Af­ter a few min­utes, Lenox saw a way to in­tro­duce Sari into the con­ver­sa­tion—and he saw all three faces open wide with hope, with an­tic­i­pa­tion.

  So they were here for her. Was this why An­gela wanted to move?

  Af­ter twenty min­utes or so the young lady her­self ap­peared with Lady Jane. She was wear­ing an em­broi­dered daf­fodil-yel­low dress, and looked calm, cheer­ful; only from hav­ing known her these weeks since her ar­ri­val could Lenox dis­cern the tremu­lous­ness in her speech.

  “Good af­ter­noon,” she said, in­clin­ing her head to the three, and tak­ing a seat on the sofa op­po­site them.

  “What splen­did weather!” said the boy Lock­ett—and Lenox glanced doubt­fully out­side at the speck­ing rain, but the oth­ers took up the theme, men­tion­ing that if to­day was not an ex­am­ple of the splen­did weather, it must at least be owned that it had been a milder win­ter than usual—or if not, in strictest hon­esty, milder than usual, at least fairly sunny. None of them said, but Lenox could glean, by the young In­dian woman op­po­site them, that it re­ally ought to have been good weather, on her be­half.

  He saw with a flash that what re­ally united the three was that they would be dis­owned by their fam­i­lies for mar­ry­ing an In­dian girl. At least—dis­owned as an open­ing gam­bit, at the very min­i­mum, in the fam­ily’s protest against the idea. He didn’t like that. Sari was not an ax to grind against their fam­i­lies. They would have to pro­tect this girl, he saw. He had un­der­es­ti­mated how much.

  Lenox was saved from their com­pany by a foot­man, who an­nounced that he had a vis­i­tor from the agency wait­ing in his study. It proved to be Mon­tague, stand­ing awk­wardly just in­side the door. He beamed when Lenox came into the study.

  “Good af­ter­noon, sir—nearly evening,” he said.

  “Hello, Mon­tague,” said Lenox. Dis­tantly he heard a loud laugh from the draw­ing room, and frowned. “How are you?”

  “Very well, sir. I went to Blue­gate Fields af­ter all, sir—though I know it’s all over, the case.”

  Lenox was sur­prised. “Alone?” he asked doubt­fully.

  “I know one of the con­sta­bles there, a sound fel­low.”

  Lenox grew alert—he heard in Mon­tague’s tone that he had dis­cov­ered some­thing.

  “Were you ac­costed, go­ing among the dens?” he said to the ea­ger young man, whose shoes still had rain­drops on them. He re­minded Lenox of him­self at that age, un­bri­dled by time, ex­pe­ri­ence; and he felt a deep pang, not un­happy, at the years fled. “Sit for a mo­ment and tell me all.”

  CHAP­TER THIRTY-FOUR

  Mon­tague sat down as Lenox went and poured them two glasses of scotch. “On the con­trary, I did the ac­cost­ing. I spoke to a dozen or so of the men who run the opium dens over in that part of the city. And I showed them this.”

  He held up the pic­ture of Martell.

  “Sev­eral of the fel­lows went very rough when I showed them the pic­ture, and warned me not to come back or it would be my neck—straight in front of Dor­rance, too, my friend the con­sta­ble, who could only shrug.”

  Lenox sat on the op­po­site sofa, hand­ing Mon­tague his drink. “Pray go on.”

  “Thank you, sir. Ah, that’s good.” The rain had picked up out­side, and Mon­tague glanced at the win­dows, rec­ol­lect­ing his thoughts. “The ninth man we tried, how­ever, laughed.”

  “Laughed!”

  “Yes. His name was Lang Tu. A great brawny chap. He rec­og­nized Martell at once, that was ob­vi­ous. At first he wouldn’t say a word. Dor­rance and I had a drink at the bar—just pressed lemon, you know, they have quite a few re­fresh­ments with­out al­co­hol be­cause the wives of the men sit there wait­ing to bring them home. They were play­ing cards—it seemed quite sad.

  “Af­ter a lit­tle while Lang Tu’s host­ess led us to a small back room. He was there and asked me what it was worth to know the truth. Well, Dor­rance had pre­pared me for this. I said I hadn’t very much money, just ten shillings, which I gave him, as an act of good faith, you see—but that Martell was my cousin. They take fam­ily quite se­ri­ously over there it seems. Any­how, Dor­rance thought so.

  “Lang Tu thought and said, well, it could do no harm, since all the par­ties were dead.”

  “Dead!”

  “Yes—the par­ties be­ing Martell and an opium seller named Chang, who was mur­dered in a tea­room in Clerken­well Road last year.

  “About a week be­fore Martell died, Lang Tu told me, he was vis­it­ing his as­so­ciates, sit­ting in the noo­dle house there in Blue­gate Fields, drink­ing the liquor they have made of rice and sugar. They were all talk­ing about death, one of the risks of their pro­fes­sion, and Martell said that if he died, it wasn’t a Chi­na­man—it was ei­ther a fel­low named Phipps, he had chivvied out of some money—”

  Lenox stopped him. “He was sure of Phipps? The name did not come to him this week?”

  “No—he knew Phipps well.”

  “Work­ing on the river,” Lenox mur­mured, sit­ting back. “It makes ab­so­lute sense.”

  “But Lang Tu went on to say that he re­mem­bered the mo­ment be­cause—well, first be­cause Martell died, I sup­pose, but also be­cause of some­thing Martell said as a joke—that it would be ei­ther Phipps or, and he laughed when he said it, a boy of ten.”

  Mon­tague sat back. That was the end of his in­tel­li­gence to re­port—and it was a good deal. “A boy of ten,” said Lenox, baf­fled. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Mon­tague. “That was all he could re­mem­ber. ‘A boy of ten,’ he was sure of that be­ing the phrase. They all thought it very droll, ap­par­ently. A week later Martell was dead.”

  Lenox and Mon­tague dis­cussed this strange turn of af­fairs for a good while. Could the apothe­cary have meant it lit­er­ally? Ought they to check with In­spec­tor Adam­son once more that Ja­cob Phipps’s al­ibi had been le­git­i­mate? But, no—where he was at the time had been at­tested by nu­mer­ous im­par­tial wit­nesses in the re­port.

  It was an in­trigu­ing, al­most mad­den­ing hint. A boy of ten years old.

  With the five o’clock post, a note came from the Duke of Aderkenalty. Lenox could tell when the let­ters came in on the tray, for the en­ve­lope was twice as large as the oth­ers, on pa­per heavy as linen, with the ducal seal im­pressed upon it.

  Dec. 12 79

  Lenox—

  I do not know the sym­bol. I have con­sulted Pu­gin and Scott but nei­ther record it and you may be sure that these later-com­ing re­vi­val fools would not tol­er­ate it. Of older Lon­don sym­bol­ism I would con­cede to few (this Maeve woman is sharp I grant you) and it is not dated to them. Nor did Ruskin know it, and I had him out of bed to be asked. But if you tell me there are three in­stances in W.4, I must add it to my book. It is im­per­ti­nent of you. Best to Jane.

  Aderkenalty.

  Wis­te­ria House, Pall Mall.

  En­closed was Lenox’s crude draw­ing of the sym­bol, on which the Duke had scrawled, “I have sent out one of my young men to make a bet­ter draw­ing—you will be copied one.” There were a dozen ar­chi­tects the Duke em­ployed, most of them build­ing him an im­mense Pal­la­dian folly upon the west­ern shores of Scot­land.

  “Take a look at that,” said Lenox, and handed the note to Mon­tague.

  As the lad read it, Lenox dashed off a quick let­ter telling Adam­son of the new phrase, “a boy of ten years old.” Then he wrote to the Duke.

  When he was done with these notes, Lenox told Mon­tague all about the lit­tle sym­bol—which, he ad­mit­ted, had be­come its own mys­tery to him, in­de­pen­dent of the Martell busi­ness.

  “How can I help?” Mon­tague asked.

  “My own plan is to walk the area and look for more of them.” He peered out­side doubt­fully. “Well—to­mor­row, any­how.”

  “I might go to the reg­istry of­fice and check who owns the build­ings,” sug­gested Mon­tague.

  “That is an ex­cel­lent idea. But does the agency not have you on a case?”

  “No—Lady Dalling­ton told me to stick with you un­til this was fin­ished. ‘Stick with you,’ those were her words.”

  How good Polly was to him. “Very well,” said Lenox. “Let us pur­sue it. What else did Lang Tu tell you?” he asked. “Would it be use­ful to re­count the story once more?”

  So Mon­tague did this, and they were in the midst of dis­cussing it yet again when they heard a thump come from up­stairs, fol­lowed by a loud voice, and then a soft sec­ond one, and a loud, long re­turn. A door slammed. Then the voices started again, and Mon­tague stood up.

  “I shall re­turn to­mor­row at about mid­day, hav­ing vis­ited the reg­istry,” he said.

  “Ex­cel­lent,” said Lenox. “I had bet­ter go and see what that is about.”

  Mon­tague took his um­brella in the front hall and went out un­der Kirk’s watch­ful eye, while Lenox went in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. He was half­way through bound­ing up the stairs when he no­ticed how easy it was; how since be­ing ill, since his ob­ses­sive streak of days walk­ing mile upon mile, step upon step; how since his work with Sven, too, which had given him the strength to re­cover from this ill­ness—how through all of that! He was bet­ter.

  But there was barely time to re­flect on this, for as he en­tered the sit­ting room where they al­ways passed the hour be­fore din­ner, he heard an­other tremen­dous thump, and Sari’s voice, cry­ing, “How could you?”

  CHAP­TER THIRTY-FIVE

  All five women of the house were in the sit­ting room, with its pretty pale green wall­pa­per. Lady Jane and her two daugh­ters were pressed in sur­prise against the back of the lit­tle wal­nut sofa, eyes wide. Sari and An­gela were about eight feet apart, star­ing dag­gers at each other.

  From the books on the floor he sur­mised that Sari had been throw­ing things at An­gela. He had a brief vi­sion of his fu­ture—for nei­ther Clara nor Sophia was meek.

  Sari whirled ac­cus­in­gly on Lenox, “And you knew?”

  Lenox saw that there were large tears in her eyes. “An­gela told me that she might like—”

  “To leave me,” said Sari bit­terly. “Af­ter a child­hood to­gether, af­ter a trip across the world to­gether, she—”

  “You are go­ing to be mar­ried,” said An­gela.

  “I am not!” said Sari hotly. “And I have told you so a hun­dred times, a thou­sand times, you hard­headed ob­nox­ious—”

  “You are go­ing to be mar­ried soon,” An­gela re­peated doggedly, in­deed hard­head­edly, “and as kind as you have all been to me, I have no place here.”

  They all ob­jected to this at once. An­gela ig­nored them.

  “Let me fin­ish, please. I know now that I am very lucky in my fam­ily con­nec­tions. It was some­thing my fa­ther never told me we had, and I am bit­ter for it and grate­ful at once.”

  There was a si­lence.

  “But I must find my own path.” She turned her look back to Sari and a soft smile ap­peared on her face. “When you are mar­ried, my dear, if it is one of the rich ones, you may keep a bed­room for me. And if it is one of the poor ones, I shall sleep in the gar­den. I have al­ways known the world would want you, Sari. Why wouldn’t they? You are the best per­son in it. But it is time for me to get out of my way.”

  Sari was silent, her small body racked by sobs. “You are wrong, you are wrong,” she said mis­er­ably.

  “Ed­mund has no wife, and lit­tle so­ci­ety,” An­gela said, and Lenox re­al­ized then that she had per­ceived Ed­mund, too, was not just con­sult­ing her own wishes. “Per­haps I can help him a lit­tle, as a young fe­male rel­a­tive. Some­one to pour tea.” She took her old friend’s hands. “And the eco­nom­ics, dear one, the eco­nom­ics! Think of how happy that shall make me.”

  Sari looked at her, as if to say that she un­der­stood all of this—it all made sense—but it had noth­ing to do with them. “How could you?”

  The In­dian girl burst into tears then and flew from the room—af­ter which Clara, too, burst into tears, and ran out, trailed by her sis­ter and mother.

  This left Lenox and An­gela fac­ing each other. “Couldn’t have gone bet­ter!” he said brightly.

  She had the grace to smile, though she looked bereft. “I will go to my room now, if you do not mind, Cousin.”

  “Of course not. But, An­gela, are you sure? Why not wait?”

  The girl shook her head. “If I stayed, it would stop her, I know it would, her loy­alty—and why should I stop her from be­ing mar­ried? Why should I deny her what my fa­ther and her mother had? Only check on the man she chooses, Cousin. Please.”

  For the first time since he had known her he saw her face trem­ble with emo­tion. She was near tears. Lenox longed to reach out and hold her; and he re­mem­bered that he had once in a while felt the same about Jasper, whose un­canny knack with an­i­mals had al­most made him seem one of them, as if the world had touched him less, na­ture held on to him a lit­tle longer, than most.

  He might not have done it a month ear­lier—but he had been very ill, and im­pul­sively he stepped for­ward and took her into his arms. She re­turned the pres­sure lightly, but he held on tightly, as if she were her fa­ther, and he were say­ing good­bye. He didn’t let go, and af­ter a mo­ment she re­lented into his chest, and soon she, too, was sob­bing, long feel­ing-full ex­ha­la­tions, a si­lence re­leased.

  “We love you, dear,” he mur­mured.

  And when sup­per came an hour or so later, all six mem­bers of the house­hold were seated, and in the event it was one of the most laugh­ter-filled, joy­ous of their meals to­gether; and Sari and An­gela’s truce, what­ever its terms, meant that they had rarely seemed closer, fin­ish­ing each other’s sen­tences.

  Af­ter sup­per An­gela and Sophia were play­ing cards, when Sari ap­proached Lenox and Lady Jane. “If An­gela goes, I can go, too,” she said qui­etly.

  “We would not for­give you or her,” said Lady Jane.

  And that was the end of that idea.

  It was an un­usu­ally cold night, but Lenox felt an itch to be out in the city. On the third floor, he spent a mo­ment sit­ting be­side each of his daugh­ters’ beds—his last daily mo­ment with the mir­a­cle, the gen­uine mir­a­cle—and af­ter kiss­ing them good night, he with­drew, went down to the front hall, and put on his great­coat. As he donned it, he saw the win­dow­pane catch a few snowflakes, which stayed still, crys­talline, in the cold.

  He had lived in this city for most of his life and rec­og­nized it, from a hun­dred small signs he couldn’t have named, the scent, the tem­per­a­ture, the hu­mid­ity, for what it was: the be­gin­ning of a bliz­zard.

  Nev­er­the­less he went out, turn­ing right up to­ward Grosvenor Square. He had no fixed des­ti­na­tion in mind, merely wan­dered. Soon enough he ended up at White’s, one of his clubs.

  “Hullo, Win­ters,” he said to the stolid porter.

  “Good evening, Mr. Lenox.”

  “Any­one in?”

  By this Lenox meant his brother, or one of his half-dozen par­tic­u­lar friends. “No, sir,” said Win­ters.

  Lenox nod­ded hello to sev­eral peo­ple on his way through the richly pan­eled rooms. In the bar, he asked the bar­man, LeBoff, for a cup of cof­fee with whisky. When he re­ceived it, he went out­side and sat down on the bal­cony, where he could be alone.

  He knew as a fact what some Lon­don­ers de­nied, which was that you could see the sky bet­ter in the coun­try—in no con­text but its own im­mense black­ness, the air around you as noise­less as space. But as he sat on the bal­cony of his club, wrapped in his scarf and an over­coat, drink­ing his cof­fee and watch­ing large flakes of snow fall very slowly but steadily over the Lon­don build­ings, he felt nearly that com­plete­ness. It was so still. He took a long breath, then an­other, then an­other. He still could not quite be­lieve that his wound was bet­ter. He felt new; the joy of new­ness.

  Some fif­teen min­utes or so later he heard the door click gen­tly open be­hind him, and saw that it was Gra­ham.

  “Good evening,” said his old valet, com­pact and tidy in his dark suit. “Win­ters said you were here.”

  “Gra­ham!”

  “May I join you? I asked for tea to be sent out.”

  Soon enough this came, and LeBoff brought Lenox more cof­fee, too. They sat in si­lence for a few mo­ments, star­ing at the stars. “There is all of that and then there is us, eh, Gra­ham? A mil­lion other worlds.”

  “This one has been dif­fi­cult enough for me to un­der­stand at times, I con­fess, sir,” said Gra­ham, and laughed, his eyes crin­kling. It was a rare and amus­ing sound to hear, Gra­ham’s laugh—and Lenox rec­og­nized in it some of his own ner­vous ex­haus­tion. But that made no sense. Gra­ham was the strong­est per­son Lenox knew.

  “Why are you here at this late hour?” asked the de­tec­tive, fol­low­ing his hunch.

  “I hap­pened to be pass­ing, and asked Win­ters if any­one was in.”

  Lenox nod­ded. “I did the same.”

  “I had din­ner with sev­eral se­nior mem­bers at the Re­form,” said Gra­ham. “In­di­gestible food.” He sighed. “I fear I am be­com­ing a nui­sance. There is talk of me be­ing sent to Ire­land. A great honor, you know.”

  He laughed bit­terly.

  Now his mood made sense. He was com­ing from re­ceiv­ing bad news. They were go­ing to try to ship Gra­ham out of the way—use­ful in op­po­si­tion, but not quite “our kind,” when it came to rul­ing, his birth against him. Lenox felt a rush of anger.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26