set up in a series of connected rooms, each tiled in a different brilliant pattern, all with divans and sofas and chairs at their edges, turbaned servants standing close by at every turn. Their little crew made for an odd intrusion upon the leisure of the prosperous gentlemen who were using the baths, but they only received glances of curiosity, no challenge to their progress.

Following the manager, Smythson, they passed through the hot room, then the “very hot” room, which wasn’t pleasant, then the sluice room, where they didn’t pause at the waterfalls of cool water, though Thurley, in his three-piece wool suit, red as a beet, looked as if he wouldn’t have minded.

After that it was the massage room, the cool room, the plunge pool — room after room after room, the steps in a sequence that aspired toward what must have been a nirvana-like relaxation.

“You haven’t seen him, Mr. Thurley?” Nicholson whispered after each room.

“No,” said Thurley. “And it is exceedingly unpleasant to examine these fellows so closely when they’re — when they’re disrobed. I don’t like it a bit, and I don’t blame them for disliking it either, I can tell you.”

“Stick it out a bit longer,” said Dallington encouragingly. “If we find him, I’ll treat you to a bath myself.”

Thurley, who liked a lord, colored and said, oh, it was an honor to help, no remuneration necessary, though of course anyone might find it refreshing to enjoy a bath, after suchlike exertions.

And then, in the middle of this speech, the theater’s manager spotted him: the man that all of London had been looking for.