The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was following this illuminating discussion with McConnell that Lenox finally returned to Hampden Lane after his long day, to find Lady Jane and Toto together with their daughters. When Toto had gone he ate a quick bite and then sat in his study, thinking. Lady Jane stayed with him there to keep him company, reading next to the fire at the end of the room, occasionally closing her eyes to drowse. Lenox, for his part, was wide awake. His mind was working, working. Eventually he pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and began to write up his notes from his day’s activity.

A slow, methodical poisoning — it stood in stark contrast to the brutal and instantaneous method of Jenkins’s murder. Lenox wondered what Wakefield’s habits of drinking had been. According to his butler he had generally eaten lunch at the Beargarden and supper at the Cardplayers. It would be necessary to inquire there about his drinking habits — indeed, they might even have his bills, showing what he drank and when. Lenox jotted down a word to remind himself to check this.

“Why would the lead have suddenly killed him just now, so soon after Jenkins’s death?” Lenox had asked McConnell in the laboratory. “I mean to say, if the poisoning had gone on for weeks, mightn’t he have died at any moment?”

McConnell shook his head. “By the time he died, he would have been inured to the taste of the lead in his wine, I expect, and whoever was poisoning him could have increased the dosage enough to kill him outright. His body would have been so toxic at that stage that any little extra amount would have pushed him over the edge.”

“A brilliant method if you have the time,” said Lenox. “I’m surprised I’ve never come across it. An ideal means for a wife to kill a husband, I would have thought.”

Replaying this conversation in his mind, Lenox looked across at his own wife and smiled. “Jane, if you had to kill me, how would you do it?”

Without opening her eyes, she said, “I’d have elephants stomp you. That’s how they do it in India.”

“It seems unnecessarily harsh.”

“You shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.” She opened her eyes and looked across at him pointedly, but couldn’t keep a straight face, and laughed. “I could never kill you. What on earth do you mean by asking, Charles?”

“If I weren’t me and you weren’t you, I suppose I mean.”

“Thank goodness that’s not the case.”

“But if it were? Would you poison me?”

“I don’t want to think about it. This sort of thing never came up when you were in Parliament.” She looked up at the clock on his mantel. “It’s late, too.”

He stood up from his desk and went across the room to give her a kiss on the forehead. “You ought to go up to bed.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I have to go out again.”

“Do be safe.”

“I will, I will. You have my word.”

She squeezed his hand and stood up from the chair, her copy of Middlemarch under her arm. She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

After Jane had gone to bed Lenox sat at his desk again, ruminating about the case. He felt as if there were too much to do. He mustn’t lose track of Jenkins. That was crucial.

At ten forty, tired, he departed Hampden Lane in the carriage, his horses apparently again in full health. He stopped in front of Mitchell’s, where he saw Dallington just about to enter. “John,” he called from the carriage.

Dallington turned. “Ah, there you are.”

“Let’s go to Wakefield’s instead. I’ll explain on the way what McConnell has told me.”

“Right-o.”

It was too late to expect Wakefield’s servants still to be awake, and the house was mostly dim, so when Lenox rang the bell it was with the expectation that there would be a wait of some time. Instead the door opened almost immediately. Wakefield’s butler, Smith, was still dressed for his job.

He bowed slightly. “Your Lordship, Mr. Lenox, how do you do. Can I help you?”

“We had a few more questions we wanted to ask you, and perhaps the other servants.”

“By all means, sir — though I should say at the moment Lord Wakefield’s cousin is here, Mr. Theodore Murray. I have been attending to him.”

“What is he doing here?”

“I am given to understand that he is arranging Lord Wakefield’s business matters,” said Smith quietly. They were standing in the front hallway. “In preparation for the new Lord Wakefield’s arrival tomorrow — my employer’s son. He has been informed of his father’s death and is coming to London by an early train.”

This was the Earl of Calder, at Cambridge, Lenox recalled. “We needn’t come all the way in,” said Lenox. “We are primarily curious about His Lordship’s daily habits, and you might just answer our questions about those.”

“His daily habits, sir?”

“His meals, for instance. You mentioned that he often ate out.”

“Not breakfast, sir.”

“He ate breakfast here every morning?”

“Yes, sir, in his rooms. He took two pots of tea and four eggs, poached on toast. It was a very regular thing with him, sir.”

“And his lunch? His supper?”

“I don’t think His Lordship ate either meal here more than a dozen times in the year I’ve been working for him, sir. He was very constant at the Beargarden and the Cardplayers.”

“Did he return home in between? Did he have a glass of wine before he went out?”

“He sometimes returned home between lunch and supper, sometimes not, sir. As for a glass of wine — no, his preference before supper was for ale. We always keep a great supply of it from Hatting Hall, where they make it themselves. It’s very strong.”

“Do you know if he drank wine at supper, at his club?” asked Lenox.

“I couldn’t say, sir. He didn’t generally drink wine, though I know that he was fond of port, Lord Wakefield. He had it by the case from Berry Brothers. He kept it in his rooms.”

Lenox looked at Dallington. Port — that could be it. “Could we see the bottles of port he drank?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to fetch it, or would you like to come up to his rooms for yourselves?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather we went up.”

Wakefield’s rooms were tidy and as impersonal as the rest of the house, with the exception of his desk, which was covered with loose snuff, chits of paper, all manner of debris. Smith, observing them take in the state of the desk, said, “We were under orders not to disturb it.”

“Did Nicholson and his men look through the desk?” asked Dallington.

“Oh, yes, sir, very thoroughly.”

Near the fireplace in the second of the two rooms Wakefield used for himself was a stand of liquor, and there on top of it was a bottle of ruby port. Lenox opened it and sniffed it. “Could I take this?” he asked.

Smith looked doubtful. “Perhaps if you could ask Mr. Murray?” he said. “Only I know that port is very expensive, sometimes, sir.”

Lenox had a small glass phial in his valise. “Here’s a bargain for you — I’ll take a thimbleful and leave the bottle.”

“Oh, in that case — yes, that should be fine, sir.” As Lenox shook the bottle hard (McConnell had told him the litharge of gold might sift down to the bottom) and then took his sample, Smith went on, saying, “You can see, under here, sirs, where he kept the rest of the case.”

He opened the cabinet to reveal a wooden crate with an open top, which must have held six bottles once. Now it held two. Dallington pulled it out and inspected it. “It’s stamped with Berry Brothers’ seal on the side, right here,” he said.

Lenox closed the phial, put it in his valise, and took the crate from Dallington. He held it under the lamp to look more closely. “Look,” he said to Dallington, “an invoice.”

Glued to the underside of the box was a sheet of paper. Lenox pulled it off and read it. His eyes widened, and he looked at Dallington. “What?” asked the young lord.

“Look at the order.”

Dallington took the sheet of paper. After a moment his eyes, too, widened. “We need to take this as well,” he said to Smith.

“As you please, sir,” said the butler. “It was only that I didn’t want anything that the heirs … that might be of value.”

Not much later Dallington and Lenox walked out along the street, passing the convent as they strolled toward Regent’s Park. It was not quite eleven thirty. “I’m disappointed in Nicholson and his men that they missed the invoice,” Lenox said.

“It was glued to the underside of the box, in fairness.”

Soon they met the inspector at the gate, where he was waiting, and together they took up their chilly post. They stayed until twelve thirty, but there was never any sign of Francis.

Softening the disappointment of this, however, was that invoice, which they showed Nicholson before they went their separate ways — for it gave the address of the person who had bought the potentially fatal port that Lord Wakefield had spent his last weeks of life drinking: one Andrew H. Francis, of Mornington Crescent.