The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Between the end of this midday meal with Graham and his scheduled meeting with Dallington and Nicholson at Scotland Yard, Lenox only had about an hour and ten minutes; it was perhaps just enough time to squeeze in a visit to Madeleine Jenkins. At any rate, he could be fifteen minutes late to the Yard without very much guilt, were it necessary.

His carriage trundled across the river, and as he looked back at the lovely golden stretch of Parliament, at the high clock face of Big Ben, he realized that he didn’t regret driving away from it. Good to know, he thought. He’d meant what he said to Graham. He had no desire to stand for Parliament again. Whatever LeMaire might decide, whatever a newspaper might write, he was a detective once more. That was reward enough on its own.

Time, now, to find out who had shot his friend Thomas Jenkins.

Fifteen minutes later he stepped out of his carriage into a bright, leafy street, and paused for a moment to study the Jenkins house, which signified, everywhere, its recent grief: Its windows were closed, even on this lovely day, there was a black velvet knot on the door, and each of the five gray alder trees on the lawn had a cross at its foot. All of this was at odds with the first spring beauty of the green grass upon the small lawn, and the tiny buds on the flowering bushes near the house’s broad porch. Lenox glanced up at the windows of the second floor. Behind one of them, he knew, was the body, which by tradition would be kept in the home until the funeral. That was scheduled for tomorrow. With a heavy heart, he went and knocked on the door.

A housekeeper answered, and behind her, crisp and businesslike, was a woman of about fifty, with gray hair in a tight knot and a manner that suggested visitors were unwelcome. She admitted to being Madeleine Jenkins’s sister before asking Lenox rather shortly what business brought him here.

Just as Lenox was about to answer, Madeleine herself floated into view, her face distracted, distant. She just barely made eye contact with Lenox. “Oh, hello, Mr. Lenox,” she said. “Please, come into the sitting room. How kind of you to visit.”

“Mrs. Jenkins,” he said, approaching her quickly, “I cannot adequately express my sorrow at your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Please, sit. Clarissa, would you ask if the maid could fetch Mr. Lenox some tea? He was a colleague of … of my husband’s.”

Lenox sat down upon a hard small couch. It was stiflingly warm in the room. All of the mirrors were covered, all the clocks stopped, further traditions to honor the dead. He hated them all, for some reason, though he understood that others might find them comforting.

Madeleine was dressed in the habiliment that was called deep mourning, a black weeping veil, a house cap, a long black dress. It would be a year and a day before she could enter second mourning, the stage at which she might add small bits of color to her person, even a piece of jewelry, though black would still predominate. That might last another six months, and then it would be half mourning — gray dresses, or lavender, though still always with some black added at the waist or the shoulders.

These were the forms. In truth Lenox doubted, from her broken face, whether Madeleine would ever come out of deep mourning, at least in the sense of deep anguish. She was still a pretty woman, with long dark hair and soft eyes, and by rights she might marry again within two years. But he couldn’t imagine she would. He had rarely seen a widow who looked more surprised, or more hurt. Their children were very young.

They spoke gently to each other for a few minutes. Finally, Lenox said, “As you may know, I am helping to investigate Thomas’s death.”

She glanced up at him. “I saw that in the newspaper this morning.”

“I hope you don’t believe that I would ever compromise the—”

“No, no. He trusted you completely, too, you know. He would have chosen you himself.”

Lenox had believed this, and the letter in Jenkins’s shoe indicated as much — but it was still meaningful to hear it from her, a relief. Saddening, too, because their breach had been so pointless. “Thank you for saying so,” he said.

“Not at all.”

“As you may know from Inspector Nicholson, the difficulty we’ve had is that we cannot find your husband’s case files. He was working on something substantial, I believe. He left me a note—”

“Yes, saying that you ought to consult his papers.”

“You have no idea where they are?” Lenox asked gently.

“I wish I did. They wouldn’t be here — that’s the only thing I know.”

“Did he have a safe?” asked Lenox.

“Yes, but we’ve looked in it twice now. It has a few certificates, locks of the children’s hair, and my jewelry, along with a few oddments. Nothing professional.”

“He never brought his papers home, in your recollection?”

“No.”

“Did he work from home?”

She shook her head. “Very rarely. Once in a while he sat up late in the kitchen thinking over a problem. He liked to be alone. I would make him a pot of tea and he would take his pipe and his tobacco. The kitchen fire is warm all night, and he would sit in a soft chair I keep there.”

“Did he write while he did this?”

To Lenox’s surprise, she said that he had. “Sometimes he asked me for pen and paper. But he always burned his notes. It was an aid to thought for my husband, writing.”

“I take it you haven’t seen any papers he left lying in the kitchen?”

She smiled faintly. “No. Believe me, Mr. Lenox, I am conditioned to be on the lookout for papers, for any piece of paper Thomas might have left behind. You cannot imagine how dearly I wish I could find one for you. The moment I see any kind of paper at all it is yours. It’s only that it hasn’t happened yet.”

“You have been in and out of the kitchen recently?”

Her smile widened, wanly. “Only two or three hundred times.”

It made sense that she would spend a good deal of time in the kitchen, even at a time like this. The Jenkinses would have kept a single maid, Lenox imagined, and perhaps hired another in special circumstances. Madeleine would have been in the kitchen a great deal — a working wife, not a sitting room wife. “Did Jenkins stay up late any night this week or last?” he asked.

For the first time she looked slightly surprised by a question. “Well, yes, I suppose he did. I think Tuesday. I heard him come to bed after midnight.”

Tuesday, two days before his death. “Could I see the kitchen?” he asked.

They walked down the narrow staircase in single file, but the kitchen itself was slightly less overheated than the sitting room; near the ceiling was a row of small windows, one of which was open to let in the breeze. Something was cooking slowly on the stovetop in a closed pot. Rabbit stew, perhaps? It smelled wonderful.

“This is the chair?” asked Lenox.

“Yes,” said Madeleine. She raised a hand to her mouth and for a moment looked as if she might break down, but composed herself. “That’s where he sat.”

“Can I ask — without wishing to seem a narcissist — whether he had mentioned me recently? I wouldn’t, usually, except for the note he left me.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said.

Lenox stood up and looked under the cushion of the chair, then shook out its pillows. No piece of paper fluttered away from them, alas. He stood, trying to think of what would have preoccupied Jenkins down here. “Your fire’s gone out,” he said, gesturing toward the gray ashes.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ve been distracted.”

Then he saw something. He bent down; the fire was in a small cradling grate, much smaller than the hearth itself, with brick all around it to catch any sparks. “There’s a piece of paper back behind the grate,” he said. “It’s in a ball.”

“Is there? No, there can’t be.” She bent down to look, too, and saw the balled-up paper. “Can you reach it?”

He could. It was charred but mostly intact. He unfolded it and read for a moment before he realized, with disappointment, that it was a recipe. “Is this your handwriting?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. He started to ball the page back up, but then she said, hesitantly, “But on the back — might that be Thomas’s? I think it might, you know.”

Lenox turned the page over and saw, with a thrill, the heading of a list.

“This is Thomas’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Yes, do you know what, it is,” she said. Her face was eager. “Could it help?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “It could, perhaps. I hope.”

“What do you think this code means?”

“It’s not a code.” Lenox had seen immediately what the shorthand meant. “Portland Place, New Cavendish Street, Harley Street, Weymouth Street. These are addresses, all within a few blocks of each other.”

And all within a few blocks of where your husband was killed, he almost added, but thought better of it.