The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The three investigators and the butler sat there in silence for a moment, and then Nicholson said, very pointedly, “What else can you tell us about this person — Francis, Hartley, whatever the hell he’s called?”

Unfortunately Smith knew very little. He was more than happy to recapitulate the few small details of dress he recalled — a crimson dinner jacket one evening, for instance, as if he had come from or was going to attend some fashionable event — but he couldn’t offer a great deal else. To Lenox the most interesting thing the butler told them was of the variable nature of Hartley’s visits. He sometimes came for ten minutes, sometimes three hours. It suggested either close friendship — or business.

It was an odd feeling to hold in his hand the gun that might have killed Jenkins, with its very slight heft, its small size a kind of final insult.

“We must go and meet this fellow tonight,” said Dallington at last, glancing up at the wall clock. “I suppose York must be a friend of theirs.”

“Yes. It’s not all that common a last name, either. The first thing to do is check the rolls of his clubs,” said Lenox. “Smith, what clubs was Lord Wakefield a member of?”

“Too numerous to mention, sir — many lifetime memberships came down to him from his father — but the two he regularly visited were the Cardplayers and the Beargarden. He almost always took his luncheon at the Beargarden and his supper at the Cardplayers, and then stayed on after supper for his cigar and his glass of port, playing whist.”

That made sense. Both were clubs devoted to drinking and gambling, dominated in their membership by young men. Wakefield wouldn’t have found the clubs along Pall Mall congenial, in all probability, with their staid dining rooms and older members snoozing above the Times. “We’ll start there,” said Nicholson.

“But if I might suggest—” said Smith.

“Yes?”

“One of the entrances to Regent’s Park is called the York Gate, sirs. Might the reference in the letter be to that?”

They exchanged a look. “That’s rather helpful,” said Dallington. “Why did that pop into your mind?”

“I must pass it half a dozen times a day.”

“You aren’t very secretive, Mr. Smith, I suppose, on Lord Wakefield’s behalf?”

The butler shrugged very slightly. “Lord Wakefield has not been what I wished he might as an employer, sir. You may ask my former master — Jarvis Norman, of Turk’s Crescent — and he will tell you that I have recently asked for a reference, hoping to find a new position. I was deceived by a title, I suppose, sirs. It does not surprise me that Lord Wakefield came to a bad end. Private habits are often the truest sign of a man’s morals.” Smith hesitated. “And my father was a constable with Sir Robert’s first peelers, sir. I have always felt very great loyalty to the Yard.”

“Was he never!” said Nicholson, brightening. “What was his name?”

“Obadiah Smith, sir.”

“Obadiah Smith,” said Nicholson, thinking.

“He died in the year ’71, sir. Born dead on the stroke of the new century, January 1 of 1800, so he was seventy-one himself when he went. His area of patrol was near the Inns of Court.”

“I think I recall the name. Bless him, anyhow. There are few enough of that old guard left.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“If you ever want a change of career, your father’s service could help you find a place on the force. You spotted York’s Gate quickly enough. It might be a line of work that suits you.”

“I’m very obliged, sir, but it was my father who pushed me into service. One too many knives he’d seen, he always said. ‘Better polish ’em than dodge ’em,’ he’d say. And I must admit that by and large I’ve been happy.”

“You mentioned private habits,” said Lenox. “Wakefield’s were bad?”

Smith hesitated again. “I wouldn’t wish to speak ill of my master, nor of the dead, sir,” he said. “So I am doubly compelled to keep my thoughts to myself, you see.”

“Anything you say will remain very strictly within our confidence,” Nicholson said. “And it may help us stop a very dangerous man.”

Smith looked doubtful. His resistance before had seemed pro forma, but now he looked disinclined to speak. “I really feel I must wait until Lord Wakefield’s son — someone from the family, that is, anyone … in short, it is not my place, sir.”

Lenox had half-forgotten Wakefield’s son, the Earl of Calder. Somewhere in a room at Downing College, in Cambridge, without knowing it, the lad had inherited a marquessate and Hatting Hall and this London house and who-could-say what else. His own title, at the very least — his current one being borrowed from his father, as was customary among the old aristocrats, because they had so many titles that they could give the lesser ones to their children; it was by this method, in fact, that the Prince of Wales was so called, borrowing the honorific from the monarch, his mother or father. Lenox wondered how young Calder would hear the news. He hoped not from the papers. Would the perfunctory relationship the father and son had had make this death harder to bear, or easier?

“Mr. Smith,” said Lenox.

“Sir?”

An underrated quality in a detective was charm. You might also call it charisma. Charm could persuade a witness to speak more openly; it could redress the imbalance that was inevitable when one person had all the information and the other none. It could make a witness want to speak, want to go on speaking, when otherwise he or she might not have. Jenkins had had it. Nicholson didn’t, quite, though he was affable, which was a different kind of strength — a more comforting one.

Lenox didn’t have inherent charm, either, but over the years he had cultivated a certain tone of voice for use on recalcitrant witnesses. It contained a mixture of superiority, amicability, and confidentiality. It was a performance.

He spoke in this voice now. Wakefield had been a bad man, he explained — that was the unfortunate truth. By contrast their friend Inspector Jenkins had been a good one, indeed a very good one. If it had just been Wakefield’s death they were investigating, they might well have been happy to wait for Smith to speak with the marquess’s family, to take his time. But there was Jenkins. Lenox described Madeleine Jenkins and her three children. His voice grew more urgent as he spoke. In all it took only a minute or so to make his case, but by the end of that time Smith was nodding. His face was serious.

“I see, sir, I do. I hadn’t realized the death of Mr. Jenkins — the one in the papers — well, I didn’t know, sir, that it was related.”

“May be related,” said Nicholson. “We—”

But Smith, whose manners throughout the conversation had been very deferential, was now impatient to speak, and cut in. “I hadn’t put it together, you see, sir, but Inspector Jenkins was here. He called upon Lord Wakefield, sir.”

The three investigators exchanged glances, all interest in Wakefield’s private habits set momentarily to the side. “Jenkins was here?” asked Lenox. “When?”

“He called twice, sir. I hadn’t even linked his visit in my mind with the fellow in the headlines, oddly enough. But it was him — or at any rate it was an inspector from the Yard named Jenkins.”

“There was only one,” said Nicholson.

Dallington had a folded newspaper in the inner pocket of his jacket. He pulled it out and unfolded it. “Is that him? The picture there?”

“Yes!” said Smith eagerly. “That was the man who visited — I’m sure of it.”

“When?” asked Lenox again, more urgently.

The butler’s eyes were raised to the ceiling in concentration. “The first time was two weeks ago,” he said. “He called when Lord Wakefield was out. He waited here for fifteen minutes.”

“He gave a name? A card?” asked Lenox.

“No, sir, and I thought it was odd at the time. I would never have known his name if he hadn’t called again, four or five days ago.”

“How did he introduce himself, on his second visit?” asked Lenox.

“He didn’t. But Lord Wakefield said to me, ‘Smith, have some tea sent up for Inspector Jenkins. It’s not every day we receive the very great honor of a visitor from Scotland Yard.’ He was being ironical, I mean to say, sir. And it was the very profound honor, now I recall, sir. ‘It’s not every day we receive the very profound honor of a visitor from Scotland Yard.’”

“How long did they sit together?” asked Dallington.

“An hour, perhaps longer.”

“Did you overhear anything they discussed?”

Smith shook his head. “No, sir. They were silent whenever I came into the room.”

“Did they seem agitated? Angry?” asked Lenox.

“Only silent, waiting for me to be gone I’m sure.”

“There weren’t any raised voices?”

“No, sir.”

“What did Wakefield do after Jenkins had gone?”

“He immediately called for his coach and went out.”

“How long was he out?”

“An hour or so, sir.”

“And he returned alone?”

“No, sir. He returned with Mr. Francis. They were closeted together for several hours, late into the night, that evening.”

Dallington looked at Lenox. Neither man needed to speak to understand the other’s thought: that they were now getting very close to the truth indeed.