A Beautiful Blue Death (19 page)

“Never mind, never mind.”

“It would be tomorrow morning, Mr. Lenox. Three of the guests will be at the House, the two nephews will be at separate engagements, and one of my men will be following Barnard, in case he returns abruptly.”

“I see.”

“And of course, the Yard will appreciate your insights, Mr. Lenox.”

“Of course.”

“Well?” Exeter puffed on his cigar.

It had the flavor of a trap or, if not of a trap, then of a foolish adventure, likely to yield more harm than good. And yet it was irresistible. To be able to look into the suspects’ bedrooms repelled Lenox in one way, but he knew it was a chance he could not reject. Again, he reminded himself that Prue Smith’s interests must triumph over his own.

“I will, Inspector,” he said, “on the condition that Barnard shan’t know, at least for now.”

“You have my word,” said Exeter.

Lenox knew what to think of Exeter’s word. Nevertheless, the two men shook hands and, after naming a time, ten the next morning, Exeter left.

The real question was why the Yard would be so deeply concerned; the answer, Lenox knew right away, lay with Barnard. But did that remove him from suspicion? It must have been at his prompting that Exeter was working so diligently—his prompting and perhaps his gold, on behalf of the country’s gold.

Lenox was too agitated, by the time his guest had left, to settle in for the night. He decided to pay a visit to his brother, so that he might ask him about the mint.

But when he reached nearby Carlton Terrace, where the Lenox family house in London was, Sir Edmund was out. Lenox felt at a loss, until it occurred to him that he might seek out Claude Barnard sooner than he had planned. He walked back to his carriage and asked his driver to go to the Jumpers.

He arrived there a few minutes later. The window that had been broken by a shoe, when Lenox had first come to see Claude, was repaired, and inside there was the sound of loud talking. He could see through the glass a foursome playing whist, and beyond them a billiards table, and after a moment’s pause he went inside himself, to find the young man he wanted to speak to.

“Claude Barnard?” he said to the harassed porter.

“Right away, sir. If you’ll follow me.”

He led Lenox up a flight of stairs and into a smaller dining room than the one on the first floor. It smelled of smoke and was full of dark wood paneling and small tables. The club’s insignia was framed on the left wall, but that was the room’s only decoration, and Claude Barnard was its only inhabitant. He sat at a table with a plate of simple food in front of him, a few pieces of bread and cheese and a jug of wine, which he was tipping into his glass when Lenox came in. He seemed morose.

“Claude?”

The young man looked up and laughed bitterly. “It is my fate, I see, to be pursued by men whom I scarcely know.”

“Surely I’m the only one,” said Lenox, sitting down across from him. The porter had left.

“Ah, life would be a good deal easier if you were, my dear fellow.” Claude stroked his chin contemplatively. “There’s you. There’s that horrid man from the police, Exeter. There’s my tailor; he’s waiting for my next allowance even more eagerly than I am. And then there’s that awful footman, who sneaks about like a spy but seems to be deficient in the most basic areas of common sense.”

“James?”

“I daresay. I ask you, what sort of man thinks that spying consists of standing in the hallway in front of one’s damn bedroom? About as subtle as a slosh on the head with a stick.”

There was a pause. Lenox lit a cigarette before he spoke.

“You had an affair with the dead girl, I believe, Claude?”

For a moment, Claude’s face was impassive. Then he laughed and threw his hands up in the air. “There it is,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Lenox.

“Now you know.”

“I know what?”

“It’s out. Damn, though. Yes, yes, I had an affair with her. What of it?”

“That you concealed the fact seems to make you a likely suspect in the girl’s death.”

“It does?” He laughed again. “There would be more dead girls than you could count, if I was that sort.”

Lenox said nothing.

Claude rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, inappropriate… but of course I didn’t kill her, you know.”

“You didn’t?”

“Dammit, no! I feel horribly broken up about the entire thing. Why do you think I’m dining in this godforsaken room?” He picked up the wine and then put it down again, waving his hand with a gesture of futility. “I tried to act normally, but God—”

“I must ask why you neglected to tell me your secret,” said Lenox.

“You’re a stranger to me!”

“Yes. But you must have known it would come to light.”

“No. I thought it would die with her.” Claude lit his own cigarette and shrugged. “I really am sad, you know. I joke, but only because it’s so damn hard—I couldn’t tell anyone, of course, and I couldn’t even go to the funeral. It would be ridiculous.”

“Yes,” said Lenox.

“At any rate, you know everything now. Tell the world, if you like.” Claude chewed morosely on a bite of food.

“Claude, what did you do with the money your uncle gave you? The ten thousand pounds?”

Claude looked at him. “You don’t miss a trick,” he said. “I invested it. Found a good, only slightly risky proposition in America.”

“What is its status?”

“Flourishing.”

“You have enough money?”

“Nobody has enough, but I’m decently covered.”

Lenox sighed. “I must ask, again, whether or not you killed her.”

Again the young man laughed. “You’re not much of a detective, are you?”

“Perhaps not.”

“I was in the drawing room the entire time.”

“Not the entire time. You told me you went out to the washroom. And then you might have enlisted outside help.”

“Enlisted whose help? I don’t move in your circles, my dear man. The criminal elements are wary of offering their services on the street corner, you know. Not sound business, I expect.”

“Claude—”

“Although I suppose I could have asked Eustace to do it. But no—he would have lectured me on civic responsibility and the greed of the lower orders, so scratch that; it would never be worth it. But how about Duff? He’s a likely fellow. Or one of
the lads downstairs, eating supper below us? All of them are masterminds. I believe Solly Mayfair solved Fermat’s theorem last week, on a bit of scrap paper between hands of gin rummy. Or perhaps I asked the Prime Minister?”

“Claude—”

“Or the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

“Claude—”

“The Queen!”

“Claude, it is a serious matter.”

He waved his hand tiredly. “Leave me alone, would you?” He began to pour wine into his glass and acted, indeed, as if the older man weren’t there.

After a few moments, Lenox stood up, paused for a moment, and then left. It was not the time to ask about the burn on his arm. This conversation was even less fruitful than their first one.

On his way home, he felt more lost than he had since the case began—and, for all that, very nearly sorry for the fellow he had left behind, sitting alone over his modest repast.

L
enox awoke the next day at half-past seven and devoted the early hours of his morning to quiet thought. He ate again in the armchair in his bedroom, gazing out over St. James’s Park and savoring his final cup of coffee, and again he tried to make out the unlinked clues of the case, which sat before him like so many puzzle pieces—but each seeming to belong to a separate puzzle.

He thought it made sense, after a night of turning it over in his mind, that Exeter had come to him. Exeter knew him to be investigating the case already, Exeter would have difficulty on his own, and Exeter would rather ask him for help than fail before Barnard and the world.

After all, there had been a dozen times before when Exeter had at last consented to take Lenox’s laurels, in exchange for the pleasure Lenox drew from solving the case. However, it had never been so tense as this, and more, it had never been at a time when Lenox had received so much discouragement, though who knew from what quarter it came.

He asked Graham to fetch the book on Peru from the library and read for half an hour, imagining himself on those distant
shores with only a compass and a knife; then, at nine-thirty, he put the volume down and changed from his robe into a suit and from his comfortable slippers into his beleaguered boots.

He met Exeter on the corner of Clarges Street promptly half an hour later. The great inspector was less deferential than he had been the previous evening, but then Lenox gathered that there was an invisible army behind them as they walked, waiting for instructions, and Exeter would be loath, above all men, to show weakness in front of subordinates.

They entered Barnard’s house a few moments later. Lenox felt his principles betraying him even as they passed through the doorway, but he steeled his mind with the thought of the unanswered questions that lurked within and made a silent pact with himself that he would no longer worry about whether or not he was wrong to have come. Alas, it was the sort of pact he had trouble keeping. But he was able to muster enough professionalism, amateur though he was, to spend the rest of his time usefully, seeing what he could see rather than quelling his own doubts.

The house was, indeed, empty. The maids had finished their work upstairs, and Miss Harrison was supervising the preparation of the midday meal. And if one of the servants did happen to venture upstairs, not one was willing to stay within sight, much less stop Inspector Exeter in his searches.

“I suppose that the guests have consented to let you search their rooms?” Lenox asked, as they went up the stairs to the third floor.

“No,” said Exeter. “Mr. Barnard gave me a key. Less trouble to everyone that way, he said. He just doesn’t know you’re the one looking, not me.”

“Ah.”

They arrived first at what was plainly Duff’s room, which Exeter confirmed: a well-ordered desk, a spartan wardrobe, and a bureau unburdened by any personal objects other than a medical kit. Curious, that, though there was nothing out of the ordinary
in it. No arsenic, for example, though it would have been convenient. Lenox looked into each drawer of the desk and then shuffled quickly through the clothes, briskly checking the pockets of the pants. He scanned the floor, aware of his limited time, and found it bare. Then he left the room, wondering yet again about that puzzling bottle of arsenic.

But he thought better of it once he was in the hallway and, without saying anything to Exeter, he turned on his heel and went back inside. Once in the room, he searched out the four corners and at last found what he was looking for: a wastebas-ket, which had been obscured by the closet door.

“Too bad!” he said, picking it up. “They’ve emptied it already.”

“You would look through a man’s trash?”

“I would.”

Exeter shook his head, while Lenox replaced the basket and headed back toward the door. But the Inspector stopped him and pointed to the floor. Lenox turned and saw that a scrap of paper had fluttered to the ground, resting half in sight beneath the closet door.

“Excellent,” said Lenox, and picked the paper up. He held it so both men could read it together. Its bounty was small, but interesting:

£? JS?

Lenox handed it to his companion and moved quickly into the hallway and on to the next room. It happened to be Soames’s, and while it was considerably less tidy than Duff’s, with all sorts of personal oddments lying about, racing forms and suspense novels, in the end none of them were useful, so he moved, still as quickly as he could, to the next door down the hall.

Here he had arrived at Eustace’s room, and while it, too, yielded unfortunately little, it gave some idea of its inhabitant’s tastes—there were thick, strictly pressed wool clothes hanging
in the closet like a battalion in formation, and there were a number of conservative pamphlets, stacked neatly on the desk, next to precisely sharpened pencils and a stack of blue stationery. No paints, which Lenox found strange. The only sign of disorder was a handkerchief, which had been lost beneath the bed and smelled of peppermint and wax.

Claude’s bedroom was as little a surprise as his cousin’s; it had all the disarray of Soames’s room without any of the attempts at tidiness. What clothes there were had been hung neatly by the servants, but evidently he had instructed them not to touch his bureau or his desk, for both surfaces were covered with half-empty wineglasses, small tokens and coins, variously used candles, discarded pieces of cloth, and scraps of paper—most of which turned out to involve gambling debts, either owed by or owing to him but predominantly the former. Either he had collected much of the outstanding money he had won or he was a poor player indeed.

Potts’s room came last, and when he entered it Lenox felt his deepest pang of shame. Here was a man he barely knew, who was seen by nobody, whom Lenox in all probability would never meet at a party, for Potts wouldn’t be invited, but who might have been anything at all, even nice and kind, at any rate quite undeserving of this invasion.

And then, the room, he thought briefly, was touching in a way. Potts had declined the help of the maids in some matters, Lenox could see, because he had obviously folded his own clothes, and taken great pains, as well, though his work was filled with imperfections. His bed had been made by a professional hand, but the wood by the fire had clearly been stacked by Potts, being different from the woodpiles in every other room—stacked diagonally in the up-country fashion that helped prevent house fires.

But Lenox, in keeping with his pact, pushed all of this out of his mind and tried to push out of his mind even that he was
favorably disposed, by the nature of the room, to the self-made man who resided in it.

He looked swiftly over the desk and the bureau, finding only the small things Lenox himself might have had, a cameo of what looked like his daughter and a tinderbox, and then checked through the clothes and to see if the wastebasket had been emptied, which it had. He then scanned the floors but found nothing there.