An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries) (22 page)

Lenox had already ordered coffee, which arrived as McConnell was sitting. He peered into the pot. “There are white bits floating in it,” he said unhappily.

“Eggshells—it takes the bitterness away. Old doctor’s trick, you know. Could I have a cup of that?”

“You can have all of it.”

“No, come, you must try it. There, half a cup each.”

Lenox took a sip and was compelled to admit the efficacy of the eggshells. “Not bad.”

They ordered, and for a while McConnell spoke about the patients Lenox had seen, giving him more detail on each one—a small boy with a teratoma, an older girl with the hundred-day cough, and a newborn, seemingly in perfect health, whose breathing was strained. “We shall pull him through, however,” said the doctor. “I’m sure of that.”

“Then I am, too.”

McConnell paused now. “Tell me,” he said, “did you come to the hospital because you knew I would be there?”

“No. Did you not observe the surprise in my face?”

“I thought I did,” McConnell murmured. “I had kept it quiet. Still, it was a jolt seeing you there.”

“You have a taken a job of work, then, Thomas?”

“You don’t need to say it that way,” said McConnell irritably, “as if you were Toto’s father, the old bugger, and I had decided to shift vocations and become a chimney sweep late in life.”

In that sentence was encapsulated the change in Lenox’s friend—a new self-confidence, a new indifference to the opinion of others. “You seem happy.”

“I have never been happier in all my life. I have been at the hospital for six weeks, and it has passed like six hours.”

“But Toto doesn’t know,” said Lenox.

A defiant look came into McConnell’s eyes. “I asked her if I should take the job—Dr. West was my professor, many years ago—and she pitched a fit, if you must know. Fortunately I am not tied to her apron strings.”

“She thinks you’re having an affair with Polly Buchanan,” said Lenox. He had decided upon directness. “In fact, half of London thinks as much.”

McConnell’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he burst into a long and rolling laugh. After a few moments, catching sight of his friend’s stern face, he laughed harder still. “Oh, dear,” he said, wiping his eyes.

“I cannot see what is so funny,” said Lenox, vexed.

“Only the idea—but I suppose that is why Toto has been so cold? What a relief!” McConnell emitted a final sigh of laughter and then, realizing perhaps that he had conveyed too much information about his marriage in that spontaneous exclamation, hurried along his next words. “No, no, Charles, I have no amorous affection for Miss Buchanan. I look forward to telling Toto as much this evening. I suppose I had better tell her about the hospital, too—yes, I will, and she can take it just as she pleases, for I don’t mean to stop.”

“You are friends, you and Polly Buchanan? She is a great rake.”

“Just a minor friendship—no, I would not even call us friends, though I cannot dislike her. Still, I must keep my word, and not tell you why she and I have met in Hyde Park. For I assume our meetings there have given rise to these rumors.”

“Yes.”

“Trust me, Charles, in the fullness of time I shall explain it all to you. Polly Buchanan! You must admit that it’s amusing.”

Lenox, who conceived himself bound to admit no such thing, merely frowned. Their food arrived, and McConnell dropped into it ravenously, ordering a pint of ale to accompany it. For many years he had been too heavy a drinker, but even to Lenox, now, his thirst seemed healthy.

What happiness he saw in his friend’s face! In spite of his misgivings, Lenox felt a growing warmth of corresponding happiness, and blended into it an overpowering degree of relief. Toto would understand about the hospital. She was not a cruel-minded woman, not at all. The only shame was that it had taken so long for him to return to medicine.

Thomas had the same feeling, describing, as they ate, the sense of waste, of talent squandered, that the decade since his marriage seemed to represent.

“I don’t blame Toto in the slightest. It was my own fault,” he said, “and when her mind is at ease over Polly Buchanan, how much happier she shall be, knowing that I am happy. Do you not think so, Charles?”

It was an unusually intimate question, and an unusually intimate conversation, but something about the hominess of the food and the sawdust on the floor and the rising drunken voices toward the back of the room made it seem appropriate. They were friends of very long standing, after all. So Lenox replied that yes, he did imagine that Toto would be happier. “Perhaps your only error has been secrecy, Thomas,” he said.

“One is bred to it.”

“That is true.” Lenox took a sip of coffee, sitting back from his half-eaten luncheon. He checked his watch. It was nearly three. “I must go soon. Tell me first, though, what I am to say to Jane?”

“You must tell her what you please,” said McConnell lightly. “You speak as if it all must be such very heavy weather.”

“I don’t think you can understand how Toto has suffered, Thomas, and as a consequence how much Jane and I have suffered on her behalf. Your happiness has blinded you. If I still seem somber, that is the reason—not because I am not pleased that you have come to work at the hospital, which has already earned my full-hearted esteem. I give you joy of your new venture. Only you must recall the old ventures, too.”

McConnell hesitated for a moment, thinking, and then nodded. “Yes.”

“I hope you are not offended that I am candid.”

“Never in life. I think you are right, Charles. I have been selfish—but it may be that I was overdue some selfishness, and now I can accord myself the proper prescription of it again. All those years I spent in a lab, such a wan imitation of life! You’ve no idea what it is to lose yourself for so long.”

Lenox briefly alighted upon the feeling of avid anticipation he had of the meeting at four, then thought of the thousands of hours he had spent at his office in the Commons. “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

“It is like coming back to the red-blooded rush of living, after being a ghost. I am certain that Toto will understand—Polly Buchanan, indeed.”

Lord John Dallington was unmistakably in better health. Lenox watched him stride down a wide central passage at Scotland Yard just after four o’clock. “Jenkins will be another moment,” Lenox told his young associate.

“Is he bringing a constable with him, I hope?” asked Dallington.

“Two.”

“Who are these four gentlemen we mean to visit, then? Old college mates of Godwin’s?”

Lenox read out the names that Skaggs had given him. “Mark Troughton. Albert Walworth. Jeremiah Smith. St. John Walker.”

“They sound a dreary lot.”

“Let us hope they are dreary enough not to fire a pistol upon us, at any rate.”

“True, I should hate to die just when I no longer feel like ten-day-old soup.” Then, cheered by a thought, he said, “But perhaps they’ll hit the constables!”

“Come now, Dallington.”

“Only a joke.”

They visited Mark Troughton first, and Skaggs had been correct; he was not the man for whom they were searching. They apologized to him and returned to the Yard’s large, rather ratty carriage.

The remaining three gentlemen all, by coincidence, resided within a few streets of each other in Bloomsbury. The first they visited was St. John Walker—his forename pronounced Sinjun, one presumed. As they approached his door, Lenox felt a patter of anxiety in his chest. He braced himself.

The result of their inquiry here was disappointing, too. Walker was a tall, very thin person, with enormous red ears like bell pulls. When they explained their visit he replied that, instead of murdering and thieving, he occupied his time by buying antiquities and reselling them on the secondary market. “I’ve very sorry you’ve got the wrong man,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” Dallington told him glumly.

“I had never supposed it to be, but I can understand that it must be an exasperation to you nevertheless.”

“Thank you, Mr. Walker,” said Jenkins and motioned the two constables, hearty beef-fed lads with high hopes of making the arrest, to retreat down the steps of the house.

That left two men: Walworth and Smith. “Skaggs notes that Smith is the handsomest of the lot,” said Lenox.

“Ah, Rupert Skaggs, noted judge of beauty,” said Dallington.

Lenox smiled. “I suggest we leave him for last.”

Walworth was out. He lived in a gloomy set of apartments, largely unadorned, with a single servant, a young and jumpy valet who introduced himself as Albert Wrightswood. “You’re both called Albert?” Lenox asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“He must sound mad when he speaks to you,” Dallington said. “It’s as if he’s telling himself to fetch his pipe or lay out his clothes. ‘Albert, you’ve done first-rate work today.’ Eh?”

The junior Albert smiled weakly, the presence of five strange men from Scotland Yard evidently having dampened his appetite for witticisms at his own expense. “Perhaps, sir.”

There was something Lenox didn’t like in the young man’s edginess, however. “Where is your employer?” he asked.

“Out upon a social call, sir.”

“Do you know where?”

“At the Biblius Club, I believe, sir.”

Lenox and Dallington glanced at each other. “I know it,” said Lenox. “He is a member?”

“Yes.”

“We shall seek him there.”

When they left, however, Lenox, in a whisper, suggested that they watch the door for a moment. Sure enough, Albert Wrightswood appeared a few moments later, all in haste to be gone. Jenkins sent one of the constables along with cab money to follow him.

The party from Scotland Yard was down to four in number, therefore, when they knocked upon the door of Jeremiah Smith. It belonged to a lovely alabaster town house overlooking Bedford Square.

Jenkins wasn’t pleased. “This hardly has the appearance of the residence of a gentleman who needs to commit fraud to buy a hat.”

“Perhaps his frauds have run pretty large,” said Dallington.

A white-haired housekeeper answered the door and led them into a drawing room, where they waited for three or four tense minutes. At last Jeremiah Smith entered the room, face serious—and confirmed all of Jenkins’s fears. It was not the man from Gilbert’s.

They made their hasty apologies and, without needing to consult each other about the decision, made for the Biblius Club, and Albert Walworth.

The club’s steward acknowledged that he was in, and after a perfunctory objection to their intrusion upon a private clubhouse, which Jenkins immediately squashed, he led them upstairs to the club’s back library, overlooking the garden.

“What is on the third floor now?” asked Lenox to the steward in a low voice, as they walked. “I know the society that was there has been disbanded.”

“Yes, that was a terrible set-to. The Biblius Club uses the space now—and got it very cheaply, because nobody wanted to rent the rooms of the September Society. Here we are, gentlemen. Mr. Walworth, you have visitors. Impertinent visitors.”

Indeed, here Walworth stood, and the last of Lenox’s hope dissolved. Jeremiah Smith had not been remarkably handsome, but in comparison with poor Albert Walworth, who had a bulbous nose and eyebrows the size and texture of two voles, he was like one of the ancient Greek gods, returned to modern times. For the fourth time they went through the same apology, which Walworth, befuddled, managed half to accept.

Out upon the street Lenox sighed and made his own apology. “I am sorry, gentlemen.”

“It was worth the effort,” said Dallington loyally.

“Perhaps the two of you would like a cup of tea?” asked Lenox.

Jenkins hesitated, plainly out of sorts, but then, manners winning out, assented. Soon they were all in a carriage bound for Hampden Lane.

As usual, Lenox was greeted by a raft of telegrams, many of them to do with Parliament. One of them, however, bore the return address of Skaggs. This he tore open as Dallington and Jenkins settled themselves into armchairs.

Misidentified forty-one, forty-three STOP addresses and names appended STOP Apologies Skaggs

Lenox handed this note to Dallington, who read it and passed it on to Jenkins.

“What sort of code is this?”

Lenox explained: Skaggs had dismissed forty of the names on his initial list, reserved judgment about the four they had just visited, and had all but certain confirmation on three: the forty-first, -second, and -third names on his list. Apparently his certainty had been misplaced, however, and when he had gone back to check those three he had discovered the fact.

“It’s two new names,” said Lenox. “If you have the energy to go out again.”

“We’ve sent Constable Hardy home.”

“I’ll go,” said Dallington. “Though I might swallow down a sip of that tea first.”

Twenty minutes later the three men were in Lenox’s carriage, bound for Belgravia. The first address was in Dalton Mews; the name of the man who lived there was Leonard Wintering. It did look rather a more promising location in which to find their impostor, a dingy building in an otherwise affluent street, no steward or porter or housekeeper at the door to greet them.

“The third floor,” said Lenox, looking down at the telegram. “The door is marked with Wintering’s last name.”

“I look forward to apologizing to him for infringing upon his privacy,” said Jenkins. “It will be our fifth apology of the day. Mrs. Jenkins will be delighted that I am so promiscuous with the things.”

Lenox ignored this sarcasm and led them up the stairs. He was using no special caution, until, on the landing below the third story, Lenox suddenly felt a sense of unease. “Stop,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Dallington in a low voice.

“Do you smell that?”

Both men turned their noses up into the air. “Someone has built a fire,” said Jenkins. “It’s cold out, after all.”

“No—that is cordite you smell, not a wood or gas fire. A gun was fired here today.”

Dallington and Jenkins looked at each other and nodded. “Carefully, then,” said Jenkins and went ahead of them, leading the way up to the third floor and Wintering’s door.