The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The morning that Smith’s trial was to begin, Lenox and Dallington had breakfast with Nicholson in a small, noisy restaurant near the courthouse. They hadn’t seen him in some time. He looked tired and flagged down the waiter several times to ask for more coffee.

“We’ve been trying desperately to find further evidence against Smith,” he said. “The case has been given a very high priority at the Yard, as you can imagine — a police inspector and a marquess. No limit to the budget or the manpower at my disposal. But for all that, we haven’t been able to find definite proof. There is Armbruster’s word, but even he didn’t see the murder directly — and of course he’s cooperating with us to avoid punishment himself, which makes him less than an ideal witness. Smith must be a genius, I think, to have come through this foul situation without a mark on him.”

“He’s been both clever and lucky,” said Lenox. “Anyone in the world might have seen the murder on Portland Place.”

“Sister Grethe comes to mind as a possible witness,” said Dallington dryly.

“Too bad her trial begins today, too,” said Nicholson. Gwen Smith was also at the Old Bailey. “I can’t imagine she’ll escape prison, at least. That’s a minor consolation.”

“You have him on the Slavonian, too, though?” asked Lenox.

“Oh, there’s no question at all about that. Dozens of witnesses, each more eager than the last to point a finger at him. The difficulty is that it won’t put him behind bars for more than three or four years. That’s the law. What’s heartbreaking is that it’s probably the precise punishment he would have served if Jenkins and Wakefield had lived. He’s saved himself nothing, and cost them a great deal — Jenkins especially, of course.”

The waiter set down an extra plate of buttered toast at the center of their table, and Dallington took a piece, tearing it into bites moodily. The clink and clatter of silverware and the din of cheerful voices was all around, a London morning, but the three of them sat silent for some time.

At the courthouse there was a push of journalists standing by the doors, shouting questions at the witnesses and solicitors who entered. Fleet Street would use any excuse it could find to bring the Slavonian Club back into its headlines, the story’s lurid mixture of aristocracy, money, and sex selling out editions faster than anything else had in 1876, every tutting curate and bored housemaid desperate to devour each minor new detail that the press could winkle out of the case.

“Mr. Lenox! Will he hang, Mr. Lenox!” cried out one chap, and another at the same moment said, “Nicholson! Inspector Nicholson! Is it true as you were a client as well, and you and Armbruster hushed it all!”

Nicholson flushed and turned. “Don’t answer,” Dallington advised.

At the door there was a small line, and Lenox found himself waiting behind a thin-shouldered man in an expensive cloak. The man turned as Lenox came up behind him. It was Monomark.

“Lord Monomark,” said the detective, smiling faintly. He was surprised. “Are you sitting in the galleries?”

Monomark had brilliant, predatory eyes, in a thin, ascetic face. “Surprised you’re here,” he said, “after all that our Inspector Jenkins said about you in the papers. Wonderful quotes, those, honest and forthright. A testament to the chap. Though they must have stung, I expect. Dear, dear.”

It did sting — and the Telegraph had reprinted the quotes that very morning. Lenox only widened his smile and said, “They ask you to come when you solve the case, you see. I’m not surprised LeMaire has yet to learn that, however.”

Monomark flushed — he was not a man whose jibes were often answered. “We’ll see you out of business within the year. Mark my words.”

“Did you hear that we’d been named official investigators for the Houses of Parliament?” Lenox asked mildly. “Mrs. Buchanan is there even now. More work than we know what to do with. Tell LeMaire we’re happy to hire him back, when he’s out of a job.”

In another lifetime, Lenox probably wouldn’t have made his words so barbed. Business had changed him, however. Monomark, who no doubt thought of him as part of the soft circle of aristocrats to which he had gained only halting and uneasy entry, seemed to reassess him with those eyes. “Parliament,” he said. Lenox could tell he hadn’t heard of their hiring. “A pack of fools. Everything you need to know about the House of Lords you can learn from the fact that three is a quorum.”

“The house in which you sit, if I’m not mistaken, My Lord.”

“I didn’t—”

But what Monomark did or didn’t do would have to wait, because just then, behind them, there was a piercing cry on the steps. “She’s dead!” It was one of the runners, who were able to enter the cells with messages. “Gwen Smith is dead! I saw the note! Story to the highest bidder!”

There was a pause, and then the full pack of journalists sprinted toward the boy. Monomark almost looked as if he wanted to join them, and for an instant Lenox liked the old man, his will still so bent upon success, upon victory. “False, I’m sure,” he said.

Behind Lenox, Nicholson pushed his way through. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Enough of this. Scotland Yard — yes, this is my badge, stare at it if you like, but quickly, quickly.”

It was the truth: Obadiah Smith’s mother was dead. She had poisoned herself. It would be several hours before the coroner confirmed the cause of death, but he didn’t have to bother to convince the detectives — she had left a note.

In it, she confessed to every crime of which her son might have been guilty.

And then I did take the pistol and shoot Inspector Jenkins from short range in the head … packaged the pistol in a parcel under the fraudulent seal of an invented person of my own invention, Andrew Francis … never informed my son that the port had been poisoned … I know he believed the club located at 75 Portland Place to be a wholly legal business … I take my own life out of guilt and ask only that he be fully exonerated and allowed to live his life …

The note ended with an entreaty, incredible on its face, that the new marquess of Wakefield retain Smith as his butler. It’s only fair, Your Lordship, said the note.

Nine days later, Obadiah Smith received a sentence of two months’ imprisonment in Newgate. He also received a hundred pounds from the Telegraph to write a story: INSIDE THE SLAVONIAN CLUB: AN INNOCENT’S TALE. In prison that money, in addition to whatever else he had saved, afforded him a life of luxury, in particular the most sumptuous thing a person in his position could buy — privacy. For a few extra coins, as well, Miss Randall went to visit him each night. Smith was working on a book, from what the guards said. It would expand upon the article, profess his innocence, lament his mother’s misdeeds. And — what guaranteed that it would make him a small fortune — it would name the names of the aristocrats who had frequented the club.

The same coroner who had determined that Gwen Smith poisoned herself informed Nicholson, one morning, that she had been in a very advanced stage of illness, with mere months to live, perhaps even weeks. Lenox was a father, and just as he had felt a fleeting tincture of admiration for Monomark, so he did for Gwen Smith. It must have taken mettle to plan and then carry out her own death, all to shield her son.

Of course, he was also distraught. After the trial, he, Dallington, and Nicholson took their carriage to Jenkins’s house and sat with Madeleine Jenkins for an hour. They apologized for their failure. To Lenox’s surprise she seemed better, however, even, when her children entered the room just before they left, allowing a smile to appear on her face. Perhaps he had underestimated her resilience.

“Did we ever contribute to the fund for the family?” asked Dallington as they left, in a low voice.

“The firm did,” said Lenox.

“It’s not enough.”

“No.”

And it wasn’t. When they returned to the office in Chancery Lane that afternoon, Lenox fetched a small slate blackboard he had in his office. He went and hung it by the door and carefully wrote two names on it:

The two men who had eluded him since he returned to detection. The agency would carry on, obviously, and his own work in the next months might lead him anywhere, to any corner of England or the world — and how thrilling that seemed, how distant from the dry closeted workings of Parliament! — but sooner or later he would repay the debt he owed them.