“Odd, I agree. What do you see in it, sir?” Graham asked.
It had been less than a week since Claude Barnard’s guilty plea at the Assizes, and during that time something had bothered Lenox. He was certain in his conviction of the lad’s guilt, and certain of Eustace Bramwell’s death, but in the back of his mind he realized that there were dark spots in his understanding, and he had worked his mind over them ceaselessly, if quietly, like a stream wearing away a stone.
“There was a second plot line in the Smith/Soames case, Graham,” he said, “running with a faint pulse beneath the actions of the cousins. Oh, to have missed it!” He pounded his fist on the seat. “And now the footprints will be gone.”
“May I ask what you mean, sir?”
Lenox, though, was already lost in his thought. “How far back… ?” he muttered, and then, a moment later, he shook his head, and said, “Very possibly.…”
He spoke again a few minutes later, at the beginning of the long driveway to the house, which ran for some miles through a dense grove of trees. “You know, Graham, I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that I’m clever.” Graham said nothing but gave that same small raise of his eyebrows. “I ought to have paid closer to attention to Barnard.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Yes, of course. The immediate obfuscation—the insistence that it was suicide—and then the exchange of bright young Jenkins for bull-headed Exeter, and finally our odd breakfast together and his insistence that I stand at the edges of the case. Stupid me, I ignored it—took it for his usual ill grace.”
“What was it, sir?” Graham asked.
Lenox sighed. “It was he who stole the money, Graham. I have little enough proof, but I know it in my bones. He stole the nineteen thousand and who knows how much else?
“You remember, of course, the men who attacked me. I think you were right to begin with. When that man muttered Barnard’s name, it wasn’t because Barnard’s a public figure.”
“I agree, sir. As I said before, they did not seem like men who read the society pages.”
“Exactly. You had it all along—he sent them. I also believe he organized the original attacks on the mints. The hammer tattooed above the man’s eye—of course I see it now; he was in the Hammer, the gang that runs out of the Rookery. No wonder that’s where the chaps led you. I should have seen it before—daft of me. Led by a fellow named Hammersmith, who controls most of the organized theft in East London. Some of its more powerful members have that tattoo as a mark of loyalty. It’s considered an honor in those circles.
“Why attack me? It was absolutely necessary that I stay away from the case. Barnard could handle Exeter; he couldn’t handle me. But why attack the mint? It was too well guarded. He could guarantee bad guards occasionally, because he runs the mint, but it was too risky. So Barnard himself suggested keeping the gold in his strongroom. Newton Duff mentioned to me when we met that Barnard had initially wanted no guards in his house; he felt he could guard it alone. Is there anything more transparent? I say again, I have no proof, but I feel utterly certain.
“And then the sum! Nineteen thousand pounds. A clerical sum, a sum that would be missed but not thoroughly investigated. A sum a gentleman could live off of for years and years, but not a sum so ostentatious as to arouse much curiosity. I wonder, Graham—how many times has he stolen such a sum? How many times has he squirreled away a few hundred pounds, then a few thousand pounds, as his status rose? All the time, mark you, serving so well as to be above suspicion.”
Graham began to speak, but Lenox held up a hand. “No, Graham. I know it. Everything tells me. The great mystery of George Barnard’s money—I’ve got it. Nobody has ever known, not even the men who always, always, know such things.”
The carriage slowed to a stop as they arrived at the door. “I can’t prove it yet,” said Lenox, “but I will.”
He didn’t open the door to the carriage for a moment.
“It is quite possible, sir,” said Graham.
“It is beyond possible, Graham. It is a certainty. And you should take more pride in it—you were the one who forced me to read this and who followed those thugs to the Rookery.”
“What will you do next?” Graham asked.
“I must track down the men who attacked me; I am certain now that it was Barnard who sent them. Claude would have mentioned it, you know, if he and his cousin were responsible for the attack. And Eustace, I would guess, would have thought his plan too clever, estimated his own intelligence too highly, to resort to such things. His plan was already working. Barnard is the only answer.
“But he has gone a step too far. He should have left the money alone, after I began to look into his household.” With a look of determination, Lenox said, “Yes, he will regret that. He should have laid low.”
Only then did he step out of the carriage and greet his brother, his sister-in-law, and his nephews.
Chapter 49
It was now nearly a month later. Lenox had grown accustomed to living in Lenox House again and felt happy, pottering about during the days and sleeping well during the cold nights, back in the heart of his family, back in his childhood home, reading quietly and eating well and resting his mind. He had made a bargain with himself that he would only begin to think about Barnard when he went back to London, which wouldn’t be for some time.
One Sunday at midafternoon, he had just come back from a long walk through the grounds. He had taken to doing this every day. He would walk past the thickets of old trees at the end of the park, which he greeted like friends, and then across the stream that divided the park from the wild acres of the property, where he and Edmund had played as children. After perhaps three miles, he would reach several large rented farms at the south end of the estate, which buzzed with activity even through winter. Horses grazing, vets examining the pregnant cows and dogs herding the rest of them, rows of chicken coops where the farmer’s wife went every afternoon to find a new batch of eggs. It was a life he loved. He would watch for a while and then turn around and head for home.
Back now, he paused briefly in the parlor to warm his face and hands at the great hearth. His feet, of course, were quite warm enough, thanks to Mr. Linehan.
It was a large solid house, divided into two wings and shaped like an L. In the older wing were the great hall, where the family portraits were, and the chapel where the family had been that very morning. But the bedrooms there, because they were small and medieval, went unused. They all slept in the new wing.
Lenox was staying in his old room, which Sir Edmund reserved for his use alone. It was attached to a good- sized study, where he kept a few duplicates of his favorite books, histories of the Roman Empire and journals on English archaeology, plus pictures and papers from university, which he sifted through now and again. It also had a desk and a small fireplace, and he had his morning tea there, writing letters in his robe and slippers before joining the family for breakfast.
Warmer now, he leaned his walking stick against a wall before going off to search for his brother. He would probably be in his library, where he usually stayed when his family was gone, and Molly had taken the boys over to town to see a play. The two brothers were alone in the house.
Strange to think of it as Edmund’s library; it had always been their father’s, where the young Edmund and Charles had gone, in season, to be chided, praised, or punished, from their earliest years to their time at Harrow and then Oxford. But now it was cluttered with the things of the ninth baronet, blue books from Parliament, letters, and a portrait of Molly. All that really seemed the same were the old desk, the family books, and the small diamond-shaped windows at the back of the room.
Lenox and his brother had always been affectionate and spent a good deal of time together. But during this visit, sitting here together late at night, they had talked much more deeply than ever before. They discussed their family; they were the only people who remembered their parents as they did, and it was nice to talk about them together. They talked, at last, about Edmund’s real role in Parliament, which his modesty had concealed for so long. Lenox told his brother about old cases, which he had never bothered to mention, and they conspired over small matters of the estate.
Now, when Charles knocked, Edmund was there and invited him to sit down.
