two brothers turned left, to Bellamy’s.
Bellamy’s was a large spacious restaurant looking over the river. Dickens had written about it—the butler Nicholas and the provocative waitress Jane—in
Lenox and his brother sat at a table next to a window, under a portrait of Fox, and Edmund, staying true to form, immediately said, “Well, dear brother, and what are you working on?”
Lenox smiled. “Lovely to see you too, as always. Are young Edmund and William well? And Emily?”
“Don’t be that way, Charles, what have you got? Why, only the other day in the country we had a silver thief.”
“A silver thief! In mild Markethouse! And was he caught?”
“Well, it was not so much that there was a silver thief as that there was a matter of misplaced silver.”
“Who could have misplaced so much silver? Did you think of insurance fraud?”
“It was a fork, to be precise.”
Lenox raised his eyebrows. “One fork, you say?”
“But a serving fork, you know, so it was really quite large. And of good silver. Very well made. And old. An heirloom, really.”
“How many men were assigned to the case? Did you break up the silver ring?”
“It had fallen under a chair, you see. But I only read that the next day.”
“So it was touch and go for a turn of the sun?”
Edmund smiled. “Have your laugh.”
Lenox did laugh, and then put his hand on his brother’s arm. “Shall we order?” he said.
“Yes, yes.”
They each decided that they would have the same thing, the only thing the chef did decently: roasted mutton with new potatoes and buttered peas under, and a flood of gravy over the entire thing.
“And a bottle of claret?” said Edmund.
“Unless you have the business of the people to attend to, this afternoon?”
“No, we’re in committee.”
“Then yes.”
“Now really,” said Edmund, “stop delaying, and tell me what happened with the forgery. The Yard has refused to leak it to the press.”
“It was Isabel Lewes.”
Edmund gasped. “It couldn’t have been!”
“It was indeed.”
“She was out of London!”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“And how are you so sure?”
“There was a sapphire necklace involved.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well, please, go on!”
“Another time.”
Edmund groaned.
“At the moment, I am at work on another matter.”
“What is that?”
“You’re certain you want to hear?”
“Of course, of course!”
Just then the mutton came, and as they poured the wine and cut the meat, Lenox briefly relayed to his brother the events of the previous night and of that morning. He omitted only the name of the poison, because he didn’t want to risk being overheard.
Edmund was a little overexcited by the new case and for some reason kept saying that he was “as good as a vault” and would be happy to stay in the city to “ferret out the truth, however dark it might be.”
“It is a perplexing matter,” Lenox concluded, “because the motive of any murder is most likely to originate from one of the victim’s daily acquaintances, but none of her daily acquaintances would be likely to use such a means of murder.”
“Mightn’t the murderer have stumbled upon the poison? In Barnard’s house or elsewhere? A servant could easily do that.”
“I thought of that,” Lenox said. “McConnell sent a note over this morning, saying that only one apothecary in London sells the poison, so I mean to ask there. But I think it unlikely. It would be so easily traced to whatever house it came from.”
“But perhaps the murderer thought the fake suicide would never let the police get so far.”
“Perhaps. At any rate, I shall see the chemist this afternoon, and he can settle it. If so, the case will be solved.”
“Yes,” said Edmund. But he looked uneasy.
“Is anything the matter?” Lenox asked.
“I’m in the midst of what you might call a moral dilemma.”
Lenox looked at his brother, who was in his tweed jacket and had a spot of gravy on the old Harrow tie they both happened to be wearing that day, and at his furrowed brow, and felt an enormous surge of fondness for him.
“Tell me what it is, if you like.”
“The dilemma is whether or not I ought to.”
Lenox suddenly looked very serious. “It is related to this case?”
“It is.”
“Then you must, Edmund.”
“One man can have several loyalties to consider at once, dear brother.”
“To whom must we be loyal beyond the dead? Surely none of the family is at all involved.”
“I am loyal to my family and, as you say, to this young girl—but also to my country.”
They had finished eating. The waiter cleared the plates away in the long pause that ensued. Both men leaned back and lit cigarettes, and Lenox drank a sip of wine.
“A matter of state?” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“Then it is your choice. But you shall have my discretion as a detective and as a brother, should you choose to tell me.”
Edmund smiled. “I know that,” he said. He sighed. “I may as well.”
The two men leaned close to each other, and Edmund said, “Barnard is storing this year’s gold in his house.”
“What do you mean?”
“The coinage.”
“The mint’s gold? To go into circulation next month?”
“Yes.”
Lenox sat back and whistled softly.
The mint was located in a very secure building in Little Tower Hill, near the Tower of London. It was a yellowing stone building that sat behind a tall iron fence. Its front was pillared and wide, though it was only very rarely that somebody went in or out. In a busy street, it was silent. Whenever Lenox passed it he felt the million jealous eyes that had stared at it in the past. Inside, delicate machinery converted bars of pure gold into exact- weight coins, which were then distributed to the nation.
Barnard ran this operation with great care. For instance, it had once been very common to see nicked coins, with little pieces cut out of the sides, not enough to render them worthless, but enough that if the nicks were in a
