An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries) (25 page)

I fear this is unhelpful, but at least I can give you an accurate description of him, for I do see him now and then, perhaps every six months. He is very short, just above five foot I would say, and has a bald crown, with dark hair around the fringe. He has an unprepossessing face, with a bulbous nose and eyes set rather too close together, though last I saw him he was wearing spectacles. Certainly he has never been anything but gentlemanly with me in our interactions. I always sense in his manner a bit of atonement for his father’s bad reputation—even apology, perhaps. It is no wonder he stays out of Farnborough, where they gossip like schoolgirls.

That is all the account I can offer for Archie Godwin. As for us, we are still struggling to keep the bones of Leck together, Frances and I, and there are many moments of worry—but as you know love and marriage are a tremendous solace, and we find great joy in each other’s company still. It would make us happy indeed if you and Jane could visit. Name your date. Otherwise I will be up in September, as always, to see my lawyers and spend a week in London. I know that I will see you then—if not before—and regardless of when our next meeting may be, believe me to be,

Your very dear friend,

Peter Hughes

When he finished reading this letter Lenox felt a powerful wish to see his friend again. Leck was a beautiful place, with ancient magic in its gray walls, situated on a rise of hill just above a pristine, circular lake, and Peter, who had grown quite fat and red, was one of the funniest, gentlest people he knew. His wife, too, a gray-haired woman slightly older than he, was unusually caring and sweet.

He thought of how unpredictable life was. If Peter had decided to come live in London after he finished at Cambridge, the two men would have seen each other three or four times a week for the past twenty years. Instead their friendship consisted in this—letters, a week in September, and the abiding memories of a daily closeness that was now decades in the past.

Lenox wrote his reply, sipping his coffee and relaying his news, including reports on Sophia and particularly on Edmund, whom Peter had known more slightly when they were all at school.

He still felt disappointed that they had been wrong about the robbery at the palace the past two nights, but it was absolutely essential that he devote the day to Parliament. As soon as he had finished his letter to Peter he stuck it in the silver toast rack where he kept his most pressing ingoing and outgoing correspondence, put on a light cloak, and left.

The next six hours were long and full of quick, significant meetings; Whirral and Peligo, the two men who rumor said were paying off Graham, appeared at his office, and though he tried to discern from their attitude whether
they
thought it was possible, somehow, that they had bought either his time or his favor, he could not see it. He was closeted afterward for several hours with the party leadership. There were significant speeches to be made that night. Gladstone parceled them out like favors at the end of a party.

None to Lenox, however.

When the meeting was concluded, and men began to stand up from the long oval table and break off into twos and threes, Gladstone came over to Lenox and asked, with a kindly smile, if the younger member would walk the halls with him.

“Certainly, Prime Minister,” said Lenox. It was still customary to address Gladstone by this title among members of their party, though he was out of office now. They offered the honorific with the assumption that one day he would resume his proper place in government; namely, at its summit.

They walked into the halls together. When they were alone, Gladstone said, “I looked down the benches last night and could not find you.”

“I was at Buckingham, sir.”

In normal situations this would have excused one’s absence from any social event short of a funeral or an invasion from the heavens, but Gladstone, like Disraeli, was unusually sharp. He raised his eyebrows. “A dear friend of Lady Monmouth’s, are you? I understand the dinner was only for a hundred people. I had to decline.”

Lenox smiled. “Not precisely.”

“Ah. Precision. It is an interesting virtue, is it not? Too much of it can lead to fastidiousness—but on the other hand an insufficiency of precision, a perpetual inexactness, can lead, I think, to the more serious degradation of
moral
inexactness, though it begin as merely a trait of laziness.”

“Sir?”

Gladstone stopped at a high arched window, recessed into the wall so that it offered a stone bench for passersby. He sat down and looked out over London through the glinting glass. Though it was a bright day the Thames was unusually turbid, churning up red clay along its two pebbly strands. At its depths toward the middle of the river, however, it flowed as sleek and gray as ever.

Gladstone looked back at Charles. “Sir Edmund assures me of your sincere belief in your secretary’s honesty. Unhappily, it is no longer a mere matter of exoneration. The opinion of the world is set against Mr. Graham—set firmly against him.”

“The opinion of the world is an ass.”

Gladstone smiled mildly. He knew that fact better than most. For many years he had visited with prostitutes, with the aim of reforming them. He had even invited them to take tea at Downing Street. His wife was always present at these meetings, yet gossip ascribed his fascination to less noble motives than he claimed. Lenox happened to believe him, but of all men he ought to have understood the impudence of quick tongues in London. There were times when the opinion of the world, as he called it, was scurrilous indeed upon the subject of William Ewart Gladstone.

“Edmund tells me as well that you have a strong personal connection with this Mr. Graham. It troubles me all the more, therefore, to tell you that either he must go—or you must. Not from Parliament, for the seat is yours, but you will return to the back benches. Mr. Graham has attained some power in these halls, Lenox, and for our purposes, however baseless the rumors, that will not do. We cannot lose ground against Disraeli. He already has our backs against the wall.

“The stain has not yet spread to you, Charles. Yes, I see your grimace. This is politics, my dear fellow, nothing else.” He stood and put a hand on Lenox’s upper arm. “Let me know when it is done, and we will be delighted to have you speak again.”

It was impossible for Lenox to put his finger on what bothered him so much about the case—about Wintering’s death, about this third man Whitstable had seen with Godwin and Wintering, about Grace Ammons, about the whole bloody mess.

He spent his evening thinking about it. Lady Jane was out upon the errands of the season, fluttering around the girls who were newly out, fixing their hair and dresses, consoling and congratulating their mothers. Lenox ought to have been with her, but he had begged off it. Something in his face must have told his wife it wasn’t worth attempting to persuade him to come.

He gave the servants the night off and ordered supper in from the chophouse down Hampden Lane. He poured himself a strong whisky and soda and pictured the front benches that evening, without him; pictured the cold body of Wintering in the cellar of Scotland Yard; pictured the Queen’s servants packing for Balmoral. It was a good evening, cool and remorseless, for self-pity.

After he ate he felt exhausted. He went over to the soft armchair by the fire where he liked to read and picked up the
Telegraph,
casting his eyes over the crime notices for London. There had been a stabbing in Bethnal Green, a fire in Bermondsey, a straightforward murder in Chelsea—the husband had already confessed to killing the wife. In Kensington that same paradoxical homeless man was still missing. Someone had cut loose all the horses in southwest Battersea. As he read these notices his eyes grew heavy, and soon he could feel, with some barely conscious part of his mind, his hands descending heavily into his lap, the newspaper softening down with them, and then he was unconscious.

He woke up with no particular sense of urgency, only a pleasant warmth, until he realized, with a start, that all of his deductions and suspicions had woven together in his mind.

He had it.

It was the newspaper that had finally given him this comprehension. He understood the whole thing now, he thought—or at least the who, the how, the when. The why was murkier.

He bolted out of his chair and to his desk, yelling for the only remaining servant in the house, Kirk, to come to his study.

“Sir?” said Kirk, looking alarmed.

“Telegram this around to Jenkins and call my carriage out.”

“You have given all the stable—”

“Christ, call me a cab then.”

The telegram he had written said:

Must return tonight STOP Queen in danger STOP Dllngtn and I will be in same place as last two nights STOP URGENT

It would bring Jenkins. It had to. He sprinted down the steps of the house and into a cab, which he directed to Half Moon Street.

Dallington was in, fortunately. Lenox didn’t even bother knocking on the door—he simply stood on the pavement and called up toward the open window. “Dallington, we have to go!”

Dallington’s head popped out. “Righty-o. Down in thirty seconds.”

Lenox, stepping from foot to foot, was too nervous to feel much amusement, but his friend’s predictable gameness did put a brief smile on his face. When he heard footsteps on the stair, he got back into the cab and waited.

He had never felt entirely happy about the suit they found in Godwin’s wardrobe, he thought.

Dallington’s tie was still only half looped around his collar as he stepped into the cab, and he was standing on the backs of his soft boots. Lenox rapped the cab’s window, and they began to move. “Where are we going?” asked the young lord, bending down to fix his boots.

“Buckingham Palace.”

“But there’s no party tonight.”

“I think we were mistaken,” said Lenox, turning toward his friend. “What if Wintering’s objective wasn’t to rob the Queen?”

“Then what was it?”

“To harm her.”

Dallington’s face, never much inclined to seriousness, nevertheless now took on a look of severe concern, and the thought skimmed across Lenox’s mind that his friend was a more serious royalist than he let on—more devoted to the Queen than he would have admitted. “What makes you think that?”

“The thought that has unsettled me is that the scene at Wintering’s was too perfect—the dates circled in the newspaper, the wax impression carefully placed alongside it, the knife, the black cap, all of his kit so neatly laid out.”

“That only means he was thorough.”

“You saw his rooms—tobacco spilling, bed unmade, nothing put away. He didn’t seem so orderly to me.”

Dallington shrugged. “It hardly seems conclusive.”

“No. Only suggestive, but think—would he really need to have circled those dates in the newspaper? In his position I would have committed them to memory.”

In this particular part of the West End nearly every house was busy and full, roused from the dormancy of winter by the season. The exception was Buckingham Palace, apparently. As they approached it along Constitution Hill, the flag was still high, indicating that the Queen was in residence, but all of the gas lamps lining the front gates were unlit and the interior was dark.

By some kind of magic Jenkins had reached the palace before Lenox and Dallington. He ran up to their cab when it arrived. “What the devil is this about, Lenox?” he demanded.

“I think they’re coming back tonight.”

“They?”

“He, I should say—the third man.”

“And why do you think that?”

Now Shackleton was bearing down on their small group, his face irate. “Gentlemen, what is the meaning of this?”

Lenox explained again that he thought Wintering’s rooms had been used by the murderer to misdirect them—but as he spoke, he saw three faces fill first with doubt, then with outright dismay.

“That is all?” asked Jenkins.

“No. That is far from all,” said Lenox.

“Then tell us what you think.”

Not wanting to look foolish—he had begun to doubt himself, very nearly—Lenox said only, “You’ll see. Shackleton, if I’m not mistaken, this is the south end of the palace, and the Queen’s rooms are on the north end?”

“Yes.”

Dallington added, “The rooms of state—the East Gallery, for instance—are in between, along the west side of the palace.”

“We have two men waiting by the window for the key of which you found the wax mold.”

Lenox shook his head. “I think that mold was a blind, like the circled dates in the court circular in the
Times.
I think Wintering took a second mold while he was in the palace. That was why he had to come back for a second party—one in the garden, around the north end. The whole thing has been exquisitely planned from the start, Jenkins. Is the Queen guarded?”

“Of course. Always.”

Lenox waved a hand. “No, I mean, are there still extra guards attending her?”

“Not from the Yard any longer.”

Shackleton shook his head. “Two outside that window, just in case, and half her usual compliment in the palace. Many of us go ahead to Balmoral, to secure it.”

Lenox looked at Jenkins. “He knew that.”

“Who?” asked Jenkins, his voice full of frustration.

Lenox was about to explain—the suit, the newspaper, even the letter he had received that morning—when there was a crack of gunfire from the palace.

All of the blood drained from Shackleton’s face. Without a word, he turned and began to sprint the hundred yards back to the palace.

Lenox, Dallington, and Jenkins hesitated for a moment and then ran after him.

The place was in chaos. A servant in a nightcap had woken and was stumbling down the hall with a candle; the porters had abandoned their stations to help the Queen; there were cries from distant rooms. Shackleton wended his way through the byzantine corridors with expert speed. They were just barely able to track him.

Leaping up the marble steps of the private residence three at a time, he called out, “Your Majesty!”