The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lenox looked at the doctor. “I know we’ve asked too much already, but if you could—”

“Of course,” said McConnell.

The three men went outside to Lenox’s carriage, which was waiting in the weak warmth of the spring sun. The bobby knew nothing of the circumstances of the attack, not even whether there had been another murder or not. He had just been told to come and fetch Lenox. The drive didn’t take long, and as they pulled into Portland Place Lenox looked anxiously through the window and after a moment said out loud that he thought there wasn’t another corpse; there was a single constable at the door of Wakefield’s house, not the whole circus that would gather in the event of a death.

He was right. Inside the house Nicholson was talking in a low tone to a young man. Both looked up at the arrival of Lenox and McConnell, and Nicholson said, “Ah, here’s Mr. Lenox now. He’s been working closely with us to investigate your father’s death. Lenox, this is the … well, the Marquess of Wakefield.”

The young man stuck out his hand. “Joseph Travers-George,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance. I know that Scotland Yard are doing all they possibly can to get to the bottom of all this. Rotten business.”

The new marquess spoke emotionlessly, as if he were thanking Lenox for his assistance with a banking transaction, not a criminal investigation. This squared with the upbringing he had no doubt received, an emphasis on stoicism, and then his father had been no prize. Whether or not it was seemly, not all deaths were mourned equally.

Still, it seemed odd. Lenox felt a breath of interest in the back of his mind. Some enormous proportion of a detective’s education could be reduced to a single Latin phrase of two words: cui bono. Who benefits, as it was most often translated into English, though Lenox associated it more strongly with money than that translation would imply — who gains, perhaps. Who is enriched? It was easy to say this to a young constable at the Yard, of course, but it took the grind of years to really impart that knowledge to a man, case after case in which some sordid crime led back to a few thousand pounds, a few hundred, even just a few. Cui bono. It was the phrase that entered Lenox’s mind as he shook the hand of the former Earl of Calder. This young chap had inherited one of the largest fortunes in England two days before, and one that he couldn’t have expected to descend to him for many years, given the rude health of his father.

There was every chance that he was a mere bystander to the circumstances. But the alternative was not impossible, either.

The lad was only twenty, but you could see his middle age coming pretty plainly; he was already overweight and slightly too red, with a globe of a stomach and limp light hair. He looked as if he would grow short of breath easily. Nevertheless he was very well dressed, in a suit tailored by some excellent master of the craft, for it made his shape as close to youthful as it was ever likely to be, unless he decided to stop eating for six months, or took a sudden fancy to exercise and cold baths.

Lenox introduced McConnell and then said, “There’s been an attack?”

Nicholson nodded, lips pursed. “Yes. On the butler, Smith, poor fellow. He’ll survive, but it was a nasty piece of work. He’s resting upstairs, but you’d better let him tell you himself. He’s fit enough to talk.”

Smith was in a guest bedroom on the third story of the house. There was a constable posted outside his half-open door. The room was neutral, irreproachable — like much of the rest of the house, without any evidence of Wakefield’s personal taste. “Will you live in London?” Lenox asked the new young marquess as they walked toward the room where Smith was recovering.

“No, no. I’ll finish at Cambridge and move to Hatting. This isn’t a family house. My grandfather bought it not thirty years ago. I mean to let it as soon as I can.”

The light was low by Smith’s bed, but Lenox could see that he was bare-chested underneath his blankets, and that there was a long bandage across his torso. He looked pale. The cook, a pretty woman, was sitting by his bed, and didn’t rise when the men entered, a breach of normal convention that showed, perhaps, the seriousness of her concern for her colleague.

“How do you do, Smith?” asked Lenox. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that you were attacked. You’ve seen a doctor?”

“Yes, sir. He was not overly concerned.”

“Nicholson said you wouldn’t mind telling us what happened?”

“No, sir.” Smith struggled to sit up a little straighter against his pillows, and the cook quickly helped him. There was a strong smell of beef broth in the room; he had been eating, anyhow. “How much would you like me to tell?”

“All of it, if you don’t mind doing so a second time.”

“Not at all, sir. This afternoon I was preparing the second-largest bedroom for the inhabitation of Lord Calder — excuse me, Lord Wakefield.” The young inheritor nodded his forgiveness of the slip, himself probably still unused to the new name. “There was a noise in the hallway, and I knew that the other staff were all in the basement. Or thought they were. I went out to see what it was, just in time to see somebody walking into the master bedroom — that which was Lord Wakefield’s, you understand.”

“Where we found the port?”

“Yes, sir, precisely.”

“Please, carry on.”

“I went down the hall. The door to the master bedroom was ajar, and I called out to ask who was there. There was no response, so I pushed the door open and saw two men coming toward me.”

“Two men,” said Lenox slowly. “What did they look like?”

“Both of them had their faces concealed,” interjected Nicholson.

The butler nodded. He looked pale, thinking of his attackers. “They had dark scarves around their mouths,” he said, “and caps on.”

“What else were they wearing?” asked Lenox.

“Nothing distinctive, sir. Dark trousers, dark shirts.”

“Eye color?”

“I cannot recall, sir. I was very taken aback when I saw them, as you can imagine.”

“Might one of them have been Francis — or Hartley?”

“Inspector Nicholson asked the same question, sir. The answer is that I cannot be sure. I don’t think so, but it all happened very quickly.”

“What happened, exactly?” said a voice behind Lenox. It was young Travers-George.

“I asked them who they were and what they wanted. They didn’t answer. I had been cleaning the furniture in the blue bedroom, so I was holding a tin of polish and a cloth. I dropped them as they approached and started to back out through the door, but they caught me and took me up. One of them held me with a knife at my throat while the other looked through the room, very quickly.”

“What was he looking for?”

“I don’t know, sir. He looked through all of Lord Wakefield’s effects. He didn’t take anything. I don’t think he took anything, that is.”

“Did he mention the port, or seem to look for it?”

“He didn’t mention it, though he did look carefully through the liquor stand, sir.”

“And so how did you come to be wounded? And how did they leave?”

“I heard footsteps in the hallway, sir, and I suppose I panicked. I cried out for help. I jerked out of the grip of the man who was holding me. I must have taken him by surprise, because he stumbled backward and slashed out at me. The knife caught me across the chest.”

“Thank God it wasn’t the throat!” said the young cook. Her name was Miss Randall, Lenox recalled, a quiet soul with a heavy Lancashire accent and dark ringlets of hair. “It was me in the hallway! I might have got him killed!”

“There, now,” said Smith to her, patting her hand. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt yourself.”

“Did you see the two men?” Lenox asked the cook.

“They came barreling out past me quick as you like,” she said, her eyes wide at the memory. “Terrible huge men.”

“Did you get any better look at what they were wearing, or what they looked like?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The same, sir. They left great horrible smudges all over the floor.”

“Footprints?” said Lenox quickly. “Where?”

Nicholson shook his head regretfully. “They’ve already been cleaned.”

“We had the young lord coming, sir, we didn’t want it a mess,” said Smith apologetically, and then added, “Your Lordship.”

“I appreciate the thought,” said the young man.

Nicholson said to the butler, in a grim voice, “You’d better tell Lenox what they said on the way out, too.”

“What was that?” asked Lenox.

Smith looked hesitant but then said, “They mentioned a detective.”

“Nicholson?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” said Smith. “The one who had been looking through the room — not the one who’d been holding me, you see, sir — stopped for just a moment and said, ‘Tell that detective to keep his nose out of it. Tell him a man with a wife and daughter should know better.’”

Lenox felt his heart freeze. He looked at Nicholson, who shook his head and said, regretfully, “I don’t have a wife or a daughter. I fear they meant you.”