“No, no! I have what you were looking for.”
“Do you then? I’m impressed that you found it so quickly.”
Jensen went behind the counter, disappeared for a moment, and returned with a large ledger with the word TRANSACTIONS embossed on its cover in gold letters. He made a great show of taking out his glasses, perching them at the end of his nose, and flipping through the pages carefully.
“How much do I owe you?” Lenox asked.
“One shilling, please.”
Lenox nodded and put a shilling on the counter. Then he added another, and said, “As a down payment for my next professional visit.”
Jensen pocketed the money and nodded gravely, then took out another, smaller ledger and put a shilling’s credit by Lenox’s name.
“Let me see here,” he said, again scrolling through the larger book. “I always get lost among these lines when I open the book. My wife keeps the accounts, you see. But I’ll find it in the end.”
Lenox nodded and smiled. “It does smell like pork chops,” he said.
Jensen looked up. “And parsnip soup, if I’m not mistaken, with peas and onions on the side.” He patted his stomach again. “Ah!” he said, finding the correct entry. “Here we are.”
“Yes?” Lenox said.
“The arsenic was from Lymon’s, on the good side of Shore-ditch. You can tell from the crest. Luckily, Lymon is a member of our little club, the Ten O’clock Chemists. I went and spoke to him.”
“What’s the Ten O’clock Chemists?”
“We have a few rooms in the West End, with newspapers and cards and a good supper of meat on the joint every Wednesday. About fifty of us. At our meeting yesterday—we meet at ten, you see—I asked them to look for this bottle—Lymon marks each one specifically. Arsenic Act of 1861. Otherwise I doubt I could have traced it; takes the government too long to file all the records. Lymon sent over the note today.”
“Please tell him how grateful I am to him. Sounds like a charming club, too.”
“Full of decent folk,” said Jensen, smiling. “Don’t mind having my pipe there now and again.”
“Who bought the poison then?” Lenox asked.
Jensen peered down through his glasses. “Let me see then,” he said. “Ah. Does this name ring a bell? A Mr.… Mr. Newton Duff?”
Chapter 21
It so happened, when Lenox returned home, that he discovered that for once he had no social obligations. He knew he ought to be grateful for the free time, but almost immediately a sense of restlessness came over him.
Like some men of varied interests and comfortable means, he was rarely bored, but nevertheless he occasionally found himself unsatisfied by the pursuits available to him of an evening. Neither his books nor his maps nor the prospect of a spell at one of his clubs interested him, and therefore he found himself, in the hour before supper, walking vaguely toward the West End along St. James’s Street, growing gradually less certain by the moment of any firm knowledge he had about the murder of Lady Jane’s former upstairs maid. Newton Duff kept running through his mind. Would the man be foolish enough to kill somebody? And if so, why? Or if not, why had he bought the arsenic and to whom had he given it?
It had now been two full days, as well as the evening of the murder itself, that he had been invested in the case. It felt at once like less time than that and more. He had done a great deal, but instead of the work yielding back to him a series of small discoveries, such as those that comprised most cases, all he could do was pull at the ends of the ropes and hope something would pull back.
This evening, at any rate, there was little more that he could do. He would have his supper and go down to the Devonshire Club later, perhaps, or go to see a few collectors he knew, or even drop by—but no, he felt; no, none of it would do. With the restlessness in his heart increasing every moment, he found his feet turned toward Clarges Street and, without quite realizing it, soon found himself standing across from George Barnard’s house, as if by staring at it he could unlock the secrets it held.
For fifteen minutes he saw very little. Indeed, it was hard to discern whether or not there was anyone in the house at all. Barnard’s dining room sat to the rear of his living room, whose windows were darkened, and if there was a glimmer, now and then, it might have only been a trick of the eye.
And then three things happened in rapid succession, all of which filled the space of less than half an hour but which it would then take Lenox a great deal of time to piece together.
First, Claude Barnard burst forth from the house, laughing, with a young man Lenox took to be a friend, probably from the Jumpers, a tall fair lad. The two of them paused together on the stoop to fix their cuffs and examine their appearances in the window glass—and in the light pouring through the front door and by an odd flicker of the streetlamp, Lenox thought he saw a small raw burn mark on Claude’s forearm. No sooner could he look again than the door was closed, the buttons had been buttoned, the coat donned, and the forearm again concealed, and the young men had turned down the street.
But the moment left Lenox with the peculiar feeling of having seen something revealing without knowing precisely what it was—and without having a chance to learn because it was so quickly withdrawn.
He turned on his heel, and within short order the second thing happened: He felt sure that he was being followed.
It was the sort of thing for which he had developed an instinct. No specific shadow stalked him, but from the corner of his eye he sensed a presence behind him amid the flickering lamps that played along the cobblestones.
This gave him no alarm, but all the same he felt he had better pursue a cautious course. He walked down the street, nodding, once or twice, to men he knew, and planning to seek refuge in the Athen?um, his nearest club. It was unlikely that anybody could follow him inside, unless it was a gentleman who sought a word but felt uneasy about meeting him in public—which was certainly possible.
But as he turned up the steps of the club, the man who had been following him apparently relented, because from behind him Lenox heard his own name called.
“Mr. Lenox!” the voice repeated.
The detective turned around to see James, the footman, fiance of the dead maid, looking up at him breathlessly.
“James?”
“Yes, Mr. Lenox.”
“I understand that you’re having a difficult time, James,” said Lenox, “but it is unpleasant for anybody to be followed through the streets at night.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lenox, sir.”
“It’s all right. What can I do for you?”
The young man looked so anguished, Lenox took a step back down the stoop to stand at eye level with him.
“Something is on your mind?” he said. “Is there anything you wish to confess?”
A moan of some sort escaped the footman’s lips. His black hair was uncombed and his eyes were sunken, as if he had not slept since Prue’s murder. “No,” he said, “no.”
“What troubles you, then?”
“Oh, Mr. Lenox,” cried the young man, “tell me anything, give me anything to do, anything, anything!”
Lenox softened toward him immediately. “I truly am sorry,” he said.
“Anything!”
“In time it will pass.”
“But… oh, I loved her so very much, Mr. Lenox!”
Lenox thought carefully for a moment. “Very well,” he said. “If it gives you comfort, you may observe the inmates of Mr. Barnard’s house, watching for any peculiar behavior.”
