The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On the ground floor of Scotland Yard was a long room of democratic usage. There were desks at which men could work; there was a corner dominated by armchairs and newspapers, which looked almost like the nook of some rather down-at-heel gentleman’s club; up toward the opposite end was a great urn full of tea with a tottering stack of cups next to it.

Within the Yard everyone called it the Great Room, and it was here that Lenox met Dallington and Nicholson twenty minutes after the hour. He apologized for his lateness, though perhaps with a note of self-forgiveness in his voice — since after all he had something to offer them, the list of addresses he’d found behind Jenkins’s kitchen grate.

Nicholson took the list and looked at it for a moment, then expressed his irritation that his men had missed it. “I’ll have a word with Armbruster. Not to mention Jenkins’s own sergeant and constables, who have been around there for a second look.”

“What do the addresses mean?” asked Dallington.

Nicholson shook his head, staring at the paper. “I’ve no idea, except that Wakefield himself lived in 73 Portland Place, obviously.”

“They could be witnesses Jenkins wanted to call on,” said Dallington.

“To what?” asked Lenox. “It’s such an unusual assortment. Why not 71 Portland Place, right next door? And what could anyone have seen at 99 Weymouth, two streets away?”

“Shall we have constables knock on all of these doors and ask them whether they have any information about Jenkins or Lord Wakefield?” asked Nicholson.

Lenox considered the idea. “I suppose you’d better.”

“I’ll just arrange it, then. Back in a moment. Have a cup of tea.”

Dallington and Lenox made their way down toward the table of refreshments, talking quietly. “I’m free,” said Dallington. “Perhaps I’ll go along.”

Lenox thought for a moment. “Might we send Pointilleux?”

Dallington frowned. “Do you think it’s the right time to train him, on such a sensitive matter?”

“He’s inexperienced, but he’s bright, and I’d like to reward him for his loyalty to us. He’s made it plain that he would like to get out of the office and do some work. On top of that, whether it’s you or he who goes, the Yard will insist upon taking the lead.”

“True enough.”

“That would also give the two of us time to step over to McConnell’s laboratory.”

Nicholson returned after a few moments with Sergeant Armbruster, the rather portly, worried-looking officer who had so dearly wanted hot soup for himself and his men as he was managing the scene of Jenkins’s murder. He had also conducted the canvass. Nicholson reintroduced them and said that the sergeant and his men had already visited most of the houses on the list.

“Which ones haven’t you visited?” asked Dallington.

“I’m not entirely certain, sir,” said Armbruster. “It will be in the report we made. I’m happy to go out again, though as I said to Inspector Nicholson, we found little enough the first time, and I generally work here, in the back offices, not out in the field. Perhaps it would be better to send a fresh pair of eyes.”

“Sometimes it only takes a second round of questions,” said Nicholson sharply.

The sergeant nodded quickly. “Oh, yes, sir. Did you want me to go now?”

“I do. You can take two constables from the pool.”

“And a lad of ours, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Lenox.

Armbruster took out a brightly polished gold watch, whose chain was stretched taut over his belly. “Of course, sir,” he said. He looked rather dispirited, and Lenox wondered what his plans for the evening had been.

Lenox and Dallington left the Yard not long after — Nicholson was going to read over Armbruster’s initial report again, and gave them a copy so they could do the same — and stopped into Chancery Lane, where they informed Pointilleux that he would be accompanying several members of the police force on a canvass. He reacted with a momentous wordless nod, took the information Dallington handed over, and set off at a rapid clip to meet Armbruster and his men.

After he left, Polly appeared in the doorway of her office. She was wearing an unadorned blue dress and had her hair under a bonnet. There was ink on her fingers. “How is the case proceeding?” she asked.

“It seems to me that we have a great deal of information and not quite enough,” said Dallington. “How has it been here?”

“Very busy,” said Polly. Suddenly she looked tired. “LeMaire has left. And there was a new matter for me, a young governess whose mistress has accused her of an inappropriate friendship with the gentleman of the house, quite inaccurately. She was close to hysterical, the poor dear. Penniless, it goes without saying, but I felt we must assist her.”

Dallington was moved. “By all means. Can I help?”

Polly looked at him quizzically. “Can you spare the time?”

When the three had met the year before — Polly had been an independent detective then, fresh to the business and full of new ideas — a friendship had sprung up between all three of them, but especially, perhaps, between Polly and Dallington. It made sense. They were of the same age, the same class. Both had been rather battered in their turn by the gossiping classes of London’s salons. Above all, they had the same wry, not altogether serious way of looking at the world. It was enough to madden some people — those who took the world very seriously indeed. Lenox wondered what Alfred Buchanan had been like, Polly’s short-lived husband. He must remember to ask Jane.

For a while, as Lenox recalled, it had seemed inevitable that Dallington and Polly would fall in love. Indeed, there was a moment when it seemed to him that they had already fallen in love. Like most ironists, Dallington was at heart a romantic, easily moved, and there had been glimpses in his face of something like passion, which Lenox had observed when Polly was talking, or even merely when she was in the room. As for Polly, early widowhood had trained her to wear a mask, but Lenox had imagined that he detected a softness in her, too.

Yet here they were, several months later, and the two were only colleagues — considerate of each other, particularly he toward her, but if anything slightly more distant than they had been in the first months of their friendship. Was their business the cause of this very faint separation? The struggles of the agency? Had something passed between them?

At any rate, Lenox could see in his protégé’s eyes that at least on one side there were still feelings of love lurking beneath whatever conceptions of professionalism and respect had stilled them. He wondered if Polly felt the same way. He hoped she did. There were few men he had met finer than John Dallington, and few men who more deserved a wife’s love. Nevertheless, it was not difficult to conceive of him as one of those eternal bachelors, aging into affectionate courtliness, going home to an empty sitting room every evening. There was something proud — untouchable — in his bearing. Lenox wondered if too many doors had been barred to him, in his wild days, for him to be quite comfortable with the traditional gestures of wooing. He was like Polly, in this regard: Each had a mask of proud self-sufficiency, and underneath it a need to be loved.

“He certainly has the time,” said Lenox quickly. “There’s nothing else we can do today on behalf of Jenkins and Wakefield, whereas it seems as if there’s a great deal to do here. Dallington, I’ll go to see McConnell. We can meet again here in the morning.”

“If you’re sure?” said the young lord.

“Absolutely.”

“Then perhaps I will stay and help Polly.”

So it was that Lenox rode alone to McConnell’s in the waning spring light, jotting a few overdue thank-you notes as the carriage moved through the West End.

At the door the doctor greeted him with a grim smile.

“What?” asked Lenox, reading McConnell’s face. “The port?”

“Yes. Poisoned. Come in and I can show you.” McConnell led Lenox up to his laboratory again, where he demonstrated the chemical test he’d used, as well as the controlled test he’d done on an identical port that he’d sent his butler down to Berry Brothers to buy that morning. “Can’t be too careful.”

“There’s no doubt, then?”

“None at all. The Yard’s chemists are bound to find what I did. In fact, the quantities were unusually high. The marquess must have had a copper-bottomed constitution to survive as long as he did. Have you found the fellow who poisoned him yet?”

“Not yet,” said Lenox.

“I can’t imagine Berry Brothers will be altogether pleased to know that their product has become … well, a weapon of murder.”

“The manufacturers of the Webley will sleep well enough tonight, I’m sure,” said Lenox. He paused and stared at the beakers and glass bowls on McConnell’s wooden tables. “The question I have is whether Wakefield had time to murder Jenkins before he was murdered himself — or whether Jenkins knew that Wakefield was in some kind of trouble. He may even have been trying to help him. Though I doubt he could have imagined someone was poisoning the man.”

There was a knock on the door downstairs, and a moment later Shreve, the McConnells’ butler, appeared in the doorway of the library. “A visitor, sir. He is most insistent upon his need to see Mr. Lenox.”

Behind Shreve was a bobby. “Is one of you Mr. Lenox?” he asked.

“I am, yes.”

“Inspector Nicholson sent me here to look for you. You’re to come with me at once. There’s been another attack at Portland Place.”