A Beautiful Blue Death

Prue Smith, but then a fresh trail emerged. Therefore it was down to these several people.

“Roderick Potts could not have committed either murder. He was watched at the time of Jack Soames’s death, which made him extremely unlikely to have killed Prue, but I couldn’t discount it—until this morning. I had forgotten that Potts is a very fat man, in somewhat poor health. It took quick light feet and an agile body to walk down the stairs quietly, kill someone quite physically, and then, too, to sneak through a window. Not conclusive— but combined with all the facts, fairly near it.”

Through this explanation Lady Jane listened patiently.

Lenox leaned back and chewed on his pipe before continuing. “After Potts we have Duff. I suspected him from the start, I’ll admit. That the bottle of arsenic was his seemed at once damning and yet impossibly easy. And just this morning he paid me a visit, which, depending on one’s perspective, either exonerated him entirely or made him my first suspect. I think if I had not had something like an epiphany, I should have followed his trail—but it was unnecessary. And something else occurred to me as well. I told you of the valuable possession secreted in Barnard’s house; Duff was there to protect it. So he told me, and it would be such an easily discovered lie that it had to be true. Well, if he had murdered two people to steal it, and then stolen it, even Exeter would think of him first. No, I think it would be improbable even if I hadn’t solved the case.

“We are left with four people: Jack Soames, Claude Barnard, Eustace Bramwell, and our acquaintance, Lady Jane, George Barnard. Exclude Jack Soames, and we are left with three names. You may call me the stupidest man on earth, if you please, because I should have narrowed it to these four straightaway, and even when I did I picked out Soames. Surpassingly feeble of me. My only excuse is that the motive was so strangely inverted.

“Now, who did it? I’ll tell you—”

But the revelation would have to wait at least a few minutes longer. Sir Edmund, again in his unattractive attire of the morning, had burst into the room, out of breath and very evidently bearing news.

“Charles… Charles,” he said, panting. “I saw him… he looked up… I hid myself out of his sight… where I could see.…”

He stood up, having been bent over, and collected himself. Lenox, too, had stood, and now clapped his brother on the back. “Excellent! Excellent!” he said.

“I was—”

“May I guess?”

Edmund looked surprised. “Yes, of course.”

“A man came into the room, moving very quickly, and knelt to the floor.”

“Why, yes!” Edmund was wide-eyed.

“He looked under the bed and then ran his hand across the floor, several times.”

“Yes, right again!”

“Then he stood up, much disconcerted—he may have even stood there for a moment—and then ran out as if struck by lightning.”

“Why, Charles, are you making a fool of me?”

“Oh, Edmund! Not for all the world.”

“Do you know who the man was, then?”

“Why, I imagine I do. Was it Claude Barnard?”

Edmund looked at him with amazement. “Yes—yes, it was.”

Chapter 44

The three old friends were seated on the two leather sofas in the middle of Lenox’s library, with Graham in attendance. It was bitter cold outdoors, with a high wind, but there was a large bright fire inside and the room was pleasantly warm.

Edmund and Lady Jane sat opposite Lenox, who had tapped his foot restlessly throughout the evening and stood up every few minutes to tidy something on a bookshelf or tend the fire. Both were used to seeing him this way at the end of a case, slightly nervous, slightly dogmatic, checking and rechecking the facts he knew.

Still, Edmund was disappointed, and after a moment of silence, he said sorrowfully, “I suppose my work has gone for nothing, then. Oh, it’s all right, Charles,” he said, when Lenox put his hand out. “It was interesting nevertheless. Top-notch.”

“Gone for nothing? Edmund, don’t be mad. It was unkind of me to steal your story, but I was too excited by it. As for your work going for nothing, I’ve spent the last hour figuring out how to make any of it stand up in court. Gone for nothing? I don’t think all the papers in a year could have brought me better news. To have your corroboration—absolute corroboration, in a way.”

“Really?” said Edmund, slightly cheered.

“Yes! Absolutely indispensable, dear brother.”

“It was rather thrilling.”

“Nothing, literally nothing, short of a confession, could have helped me more. I was hoping you would see something exactly of the kind when I sent you out.”

Edmund was now recovered and turned to Lady Jane. “Oh, Jane,” he said—for of course he too had grown up with her—“you would have been surprised to see me out there! Completely in disguise!”

Lady Jane, who had been taking in Edmund’s attire, made a bit of a face and said, “I say this as one of your oldest friends, Edmund. You don’t look your best.”

“I daresay—but all worth it.”

She smiled, then turned to Lenox and said, “It was Claude, then?”

Edmund nodded, but Lenox put up a finger. “No,” he said. “No, not exactly.”

Now Edmund, who, poor soul, had endured many ups and downs in the past minutes, said, with some confusion, “Why, what do you mean?”

“Claude, you may remember, has the airtight alibi of your witness at the ball, Edmund.”

“I could have been wrong,” said Edmund.

“You weren’t. Claude didn’t kill Jack Soames.”

“Drat,” said Edmund.

“Claude poisoned Prudence Smith in cold blood, but his first cousin, Eustace Bramwell, murdered Jack Soames, also in cold blood, on the evening of the ball.”

During the silence that ensued, Lady Jane and Edmund sat very still, while Lenox, who, truth be told, had a touch of the dramatic in him, went to his desk, took a pinch of shag from his cigarette box, and relit his pipe before returning to sit.

“Separately?” said Edmund, at last.

“No, in utter concert, to the extent that each of them had an airtight alibi for one of the murders, which did throw me off the trail for a while—and if it had been left to Exeter, I think the Yard would have missed it altogether. Exceedingly clever lads, and a clever plan. I’ve seen things of the sort before—the Von Olhoffen brothers. Usually one is the mastermind and persuades the other.”

Lady Jane was still silent, and Lenox realized that he had briefly forgotten why he first became involved in the case.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” he said.

After a pause, she said, “No, I thank you.”

“It is better to have it solved.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

For a time all three were silent. At last, Lady Jane spoke again.

“How did you figure it out?”

Now, with both Edmund and Jane still sitting and Graham standing by the door, Lenox rose to pace the room as he answered the question.

“It was very obscure—very. But as I was explaining, Edmund, by this morning I had narrowed it to the two cousins and their uncle.