A Beautiful Blue Death (17 page)

He went again to the members’ entrance, facing the river. On the walkway on either side of the door were two awnings, one green-striped and the other red-striped, the green for the Commons and the red for the Lords. In summer they retreated under their awnings and sat outside with cool drinks.

On this day he went inside, nodding to the doorman, who recognized him, and again faced the choice of going right, to the rooms of the House of Lords and the Queen Empress, or left, to the rooms devoted to the House of Commons. He took a left.

At lunch he had simply gone to the first room, the dining room, but now he went past it. Down here, where there was a whole series of rooms overlooking the Thames, were the places that various members sat in between sessions, to broker deals or talk with their friends or simply have a drink.

There was a large empty library, followed by a periodical room with all the day’s papers and journals, and a smoking room, with a billiard table in it and several men waiting about, talking listlessly.

Past that was a refreshment room, which was abandoned now but would be filled that evening with people after a pint of ale or a glass of shandy. Then there was a tearoom, which was more populated, for many people were having a late breakfast, and finally there was a large chamber with many comfortable couches, and waiters here and there, which didn’t have a name but was closer to a clubhouse than anything else. It was the room with a door to the hall that led into the House of Commons, and he decided to wait here, where Soames was most likely to pass before he went into the chambers.

He retired to a large leather sofa and read the
Pall Mall Gazette
for half an hour.

While he was carefully reading a report on the conditions of London slums, Soames came along at last, walking side by side with Newton Duff. They had evidently come together from their host’s house; Soames seemed to be talking at length about a horse named Adagio.

Duff, who looked as if he was sorry he’d ever heard of horses—or of Soames, for that matter—said a cursory goodbye and stalked toward a group of less frivolous members. Lenox wondered briefly whether a man as smart as Newton Duff could make the error of leaving a bottle that led back to him at the scene of a murder. Yes, he thought—but before Lenox knew it, Soames turned, temporarily at a loss, and saw him.

“Charles!” he said. “Hallo, old chap.”

“Jack,” said Lenox. “Good to see you.”

Now Soames was of a specific type among the English gentry, not altogether a good type or a bad one, but rather one who lived on the periphery of these categories, half in and half out.

He had earned the title of captain some years past, in the army, and he was known to his friends by and large as Captain Jack, or Soaps to his close friends. But he was a gentle man, not at all militant. He had earned his rowing blue at Oxford, in the years before Lenox’s time, and his ability with an oar was by all accounts prodigious. He had secured a place in Parliament shortly after coming down, out of a pocket borough belonging to an old oarsman who had admired the young Soames, and from then on he was received throughout London, but in a way he had never quite equaled his early promise, and his life now, though happy enough, was marked, among those who knew him, by the peculiar sorrow of unfulfillment.

He was the sort of man who stayed at his club much of every day, playing billiards or cards as people floated through the room, eating good meals and making much of himself, encouraging talk
of days in the old crew or the old regiment, but without any particular present glory to balance it; he was quick, in the way that men of the clubs are quick, but like them he had lost, whether by drink or lassitude, the ability to focus his efforts over a long time or on a large subject. Gradually his interests had begun to turn to the turf; he was now considered an authority on horses and could tell you of this trainer or that jockey. But serious men, some of whom had looked up to him twenty years earlier, no longer took him seriously.

Lenox felt a deep sorrow, in a way, to know that he was in financial trouble, for whatever his decline, Soames was an institution of a sort, and, moreover, his family’s money had all been entailed upon an elder cousin, who was unlikely to let it leave his pocket.

But still, all in all, he was a good man and tried to do his duty in Parliament, even amid talk that he would be replaced. His only committee work now happened to involve the mint.

“How are you, Charles?”

“Aside from this,” said Lenox, pointing to the cut on his face, “quite all right.”

Soames laughed. “Have you been boxing?” he said.

“Rather against my will.”

“Have a cigarette?”

Lenox accepted, and gestured toward a pair of armchairs. The men sat down. A waiter came by and asked if they’d like a drink. Soames declined, but Lenox asked if he wouldn’t join him in a glass of hot wine, early though it was, and Soames said that perhaps he would after all.

They had been talking of horses, the expert having found a more willing listener in Lenox than in Duff. But in the lull when Soames took his first sip, Lenox said, “And what is this about the murder?”

“You ought to know, from what I gather.”

“Why?”

“You were around that evening, weren’t you?” Soames said.

“Ah, but Barnard asked me to step back.” This was not a lie.

“He did? Tough bird, Barnard. Good man, but tough.”

“What do you think of it?”

“The girl?” Soames shifted uneasily in his seat. “I daresay it was one of the servants. One of them started to cry during supper two nights ago, just for an example. Never seen anything like it. Probably felt guilty.”

“Perhaps the fiancé?”

Soames looked away. “Perhaps,” he said.

“I hear there are two nephews there?”

“Both horrid, old man, really horrid. One of them is a sort of Casanova or something, and the other disapproves of me, I rather think.”

Lenox gestured to the waiter for another glass.

“Thanks, Charles,” said Soames, watching his cup as it was filled. The wine steamed and smelled of lemon and cinnamon. “Cold out, you know. Got to endure a day of these things on the benches, now. The wine will make it pass. They’re asking me to show up more often, you see, even though I don’t know much.”

“Is there anything at the mint, right now?”

“Oh, no, not really. I only help Barnard, you know. That’s why I’m staying with him. Close work.” He blushed and didn’t say anything else.

“I really am curious,” said Lenox, “about what happened to the girl. Spectator’s interest, you see.” This was closer to a lie.

“I haven’t really got any idea.”

“What about Duff? He’s a hard one.”

“Duff? Do you think?”

“Why not?”

“You may be right. In fact, if I were an inspector, he should be where I started.”

“Really?”

Soames took a sip and then put the glass down unsteadily. “Oh, yes. Can’t think why it didn’t occur to me before, actually.”

“Perhaps we’re overstating it.”

“Nothing of the sort.” Soames coughed. “Just as a parlor game, of course, it would have to be him.”

“Just as a parlor game.”

“Well, of course, none of us could have done it, you know, in reality.”

“Of course.”

“Suicide, I have no doubt.”

“That’s how it will end,” said Lenox. “But as a parlor game—”

“Oh, Duff.” Soames finished his wine. “All the characteristics. Dark chap.”

“Dark as midnight.”

“Yes.”

“But then, why not you?” said Lenox, smiling. He hated to, but he did.

Soames stared for a moment, but then laughed. “Indeed, why not? Only, in a game, you know, it’s the mental part of the thing, the motive. I’m not too likely.”

“Probably not.”

“Maybe as a surprise ending.”

“You mean, where Duff seems like the man for it but it turns out to be you?”

“Yes,” said Soames, and laughed. His face was red. “But in real life—”

“Never, in real life.”

“No, no. Preposterous.”

“Yes.”

There was a silence.

“Well, I’d better get inside,” said Soames.

“Good to see you, though.”

“Thanks for the wine and all, Lenox.”

“Of course.”

“Are you meeting your brother?”

“Yes,” said Lenox. “In a little while.”

“Say hello. Old Edmund. We were at university together.” A sad moment passed. Then the two men shook hands, and Soames went into the chamber.

A
fter he had interviewed Soames, Lenox was at loose ends. He was to have lunch with his brother in only an hour, give or take a few minutes, so it would be pointless to go home. He decided that he would take a walk.

The new snowfall was already trodden underfoot, and the city had again taken on a dingy aspect, but the air was clear and, if cold, not unbearably so. He decided he would go down by the river.

Every few hundred yards, in this part of London, there was a staircase leading down from the sidewalk that overlooked the Thames. Lenox went down one of these staircases and soon found himself even with the water, on a little promenade lined with short trees that ran for a while just next to the river, much more quietly than the busy street above.

The water was gray and running fast, with drifts of ice eddying down it and snow fringing its sides. A few birds were flying close to the water, and Lenox stopped to sit on a bench and watch them skimming the small waves. The sky was gray and the river was gray. It was the sort of thing he loved, though a sudden ache where he had been hit called him back to the world.

Soon it was lunch time, and he walked back slowly, looking at the buildings of Whitehall.

Lenox’s interest in politics dated back nearly as far as his memory. Lady Jane’s father had often taken his seat in the Upper House, where Lenox and Jane would watch him speak from the spectators’ gallery, and while Lenox was unimpressed with the trappings of power, he was fascinated by the power itself. It amazed him, after his schoolboy lessons of the monarchs and a deeper look into history at Harrow, that the bodies of Parliament controlled the fate of their countrymen. The discourse, which he read in the papers, was seldom elevated, occasionally very low, but once in a while sparkling. He had grown up with the ideal of the great statesmen, Burke, Fox, Peel, and Palmer-ston, in his mind. And then, he felt, as he grew toward adulthood, that he had fallen into a singularly lucky time, when both Disraeli and Gladstone were coming into their strength as leaders of men. It was a time of great debate.

But it had been a fascination from afar. Sir Edmund, as both brothers had always known, would be the member from Market-house. The baronet always was. Charles, their father thought, would buy an estate near Lenox House, or, if it were absolutely necessary, a house in London. But leisure would fall to him, whichever it were, as the consolation for having lost a career.

And yet there were times when Lenox walked among the members he knew, or spoke confidentially with his brother or with the half-dozen politicians he had known since childhood, when it occurred to him that there still might be a chance; he still might enter the House. He knew their minds, though suited to politics at the moment, were in the end no sharper than his. He felt that he might be equal to the job.

But for now he was content to walk the halls of power, to ask his brother for morsels of information, to read the paper in the evening, and to say hello to Disraeli at a party or to Russell at a
country house where they found themselves together—to move partially in the political set.

No matter, no matter. The case at hand, that was the important thing. He walked back in the direction of the members’ entrance at Parliament and then to Bellamy’s, with its low windows and old portraits, to meet his brother.

Lenox had been sure he could take Soames unawares and question him almost without his knowing. That such was not the case put Lenox on his guard. And then, Soames’s manner had been so peculiar. The way he grasped at Duff’s character, his uneasiness at certain questions, and his insistence that none of them would be found to have done it when the facts came out in the clear.

But surely not Soaps the clubman, whom Lenox had known to say hello to for decades, since he and Edmund had been at university together? No, it was the drinking that had rendered him so inarticulate and ill at ease and of such an unhealthy pallor.

Lenox waited for his brother, and at last he arrived in the dining room. They each ordered a slice of hot game pie with sauce, chips, and peas. Sir Edmund, who was in a cheerful mood because he was returning to the country soon, ordered a bottle of port after lunch, and the two men shared it happily, talking not of the case but of Lenox’s own nephews, who were good lads, and of minor matters about the estate: its rolls, the steward’s complaints, and Darrow Farm, which was the largest tenant farm on their land. Sir Edmund had a living in his hands and wondered whether he should sell it to the highest bidder or, at a lower price, to a cousin of their mother’s; both decided that the cousin should have it and come to Markethouse as the rector. The two men occupied themselves with problems such as these, which brothers who are lucky enough to be close may discuss. At the end they talked over Charles’s visit, which would come at Christmastime.

“I had hoped to go to the Riviera, you know.”

“Oh, Charles, you will plan, won’t you? I remember when it was Portugal last year, but you had that case with Meyer the German—oh, and I remember your short-lived dreams of crossing over to America, as well.”

“Well, well, one of these days.”

“I daresay.” Sir Edmund laughed. “But it won’t do to get your hopes up again. Be happy to come to the country; we can hunt a bit, you know. I’ve finally managed to convince Crump”—the butler at Lenox House since time immemorial—“that we need real fires while anyone at all is awake. Though you would have thought I’d suggested we set the old portraits ablaze.”

Lenox laughed along with his brother. “I look forward to it so greatly, you know. To see Molly and the boys.”