The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER THIRTY

That afternoon was Jenkins’s funeral. Lenox and Dallington rode together to it, and Lenox used the time to tell his protégé about the interview they had conducted with Armbruster.

“Where is he now?” asked Dallington.

“Still in Nicholson’s office, waiting for them to search his desk and his house. He’s not happy about having to sit there for hours, but they can’t arrest him. For all I know he’s marched out of the office already. He seemed more confident as time went on, I’m sorry to say. There was a moment when I thought he might break down, but if he doesn’t we’re flummoxed.”

Dallington turned his head, his face philosophical. “Still, it was well done to spot him, the scoundrel.”

Lenox hesitated, then said, “No, it was badly done. I realize that now. I would have been much better off observing him, building a case against him.” He shook his head. “I was too excited to have put it together, after Pointilleux described how incompetent the canvass was.”

He half-expected Dallington to object to this self-criticism, but the younger lad said, “Perhaps, I suppose.”

In all the months of the agency’s existence it was the closest he had come to offering any criticism of Lenox. He felt it keenly. “Armbruster will betray himself in the end, I hope. Something in his office or in his house that he didn’t count on us finding.”

“I hope so too,” said Dallington.

The funeral was at a church called St. Mary’s. They arrived a bit early and found Nicholson standing on the church’s steps, changed from his daily clothes into a subdued gray flannel suit, with a black bowler hat on his head. He greeted them.

“Any news?” asked Lenox.

“None. He won’t talk, and there’s nothing unusual in his desk. I’ve left instructions he’s not to move. But as you said, I doubt we’ll find much. All society’s going to hell anyway,” said Nicholson moodily. “Marquesses murdering and getting murdered. Police sergeants stealing papers.”

Dallington smiled gently. “And they say the Queen and Princess Beatrice have been seen smoking cigarettes at Balmoral.”

Nicholson shook his head. “It’s extremely distressing to think of it coming from inside the Yard.” He looked at Lenox. “Do you think Armbruster killed Jenkins himself?”

Lenox shook his head. “I think he did a job for money. The new watch tells us that. He took the papers and he made sure — or tried to make sure — that there was nothing incriminating on Jenkins’s person. At the scene and since, he’s dragged his feet and tried to slow down the investigation.”

Nicholson nodded. “The soup, the slow and incomplete canvasses.”

“But I would hazard that was his full role. I could be wrong, of course.”

“Who paid him, then?”

Lenox shrugged. “Andrew H. Francis, I suppose.”

“Yes. Him.” Yesterday and that morning the Yard’s clerical staff had done extensive research in the directories of London and still hadn’t found Andrew Francis — or at any rate not one who corresponded to the description they had of him, young, aristocratic, wealthy, well dressed. Lenox had begun to wonder whether it was a pseudonym. “The fellow shot an inspector of the Yard, poisoned a nobleman and arranged for him to be shipped to Calcutta like a slab of mutton, and we can’t find hide nor hair of him. Either he’s a genius, or we’re a pack of fools.”

“We’ll find him,” said Lenox. He wished he were as confident as he sounded.

“How?” asked Nicholson.

“By carrying on. After the funeral I mean to start with what Pointilleux found — that list of houses that Wakefield owned. If Jenkins thought it was significant, I’m certain it was.”

They spoke for another few minutes, and then the bells of the church chimed, and all of the people engaged in similar conversations on the steps turned toward the enormous oak doors of the church and began to walk inside.

The service was long. There were several hymns, followed by a warm eulogy from the Lord Mayor of London, a redoubtable figure in black velvet breeches with a silver-headed cane. The turnout was excellent in this respect — there were three Members of Parliament present, the entire upper echelon of the Yard’s administrative staff, and more off-duty bobbies and inspectors and sergeants than could be counted. Behind the final pews of the church were a few loose lines of standing men, and their stolidly endured discomfort over the eighty minutes was its own kind of testimonial to Jenkins, the church too full because he was so mourned.

Of course, though, it was difficult to take much pleasure in the attendance when set off forward and to the left, in the specially wide pews where the local lord must have taken his place on Sundays, was Jenkins’s family: Madeleine; two small boys; a baby girl in a white lace dress and matching bonnet, blessedly unaware, for now, of what she had lost.

After the service was over, the people in the church made their way outside and stood on the steps again. The traditional funeral procession began. First a long series of empty carriages passed down the avenue outside, each, including Lenox’s own, sent by its owner as a mark of respect; after the carriages a line of five deaf-mutes dressed in black and red carried long wands, men who hired themselves out for funerals such as this one every day of the week; then the casket itself came, borne by a dozen pallbearers. Lenox looked among their faces and saw several men who worked at Scotland Yard.

Last was another carriage. Accompanied by a few ancient relatives, Madeleine Jenkins and her children stepped into it. They would follow the convoy to a cemetery nearby for the interment.

As she went, the bells of the church began to ring, thirty-nine times in this case, one for each year of Jenkins’s life, and then nine solemn strikes of the largest one, the tenor, to send the departed man on his way to his God.

The crowd on the steps watched silently until the final carriage was out of sight, and then breathed a collective exhalation, which could hardly be helped from bearing a slight air of relief. That was over, at any rate. By ones and twos most of the men and women began to get into a line of waiting cabs. There would be ham and bread and ale at Jenkins’s house now — a few hours to celebrate the man, with quiet stories and jokes, after these somber hours of grief at his death.

Lenox and Dallington decided it would be quicker to walk. The house — Treeshadow, Lenox recalled — wasn’t far, and it was a lovely spring day. They’d lost Nicholson, who was of course among dozens of his own daily colleagues on an occasion such as this one.

Dallington lit a cigarette. “You won’t find a more Christian fellow than me, but I can’t stand a funeral.”

“Really? I find it comforting.”

“I don’t mind the hymns. I just don’t think anyone should be allowed to talk. It always seems like so much hocus-pocus.”

“Hax pax max deus adimax,” said Lenox, and smiled.

“What on earth are you trying to say?”

“That’s where the word ‘hocus-pocus’ comes from. It’s a nonsense phrase that traveling magicians used to say to impress people as they did their tricks. Sounded enough like Latin, I suppose. I know it because my brother used to say it to me when I was four or five and we were arguing. It always scared the devil out of me. As he knew.”

“Edmund did that? I can’t imagine it.”

“Small boys are dirty fighters. Tell me, though, how are Polly’s cases coming along? You were able to help her?”

“There’s still a great deal more to do this evening,” said Dallington, though he didn’t look as if the prospect of the late night’s work gave him as much displeasure as it might have in other circumstances. “But I tell you, she’s a marvel. LeMaire’s a fool to leave. If Polly has anything to do with it we’ll be minting money by New Year’s. Every one of these cases came to her by a reference from a previous customer, and I think every one of the people she’s helping now will refer her to a dozen more.”

“What are the cases, specifically?” asked Lenox.

As they strolled on in the soft sunlight they discussed these — many of them small domestic matters, worth a pound or two to the firm, but in aggregate, they agreed, creating something more valuable: a reputation. There was the woman in Kensington whose post kept disappearing after it was delivered, the lost dog in Holborn, the Oxford Street tearoom whose owners suspected their cashier was stealing from them — but dearly hoped she wasn’t, because she was their beloved daughter. Small or large, Polly handled all of these matters with intense dedication, Dallington said.

They neared Treeshadow after a little while, identifiable from a distance by the great bustle outside of it. When they arrived at the house Dallington discarded his cigarette.

Lenox stopped him with a hand. “John, before we go in — I only mean to stay for twenty minutes, and then I should be off. You must stay longer for both of us, if you don’t mind, and then you ought to return to Chancery Lane to help Polly.”

“Where are you going?”

“Those nuns are going to tell us what they know once and for all. Preferably this very day.”