“Do you have any reason to believe that any of the other guests, or any of the servants, committed the crime?”
Claude frowned. “No, not really. Oh, but perhaps it was Eustace,” he said brightly.
“Your cousin?”
“Old Barnard wouldn’t like that,” said Claude, talking as much to himself as to Lenox. “The bad apple. Might turn him against his sister, mightn’t it?”
“You don’t like Eustace?”
“Can’t stand him. Grim chap. Horrid company. Always reading, you know. Just reads. I chalk it up to bad early influences. The child is the father of the man, I always say. Heartbroken parents, all that sort of thing.”
“In that case why did you submit his name for the Jumpers?”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you? I did it because Uncle asked me to. No doubt saw the boy’s defects and wanted to place him among good sorts.”
“You want to please your uncle?”
“Always obliging. Strong family connection. Jumpers through a few hoops.” Claude laughed uproariously at the pun.
A few moments later, the carriage had drawn to a halt on a thin dirty street, where the fresh snow was already covered by a layer of dust and children were running about. A few of them ran up to Lenox and Claude, and the elder man gave them each a coin and asked them to watch his carriage.
Claude led his questioner into a dingy wooden storefront with the name THE PAINTED DUCK on a weatherbeaten sign hanging above the door. It appeared to Lenox that they had come to a coffeehouse.
Inside it was dark, even with daylight outdoors, and smelled strongly of dark coffee and tobacco. There was wood paneling on the walls and a great Rumsford fireplace in the center of the room, with horsehair chairs and low tables all around it. Above the bar were bookshelves with souvenir cups on them, and horseshoes hung on the walls. There were dozens of men sitting around sipping coffee, not so much because they liked it as to rent space in the shop, and only one woman, a redhead with furious freckles who sat at the bar and talked to the proprietor. Most of the men were wearing out-of-fashion clothes, mended several times over, and they all talked in low voices, as if they didn’t want to be overheard.
The heyday of the coffeehouse had been a century ago, and they no longer drew many of the literary crowd, but they still received support from Parliament. They were thought to provide an alternative to drinking in pubs.
“Your treat, my friend?” asked Claude, finding a table.
“Of course.”
Claude ordered them both coffee, and then had for himself some toast with black-currant jam and a hard- boiled egg. Lenox declined food and neglected the coffee after his tentative first sip.
“You have business here, I believe?”
“Of a sort. After all, this is business, too,” said Claude merrily.
“I suppose.”
“And I have a meeting in a few minutes.”
“Then I shall try to be brief. What do you know of your uncle’s work at the Royal Mint?”
“Virtually nothing.”
“That seems odd.”
“It is his private mint which interests me most.”
“Does he confide in you?”
“No. You don’t think my uncle did it, do you? He’s a decent enough chap, I should say. Not the type. Bit flinty, bit imperious, but a leader of men.”
“I do not suspect him, no. What do you know of your other guests?”
“Well, there’s Eustace, who’s a tick. Of the first order. He’s probably your man. And there’s Soames, who’s nice enough. Duff is a hard sort but full of moral fiber. Not likely to murder a girl unless she blasphemed in his presence or something. Potts—well, as vulgar as the day is long, my old man, but I don’t see that there was any money in the business.”
Lenox had his own opinion of people’s vulgarity, but the boy was accurate enough.
“All told, not a very criminal lot,” Claude went on. “I should guess that a man slipped in from the street. The papers always have things like that, you know. I saw only the other day about a man who tried to rob a bank by kidnapping the manager’s daughter. When he couldn’t find her, he took the manager’s dog instead! Sorry to say he failed. Gives one hope when a chap can kidnap a dog and get a thousand pounds out of it.”
“And the servants?”
“Does one notice servants? There’s no butler, which is queer. I wouldn’t bet against the housekeeper in a fight with an angry tiger. One of the footmen was engaged to the girl. She herself was the only pretty one.”
Lenox rose. “I’ll leave you to your business, then.”
Upon hearing this, the freckled girl at the counter stood up.
“Good to see you,” said Claude.
As he neared the door, Lenox turned around. “Don’t tell anyone that we met, Claude?”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because, I hope, you desire the capture of this girl’s murderer.”
Claude sighed. “As you say. I shan’t.”
“Thank you.”
“Though perhaps I’ll tell Eustace that the Yard is closing in on him.”
“Please don’t.”
Claude sighed again. “It’s a hard world, when an honest young man can’t have a bit of fun after the daily grind.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Very well.”
Lenox walked out toward the sidewalk, where the young boys were watching the carriage intently, as they had been paid to do, and discussing what they would spend their newfound riches on. He looked up and down the street. If only there were some way to fix this, he thought, these children with their worn-through shoes and dirty caps; the women reusing tea leaves until they were nearly white; the men spending their pay on gin, not food; the beggars, often no more than children, playing what they called hookem-snivey: pretending to be badly ill to encourage sympathy. A way to change all that.
Perhaps he would stand for Parliament someday. Somebody there needed to make their primary concern the debtors’ prisons, the Rookery, the Dials, the children looking in the gutters for something to sell. The Board of Trade and the India Commission and the Irish question were all very well, but here were human beings in their own city, suffering too.
As he stepped into his carriage he looked back to the coffeehouse and saw the girl sitting on Claude’s lap, kissing him on the cheek, and money quickly exchanging hands, and while he considered himself a progressive, he felt again disheartened.
Chapter 16
Eustace would be more difficult to track down than Claude, who seemed to use the Jumpers as a daily office, but he would be easier to catch than any of the other guests. According to Graham, whose research was impeccable, he usually ate lunch either at Barnard’s house or at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, which was somewhat subdued in comparison with the Jumpers and thus, in all probability, more attractive to the lad.
The Oxford and Cambridge was on Pall Mall, near Lenox’s house, and he arrived in front of it just in time for lunch. The streets were snowy and cold, and as he went through the heavy wood doors he sighed with relief at the warmth.
And here he struck it lucky, saving himself the unpleasant task of lurking about Clarges Street, waiting for the
