you dying?”
“Not at the moment, at any rate.”
“Thomas will make you better,” she said, and promptly pulled her aunt away—Lady Jane was her cousin in fact, but Toto had always called her aunt—to the set of chairs on the other end of the room, and forgot about Charles entirely.
“Did Graham send for you?” Lenox asked McConnell.
“No, your neighbor did.” He gestured at Lady Jane. “She sent a note.”
“Nothing serious.”
“I am still a doctor, for all that, Charles. Lift your arm.”
For perhaps five minutes, McConnell gently pushed his fingers into Lenox’s ribs and stomach and over his waistcoat, checking twice in each case. He then sat in a chair facing the couch, pulled his flask from his hip, and took a sip from it.
“Gin?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” said Lenox.
“Your ribs aren’t broken, though one of them is badly bruised.”
“I thought as much, more or less.”
“How much advice will you take?”
“The maximum amount that will not result in any impediment to my work.”
“None, in other words.”
“You are, for all that, the doctor, Thomas. Have you no advice that fits those parameters?”
McConnell laughed. “I do, I suppose. You must eat soon and then sleep, without delay. Sleep as long as you can. Don’t have Graham wake you up.”
“I shan’t.”
“And move about gingerly.”
“I shall—or, at least, I shall as far as I can.”
“Then you’ll be all right, in the end. Who was it?”
“Two men. At the behest of Exeter, I should imagine.”
McConnell took another sip. “Do you have any proof?”
“No. One of them said,
“In that case I should probably do things much as I have been,” said the doctor, “but I might carry a revolver.”
“I don’t like to.”
“Give it a miss, then. But I would.”
Lenox sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, after all.” He noticed for the first time that McConnell and Toto were dressed for the evening. He was wearing a dinner jacket and she was wearing a blue evening dress. “Where are you going?” he said.
“To dinner at the Devonshires’.”
Lenox sat up. “I was to attend, as well. It had slipped my mind entirely.”
“No doubt they’ll forgive you. Although not as readily if you hold Lady Grey back with you.”
“No, of course not. She and the Duchess have become near friends.”
“Quite right. And Toto adores them both, or so at least she tells me.”
McConnell laughed tiredly and took another sip from his flask. A stud in his shirt had come loose, but Lenox left it to the doctor’s wife to find it. She seemed to sense that her husband was finished, for she patted Lady Jane quickly on the hand and stood up to join the men.
“Charles, old dear,” Toto said, “have you been a good patient?”
“A reasonable one, I think.”
“And shall you keep Aunt with you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Oh, good,” said Toto.
But Lady Jane looked at her young friend firmly. “I shall stay here for supper, at any rate,” she said. “Toto, apologize to Mary, and tell her I’ll play a hand of whist after Charles and I have finished, if she likes.”
Toto looked extremely cross.
“It will do no good for you to stand there like an angry cat,” said Lady Jane. “Run along.”
Toto gave her cousin a grudging hug and once again kissed Charles on the cheek, McConnell nodded his farewell, and then they were gone.
“You needn’t have stayed,” said Lenox to Lady Jane.
“Of course I shall. I’ve told Graham to bring supper into the library.”
He smiled. They ate very simple food—cold sliced tomatoes, mashed potatoes, and milk—as they had when they were children together. They ate over the side table, laughing and talking the entire time, as outside it began to snow once more.
Chapter 23
As he left Lenox’s house, McConnell had apparently slipped a dram of sleeping powder to Graham, who had in turn given it to the patient. The next morning, as a result, Lenox arose at nine o’clock, which, though it might have seemed like the crack of dawn to Claude Barnard, was quite late for the detective. He had slept off much of his soreness, though his ribs were still tender and the cut on his face had swollen. But he had slept well and felt fit for a reasonable day’s work. A sort of terror at the memory of the glinting knife stirred somewhere deep in him, but he ignored it.
It had, after all, snowed the whole night through, and there was a fresh white coat over the city. Lenox’s bedroom had a broad window with a very comfortable armchair by it, close enough to the fire for warmth, and he ate breakfast in that chair, wearing his robe and slippers. He had only just gotten used to the old snow, which was conforming to the habits of the city’s walkways, and while this new coat was lovely to look at, as he sipped his hot coffee and ate his toast, he knew it would only add to the difficulty of getting about.
He sat with his final cup of coffee long after he had put the discards of his breakfast to the side, on the tray on his night table, sipping slowly, snug in his chair, and with the prospect of a long day ahead of him. Occasionally he preferred to give himself half an hour before he started out, and so he did this morning. After last night, he thought it would be all right.
But eventually he stood up, put the cup and saucer next to the tray, and dressed. He asked Graham for his overcoat with the fringed collar, which was his warmest, and lamented again his poor choice of boots, which would no doubt be in tatters after half an hour. Then he put them on.
When he was outfitted, he stepped downstairs. As he arrayed his clothes and his person to his liking in front of the mirror, Graham spoke to him.
“Sir, I was hoping I might have another afternoon off. I have an aunt to visit.”
“An aunt?”
“Yes, sir. In London.”
“Not in Abingdon?”
“No, sir.”
“But you’ve never visited her before.”
“No, sir.”
“Inventing aunts now! That’s scarcely polite, Graham. What would your real aunts think?”
There was a slight, almost invisible smile on Graham’s lips, the sort of thing only somebody who knew him well would spot.
“Is it a girl, Graham?”
“Yes, sir.”
