The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER FIVE

When Lenox was twenty-two, pink-faced, new to London, and casting about for something to do with his life, one of the locally famous figures in the city had been Edward Oxlade. He was a police inspector who had recently retired. By the time of his retirement he had long graduated from his street corner to desk work, but after he left Scotland Yard he began to take one day each week to don his old bobby’s uniform and walk his neighborhood, lantern and whistle rattling from his belt, a figure of white-haired amiability — kind to children, chatty to shopkeepers, helpful to anyone in straits. He had come to be very popular, an emblem of the new London, the one that had risen since the foundation of Scotland Yard, its safety, its security, a metropolis distancing itself from the nighttime garrotings and daylight coach robberies of the wilder previous century.

On one of the first cases upon which Lenox had consulted for the Yard, he’d had reason to call upon Oxlade very late one evening, past ten o’clock. Oxlade had greeted him sitting down, a book in hand, a blanket over his knees.

“How can I help you?” he had asked.

The case was a slippery one; Jonathan Charlton, a friend from Oxford whose family owned a bank near the Savoy, had heard rumors that a ring of burglars was planning to strike against it. The police were watching the bank, but Charlton had asked Lenox, who as an undergraduate had been known for his idiosyncratic pastime of collecting information on crime, to look into the matter.

“I’m Charles Lenox,” he had said in response to Oxlade’s question. “I’m consulting on a case with Inspector Evans, and though I know it’s fearfully late, and cold outside—”

But before Lenox could even finish speaking, Oxlade had set his book facedown on a table nearby. “I’m ready to go,” he said.

It was that incidental act — setting his book down without hesitation — that had always remained with Lenox. There was something spirited and brilliant in it, something hearty, courageous, perhaps especially because Oxlade at that time had been a man closer to eighty than seventy. It was the act of a person with character. The act of an Englishman, one might even say, embodying the best qualities of the best Englishmen. In the end, as it happened, Oxlade hadn’t even been able to help him; Lenox had hoped he might be able to identify a man named Abraham Walters by sight, but the identification had been a mistaken one. Nevertheless Lenox had never forgotten Oxlade’s readiness to leave, without delay.

Thomas Jenkins could have published a hundred articles in the Telegraph upon Lenox’s imperfections of mind, manner, and morals — could have stood at the Speakers’ Corner of Hyde Park reading them out loud each Wednesday — and Lenox would still, upon hearing of the inspector’s murder, have set his book facedown, ready to go. Their history was too deep for anything else.

He felt himself trembling as he stood. “We must go at once,” he said. “Where is the body? Where did it happen? What has happened, for that matter?”

Nicholson was in less of a rush. He went and poured himself another half-tumbler of brandy, an understandable liberty in the situation. Jenkins had been his mentor. “It happened north of here,” he said, “by Regent’s Park.”

“Kirk,” Lenox called out loudly, “my carriage, immediately.”

“I have one of the Yard’s outside,” said Nicholson.

“We’ll follow you,” said Lenox. He was patting his pockets, looking for a notebook. “It’s useful to have an independent means of getting around the city.”

McConnell, standing now, too, his face grave, said, “A medical examiner has been to see the body?”

“Yes,” said Nicholson, “but you might as well come along. I told them to leave the scene as it was until I had fetched you.”

For the first time Lenox paused to consider this. “Why?” he asked.

Nicholson smiled a bitter smile. “Last week I had supper with Jenkins — on our own time. He was quite secretive about it. He said that if he should be killed or go missing I was to come to you. He also said that I was to hand over all of his notes to you.”

“He felt that he was in danger?” asked Lenox.

“He would say no more than I’ve told you, but he made me swear it. So it is that I am here, as you see. And that I asked them to keep the scene of the crime where it was.”

Lenox went to his desk and picked up a small black grip that contained a few essentials of the profession — a stout knife, a calabash, and various more nuanced tools of detection, a magnifying glass, a kit to dust for fingerprints. He had found his notebook, too. “I’m ready to go. Where are the notes he wished me to see?”

“In his office, I would imagine.”

“At home, or at the Yard?”

“Oh, at the Yard. I don’t know that he ever took his work home.”

Lenox nodded. “We must get them as quickly as possible.”

“I can send a constable when we reach Regent Street.”

“Perhaps just to watch his office, rather than to fetch anything,” said Lenox. “I should like to look over his desk myself.”

Kirk came in. “The carriage is ready, sir,” he said.

“Thank you.”

After Kirk had withdrawn there was a moment in which the three men, Lenox, McConnell, and Nicholson, stood in silence, looking at one another. It was hard to say what either of the other two was feeling, but for Lenox the shock of the news, which had galvanized him into action, was giving way to the realization that this terrible information was true. Thomas Jenkins was dead. A man he had known for twenty years. One of the other men in London who had known Edward Oxlade. His wife, his three children, left to themselves. His affections for organ music and a glass of strong beer. Vanished, forever.

Not much later, Lenox’s carriage was jerking across the cobblestones of Oxford Street. “How did he die?” asked Lenox.

“A gunshot,” said Nicholson. “A single wound in the temple.”

“There is no evidence of an exiting wound?” asked McConnell.

“No.”

“A small gun, then, something that could fit in a coat pocket,” said Lenox. “A pocket revolver, or something of the sort. Would you agree, Thomas?”

“Likely a Bull Dog or some copy.” The Bull Dog was a Webley revolver, immensely popular and oft-duplicated in the past five years, just two and a half inches long and therefore easy to conceal. “If you extract the bullet we shall be able to confirm it, I imagine.”

Nicholson looked at him curiously. “Even on a bullet smashed all out of shape by the barrel of the gun — and all that it hit?”

“I’ve made something of a study of them,” said McConnell.

Ahead of them the Yard’s carriage, empty but for the driver, took a left-hand turn. Nicholson had ridden with them so that they might speak. “Were there any witnesses?” Lenox asked.

Nicholson shook his head. “It was on a dark corner of the park. We have two men who heard the shot and ran to the body. We’re holding on to them this evening, giving them supper, in case they can help, but I don’t think they saw much.”

“What time did this happen?”

“Just after seven o’clock. We were there by half past the hour.”

Lenox checked his pocket watch. It was nearly ten now. “It would have been dark by then. Too bad. Were there any wounds on Jenkins other than the bullet hole?”

Nicholson paused and then turned his head, face thoughtful. “You know, I’m not sure. I don’t know that we checked.”

“McConnell can look,” said Lenox, writing in his notebook. There was a small lamp swinging on the outside of the carriage, casting just enough light that he could see what he wrote. “Was Jenkins out on police business?”

“I don’t think so. He generally left the office at six o’clock, and today wasn’t different.”

“And went home?”

“Yes. He has three children. Lord, it’s terrible to think of.”

Lenox looked out of the window. “Scotland Yard is in Westminster, however, and Thomas Jenkins lives — lived — in Wandsworth Road, directly due south of his offices. We are driving north at the moment, into the north of London. In other words, when he left the Yard at six o’clock this evening, he traveled nearly two miles in the opposite direction of his home.”

Nicholson raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Perhaps it was police business after all, then. If it was I wish he had told someone.”

Lenox grimaced. “He may have, of course. His wife.”

All three men were silent for a moment at the thought of this woman — of her evening. McConnell then said to Nicholson, “Has she been informed?”

“Henderson is going there now.”

This was Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis — the head of the Yard, a former officer in the army. He was an honest, unimaginative, duty-bound fellow, with a bald head and mutton-chop mustaches. It was difficult to imagine him comforting a woman; he was the sort of fellow more at ease in a mess hall than in a drawing room.

The carriage turned onto Portland Place, a broad thoroughfare leading directly north into Regent’s Park, lined with brick and cream-colored houses. Some people considered it the most beautiful street in London.

“It’s not far, just thirty or forty yards,” said Nicholson. “You can see the scene if you look.”

Lenox and McConnell strained to look through the window. Ahead there was a press of people, and above them, lofted onto handy poles that the Yard had recently introduced for nighttime investigation, bright lamps to illuminate the area. Several large constables kept people back from the pavement, crowding them into the street, which made it difficult for the cabs and omnibuses along Portland Place to pass. The shouting of their drivers added to the hellish din and confusion. Lenox realized with a dreadful pang that the smallish body of his friend was at the center of all this; and dead.

As they stepped out of the carriage, Nicholson first, Lenox looked up. The houses looked familiar to him, for some reason, not just because they belonged to the rest of the very fine structures along Portland Place, but these two or three houses specifically.

Had he been to a supper here recently, a ball?

Then he realized why he recognized the houses, and stopped, chilled — for unless he was much mistaken, the body of Thomas Jenkins was lying in front of the house of the Marquess of Wakefield. The seventh name on Lenox’s list.