M ost of the gentlemen’s clubs of London were on Pall Mall and St. James’s Street, near Hampden Lane, and Lenox belonged to several of them. Every group of people had a club-the Gresham for merchants, the Hogarth for artists, the Army and Navy, called Rag and Famish by its members, for veterans-but Lenox’s clubs were of a higher caste, being clubs dedicated not to a pursuit, by and large, but to the aristocracy.
They mostly resembled one another, being wide white town-houses, usually in the Italianate style, and four or five stories high. Each of them served a different mood or clique.
For instance, he had first joined the Athen?um Club, on Pall Mall, and still spent several evenings a month there. It had the best club library in England and excellent food, and most of his friends from school and university belonged there.
He also went to the Savile Club, which was less politics and more art and science, to the Devonshire Club, which was for members of a liberal bent, and to the Eton and Harrow, on Pall Mall East, for graduates of those two public schools. He belonged to the Oriental Club and the Marlborough Club, the latter of which was considered perhaps the most prestigious in London. And then there was the Oxford and Cambridge Club, at 71 Pall Mall, which was shortly to play a role in the case.
They were almost all in limestone buildings, and they were all very comfortable inside, particularly the Athen?um and the Devonshire. They all had central halls, where ceremonies and large dinners were held, and where you checked for your friends in thick chairs next to warm fireplaces. Beyond the large halls were a series of smaller rooms for smaller groups: billiard rooms, card rooms, grand old libraries where members dozed off with The Times on their laps, chess rooms, tearooms, and, of course, places to eat.
The reason these clubs flourished, Lenox felt, was that this was an age of unusually rigid separation between men and women. He and Lady Jane ignored that separation, but most men spoke very little with women except at parties, and were most comfortable playing a hand of cards or smoking a cigar with their friends, a kind of solidarity encouraged in grammar school, public school, and university, all of which excluded women.
Lenox also belonged to the Travelers Club, on St. James’s Street, and there, in the long lounge that evening, the last two members by the fire were Lord Cabot and Charles Lenox-both of whom, it could be presumed, had at least once traveled 500 miles in a straight line from the center of London, which was the very minimum requirement of that club. Lenox wished he had gone farther than Russia-he wished he had gone to the Cape of Good Hope, like Stanley Foster, another member-but he enjoyed the club’s company nonetheless. Its members were the most interesting and idiosyncratic of the aristocratic class, from every field and every pursuit, with an emphasis on scholarship. Lenox’s father had helped found it, because his own clubs were too full of bores; everybody in the Travelers was an expert on something-ancient Welsh agriculture or Persian illuminated manuscripts or Shakespeare’s problem comedies, or imperial Rome, like Lenox-even those with other careers. The building itself was an old stone one, comfortable inside, with a sizable library and a good dining room. Lenox often went there to read at night and perhaps run into a friend who also loved to travel.
But now they were in the lounge, which was a long hall with a painted ceiling and heavy armchairs. Each man had a drink in his hand, and Cabot held the poker and constantly shifted the dying embers in the hearth. He was a fat man with white hair, tidily dressed, and with a quick smile.
The fire was warm, but outside the sounds of a blizzard shuffled against the windows, the fiercer wind that rises when the streets are abandoned at night, the swirls of wet snow against the ground, and the boots of the last men out hurrying along the pavement toward home.
They were talking about the Commons, as they always did when they had supper. Their other friends had melted away by now.
“Your brother,” said Lord Cabot. “There’s an example.”
“Of what?”
“A man with no more idea of leadership than of becoming a chimney sweep! Great fella, you know, and votes well, when he comes to town, but my question is, Who, when he sits in his seat, tells him what to do? Leadership!”
“You may underestimate my brother. He surprised me today.”
“But you do see my point, Lenox!”
“You think we have no man the equal of Disraeli on the liberal side.”
The political situation of the moment was complex. Disraeli had initiated tremendous social reform, but he was a Conservative, and the Liberals were trying to find a match for him. Lord Russell was the Prime Minister and a Liberal, but by common consent he was no Disraeli.
“I should say not.”
“Gladstone?”
“Perhaps in time, my young friend,” Cabot said. “But Disraeli-”
“He will go down in history as a liberal.”
Both men laughed.
“And here we are again. It always signals the time to sip our last sips, when we reach this subject.”
Cabot smiled happily and set the poker against the hearth. Both men rose and began to walk across the great hall. Lenox corrected himself; they were not the last members present. An old white-haired man slept on a chair in the corner, his drink still in his hand. The stewards would leave him alone all night, if he slept. Particularly in a blizzard.
“A ride?” said Lenox.
“No, thank you, dear friend, my carriage should be along any moment.”
Soon both men were on their way home, having promised each other to have supper again soon. Lenox, stepping into his carriage, sighed and leaned back in his seat. Nearly midnight, he thought, looking at his watch. The streets had a ghostly feel. Who walks among us, he asked himself, with a young maid’s death on their hands?
When he reached Hampden Lane, he saw that Graham was still awake; the light in the hallway shone through the front windows. He climbed the steps, opened the door, and saw his butler reading over a set of handwritten notes, in his usual seat along the front hallway.
“Graham,” said Lenox. “How are you?”
“Well, sir, and you?”
“Excellent. Just what I needed to get my mind off the case for an hour or two.”
“I am gratified to hear it, sir.”
“Do you feel more human, Graham?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had a rotten day?”
“Far from it, sir. I admit I was fatigued by the end of my investigations, sir, but as you kindly suggested a cup of tea and a moment by the fire put me right again.”
“Always does the trick for me.”
“Yes, sir. A good English remedy.”
While they spoke, Graham had removed Lenox’s coat and quickly brushed his hat, while Lenox hung his cane on a hook to the right of the door, by a small table with a silver bowl on it. He dropped his keys in the silver bowl, and they rang out briefly
“In my library, Graham?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there a fire?”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked into the library, but instead of sitting in his armchair, Lenox went to his desk and sat down. He motioned Graham toward another chair, by the side of the desk, and then unlocked the top left drawer with a small brass key he removed from his waistcoat pocket. From the drawer he took out a pad of paper and a pencil. Then he locked the drawer again and put the key back in his waistcoat. He cleared a space on the desk, knocking a few books to the ground by accident, and waving Graham off when he tried to pick them up.
“I’ll get them later,” he said.
As a final preparation, he searched through the papers on his desk and at last lit on what he was looking for, a short mahogany pipe with a silver mouthpiece and, next to it, a leather pouch. He painstakingly prepared the pipe, which he only smoked in the evenings, during his quietest hours, lighted it, and then sat back and looked at Graham.
“What did you find out?” he said.
Graham began to speak.
“I will not have the full results of my inquiry into Miss Smith’s character until tomorrow afternoon, sir, if you would be so good as to release me for two or three hours at that time, but I have a full report of the inmates of Mr. Barnard’s house and have confirmed that all of them were present and for the most part in the dining room together, eating lunch, or in the drawing room, playing cards, between eleven and one, the period when Miss Smith ingested the poison.”
“McConnell said twelve and one.”
“Yes, sir, but to be cautious I extended the window, in the remote case that it was ingested earlier than Mr. McConnell determined. It could not have been later, of course, sir, because she died.”
“Go on.”
“As you are no doubt aware, sir, Mr. Barnard will hold his annual ball in four days’ time. The preparations for the event began long ago, and several of the houseguests arrived in the past few days, to stay until the ball ends.
“Except for Claude Barnard, who seems to live with his uncle, the guest who has resided with Mr. Barnard for the longest time is his other nephew, Eustace Bramwell, who is Mr. Barnard’s sister’s son. He is a young man of perhaps twenty-two, sir, who has just come down from Cambridge, where he was in Caius College and studied botany.”
“Botany?”
“Yes, sir. He has been in his uncle’s house for more than a month now and doesn’t work during the day. But he has an active social life, I believe, and is a member of the Jumpers Club, which caters, from what I understand, to the younger members of the aristocracy.”
“Lady Jane’s nephew is a member. Gives her fits. They drink all the time.”
“I believe that to be an accurate picture of life at the Jumpers, sir. Eustace Bramwell spends some of his time there. But he is very proper, according to the servants, and, with the exception of his almost constant lectures on class responsibilities, he is quiet and not troublesome.”
“I see.”
“He was unlikely to come into contact with Miss Smith at great length, sir, and when at home almost never ventured from his room except for meals.”
“But he was in the drawing room after lunch yesterday? December twelfth?”
“Yes, sir. He was painting a picture and conversing with Mr. Barnard’s newest guest, Jack Soames.”
“Soames?”
“Yes, sir, he arrived three days ago. As you know, I’m sure, he is a member of the House of Commons. He had come to stay with Barnard while the two men discussed issues of the mint, I believe, and also because they are close friends in the circles in which they move.”
“Anything peculiar? I know him, more or less.”
“One thing, sir. This may or may not be related to the case, but Mr. Soames, according to the latest reports, is in dire financial straits.”
“Soames! But he’s a bachelor with a fair property, I believe. The House doesn’t pay him, of course, but his constituency must.”
“I fear not, sir. And I hear his property is mortgaged.”
Lenox frowned. He had known Jack Soames for two decades, perhaps longer: a large fair-haired man and former athlete who was well-liked, if not entirely respected, by his acquaintances.
“There was also,” Graham said, “one more political figure in the house, sir.”
“Who is it? Disraeli, I suppose you’ll say, and he owes his tailor two shillings.”
“No, sir, Newton Duff.”
Lenox frowned again. “Duff? Really? Seems so unlikely.”
“He has been there a week. As you know, sir, he is not well-liked, even by members of his own party, but he has been, from what I understand, an effective politician-”
“An understatement. He carried the India bill by sheer will.”
“He may have some political business with Mr. Barnard, sir.”
“He may. Is he meant to stay until the ball?”
“Yes, sir. Although he has his own lodgings, too, from what I understand.”
“I see.”
Newton Duff was, like Soames, a large man, but the resemblance ended there. Soames was fair, Duff was dark; one was friendly, the other gruff; one was ineffective, the other was furiously effective; one was known to drink and dissipate, the other was of an iron constitution. Soames and Duff under one roof?
“And is he impoverished, Graham?”
“On the contrary, sir, he grew immensely richer this week because of the positive turn in the stock market.”
“He trades?”
“Heavily, I understand, sir. I believe his largest holdings are the Star Company and the Pacific Trust, two companies that deal in speculation on overseas goods. In fact, I think both Mr. Duff and Mr. Soames have some relationship to the Pacific company; it might bear looking into.”
“No, I think the answer is probably closer to home. It doesn’t sound like much of a time, between Soames, who’s always drunk, and Duff, who growls if you look at him, and this lad Eustace Bramwell, who’s no doubt covered with spots and wears thick glasses. Did Barnard seek out any better company?”
“There is the other nephew, sir.”
“The other?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lady Jane always says that nephews are a plague, sent to humble us before God, Graham.”
“No doubt she is correct, sir.”
“What’s this one called?”
“Claude Barnard, sir. He is the son of Mr. Barnard’s younger brother, Stephen.”
“I met him.”
“Sir?”
“This morning. He swore in front of me and said it was early, even though it was eight o’clock.”
“The younger generation, sir, is notoriously lax.”
“Is this other nephew bookish, as well?”
“On the contrary, sir, he frequents the Jumpers at all hours, and it was he who paved his cousin’s way into the club. Otherwise Eustace Bramwell might have been blackballed, from what I learned, sir. Cambridge men are unpopular there.”
“Claude is popular, then?”
“Yes, sir. He is twenty-five and still studies at Oxford, but comes down to London to stay whenever the feeling takes him, or so it seems to the members of the household.”
“What does he study?”
“First he studied to enter the clergy, sir, then he changed to history and then to the study of literature.”
“Not botany?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s a shame. Unless-are he and his cousin close?”
“Not at all, sir. Beyond the effort of paving his way into the Jumpers, they barely know each other.”
“Curious.”
“Yes, sir. I understand there is some question of rivalry between Mr. Barnard’s younger sister and his younger brother, though both are on good terms with Mr. Barnard himself for self-evident reasons.”
“Rich as Croesus, twice as old.”
“Precisely, sir.”
“Although really he’s only sixty or so.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ten years ago he was only fifty. And fifty is quite young.”
“Quite, sir.”
“And who is the last guest, Graham?”
“A surprising one, sir: Colonel Roderick Potts.”
“Ah,” said Lenox. Potts. That complicated things. He was a steel manufacturer, and the richest untitled man in the whole of the British Isles.