A Beautiful Blue Death

boy to leave his uncle’s house: Eustace was in the dining room.

Lenox sat down for a bit of food himself, a bubbling steak and kidney pie with lovely plump pieces of egg hidden inside it. His table was under a portrait of Henry VI where he could keep an eye on Eustace, who was across the hall eating a leg of lamb and reading what Lenox guessed was a scientific periodical. He was a thin lad with dark hair and a pinched, unpleasant face, small dark eyes and a sharp chin, without any sense of lightness about him.

Lenox ate only a little and, as a result, finished before his counterpart. He sat and sipped a glass of Madeira while he waited for Eustace to leave, enjoying, at least, the minor increase of civility that the club presented after Claude’s coffeehouse. Although, to be sure, the coffeehouse presented prettier company. Most of the men in the dining room were half asleep and all of them would have fared poorly if judged solely for beauty by a jury of their female peers. The youngest might have been sixty-five, but for Lenox and Eustace. Strange company for a boy up from university.

He followed Eustace downstairs and into the small smoking room, after another ten minutes, and sat quite near him, in an armchair by the window. The young man’s clothes were old-fashioned. He had a leaf and several sprigs of some bush peeking out from his pocket, and while he read he touched them absent-mindedly. Clearly, Lenox thought, he was passionate about his subject. Perhaps he had been in a garden just that morning.

Lenox had barely had a chance to speak when Eustace said to him, “What do you think of these horrid liberals, sir?”

Lenox sighed inwardly, but smiled. “I am afraid I count myself in their ranks, though they’re not so horrid when you’ve eaten supper with them once or twice.”

The boy frowned. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he said.

Lenox realized that he had run into the worst sort of young man, the one who hangs about clubs for older men, imitating their gentle lives, talking gravely about politics, and always learning the club rules to the letter. On the very lower cusp of the upper class himself, but absolutely firm about maintaining clear rules for the servants. No doubt he sat on the house committee and argued strenuously against the admission of scholarship boys. Lenox would have preferred even Claude.

“I daresay I do have it wrong. But youth is to correct the aged, as they say.”

“Well, some of the aged have the right opinion. At this club in particular, you know.”

“What political issues do you feel especially strongly about?” Lenox couldn’t help but ask.

Eustace perked up at this. “Well, for instance, there’s the matter of feudal responsibility. This country was founded on a model of master and man. It’s why the sun never sets on our empire, you know: feudal responsibility. And now they’re trying to give every man the vote—give women the vote, for goodness’ sake. What was wrong with the old system?”

“Surely the reform acts make England more democratic, fairer to all its citizens?”

“Read Plato on democracy. Just the mob’s appetite running wild. What you want is an oligarchy of the elite. Rotten boroughs are absolutely sound, you know. The Duke of Albany knows better who should be in Parliament than the man who digs his vegetables.”

Lenox pegged him as a young man on the lower fringe of the landed gentry, clinging hard to some idea of gentility. It gave him some sympathy for Eustace Bramwell.

“How about imperial reform?”

“Don’t get me started: the Indians, the Africans—they need us. Don’t you see that? Look at the way we’ve brought Christian spirit to Burma and rudimentary education to Bengal.”

Lenox decided to turn the conversation. “Don’t you frequent the Jumpers as well as this club?”

Eustace seemed surprised. “I did, of course, but it was the mistake of a man who is first coming to London, and I fell in with the bad company of my cousin, who forced me to drink, and all sorts—just a moment, sir. Was that a general question, or do you know me?”

“I confess that I know you. I am a friend of your uncle’s.” Eustace looked at him suspiciously. “My uncle is no liberal.”

“As we get older, there is common ground between us aside from politics.”

“I suppose.”

“To confess fully, I am here to ask you about the servant who died.”

“Are you from the Yard? How did you get in here?”

“No, no, I am an amateur. Charles Lenox.”

“Surely not the great expert on Roman life?”

“If you please.”

“Why, what an honor, liberal or otherwise! Do you know, I often find myself consulting that book you wrote —that was you, I take it?”

“It was,” said Lenox. A monograph on daily life from beggar to soldier to emperor, during Hadrian’s reign.

“I have to say, that was an ingenious book.”

“Thank you.”

“And then, you know, the article you published last month in the Academy’s journal, about the historical life of Bath during Roman occupation—sheer inspiration, to do that kind of on-the-ground research.”

“I appreciate it,” Lenox said. “And I would be pleased to talk about my writings another time. But the young girl is dead, and I really do want to see the matter through—only as shadow support for the Yard, you know.”

“I see.”

“It shall only be a very few questions.”

Eustace Bramwell put his journal aside and nodded, acquiescent now that he knew he was talking to the author of Hadrian’s People.

“Good,” said Lenox. “Good. First things first. Do you have any idea who killed the girl?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“Sir, if this is the sort of question which I am meant to answer, then this interview is at an end.”

“It is a necessary question.”

Eustace did not seem mollified. “The impertinence—”

“Very well, very well,” said Lenox. He was growing weary of nephews. Jane would sympathize. “Have you heard of bella indigo?”

“Of course I have.”

“How?”

“I graduated with a first in botany and won a prize in the bargain, sir.”

“Of course.”

“Are you implying that bella indigo killed this girl?”

“It may have,” said Lenox. “Have you ever come into contact with the substance?”

“No. Cambridge quite rightly considers it too volatile.”

“But Oxford cultivates it?”

“Oxford is less rigorous, in many ways—”

“Yes, yes, thank you. Have you ever been to Oxford?”

“Yes, as a child, and once several years ago to visit my cousin.”

“How many years ago?”

“Perhaps three.” Eustace lit a cigarette as he said this.

“Are you close with your cousin?”

“Far from it. I visited him as a gesture of familial kindness, and while I was there he nearly had me arrested.”

“Did you visit the botany department at Oxford?”

“And acquire enough bella indigo to kill the girl? No. At any rate, if you knew anything, you would know that the poison becomes neutral after a year’s time, when its use as a fertilizer for certain rare flowers may begin. The chemical structure is, from what we can gather, unstable.”

“What were you doing between eleven and one two days ago, on the day Miss Smith died?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I was painting the entire time.”