With a feel­ing of real reck­less­ness, but driven by des­per­a­tion to es­cape, to es­cape this ill­ness, dreary as a wet Sun­day, in­deed to es­cape all the in­fir­mity that he had ex­pe­ri­enced since New­port, he wrapped his heavy wool coat around him, stuck a cap on his head, and chanced it.

  He reached the ground a bit faster than he had ex­pected to. “Humph!” he said, sit­ting on his be­hind very sud­denly, in a patch of ivy.

  He felt him­self over, though, and noth­ing was too far wrong.

  It was the work of a mo­ment to sneak the spare key from its hid­ing spot in the eaves then, and let him­self out through the black side gate and into Ham­p­den Lane.

  For the next seven nights, Lenox fol­lowed the same sched­ule, rest­ing du­ti­fully dur­ing the day, to all ap­pear­an­ces a model pa­tient, then wait­ing un­til the night, two, three, and let­ting him­self out.

  On that first night he didn’t walk above a mile, and when it came time to climb the lad­dered stone around the drain­pipe he could barely do the job—haul­ing him­self into the room ex­hausted.

  But the next night he walked a good two miles, and af­ter that the num­ber in­creased rapidly, three miles, five, and fi­nally ten, ten, ten.

  How good it felt sim­ply to walk! It was like re­gain­ing a self. He grew used again to the black be­fogged sky above a Lon­don night, sil­very vi­o­let at its edges; he walked through the ghostly silent enor­mous pale build­ings of White­hall, sleep­ing un­til the en­tire gov­ern­ment re­turned at eight the next morn­ing; he turned down lit­tle al­leys and saw the places Sk­aggs knew, down-at-heel gam­bling sa­lons, gin par­lors, broth­els, box­ing clubs, ev­ery­where that man­aged to slink out an ex­is­tence af­ter the city went to bed.

  He had known these places his whole adult life—but in a sense he was see­ing them again for the first time. Not since he was twenty-five or so had he had the time, or en­ergy, or in­cli­na­tion to sur­vey this city in the mid­dle of the night.

  There was not a mo­ment of doubt in his mind about de­fy­ing his doc­tors. He would not have gone on if he did not feel en­ergy seep­ing back into his dor­mant cells each night, the warm blood cir­cu­lat­ing un­der his skin.

  Be­sides the ex­er­cise, too, there was charm in hav­ing a se­cret. Even from Jane! For no­body sus­pected a thing at home—no­body, that is, ex­cept lit­tle Clara, who on the third or fourth morn­ing came in with her sis­ter to give him a kiss be­fore go­ing to the nurs­ery, but lin­gered af­ter Sophia had bolted for just a mo­ment.

  “Papa?” she said.

  He was read­ing the news­pa­per over his cof­fee, and looked up. “Yes, dar­ling girl,” he said.

  “Why is there mud on your shoes?”

  He looked over his news­pa­per, frown­ing. She was hold­ing up one of his brown brogues, and in­deed she had found a streak of mud on it.

  And he had wiped his shoes clean, too. “I don’t know—per­haps they need to be cleaned.”

  “But they clean your boots ev­ery evening, and you haven’t been out.”

  Lenox shrugged, though he was proud of her pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion. “I sup­pose we shall have to sack the up­stairs staff.”

  “You are jok­ing,” she said qui­etly, more to her­self than him. She was still hold­ing up the shoe. “Papa, you aren’t leav­ing your bed, are you?”

  “No,” he said gravely, for he knew how se­ri­ously the girls were tak­ing his ill­ness.

  “You had bet­ter not.”

  “I won’t.”

  She dropped the shoe and, in her child­like way, seemed to for­get about it com­pletely, pick­ing up a lit­tle glass jar, then putting it down in the wrong place and zoom­ing out of the room when she re­al­ized her sis­ter had beaten her to the good toys in the nurs­ery.

  On the very last night of his sched­uled con­va­les­cence, Lenox walked longer than he had yet—fif­teen miles, he sup­posed, prob­a­bly longer. There was a bril­liant moon in the sky, and he could see Lon­don in all of its beau­ti­ful lin­ea­ments. He moved quickly, and as his heart thumped, he re­al­ized, with a sud­den shock, that the pain had moved out of his ribs.

  He halted, not far from Black­fri­ars Bridge. He put his hand to his side. A deep breath, an­other—and then he al­most laughed, for he could not find the pain any­more, no mat­ter how he tried.

  It must have gone.

  That morn­ing, Hal­ley and Mc­Con­nell came back to­gether and pro­nounced him fit as a race­horse. It was the first time his friend had been back in a week. “Aren’t you glad we coun­seled you rest?” Mc­Con­nell said.

  “Yes,” said Lenox humbly.

  “It is never very fun for the pa­tient,” said the young, round-spec­ta­cled Hal­ley, “but its suc­cess is in­vari­able.”

  “And the good news is that you can go for a short walk to­day—fif­teen min­utes or so, per­haps twenty.”

  “Thank you.”

  Strangely, in all his many pere­gri­na­tions through­out the pre­vi­ous week, Lenox had never passed Con­duit Street. That day, though, walk­ing in the un­ac­cus­tomed bright­ness of mid-morn­ing, he found his foot­steps bound for the street—glanced up at the green­house, gave a smile to the Coach and Horses.

  A strange case. He won­dered still who had killed Martell.

  He was two or three streets away when a chilly win­ter rain started to come down, gust­ing up lightly ev­ery ten min­utes only to die away, like a tune that can’t find a melody. The trees moved about mood­ily. In the gray flat light the city be­came a mass of in­ter­sect­ing lines of um­brel­las.

  Lenox had been walk­ing for just a mile or two, hum­ming to him­self an in­tri­cate old Bach tune that he had been forced to prac­tice end­lessly upon the pi­anoforte as a boy. He walked with his eyes about ten feet ahead of him and at knee level, as a game with him­self; for shoes were the quick­est way to place a Lon­doner.

  It was only be­cause he kept his gaze at around this level that he spot­ted, with a start of sur­prise, a soli­tary left­over clue from the Con­duit Street case.

  It was carved into the vestibule of a to­bac­con­ist’s on Re­gent Street.

  He was strangely thrilled to rec­og­nize the sym­bol from the house in Con­duit Street. He knelt down to be sure—yes, there could be no mis­tak­ing it. What did it mean? An ar­chi­tect’s mark? The rem­nant of some long-for­got­ten so­ci­ety?

  He wanted to know. The rain in­ten­si­fied, and he went in­side the to­bac­con­ist’s to in­quire.

  CHAP­TER THIRTY-TWO

  “Good morn­ing,” said the old gen­tle­man be­hind the counter. He had a white fringe of hair and wore a green eye­shade.

  Be­hind him was a glass case with hun­dreds of col­or­ful boxes of cigars and loose to­bacco. Finest Ra­jah—Tup­pence a Cigar—A Shilling the Seven! said a prom­i­nent pic­ture; there were twelve pence to the shilling so this was a free sev­enth cigar. West­ward Ho—High­est Qual­ity Shag—3 d. per ounce. Like all to­bac­con­ists it sold sweets, too, which were sorted into glass jars, with a stack of pa­per bags to make your own as­sort­ment. These were dearer than the to­bacco—a penny an ounce, or four far­things.

  “There is a small square sym­bol carved into the wood out­side your door,” Lenox said.

  The man frowned. “Most peo­ple no­tice the In­dian fel­low.”

  Lenox smiled. There was in­deed a six-foot oak chief out­side the front win­dow, sto­ically ab­sorb­ing the rain. “I have seen the In­di­ans be­fore how­ever. Do you know the lit­tle carv­ing I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s one over on Berwick Street.”

  “Berwick? You are sure?”

  “Quite sure! At Cot­tard’s Sta­tion­ers. No idea what it is, me­self. It was here when I came in.”

  Lenox’s pulse quick­ened. That meant there was the one on Con­duit Street two streets west and one on Berwick Street two streets east. His pat­tern-seek­ing mind saw the se­quence.

  “When was that?”

  “In ’74.” Five years be­fore. There was a brass mon­key about a foot high on the counter, and the man pushed on one of its paws. A lit­tle flame shot up from the brass matches the mon­key was hold­ing in his other paw, and the to­bac­con­ist re­lit his pipe. “Like I said, it was here.”

  “How did you no­tice the one in Berwick Street?”

  “I didn’t—the younger Cot­tard brother pointed it out to me.” He ges­tured to a pen­nant be­hind him. “He comes in for two ounces of Dr. Emer­son’s finest ev­ery morn­ing.”

  Lenox glanced at the ad­ver­tise­ment. A hearty-look­ing doc­tor with a spec­tac­u­lar mus­tache of­fered his pipe to­bacco, guar­an­teed to cure asthma, foul breath, canker sores, dis­eases of the mouth, and bronchial block­ages.

  The to­bac­con­ist emit­ted a hack­ing cough.

  “Thank you,” said Lenox.

  The de­tec­tive walked the two streets through the rain and found the sta­tion­ers.

  It was a pros­per­ous-look­ing ven­ture, and there, about a foot or so off the ground just out­side its front door, was the same sym­bol.

  “Hello,” he said, to a tall fel­low in a white shirt and sus­pen­ders, sort­ing through pack­ets of Christ­mas cards.

  “Morn­ing,” said the fel­low with­out look­ing up.

  “I came from Whit­te­more To­bacco—on Re­gent Street.”

  The shop­keeper looked up. “My brother goes there.”

  “It’s about the sym­bol carved into the wood out­side your door. Do you know any­thing about it?”

  “Oh—that.” The sta­tioner leaned down to his task again. “No. It was here when we moved in. Eight years.”

  “I see. What was here pre­vi­ously?” Lenox asked.

  The fel­low looked up. “Why?”

  “I am a de­tec­tive,” said Lenox sharply.

  This had the ef­fect he de­sired. “Oh. I see. Well—it was a fish­mon­ger. Gut­ted by a fire in ’69, and we got it on fa­vor­able terms. Now our cousin has opened a sec­ond branch in Lam­beth,” he added, with pride.

  “And you know noth­ing about it?”

  The fel­low shrugged. “Noth­ing at all.”

  Lenox nod­ded. “Thank you.”

  Out­side, he stooped down, ig­nor­ing the rain, and felt the carv­ing with his fin­ger­tips. It was a strange lit­tle sym­bol—and too pur­pose­ful for his lik­ing, too time-in­ten­sive. It would have taken a good thirty or forty min­utes to score the lines in so pre­cisely and deeply. Some­one meant this mark.

  Likely it had noth­ing to do with Martell; cer­tainly noth­ing to do with Mrs. Hug­gins. Yet he couldn’t help his cu­ri­ousity.

  That af­ter­noon he went to the li­brary of the House of Com­mons, where his old friend Thomas Car­ruthers still presided. They had met when Lenox was first elected to Par­lia­ment. He had been not more than thirty-five then, and felt very an­cient. Car­ruthers had been eighty or so—and as li­brar­ian, in charge of, as the old joke went, the most re­li­ably empty place in Par­lia­ment.

  But there were a few ec­cen­tric mem­bers who al­ways did read un­der the rain-soaked win­dows—ei­ther books from the beau­ti­ful old neo-Gothic li­brary it­self, or “blue books,” the end­less re­ports mem­bers were given on mat­ters of state. Lenox had been one of these—he and Car­ruthers had talked daily.

  It had been sev­eral years, but as Lenox should have known, Car­ruthers had not changed.

  “How your brother has risen!” said Car­ruthers sharply when he looked across the cir­cu­la­tion desk and saw Lenox, as if they had spo­ken five min­utes be­fore. He laughed, the loose skin around his eyes and neck wob­bling with joy. “I’ll wa­ger you one thing—I will last longer in this job than he do in that one.”

  He talked in that way of the pre­vi­ous cen­tury—short­en­ing verbs, plenty of ain’ts—and his high stiff col­lar would have been old-fash­ioned even in Lenox’s fa­ther’s youth, the boy­hood style of the 1770s. A dif­fer­ent world that was.

  “Do you rate him so lowly?” asked Lenox.

  “On the con­trary—too highly. But what is it, Mas­ter Charles? I see a ques­tion in your face.”

  Lenox ex­plained the lit­tle square sym­bol to Car­ruthers and showed him the draw­ing. The old li­brar­ian pulled up the glasses hang­ing from a gold chain around his neck.

  “No,” he said im­me­di­ately. “It’s lo­cal you said? No.”

  He had a fa­mous mem­ory, and Lenox knew the an­swer was fi­nal. “Drat.”

  Car­ruthers rang a lit­tle bell for his “young lady,” a sixty-year-old woman named Maeve who taught li­brary sci­ence at Gir­ton. “Maeve knows ev­ery­thing about Lon­don,” Car­ruthers said.

  “You are far too kind, sir, in fact my knowl­edge of the—”

  “Hush now, Maeve. Charles, show her.”

  But Maeve, too, was con­founded. She apolo­get­i­cally and pe­riphrasti­cally said that she had not seen the sym­bol; it did not be­long to any of the halls, the guilds, the royal seals, the—

  Car­ruthers cut her off and Lenox thanked them both.

  But his at­ten­tion was caught by Maeve, who was new at the li­brary, and ev­i­dently a woman of im­mense learn­ing. “I know a fel­low you might be very cu­ri­ous to speak to—the Duke of Aderkenalty,” Lenox said, “not to put too fine a point on it.”

  She raised her eye­brows. “I would be hon­ored, of course.”

  The duke, whom Lenox knew so­cially, was a for­bid­ding and ab­surdly rich old fel­low, the tower of his cas­tle in Hamp­shire so large that it was said you could drive a coach and six from the base to the tower and back again with­out the slight­est in­con­ve­nience—but Lenox doubted he had ever met some­one who knew as much about Lon­don, his spe­cial ob­ses­sive study, for his peo­ple had helped found the city.

  Lenox asked to bor­row an en­ve­lope. He wrote to the Duke, en­clos­ing a draw­ing of the lit­tle sym­bol and a line about Maeve, and thanked them both.

  “Frank this for me, would you?” he asked Car­ruthers.

  “Cer­tainly,” said the li­brar­ian, turn­ing back to the in­cunab­ula he had been lov­in­gly study­ing. “Come visit us more of­ten, Char­lie! I have a good ten years left in this old green chair I tell you.”

  CHAP­TER THIRTY-THREE

  When Lenox re­turned home, he heard voices from the lower draw­ing room. Peer­ing in from a crack in the door he saw three un­fa­mil­iar young men amus­ing them­selves freely, it seemed, for no mem­ber of the house­hold was present.

  Lenox found his way down­stairs to the but­ler’s pantry, where he found Kirk and Lady Jane. “Hello, Charles,” said Jane.

  “Kirk, I’m glad you’re here,” said the de­tec­tive, stand­ing in the door­way. “I don’t think I run an ex­cep­tion­ally strict house­hold.”

  “Sir—” said Kirk.

  “And yet I can­not be­lieve that I am ex­pected to wan­der through a pas­sel of young gen­tle­men, morn­ing, noon, and night—”

  “Oh, sir!”

  “Drink­ing my wine, as if I were Odysseus—”

  “Of course he had to of­fer them wine,” said Lady Jane. “These are our vis­it­ing hours, Charles.”

  “And eat­ing my cheese,” said Lenox, a lit­tle vi­ciously, for it was a mat­ter of long-stand­ing fury to him that the one cheese he re­ally liked (a sharp ched­dar from the Gorge) was con­tin­u­ally be­ing given away to guests.

  “Leave him be,” said Lady Jane. “Kirk, thank you—you may go. If I do not ap­pear in the next fif­teen min­utes you may tell them that she is not in to vis­i­tors af­ter all.”

  “Who is not in?” asked Lenox. “Who are these young gen­tle­men?”

  “Did you not rec­og­nize Fair­field War­ren?”

  This was the son of a ma­jor in­dus­tri­al­ist. “No.”

  “You mustn’t do that to Kirk,” said Lady Jane, push­ing him back into the hall­way. “He’s get­ting on.”

  “He’s barely sixty, and he was sup­posed to re­tire a year and a half ago,” said Lenox crossly.

  To his sur­prise, Jane laughed. She paused and put a hand on his face. “How are you feel­ing?” she asked.

  They were stand­ing in the front hall­way now. “Quite well.”

  “Yes,” she said, with a note of cau­tious plea­sure, study­ing his face. “I think you look well again, too.” She sighed. “The three young men—they are suit­ors.”

  He was shocked. “For An­gela?”

  Fair­field War­ren was her in­fe­rior in birth and con­nec­tions—but she was an or­phan, pen­ni­less in her own right. She might do worse, he re­flected.

  “No,” said Lady Jane. “For Sari.”

  For once in his life Lenox was ac­tu­ally lost for words.

  “I know,” she said. “It sur­prised me, too.”

  “She has only been out in so­ci­ety once!” said Lenox.

  “Twice, if you count our party,” said Lady Jane. “Any­how, I could hardly turn them away.”

  “No.” Lenox hes­i­tated. “I sup­pose I should say hello to them. Will Sari her­self come down?”

  “I do not think so. She is taken aback—claims not to re­mem­ber any of them in­di­vid­u­ally, though how can that be true?”

  Lenox went into the draw­ing room. All three of the lads jumped up as if he were about to lead them to the gates of heaven.

  “Good af­ter­noon, Mr. Lenox!” one burst out, and Lenox rec­og­nized him as a mea­ger-boned lit­tle devil named Samuel Good­heart, a mem­ber of the Athenaeum.

  “Hello, Good­heart.”

  As he joined the three lads, he tried to spot any sim­i­lar­ity be­tween them. But they were all rather dif­fer­ent. Fair­field was a hiker and an ad­ven­turer who loved Scot­land; Good­heart a penny-pinch­ing younger son, worse still from a lower branch of one of the old­est squire’s fam­i­lies in Eng­land, try­ing to par­lay his thou­sand-year con­nec­tions into what he could make of them on the mar­riage mar­ket. The third boy was a vague tall blond fel­low who in­tro­duced him­self as Lock­ett.

 

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