As a last check, he looked, with trepidation, in a small valise by Potts’s armchair. Inside it were a few documents relating to Potts’s business and a silver pendant, which might have been, Lenox thought, for his daughter.
And then, feeling in the pouch on the side of the valise, Lenox’s heart fell. His hand had grasped a small bottle, stoppered with rubber, of the kind in which he knew poison was kept. He pulled it out. It wasn’t identical to the bottle that had been in Prue Smith’s room, but there was no need for it to be. That had been arsenic, not the poison that mattered.
“What is it?” asked Exeter.
“I’m not sure.”
“Better take it.”
The man’s stupidity was astonishing. “I think we might leave it here,” said Lenox.
Exeter shrugged. “Very well. He wouldn’t miss it, though.”
“He wouldn’t miss it if it weren’t important. If it were, he would miss it immediately.”
“Something in that.”
Exeter, at least in private, did not hold on to his public stubbornness and spoke agreeably when a better idea than his came along—which must have happened to him, Lenox reflected, a substantial amount of the time.
He removed from his pocket a small kit that McConnell had given him, which was comprised of a cotton ball, a small glass jar, and a pair of tweezers. He took the stopper out of Potts’s bottle, dipped the cotton in it, using the tweezers, then tucked the sample safely into the glass jar, screwed on the top, and dropped it into his pocket.
“Should we arrest Potts?” asked Exeter.
“No,” said Lenox, who was very nearly at the end of his rope. He was hungry as well.
“You’d better give me what you just took, at any rate.”
Lenox turned to him. “I shall have the results forwarded to you instantly—but I shall have it analyzed by a man who is superior to your men at the Yard and does quicker work.”
Exeter looked affronted. “What’s wrong with the men at the Yard?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Lenox. “Do you trust me?”
Exeter merely looked at him, with pursed lips.
“I assure you that doing it this way will yield faster results—within two days, you know. That may mean solving the case faster. Nobody will know that I aided your efforts.”
This had the intended palliative effect, and Exeter nodded, though still without speaking.
“Now how much time have I got?” Lenox asked, placing the bottle of liquid back in the valise and carefully setting everything as it had been.
“Five minutes,” said Exeter.
“Is that all?”
“No longer, I’m afraid.”
“Then show me the staircase to the next floor, please.”
“The next floor?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“There’s nothing there, Mr. Lenox, but flowers, like.”
“The greenhouse is above us?”
“Right,” said Exeter. “No use there.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll take a quick glance.”
The Inspector shook his head expansively, as if to say how little he thought of quick glances, but nevertheless led Lenox to an undersized stairwell at the end of the hall.
“I’ll stay down here. We have enough flowers in our garden.” Exeter chuckled.
“As you wish,” said Lenox, thankful for a moment alone.
The stairway turned at a right angle halfway up, and soon Lenox had lost sight of Exeter. At the top of the steps was, indeed, the door to the greenhouse, but just to its side was another door. A large man stood in front of it, wearing a gray suit but with the air of a bobby.
“May I open that door and look in?” Lenox asked.
“No,” said the man.
“On police business?”
“No.”
“Are you with Exeter?”
“No.”
Lenox thought for a moment, considering which tack he could take.
“Look—are you married?” he said.
“Yes.”
“There was a girl murdered here—barely twenty-four—I’m only trying to figure out who did it.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I already know what’s in the room.”
“I doubt that, sir.”
Lenox pulled a shilling out of his pocket and held it in the air. “My brother is in Parliament.”
The man looked slightly impressed but still shook his head,
“Please?” said Lenox. “You’ll watch the whole time.”
The man said nothing.
“Her name was Prue.”
“I thought you knew what was in the room. Why do you want to see it?”
“There may be a clue—something vital—that nobody else would see.”
The man looked down at him steadily for fifteen seconds and then said, “Oh, all right, but you only have a moment. The guard changes over rather soon.”
“Thank you, thank you,” said Lenox.
He opened the door partway. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t what he saw—tightly bound packing crates without any visible markings. The room was large but empty, other than the packing crates. The only door was the one Lenox had opened, although, at the very edge, half of a skylight, where the greenhouse ended, peered into the corner—but it was dusted over, and tiny, at any rate.
He looked around quickly. There was nothing to see; the large man had been right.
“Mr. Lenox!” boomed Exeter’s voice up the stairs.
He looked around again, disheartened. He had felt with such conviction that this room bore some relation to the case but, if it did, it revealed none of its secrets to him.
Something—he didn’t know what—made him glance up, and immediately his dejection ended—for he saw, pushing the dust away from the skylight, a hand. Acting as quickly and as quietly as he could, Lenox drew the door nearly shut, leaving himself a sliver of a viewpoint. The hand continued to brush the detritus from the window away, but at last it was clean and a face was lowered to the glass.
“Lenox!” Exeter shouted at that precise moment—which was just like him, Lenox thought—and the face vanished as quickly as it had come. Lenox closed the door quietly and thanked the guard. He walked down slowly, though his mind was running.
“Anything?” asked Exeter, when Lenox appeared.
“No.”
But this was a lie, for in the dusty window he had seen, unmistakably, the pink cheerful face of the old athlete—Jack Soames.
Chapter 28
I see Barnard’s been here,” said Lenox, taking off his coat in Lady Jane’s hallway.
“Charles, you’re early,” she said. “It’s only just after three.”
