“It had crossed my mind.”
“How did this chap make all his money? Robbing graves, or something?”
“He’s from the north, actually, near Newcastle. He manages industrial plants there. Steel, that sort of thing. The end of the country farmer, the beginning of the modern age. Actually, I know very little about him.” He would have to think of a way to change that.
“Why did he come to London, then?”
“You’ve got me there. He lives in grand style quite near here. It may be that he manages his plants from afar and gambles on the Exchange.”
“That sounds like Barnard’s cup of tea,” McConnell said.
“Indeed it does. But you were right to say that Barnard would usually be too proud to have a man like Potts in his house—you know, salt of the earth.”
“Curious.”
“Yes. Although from what Graham says I believe there may be another possible reason.” Lenox frowned. “Apparently Potts has a daughter who has come of age. She’s pretty, I gather, and extremely well educated, and she’ll have a dowry and a half, should it come to marriage.”
“An impoverished older house, you think?”
“Something along those lines, I expect. Potts, as I say, has a grand house in London himself, but he would have gone to Barnard’s in any case if he had an ounce of social ambition.”
“Of course,” McConnell said. “Do you think Potts means to tie the girl to one of the nephews?”
“I doubt it. I imagine he thinks too lowly of them and too highly of his daughter. But if Potts could broker a deal with an older house, one of the Duchess Marchmain’s sons, for instance, he might have entree to a world outside politics and money. Our world, Thomas.”
“We see enough of Barnard.”
“That’s true. But he has more acquaintances than friends.”
“What does this man Potts look like?” McConnell asked.
“I don’t know, really. A twinkle in his eye, good posture, exercises daily, cold baths, all that, I daresay. The self-made man. Intelligent, whatever you think of him.”
“Toto thinks quite highly of the self-made man, of course.”
“I do too, if it comes to it,” said Lenox.
“As do I.”
Lenox stood up. They shook hands and agreed to check in with each other soon, and McConnell saw his friend out of the room.
Chapter 15
It was midmorning when Lenox left McConnell’s house, and while the air was brisk it wasn’t biting, and he walked along the busy sidewalks in a cheerful mood. The streets nearby were open and sunny, and he felt glad to be outside. His destination was the Jumpers, which when he found it seemed to be a building much like that of any other club: four or five stories, white stone, with comfortable rooms behind the windows. He was soon dissuaded of this impression of normalcy, however, when a shoe hurtled through the front window.
He had chosen to come here because it was the haunt, according to Graham, of Claude Barnard, the young man whom Lenox had briefly met in the hallway at the lad’s uncle’s house. Graham had said he could be found here at all hours of the day, and indeed, when Lenox asked the porter if he was in residence, the porter, who looked as harassed as Job on a middling day, merely pointed straight ahead to the dining room.
The shoe had evidently had its origin here, for there was a young man, apparently called Pinky, hopping angrily toward the door on one foot.
Claude was seated at the far end of the table, next to someone Lenox thought might be one of Lord Williams’s sons. He stood up without seeing the detective and began to walk out of the room, to calls of disappointment from his companions.
“Got to see to business!” he kept saying.
Lenox waylaid him by the door. “If I could have a moment of your time, young man?” he said.
Claude seemed to be clearly against the proposition. “What for?”
“You may remember that we met yesterday morning.”
“The chap in the hallway?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! Well, friend of Uncle’s, friend of mine. What can I do for you?”
“Answer a few questions. I’d be pleased to take you to wherever you’re conducting your business, and we can speak along the way.”
Claude looked at him doubtfully. “If you wish, I suppose.”
“Thank you,” said Lenox.
They stepped into Lenox’s brougham, and Claude gave the driver an address on Marmalade Lane, a bad part of East London. Not the usual haunt of young and carefree Oxford students. Soon they had crossed London into a poorer neighborhood.
“Did you know a girl named Prudence Smith?”
“The murdered girl? To look at, nothing more.”
“To look at?”
“She was a maid. I saw her. I daresay she saw me, too.” Claude smiled jauntily.
“Did you form any impression of her?”
“None. Well, she was rather pretty, I suppose. But no, not otherwise.”
“How long have you been staying at your uncle’s house, Claude?”
“Not long. A week, perhaps.”
“You are on good terms with him?”
“Lovely terms. I’m like the son he never had.”
“Did you kill Prudence Smith?”
If Claude was taken aback, he refused to show it. “No. Couldn’t have done, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Word gets around. I don’t know about poison or any of that rot, for one.”
“Surely it’s the work of a moment to research any poison in the world?”
“Ah, but I have an alibi as well, dear old chum.”
Lenox betrayed no exasperation. “An alibi? You seem to have assumed that blame would land on your doorstep.”
“My uncle’s doorstep, you mean? Well, I can count. Only a few people were about, you know.”
“What is your alibi?”
“I was in the drawing room.”
“So was everybody else.”
“In that case I suppose none of us did it.”
“You didn’t leave the drawing room?”
“Not really. May have nipped upstairs to the washroom.”
“During which time you might have poisoned the young girl.”
“I went
“Can anybody confirm that?”
“Anyone you like. Messes of people. Maids and things. Footmen by the dozen. And the other guests. The man called Potts was in the room most of the time, reading a paper, and when he flitted out someone else was always there.”
“You seem to have thought this through.”
“Only the facts, you know.”
