The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning at the offices of Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire, the four principals of the agency gathered for their weekly meeting. Though they had been awake late, Lenox and Dallington were the first two to arrive, as if in accidental obeisance to the order of their names upon the brass plate outside the office’s door. They sat and were halfway through a cup of tea by the time Polly and LeMaire entered the room, each with a polite hello.

It was the loveliest day yet of 1876—the sweet o’ the year, as Shakespeare had called this time in April. The sun shone a mild gold through the lightly shifting trees, and the streets below, still wet from a cleaning, sparkled brightly. The mood of the city on mornings like this one was somehow brotherly, amiable, ineffably unified. Through the windows of their second-story offices it was possible to see the small conversations that took place on every city street — the cabman calling down a joke to the fruit seller, the banter between a nurse pushing a pram and a constable swinging his whistle. Sometimes Lenox loved London very much indeed.

Polly seemed tired. Anixter was speaking to Pointilleux in the next room, loudly enough to be overheard, and as she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Mrs. O’Neill had made she looked testily toward the door. Lenox watched concern fall across Dallington’s face.

LeMaire, meanwhile, had a large sheaf of papers. He set these down on the table in front of himself.

“New business first, then?” said Dallington, when Polly sat down. “Charles has a case that we’re working on together, as you both know. Polly, I hope you’ve been able to manage without me?”

“Somehow,” she said, though she smiled to reduce the bite in this reply.

“I have a piece of firm business first, if you would not mind,” said LeMaire.

“You do?” asked Dallington. “What about the order of the meeting?”

It was usually LeMaire who was most conscientious about sticking to the schedule by which these meetings always ran. “My patience is not long at the moment,” said LeMaire. From his sheaf of papers he pulled a newspaper. “I wonder if you have seen the Telegraph this morning.”

“No,” said Dallington.

From her eyes, Lenox could tell that Polly had. It wasn’t fatigue in her eyes, it was worry. He hadn’t — he’d woken late and quickly absorbed the main headlines of the Times on the way here, but the other papers were arranged in a neat half-moon on his desk, awaiting him. “We are mentioned,” said LeMaire. “Not as favorably as might be wished.”

Lenox’s heart fell. LeMaire had slid the paper across the table in the general direction of the other three, and Lenox took it.

Quickly he ran his eyes over the text of the article. One paragraph stung particularly:

It was a new quote, one that hadn’t appeared in the previous article. Lenox passed over it as best he could and finished reading. “There is no mention at all that I’m a member of a firm,” he said when he was done. “Nor that our services have been retained by the Yard.”

“That’s not fair,” said Dallington.

LeMaire’s eyes widened slightly, as if Dallington’s incredulity at this unfairness did him no very great credit. “Did you expect it would be?” he asked.

Dallington took the paper and looked at it for fifteen or twenty seconds, then offered it to Polly. She declined it. “There’s no mention of all of Charles’s past successes,” said the young lord. “Nor ours, for that matter. We must write a letter.”

LeMaire sighed heavily. “If the three of you choose to write a letter, of course you must.”

Now, for the first time, Polly looked alert. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh!” said Lenox. She had gotten there more rapidly than he had. “LeMaire, surely not.”

Dallington looked up and down the table. “What?”

LeMaire nodded, his face set with forbidding determination. “I must leave the firm at the end of April,” he said. “That will give me time to conclude my open business here. I will pay my quarter of the rent through the end of May, which should be ample time to let this space and find a new one, should the three of you wish to move into smaller premises, but I must ask that my name be taken off the firm’s letterhead at the end of the month.”

“This is hasty,” said Lenox. “It’s only been three months. All businesses struggle at the start.”

LeMaire shook his head. “I have very great respect for all three of you, but I do not believe the business is viable. The idea was good — but, if I may speak frankly, three cannot support four, and when, in addition, the fourth brings only negative attention to the firm … no, it is not sustainable, Mr. Lenox, I am sorry. I have the greatest respect for your achievements of the past, as I say.”

There was silence in the room. LeMaire lifted his cup of tea and took a sip from it, meeting their gazes levelly, awaiting their replies.

It was Dallington who spoke first. He stood up. “Good riddance, then,” he said. “Best of luck, and all that, of course. For my part, I think we’ll be better off without you.”

“Since I account for thirty-eight percent of the firm’s receipts I cannot agree,” said LeMaire. “Mrs. Buchanan accounts for twenty-nine percent. You for twenty-two percent, Lord John. Nearly a quarter, I will grant you.”

LeMaire had the politeness to stop there, but nobody needed to do the math for Lenox. Eleven percent, and that included the cases that somehow Lady Jane had arranged for him. He felt his face get red. What a mistake it was to have left Parliament. He wished the earth would open up and swallow him.

“I really do think we just need a little bit more time,” said Polly now. “And I think the first thing we need to do, by hook or by crook, is to arrange some kind of favorable press. I don’t care if we have to pay someone for it.”

“I cannot see it helping, unfortunately,” said LeMaire.

Polly persisted. “Why not agree to reconvene this meeting in two months’ time, at the start of June? If you feel as you did, you can leave with immediate effect, and with no hard feelings.”

“With immediate effect, anyway,” said Dallington shortly.

“I really do think things will look up,” said Polly, ignoring Dallington and focusing on LeMaire.

LeMaire opened the door and called out something in brisk French. After a moment his nephew came in. LeMaire invited him into the room and closed the door behind him. “Pointilleux, what are they saying about us, the people in our profession that you’ve met in London since you came to live with me? My nephew attends a great many professional luncheons, you see, as part of his training.”

Pointilleux thought for a moment, raising his eyes, and kept them there as he said, in his methodical way, “They say the firm is run very bad. They say the firm is four chickens without even one head. They say it is all some jokes, they say it is … I don’t search the word in my brain … incompetentente.”

“‘Incompetent’ is the word in English,” said Lenox.

“Incompetent,” Pointilleux repeated brightly, pleased to have learned something new.

LeMaire raised his hands, as if his case were made, and then stood. “I will speak with Mrs. Buchanan about the financial arrangements of my departure, since she has the business head among the remaining partners — no offense to either of you, rather take it as a compliment, please, Mrs. Buchanan. Otherwise, I hope when we meet it will be as friends, despite this unpleasant conclusion to our professional association. Do any of you wish to ask me anything?”

There was silence, and after a beat the Frenchman bowed and left the room. None of the three remaining partners looked at each other.

There was still one surprise left in the meeting, however. Pointilleux, who had been sitting in a chair near the door, placed some feet back from the table where the principals always sat, rose. “For my part, I would like to stay,” he said. “I have observe you all very closely, and though I respect my uncle, I think the firm will be nevertheless a”—here he groped for the correct phrase in his brain, and apparently found one from the West End stage posters he must have seen—“a marvelous hit for the ages.”

Now they did exchange glances, and then Dallington said, speaking for all of them, “We’d love to have you, of course.”

Pointilleux smiled and said, “Excellent,” then left the room.