The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

In June the citizens of London’s leafy western precincts scattered off toward the country, the sea air of Devon, the rolling downs of Yorkshire, where they found slower days, longer evenings, earlier cocktail hours. But Lenox and Lady Jane remained in London for the first weeks of the month, primarily so that he could go to work every morning, and on the month’s first Saturday night they had their friends for supper. Toto was at her father’s house with George; McConnell, though, had remained through the weekend, busy doing rounds at the children’s hospital in Great Ormond Street, and he came early to sit in Lenox’s study and drink a glass of hock.

The windows were open, allowing in a breeze and the noise of voices and footsteps from the street. “Have you seen anything of LeMaire since he started the new firm?” McConnell asked.

“Not a sight. Pointilleux still dines with him every week, and says he’s happy with the bargain he struck. I’m sure it’s remunerative, at least.”

“Are you sure the nephew isn’t spying?”

“Very sure. For one thing he’s the most literal human I ever met. For another we gave him a raise in pay, and a great deal more responsibility than his uncle is willing to give him. He has a whole pile of newspaper cuttings with the articles in which his name appeared after the Portland Place business. Keeps them in his top drawer, thinks none of the clerks know about it.”

“I wish I could have helped more,” said McConnell. “Found the source of the lead in the port, for instance.”

“He covered his tracks well, Smith.”

McConnell hesitated, then said, “Far be it from me to question how to do your work, but I confess I’ve wondered from time to time whether that twenty pounds in Jenkins’s pocket might be the answer.”

Lenox grimaced. “Have you? I’d been hoping everyone had forgotten.”

The doctor looked at him quizzically. “Why?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the case, and Jenkins was a good chap.”

“What do you think it was, then? You needn’t tell me if you don’t like, but I’m curious.”

Lenox sighed. The truth was that he thought he had a good idea about that twenty pounds; and he suspected that it had come directly from the purse of Lord Monomark.

Monomark’s reporters famously paid for information, serious sums when it was good information. Lenox’s theory, which he had shared only with Dallington, was that as part of his campaign to discredit their new agency, Monomark had paid Jenkins for his negative words about Lenox.

Several things made him think so: the cash itself, which must have come from somewhere; the unlikeliness that Jenkins, long a friend, would have said something negative about him to a reporter; the gloating look on Monomark’s face on the steps of the Old Bailey, and his inability to resist mentioning what Jenkins had told the paper. There was even the timing: the morning after Jenkins had died, there had been new quotes in the Telegraph, perhaps indicating that he had met with someone from the paper on the day of his death, which would have explained why he’d had the money with him when he died.

Then there was a final detail — the letters on Jenkins’s desk at Scotland Yard from various creditors, demanding payment.

In a way it softened the blow of what Jenkins had said. Family must come first, duty. If the inspector had spoken to the Telegraph to pay his bills, so be it. It had been intelligent of Monomark, even. Lenox’s long and publicly touted alliance with Jenkins had been one of the things that gave the new agency its legitimacy.

Lenox explained all this to McConnell. “That’s terribly unfortunate,” said the doctor.

“I suppose it might still be related to the case. But in my heart I think Monomark is the answer.”

“What a diabolical fellow!”

“Just so.”

Fortunately it was hard to stay very angry on such a mellow pink evening, and as the guests started to arrive, Lenox left his study to greet them, conducting them as they arrived out into the back garden, where Lady Jane and a few of her friends were already sitting. Dallington’s mother and father were there, and Molly Lenox, and Jane’s cousin Emily Gardner, whose fiancé, George, was expected to arrive shortly, and Emily’s dear friend Ellen Daring, who was expecting a child. Lenox took a glass of cold lemonade from a table off to the side and watched his wife from the corner of his eye. The bars were off of their windows now, and the regular patrols outside on Hampden Lane had been reduced to a weekly check from Mr. Clemons himself.

“A good horse eats seventy-two pounds of straw a week, and fifty-six pounds of hay,” Dallington’s mother was saying. “Not to mention two bushels of oats. I think it’s simply disgusting. Mark my words, we’ll have carriages with engines in them soon, and the city will be much cleaner for it.”

“But what will pull them?” asked Emily.

“Nothing at all. They’re inventing them in Germany right now. They pull themselves.”

Emily was too well-bred to convey her extreme skepticism at this idea with anything other than a very faint lift of her eyebrow, but she said, “I cannot imagine London without horses.”

The duchess, who was not a reticent person, said, “It doesn’t matter whether you can imagine it.”

Just then a footman appeared leading Dallington, who, despite the warmth of the evening, looked unflushed, his dark hair in place, his acerbic face brightening genuinely with each person he saw.

“Have I interrupted a very dazzling conversation?” he asked.

“Your mother is attempting to clear the horses out of London,” said Lady Jane.

“Oh, again? I don’t know where they’ll go. Birmingham, I suppose. A whole city of horses. Anyway it’s nonsense, because they’ll never build an engine large enough to pull a carriage.”

“I tell you the Germans are doing it.”

“They’re only Germans, not magicians.”

“You don’t know whether they’re both! I’ve been to Baden twice, and you’ve never been at all.”

“My apologies. I’m sure you spent the whole time touring their engineering colleges, and none of it at the spa.”

Just at that moment two more guests came in at the same time, first Edmund and then Polly, who said she was arriving straight from the office. Unlike Dallington she was flushed, and she accepted a glass of lemonade gratefully. Edmund had just been at Parliament; for his part, he said, having been drawn into the conversation, he did not think the horses of London were in any grave or immediate threat of eviction. If the subject was transportation, he was more curious about how Count Zeppelin’s balloons and airships might change the skyline.

Soon they went into dinner, an intimate group of fourteen. Later Lenox would recall it as one of the nicest parties he could remember them having at this house on Hampden Lane — every person there a particular friend, no grudges between any of them, the courses rolling away under the sound of laughter, the night cooling until they were all comfortable. Dallington was on especially good form. He told a long and excellent story about the valiant but unsuccessful attempts of a friend visiting America to go upstate, thwarted continuously by the city of New York’s system of public conveyance, that culminated in the fellow staring forlornly at the retreating metropolis as he sailed directly and unintentionally south.

When the supper was finished, the men and the women remained together rather than dividing, by common agreement, and they sat up for another hour or so, drinking brandy or iced wine, sitting in small clusters around Lady Jane’s drawing room. At last their energies began to flag. Edmund and Molly went home first, the two brothers making a plan to meet for lunch the next day at the Athenaeum Club, and shortly after them went Emily and George in separate carriages, and after that everyone decided that it was time, alas, for the evening to end.

When the last guests had gone Lenox closed the door behind him. “Are you awake?” he said to Jane, who was standing in the soft light of the front hall

“Just scarcely,” she said. She smiled sweetly and gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. “What a wonderful evening, Charles. Thank you.”

“No, thank you. Look, is this Dallington’s cloak, though? He’s forgotten it, the fool. I’ll run it out to him.”

Lenox opened the door and went onto into the cool evening. He hesitated on his steps, looking up and down across the spaced yellow pools of the gaslight. Then he saw that toward the right of the house two figures were standing very close together, holding hands. One of them laughed, the sound of it ringing in the empty street, and he realized with a shock that it was Dallington and Polly.

After a beat, he smiled, then stepped back into the house with the cloak. It could wait until the next day to find its way again to its owner. He closed the door behind him as quietly as he could — his heart filled with happiness.