“We have no evidence whatsoever to link him to Pierce or Carruthers, though.”
“Christ. I wonder if he could have done it.”
“Inspector Exeter has sent out a canvass to find him.”
Lenox shook his head. “Asinine. If you’re to find him you must do it subtly.”
“I agree,” said Jenkins, shrugging.
“Well — good luck at any rate. Keep me informed, won’t you?”
“I shall.”
“Good-bye.”
The inspector left, and Lenox sat in an armchair thinking. What puzzled him was the second murderer — for there must have been one, if the murders were so close together in time. How could Poole’s son, who had been out of the country, know anybody in London well enough to enlist them in such a plot?
CHAPTER THREE
Two days later a mild late December sun set over Hampden Lane. Lenox sat with Lady Jane Grey on the sofa in her rose-colored sitting room — a chamber famous for the exclusivity of the evening gatherings it hosted and for its inaccessibility to all but Jane’s favorite people — fixing his cuff links. She was telling him about the dinner party they were to attend that night.
Lady Jane was a lovely woman, with fine skin that in the sunless winter had gone quite pale, though her lips were ruby red. Her eyes were lively and gray, often amused but never cynical, with the generous cast of someone more accustomed to listening than speaking. Her intelligence shone out of them. A dark corona of hair was piled atop her head, precariously designed for the dinner party. Lenox liked it best when it shook down in curls across her shoulders, however. She dressed plainly and well; the widow of James Grey, Lord Deere, she had lived these fifteen years next door to Lenox, his closest friend in the world. Only recently, however, had he found the courage to declare his love — and found to his ongoing elation that she returned it.
Far more so than Lenox, she was a member of London’s very highest society. In that caste there were two types of ruling women: those who campaigned, gossiped, and mocked, and those who through natural grace and intelligence gradually became arbiters of taste. Lady Jane belonged definitely to the second group. Her closest friends were Toto McConnell and the Duchess of Marchmain, and the three of them formed a triumvirate of power and taste. Their houses often hosted the defining parties of a season or the most select evening salons. Yet it was typical of Lady Jane that she was going to marry a man who would much rather be searching for clues in the alleyway of a slum than having supper in one of the palaces of Grosvenor Square. She never let her place in society determine her actions or thoughts. Perhaps that was the secret of having her place there to begin with.
This was the woman Lenox was to marry, whose counsel he valued above any other, and who was to his spirit both sun and moon, midnight and noon.
“Shall we take anything to supper?”
“Oh — yes — they asked me to bring wine, didn’t they? Bother, I forgot.”
Lenox perked up. “Let’s go by Berry’s,” he said.
“Charles, they deliver,” said Lady Jane, an exasperated look on her face. “We’ll send someone around, and they’ll send the wine to Lady Nevin’s.”
“But I like to go,” was his stubborn reply.
“Then go, and come pick me up on your way back.”
Lenox was not, as many of his friends were, much addicted to the charms of wine, but nobody could enter Berry Brothers and Rudd Wine Merchants for more than a few minutes without wanting immediately to lay down a few cases of Medoc or to rush off and lecture the barman at his club about the importance of grape variety.
The shop, its front painted a dark, rich green, and its vaulted Gothic windows bearing its name in yellow stencil, was dusty, old, and wonderful, located a few paces off of Pall Mall on St. James’s Street. The darkened floorboards creaked over a cellar as valuable as any in private hands; at one end of the room was a scale as tall as a man, and beside it an old table crowded with a dozen quarter-full glasses of red wine, which customers had been tasting. Berry’s had existed since 1698 and looked as if it would go on forever.
The place was largely deserted. One stooped old man — an oenophile, judging from the excited quiver of his nose over every bottle he smelled — was rooting through a case in the back, but the proprietor didn’t pay him any mind, standing instead at the desk in front of his ledger.
Now, this ledger was famous. It was magnificently large, bound in the same hunter green that the shop was painted, and recorded the preferences and history of every client who visited the shop more than once. As soon as Lenox’s face had appeared in the doorway, the man behind the ledger was riffling through it to find the
“Hullo, Mr. Berry,” said Lenox.
“Mr. Lenox, sir,” said Mr. Berry, with a slight nod of his head. “How may I be of service to you?”
Lenox put his hands in his pockets and frowned, looking around the glass cases that held the sample bottles. “What do I like?” he said.
In general conversation this would be a peculiar question, but Mr. Berry heard it a dozen times a day. “What are you eating?”
“Probably beef.”
“You have two cases of the Cheval Blanc ’62 laid down, sir,” he said.
Lenox frowned again. “Does Graham know?”
Graham knew everything about wine.
“Yes, sir. I believe you purchased it under his advisement.”
“And I like it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Berry. “You took two bottles of it to a dinner party in March. You said it was” — he consulted the ledger — “tasty, sir.” This word repeated with faint disapproval.
“Well, better give me three bottles.”
“Straightaway, sir.”
This business soon transacted, Lenox and Mr. Berry spent a quarter of an hour discussing Scotch whisky, and before he left Lenox had tasted several samples and was feeling distinctly warm in his belly. He left with a bottle of the darkest sample he had tried, Talisker.
Lenox returned to Lady Jane’s to find her ready and was enjoying a quick sip of the Talisker when there was a knock on the door.
It was Graham. Because Lenox and Lady Jane lived in houses that adjoined, their servants often popped back and forth to deliver messages.
“You have a visitor, sir,” said Graham.
“Damn. Who is it?”
“Inspector Exeter.”
“Oh, yes? Well, Jane, do I have time to see him?”
She looked over at the silver clock that stood on her desk. “Yes, if you like,” she said. “I’ll order my carriage. That should take a quarter of an hour.”
“I’ll be faster than that, I hope.”
Exeter was waiting in Lenox’s study. He was a large, physically imposing man, who — to give him his credit — had evinced time and again tremendous physical bravery. Cowardice was never his flaw. Rather, it was that he was so hidebound and resistant to new ideas. He had a stubborn face, adorned somewhat absurdly with a fat black mustache. He was twisting the ends of this with two fingers when Lenox came in.
Well, thought Lenox, what will it be: a plea for help or a warning to stay out of the case? The two men stood facing each other.
“Mr. Lenox,” said Exeter with a supercilious smile.
Here to crow, then, thought Lenox. “How do you do, Inspector? Good evening.”
“I expect you’ve been following the murders? The Fleet Street murders?”
“I have, certainly, with keen interest. I hope their solution progresses well?”
