A Beautiful Blue Death

“Of course, Graham, of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”

“At any rate, sir, between a visit to the servants’ quarters at Mr. Barnard’s house and the funeral, I amassed a good amount of information.

“The girl’s full name was Prudence Smith, sir, and she was born in London. She went into service at the age of sixteen, and at her death she was twenty-four. In the intervening time she worked three years for Lady Helena Adeline and four years for Lady Grey, and for the past three months she has been working at Mr. Barnard’s house.”

“Of course.”

“Her family is all dead, sir, and her strongest current relation was James, her fiance, a footman. He is from a good family, all in service, and seems genuinely grief-stricken. I may add here that I know his father and do not believe the lad to be in any way a suspect, sir, though of course that is not for me to judge.

“Her strongest acquaintance besides James was a girl named Lucy, whom I believe you have already met, sir, the servant at Lady Grey’s house who informed you that Prue Smith could not read. They were very close, having served together a long while at Lady Grey’s residence, though Miss Smith was friendly with all the servants in that house and with many of the female servants here.

“This information, sir, is merely preamble to the unfortunate facts which I have discovered. It was uniformly agreed that she was a good girl and did her work well, but I fear she was led astray in the last year. She was engaged to James that entire time, sir, but in the last six months she had begun to have a relationship with a man named Bartholomew Deck, sir, known as Bart to his friends.”

“Who is he?”

“A young man of Miss Smith’s age who is the proprietor of a tavern that his father owns called The Bull and Bear.”

“What do you mean by a relationship?”

“I fear that the two young people were having an affair, sir.”

“Is this what exotic meant? Was she generally this way?”

“No, sir. I have assembled information in that direction as well, but I thought that the information about Mr. Deck might be more relevant.”

“Indeed.”

“The other servants thought of her, I believe, sir, not as a lady of ill repute or someone likely to have an affair, but as someone with hopes and ambitions and a sense of possibility that exceeded what most would contend was her excellent position with Mr. Barnard.”

“What were her hopes and ambitions?”

“She spoke of moving to the country when she was married, sir, and of having a girl of her own—nearly all the servants remember that—and she spoke of James living as a gentleman farmer. I cannot say whether any of this was attainable, sir, but when I heard these declarations they were very familiar to me. It is rare, but some girls are that way. You may recall Elizabeth, who was in service here some years ago, sir. She was of that ilk.”

“Did Prue Smith’s friends know about Deck?”

“Only Lucy betrayed any knowledge of the name, sir. I found out by accounting for the people at her funeral this afternoon. The only person unknown to me was Mr. Deck, and when I followed him I saw his place of business and learned his name from a man in the street. Lucy verified for me that they were more than friends, sir.”

“Did it strike you as strange that the funeral was so quick on the heels of her death? It did me.”

“Yes, sir, me too. I spoke to a maid, who said Mr. Barnard wanted to have a quick funeral—according to James, who made the arrangements—so that the business would be at an end.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have an address for this man Deck?”

“Yes, sir.” Graham handed Lenox a piece of paper. “The information is copied here, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“One further note, sir. You expressed some curiosity about the changing of candles in servants’ rooms. I was assured by a young lady at Mr. Barnard’s house that the servants are expected by an exacting housekeeper, a Miss Harrison, to use their candles until the very last.”

Lenox nodded, with raised eyebrows. “A tough type.”

“Very tough, sir. To conclude, Miss Smith had changed her candles only recently, according to one of the girls I spoke with. She was surprised to hear that Miss Smith had already been due for a new candle, but I managed, I hope, to convince her that I might have been confused.”

“Excellent, Graham. Very good.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I mean it. I hope it wasn’t too unpleasant, you know.”

“Not in the least, Mr. Lenox, sir.” Graham stood up. “Will you be having your tea in, this afternoon?”

“No, no. At Lady Jane’s. Take the afternoon off; have a holiday if you like. Good work all around—thank you.”

“Of course, sir,” said Graham, and walked out of the library.

With this report, Graham’s role in the case was at all probability at an end, and both men knew that Graham would thereafter resume his normal functions, but perhaps it is appropriate, nevertheless, to explain the relation between the butler and his employer, which was by many men’s standards—Barnard’s, for instance, or Sir Edmund’s—unorthodox.

It had begun at Oxford. Graham was raised nearby in a small thatched-cottage village called Abingdon and became the scout on Lenox’s stairwell the year Lenox went up. For three years he had remained in that role, always formal—a little too formal, even—and always efficient, until one night. Lenox had been reading late, taking occasional breaks to visit his friends’ rooms, when Graham had burst through his door without knocking, disheveled, without a tie on, and clearly overwrought.

“Will you help me?” he had said. And it was in those few words that Lenox realized how much he liked the quiet, intelligent Graham—indeed, how much he relied on him. He wanted to help.

“Of course.” Lenox turned his book face downward and followed Graham out. It was past curfew hours, but Graham led him through a strange route by the college’s kitchen and they slipped out undetected.

From there it was a twenty-minute ride in a hired carriage to Abingdon. Neither Graham nor Lenox spoke. Finally they drew to a halt in front of a small white house with a little bit of grass around it, surrounded by miles of farmland which Lenox assumed belonged to the Prince of Wales.

“It’s my father,” Graham said at last. “I didn’t know who else to ask for help.”

“Me, of course. How many times have I asked you for help?”

Inside, a single candle threw a dim light over two rooms. The one toward the back was a kitchen with a low straw pallet in it. The front room held a sturdier brown bed, where Graham’s father lay, clearly dying.

“I see,” said Lenox. “Is there a doctor nearby?”

“Only Colfax, down the road, sir. He wouldn’t come.”

“Wouldn’t come?”

“He’s a proper doctor. The village’s nurse died last year.”

“Where is Colfax’s house?”

“First one, half a mile down.”

Lenox found a rusty bike outside and rode furiously toward Colfax’s house. When he got there, the doctor consented to come after a short conversation, plainly only because of Lenox’s accent and appearance. It took about ten minutes of walking.

When they arrived, the elder Graham was dead and Graham was sitting on a chair by the bed, still holding his hand. Colfax offered a brief condolence, took the shilling from Lenox’s hand, and left. Lenox sat up with Graham that night, fixing coffee and letting him ramble, and in the morning he arranged for the funeral. Finally, that evening, he went back to Oxford.

Three days later he called in. It emerged after a while that Graham had nowhere to go; the house belonged to a landlord. Lenox saw the defeat in his eyes.

“Well,” said the student, “you’ll go work for my father. That will be easy enough.”

So it happened; and three months later, when Lenox moved to London, Graham went with him. They never