An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries) (3 page)

Matters had improved since that time, especially after the birth of their child, Georgianna—or George, as she was called—but not to the degree that bad news would ever come entirely unexpected.

As it happened, however, his fears were misdirected. Toto, steadying herself, said, “I believe he has taken up with another woman.”

Lenox narrowed his eyes. “McConnell? I can’t credit that.”

“It’s Polly Buchanan, the shrew.”

Lenox lifted his eyebrows. “Ah.”

“I don’t believe she’ll rest until she’s turned Sydenham into Gomorrah, Charles,” said Toto—her voice imploring, as if she wished it to be true, and then for him to believe it. Her doubts about her suspicion stood in the way of her anger, he could tell. Her face was anguished.

Polly Buchanan was a woman of twenty-five, the relict of a dashing and red-cheeked young soldier named Alfred Buchanan, who had married her in the year ’71. The week after their wedding breakfast he had gone out on a hunt in Middlesex wearing neither a coat nor a hat, contracted pneumonia, and almost immediately, with an appalling lack of consideration for his new wife, died.

With the sympathy of the world wholly hers, Polly had used the subsequent three years to flirt with every married gentleman in London, until she had a terrible reputation among their wives and rather a fond one in the clubs of Pall Mall. (“She turns a fine leg” was the sort of thing one portly gentleman at the Oxford and Cambridge might say to another.) Since she had never positively trespassed upon conventional morality and had excellent connections, she was still widely received—though rarely, any longer, much pitied.

“But Toto, dear,” said Lenox, “what cause can you have to suspect Thomas of seeing this woman?”

“They rode together across Hyde Park two mornings ago, three turns, and again, I am reported, this morning, three turns.”

“You were not there?”

“No. I was taking care of Georgianna while he complimented her hideous green eyes, I don’t doubt, the swine.”

There was a moment’s silence, into which Toto sobbed. When he spoke, Lenox’s voice was skeptical. “So based solely upon this rumor you have concluded—”

Toto looked up at him with furious eyes, but before she could reply Jane did. “No, Charles, you have come into the conversation halfway through. Thomas has been a different man for some weeks now.”

“
Six
weeks,” said Toto with profound emphasis upon the number, as if it were dispositive proof of an unspecified crime. Then she added, miserably, “He’s never seemed so happy in all the time I’ve known him.”

“Toto, dear, it must be something else. His work, for instance.”

“He’s working less than ever.” McConnell had a variety of scientific interests and an extensive chemical laboratory. “He goes two days sometimes without entering his study.”

That looked bad. “How does he occupy his time?”

“At his club,” said Toto. “Or so he says. I cannot face him tonight, Jane. I cannot face a lie from my own husband.”

“You may stay here,” said Charles.

Jane scoffed at that notion. “No, don’t say that, Charles. Toto, we would be pleased to have you, always, but you cannot run from your husband at the drop of a hat. Think, what if he is innocent of these trespasses and you stay away from home? Imagine his bewilderment. And then, is it good for George? You must rein in your imagination, Toto. It is for the best that way. Believe me, I only want you to be happy.”

But Toto, however, determined to deny her cousin this gratification, burst into a fresh sob, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes said very little and would take no refreshment or consolation. Finally, with only a meager attempt at appearing reassured, she left, promising to call in again the next evening. She might have more information then, she thought.

It was bad, no doubt of that. When they had closed the door behind her, Charles and Jane looked at each other with tight-lipped sympathy, sighed at the same time, and without needing to speak about it to understand what each felt—the sorrow, the doubt, the faint tincture of intrigue—began to walk toward the stairs leading up to their bedroom.

Just before noon each Tuesday, Arthur, a footman belonging to the staff of Lenox’s house, took the London underground to Paddington Station, carrying two pocket watches. Usually with a minute or two to spare he arrived at the terminal and watched, with a feeling of stale drama, as the large railway station clock ticked toward the hour. When it finally struck twelve o’clock, he reset both watches, one in each hand, to the same time.

This accomplished, he returned to Hampden Lane and wound all the clocks to match the hour upon the pocket watches, or at any rate an average thereof, which usually put the house within five seconds or so of British railway time.

So it had been for many years; it was a quirk of Lenox’s, from the days when he had used the rail system at every odd hour of the day, several times each week on occasion, in his detective work, and needed to be absolutely sure of where he stood in relation to the timetables the railways printed. Like the copies of Bradshaw handily situated in half a dozen rooms of his house, it was an essential professional advantage.

When the clock chimed for half past seven the next morning, therefore, Lenox, sitting over a cup of coffee and a plate of toast and eggs, the
Times
kinked just inward in his hands to give it a firm spine, knew that it was precisely 7:30—that he was not, like most London houses, three or four or twelve minutes out, in who-knew-which direction.

He rose, buttoned his jacket, took a final sip of coffee, and went outside, where the horses, warmed ten minutes before, were waiting with his carriage.

It was a crisp, white-skied spring morning, with a firm breeze minutely rearranging the world every few seconds as it gusted, a collar flicked up before it settled again, weak new petals scattered from their branches into the streets. When he was settled on the blue velvet bench of the carriage and the horses had begun to pull, he gazed out of his window at the day. He wondered about the man who had written to Dallington—what troubled him, why he was seeking help.

The horses carried Lenox with tolerable briskness down the Strand, and soon the new Eleanor Cross came into view. This tall, thin gray monument was only ten years old—or nearly six hundred, if you accepted the spirit of the thing. In 1290, when Eleanor of Castile had died, her grieving husband, King Edward the First, had ordered a cross to be erected at twelve locations between Lincoln and London: each place where the retinue had slept for the night during the procession that bore her body to Westminster Abbey. Cierring, a name that denoted a specific turn of the Thames, had been the final stop, and in time, the vicissitudes of spelling having finally settled, it became the Charing Cross. During the English Civil War it had been taken down and lost; now Victoria had installed its replacement.

In practice it was now most often a meeting point rather than one of reflection or piety, for of course Charing Cross was also the site of one of the busiest rail stations in London. As they pulled into the drive outside of it, Lenox could see the blue and white striped awning of Gilbert’s Restaurant.

He pulled out his pocket watch. Six minutes shy of eight. “Thank you,” he called up to the coachman. “Wait here, if you please.”

Gilbert’s was a place for a quick meal, with a simple menu, fish in the morning, chops at noon and night. It was also small. There were three mirrored walls and one glass one, looking out at the carriages and hansoms in front of the station.

As he came in, his eyes worked over the room. There were a handful of solitary diners, all men, but all were dark-haired, and none had a striped umbrella. The author of the letter to Dallington had yet to arrive.

Lenox took a seat in the corner farthest from the door, where he could see anyone who entered the establishment. A waiter, whom Lenox had overheard at another table speaking in an Italian accent, approached him. “Sir?” he said.

“Bring me a cup of coffee and a copy of the
Telegraph,
if you would.”

“Yes, sir. Anything to eat, sir?”

“In a moment perhaps.”

In a rack near the bar at Gilbert’s were all the day’s newspapers, hanging over wooden dowels. The waiter fetched the
Telegraph
—at a penny a bit further down-market than the fourpenny
Times,
but Lenox had already read that this morning—and soon after it a silver pot of coffee. In past years Lenox had read nearly every newspaper published in London, the very yellowest rags, in a hungry pursuit of information about the previous day’s crimes, but now he restricted himself. There was so much reading to be done for Parliament—blue books, those slim, blue-bound parliamentary reports, on nearly any subject you could conceive—that he had little choice. To belong on the front benches it was necessary to feign what nature had made impossible, which was a comprehensive knowledge of the world’s ills and fortunes. What was the price of tea in Siam? Why was the union leader of Newcastle’s ironworkers divorcing? How well kitted-out was the 9th Regiment of Foot for the coming summer? Every man in politics claimed he knew the answer to every question. Only Disraeli, the sharpest mind in every room he entered, might have been telling the truth.

Lenox read the news in the
Telegraph
with mild interest, always aware of the door as it opened and closed. First it brought in a rough-looking man with a long beard, delivering three dozen loaves of bread in oversized wax paper bags, then a woman who took a table not far from Lenox and, seated, began to pore over her diary, biting her lip, scribbling out old appointments and replacing them with new. (What a mystery these women’s appointment books were to Lenox. Even Jane’s always looked like it bore a madman’s private philosophies, scratched and cross-written over and over.) Soon thereafter a gentleman came in, going directly to the bar to order a glass of negus and a hot muffin. Dark hair, no umbrella.

Lenox checked his pocket watch frequently, so often that it would have been conspicuous in any other setting, though it was more natural in a rail station. It passed 8:10 and there was no sign of Dallington’s correspondent. Lenox forced himself to read the paper. It was dreary work, until he noticed, with a smile of surprise, a certain advertisement. It was a quarter page and lay just below a half-page advertisement for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. It read:

Miss Strickland’s Detective Agency

No problem insoluble to our dogged staff

Former bobbies and military men

References provided. Satisfaction guaranteed. Strictest Confidence.

Thefts Mysteries Puzzles Missing Persons

Live in doubt no longer

119 High Holborn WC1V

He would have to show Dallington. A competitor! It was time someone set up just such a business. He could picture Miss Strickland, too—she was probably a shade over six feet, with a barrel chest, a seaman’s tattoo on her forearm, and a black, bristly beard. When inquired for she would have stepped briefly out of the office, leaving her capable assistant, Mr. Smith, or Johnson, or Wells, in charge. It was an old ruse. Customers, especially men, felt they were getting a better bargain when a woman was in charge of a business.

The line that made him smile was second to last: “Live in doubt no longer.” Nearly every person of his acquaintance ought to avail him or herself of Miss Strickland’s services, he thought, if she was capable of such conclusive deliverance.

He did wonder what kind of cases such an ad might draw. Many petty ones, no doubt, but perhaps, here and there, something of more serious moment. The agency would have to consult with Scotland Yard if it wished to pursue a murderer, that much Lenox knew with certainty, from long experience.

The waiter looped back to him at 8:18. “Will there be anything else?” he asked. “We have a fine tart, sir.”

“I’ll take toast and jam,” said Lenox.

“Very good, sir.”

He was losing hope that the man who had written Dallington would arrive. A loss of nerve, perhaps. A fellow who wouldn’t sign a letter no doubt had trepidations about meeting in person. Or perhaps he had looked in the window, failed to see Dallington’s face, and gone on his way.

Just as he had this thought, the door opened and a man came in. This was more promising—at any rate he was fair, with light hair.

To Lenox’s astonishment, however, it wasn’t he who reacted to the newcomer’s entrance first. The woman sitting near him—the one who had been sitting and scrutinizing her diary—looked up and started. Then, without saying a word, she dropped a coin on the table, stood up, and, gathering her things haphazardly in her arms, fled through a side door, just as the newcomer spotted her. With a flare of recognition he called out, “Wait!”

Only as she was leaving did Lenox notice, cursing himself for his narrow-mindedness, that she, too, was light-haired—and then, more telling still, that she was carrying hooked upon her forearm a black-and-white striped umbrella.

The gentleman in the door of Gilbert’s—dressed well, with a recent shave that had left his blond mustache in fine trim—made no movement to pursue the woman. He stood and stared after her for a moment and then sighed and turned back through the door.

Lenox stood up and, just as the woman had, dropped a few distracted coins on the table. “Sir,” he called out.

He might have given chase to the woman, but in all likelihood he wouldn’t have caught up to her, and if he had it might have frightened her. If only she had left a return address with Dallington.

“Yes?” said the man, who had paused in the doorway upon hearing Lenox’s voice.

“May I impose upon you to ask that young woman’s name, sir?”

“You may not,” said the man coldly.

“Is it too much trouble?”

“I do not believe we are acquainted, and I cannot imagine that she would wish her identity trusted to a stranger. Plainly, since you were seated only a table apart from each other and therefore had the opportunity to speak, she did not desire conversation with you.”