The Laws of Murder

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was a great deal that Lenox hoped to accomplish that night, but he forced himself, now, to take a deep breath and survey the scene. Wakefield had vanished two days before, and now Jenkins was dead twenty feet from his house. It was a situation that required very great care.

“You’ve canvassed every house in the area?” he asked Nicholson.

“Yes, and spoken to the few remaining vendors in the park, too. The written report will be ready in the morning — you shall have it when I do — but the constables didn’t learn anything of note, alas.”

Lenox looked at the vast facade of Wakefield’s house (the marquess’s intimates called him by his surname, Travers-George; his acquaintances and his family called him Wakefield; all others, My Lord or Your Lordship or Lord Wakefield) and saw that on one of the alabaster columns in front of it was stenciled, in elegant black lettering, 73. Portland Place’s addresses ended at 80, if he recalled correctly — there the park began, Regent’s Park. Wakefield’s was a particularly large house, but all of its neighbors were just as distinguished in their construction and maintenance.

Stylistically they were all the same except for 77, two doors down from where Jenkins’s body had fallen; this was a low-slung brick edifice, rather of the last century. What caught Lenox’s eye was that it looked almost dementedly protected, guarded. There was a wrought-iron fence that reached higher than the house’s roof, its gaps far too small for even a child to squeeze between, and on its small gate were two heavy locks. All of the windows were barred. From the steps a figure, an older woman, was gazing at them. She would have had a good view of the crime, if she had been out there then.

“Who lives in 77?” asked Lenox.

Nicholson waved over Armbruster, whose task of managing the crowd had eased with the disappearance of Jenkins’s body into the wagon. On the otherwise unbroken expanse of his white shirt there was a wet brown stain. Soup, Lenox would have wagered. “Armbruster, who was in 77?”

“It was a convent, sir,” said the sergeant. “Or rather, it is a convent.”

“Who answered the door?”

“A lady porter, sir. She said the sisters and the young novices and them were at prayers, sir, at the time Inspector Jenkins was killed. Nor did she see anything or hear anything, except when the commotion out here started. She said she wasn’t a papist, for her part, she was quick to mention that. Only the porter of the place.”

That explained the reinforcements on the house. Lenox wondered if they knew anything of Wakefield’s history there. If they did the abbess might have contemplated moving away from the street.

“Did you look carefully around the body, to see if anything was thrown from it?” asked Lenox.

Nicholson smiled wearily. “We are not rank amateurs, you know. We looked at the entirety of the scene, in expanding concentric circles. Jenkins’s own method.”

In fact this was Lenox’s method, though he said nothing. “And found?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. There was the usual London mix. Discarded food and trash, cigar ends, bits of string.”

“Nothing with writing on it?”

“No.”

Lenox believed Nicholson but did his own methodical review. After ten minutes he, too, had found nothing.

He looked across to McConnell, who was standing by the van, speaking to its driver. This fellow was pressing a hand to his stomach and saying something with great animation, and the doctor felt the spot, palpated it for a moment, and then, speaking sternly, began to take out his prescription pad. At any rate some good might come of this night, Lenox thought. The living always do go on.

He went to Nicholson, who was consulting with his constables; two of them would remain near this spot overnight, observing. Lenox asked if he might see Jenkins’s possessions now.

“Yes, come to my carriage. I ought to have shown you on the way.” Nicholson’s face was grim, gaunt. “But listen, Lenox, I’m afraid I can’t stay with you all night. I’ve brought you in, as Jenkins wished, but I have superiors to whom I must answer, an investigation to begin building on my own. It’s nothing personal.”

“I understand. Perhaps you could leave Armbruster.”

“Where do you want him to take you?”

“To the Yard — to Jenkins’s office.”

“I’ll take you there. After that we can go off our separate ways.”

“Understood.”

“It’s nothing personal at all,” said Nicholson again. His face, always angular, looked very wan now, too, in the sallow light of the streetlamps. “For my part I would like to work together.”

“We might meet tomorrow and compare notes.”

“Yes, let’s do just that,” said Nicholson.

They went then to the inspector’s carriage, its bored horse flicking its tail every so often, and Nicholson found the small black leather box into which he had put all of Jenkins’s possessions. He opened the box. “Not much,” said Lenox.

“Here’s the list I asked Sergeant O’Brian to make.”

Lenox took the list.

“Nothing relevant to his work, then,” said Lenox, sifting through the box to check its contents against the list. They matched.

“No, unfortunately. Perhaps the keys.”

“And yet I wonder.”

“Eh?”

“The ticket is unpunched. I imagine it was for his nightly trip home. Did he take a cab here, then? Was he meeting someone at seven? We can ask his sergeant at the Yard — Bryson, I believe was his name.”

“Yes, Bryson.”

“We can also ask his wife if she expected him later than usual. Then there’s the money.”

“What about it?” asked Nicholson.

“It seems like a great deal to me. I’m carrying four pounds at the moment and would have imagined that I was above the average even on Portland Place.”

“True. I’m only carrying shrapnel.” Nicholson drew a few coins out of his pocket, more of them copper than silver. “Enough to get home or have a meal in a pinch.”

“I wonder if the three pounds was Jenkins’s pocket money, and the twenty for some other purpose.” Out of delicacy Lenox did not say it, but he couldn’t imagine that the inspector earned more than two hundred fifty pounds a year. That meant he had been found with nearly a tenth of his annual wages upon his person — odder and odder. “Again we might ask Madeleine Jenkins, or Bryson.”

Nicholson looked up at Lenox warily. “Perhaps you and I had better stick together after all.”

Lenox smiled. “You want to make sure you’re getting your fee’s worth, I’m sure.”

“Will you still take your fee, then?” asked Nicholson, rather surprised.

It pained Lenox to do it, but he nodded. For the first time he realized a strange truth: He was in trade. He had thought of the agency as a sort of clubhouse, but in fact he had broken the centuries-long sequence of Lenox sons who hadn’t dirtied their hands with business. He felt himself flush, and then said, “I wouldn’t for myself — because it’s Jenkins — but I have partners to think of.”

“Yes,” said Nicholson. “I understand.”

It was good for his self-regard, perhaps, thought Lenox. Humility. And then, it wasn’t as if he were selling grain from a cart. Nevertheless it took him a moment to regain his concentration.

“Let’s go to the Yard, in that case,” said Lenox. “There’s not much time to spare. I’ll just speak to McConnell.”

McConnell, having prescribed some medicine or other to his impromptu patient, was now standing by the police wagon with his arms crossed, smoking and patiently waiting. “There you are,” he said when Lenox came to him. “It’s getting rather late. Perhaps you could push us off now, and I could write you a note telling you what I find? Toto will be wondering where I am.”

“Yes, by all means — or you can skip it altogether.”

“No, no. I doubt I’ll find anything, but because it is Jenkins — no, I will do as thorough a job as I know how, and hope it turns something up.”

Nicholson had come out and waved to the driver and the constables nearby. The body could go. McConnell opened the back of the wagon and stepped inside. As he was about to swing the door shut, Lenox saw Jenkins’s boots, protruding from under the sheet that covered him on the stretcher.

On an impulse he reached out as McConnell was closing the door. “Wait,” he said.

The shoelaces still bothered him. Quickly he removed the unlaced shoe and examined it, turned it over. Nothing. Then, just to be safe, he unlaced the other boot and turned it upside down.

A very small envelope, smaller than a playing card, fluttered to the ground. Lenox bent down and picked it up. On it were written two words, which McConnell and Nicholson crowded around to read. All three of them looked at one another in surprise and consternation — for the envelope said, in Jenkins’s crabbed hand, Charles Lenox.