“True enough,” said Wells, his voice grudgingly impressed.
“What I wonder is why they risked it, knowing the town must have been watchful after the first incident.”
“They’re scoundrels.”
Lenox tested the shelf’s sturdiness, decided he trusted it, and then hauled himself up, rather laboriously, so that he was resting on his forearms, feet off the stool. “Hold steady down there,” he called.
“Be careful,” said Wells, sounding alarmed.
There was nothing interesting on the shelf, except the lighter-colored wood where the four feet of the clock must have stood for many years. As he was coming down to the stool, though, and drew eye level with the window, he saw something: In small lettering in the windows it read F. W., PURVEYOR. It gave him pause. He filed the information away for later.
“Who do you think did these things?” asked Lenox, when he was on the ground again. “Captain Musgrave?”
“I wish I could say.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” said Wells, but his eyes shifted slightly — or so Lenox thought.
“There’s no shame in fear.”
“I said I wasn’t, thank you.”
Lenox was silent a moment, looking around the shop. “Very well, then,” he said. “If you think of anything further to tell me, you can go through Oates, or you can find me at Everley. I hope we may catch him for you.”
“Here’s Mr. Oates, now,” said Wells, gesturing toward the door, behind Lenox.
Lenox turned just as the constable came in. “Hallo, Oates,” he said.
“Mr. Lenox, sir. How about that last chap?”
“The dog thief?”
With more animation than he had possessed before in Lenox’s company, Oates launched into the story of Miss Pershing and the dog thief to Wells. The detective, as soon as he politely could, left the shop.
It was just darkening, now, the sky a twilight pink above the rising hills in the distance. A feeling of sweet melancholy filled Lenox’s chest as he gazed out upon it. He looked forward to the evening, the wood fire in the dining hall — his uncle still abjured coal, one of the last stubborn few — the good night to Sophia, the civilized and quiet supper, still served, out here in the country, à la francaise, with the dishes on the table where anyone could scoop themselves a potato when they wanted one, rather than, as all over London, à la russe, the Russian style, with the footmen serving from the left. Much more companionable that way.
In the still evening air he realized that what he felt was a sense of being home. Beyond a certain age one made a home for other people — for Jane, for Sophia — and lost that childhood sense of refuge and security. Perhaps it was because Frederick reminded him of his favorite person, his mother … but no, Lenox pushed that thought back, painful as it was. Even ten years later he didn’t like to think of her being gone.
He and the dogs stopped on their way into the post office. At any rate it was what Plumbley called a post office; as so often in the country it was the front room of the home of an older woman, who in exchange for a small stipend received the mail and passed it on to the postman. (A funny quirk of the language, as the Times had pointed out recently, that in Britain the Royal Mail delivered the post, while in the United States, the Postal Service delivered the mail.)
Lenox knocked on the door and was called in. The dogs were welcome here — there was a bowl of water set by the door for them, which they took turns lapping at — and they tumbled in alongside him. “Hello, Mrs. Walsingham,” he said. “Any post for the Hall?”
“Nought but a telegram. But that is indeed for you, sir,” said the redoubtable old specimen sifting through a pile of letters.
Idly Lenox wondered whether she knew all the gossip in town — so easy for a wax seal to fall open! — or whether she was honest. Surely the latter. They would have perhaps taken the job from her otherwise. Telegram in hand, he thanked her and left.
He was sure it would be his brother who telegrammed him, with further advice, but here he was out. In fact it was from his friend Thomas McConnell, a sometime Harley Street physician of Scottish descent, married to Jane’s cousin and dear friend Toto. In other times he had helped Lenox with his cases, an impromptu medical examiner, but those days were long past. What could he be writing to say, urgently enough to wire rather than write a letter?
The telegram answered that question.
DALLINGTON MAKING A FEARFUL ROW ABOUT THE WEST END STOP THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW STOP TALK OF THE CLUBS STOP STARTED AT THE BG TWO DAYS AGO STOP SHALL I TELL THE DUKE OR WILL YOU STOP NO WISH TO CAUSE THEM PAIN STOP REGARDS MCCONNELL
Lenox’s step slowed as he read this, and his heart fell. The BG would be the Beargarden Club, a haunt of many young and debauched aristocrats. Not coincidentally it was where Dallington’s letter to Lenox — perhaps his final piece of professional duty on the murder of Arthur Waugh — had been sent in. So.
Lenox went back to Everley with this telegram in hand, much preoccupied, thinking the entire way about what he should do. When he arrived he went straight to see Jane, who was writing at her desk, a curl of hair fallen fetchingly over her absorbed, concentrating face.
“Ah, Charles!” she said, smiling and looking up when she realized he was in the doorway. “How are you?”
“Unfortunately I think I shall have to go up to London,” he said, and handed her the telegram.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the end it took a very short while for detective to find detective: Lenox ran Dallington to ground ninety-odd minutes after the train from Bath arrived in London. Now he was walking down Villiers Street, a slim cobblestoned lane that lay directly in the shadow of Charing Cross station. It was dark and cold out, with a bitter, penetrating rain.
He stopped at a dim, unmemorable little doorway with a sallow lantern flickering above it, the name GORDON’S stenciled in black on its glass. Another hundred steps on he could see the Thames and the lights of Hungerford Bridge, and the intrepid small craft that even at this hour, in this weather, were out on the water, scavenging, ferrying, on whatever mysterious errands their pilots had in mind. Lenox had always felt more comfortable in stately, leafy, daytime London than in its dark and secretive nighttime brother. He had had his adventures in both.
Gordon’s Wine Bar was down a stairwell, and Lenox had to stoop to take the steps one by one. By the bottom his eyes had adjusted to the candlelight. The ceiling was formed by a succession of low, steeply curved vaults, so that some parts of it left five feet above your head and some five inches, rather like a cave or an old Roman bath. Its stone walls and columns were smudged black here and there with smoke. Everywhere — under and around the scratched tables and uneven chairs, beneath the bar, above the bar, hung from the ceiling — there were pallets of red wine in clear bottles marked only with a few swipes of chalk.
The bartender, a saturnine, white-haired man with a large belly, was backed by seven great oak casks, marked amontadillo, madeira, port, and so on. (Why was it all Portugese, the wine? Many years before a canny British trade envoy had agreed that his country would buy solely wine from that country if she bought her cloth solely from England. It was one of the most unbalanced bargains ever struck, and the reason that every stolid insurance man in Lambeth drank something as exotic as Port, or Portuguese, wine.) Occasionally one of the quiet customers would sidle up to the bar with his glass and the bartender would fill it from a cask. At the small tables there were men sitting alone, others playing chess, others reading newspapers, the majority of them with the eyes and the complexions of the committed drinker.