Charles Finch - Beautiful blue death

Lenox could say this of him: He did not stint in his generosity in the field of his chosen passion. Whenever he went to a party, he took the lady of the house a flower of exceeding beauty and rareness, one perfectly chosen to match her temperament and sense of style. There was no lady of his own house. Barnard was a bachelor.

It was thus said that you could monitor George Barnard’s social schedule by following his blossoms from address to address. Depending on whom you asked, this habit was either charming or cloying. Lenox was neutral on the issue; though if Barnard had not been so proper, so trustworthy, so unblemished, he would have seemed to Lenox to be sinister.

By the time the cab drew to a stop, Lenox’s watch had nearly ticked to seven o’clock. He had stopped at Bond Street to up his friend Thomas McConnell, which had put him a good deal out of his way.

As he had guessed correctly Barnard’s first decision had been to bring in a high-ranking officer from the Yard. From the other carriage in front of the house, it looked as if it might be Jenkins, a young detective. His presence wouldn’t be a bad thing usually, but Lenox guessed, again correctly, that the owner of the house had told Jenkins to come alone. It was all a struggle between Barnard’s impulse to keep things quiet and his impulse to exercise his authority. If Barnard had his way, there would be no doctor, no routine examination of the premises, only an imperious dictate to resolve matters, and quickly.

So it had been necessary for Lenox to bring Thomas, who was a doctor.

The house was a very large yellow one, of the kind that was sometimes called a mansion. It had a garish coat of arms over the door, which made Lenox wince every time he saw it, and each of its dozens of windows showed some light. Barnard always had a surfeit of guests. He also threw parties by the dozen and had a famous annual ball, which wasn’t far off.

Lenox stepped gingerly from the brougham, avoiding a well of slush by the curb. He had had, just a little while before, the happy anticipation of supper and a night in his library ahead of him, but that loss couldn’t still the tiny hum of excitement in his mind-who knew what was inside this house, where it would lead him, how it would end? He loved his work.

Barnard was standing on his stoop, engaged in a solemn conversation with the young detective, when he spotted Lenox and Thomas approaching.

“Charles!” he said.

“George, how are you?” said Lenox. “I’m sorry about this business.”

“Terrible matter. Under my own roof. No end of embarrassment, you know.”

“Did the girl serve upstairs?”

“Indeed she did! Only for two weeks or so, of course, or I would have been able to spot it before it happened.”

“Of course,” Lenox said. Barnard was already fibbing. Hadn’t Lady Jane said that it had been three months? “I’m here because Jane asked me to come lend a hand.”

“Not necessary,” Barnard said. There was a pause. “How is Jane?”

“Well enough, I think.”

“Still, not necessary. Not at all. We’ve got Jenkins here. Good man.” He spoke as if Jenkins weren’t present.

“Have you met Thomas McConnell, George?”

“I haven’t had the honor. George Barnard,” he said, reaching out his hand.

“A pleasure,” said Thomas, who had met Barnard dozens of times.

There was a brief pause; then Lenox spoke again. “Still, George,” he said, “you won’t mind us having a quick look inside? To put Jane’s mind at rest?”

Barnard was evidently troubled by this request and paused before he answered. He was weighing his desire to please Lady Jane, whose good graces he wanted to be in, against his annoyance with Lenox for coming. At last he said, “For Jane, yes, I suppose. But Jenkins has seen to everything already. Says we need a doctor, but I don’t see why. Clear case of suicide.”

“Suicide?” said Thomas.

“Suicide,” Barnard said emphatically. “There’s a note, plain as day. Still, go in if you wish.”

“Thank you, George.”

He walked into the house with Thomas and Jenkins at his side, while Barnard walked toward the grand front staircase, seemingly dismissing them from his mind. Lenox had seen this front hallway many times, at the beginnings and ends of parties, but now, for the first time, he concentrated on the small gilt door to the side, which was guaranteed to be of cheap wood on the reverse and stood beneath a vast mirror, one of the dozens of doors concealed all over the house that led downstairs to the servants’ quarters.

He opened the door, and the smell of the kitchen drifted up. Barnard always served good food; you could say that for him.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Lenox waited for Jenkins to take the lead. But apparently he wanted first to have a word.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Lenox. We’ve never been formally introduced.”

“It’s an honor for me too,” Lenox said to the inspector.

Thomas stepped to the left and took a sip from a flask, while Jenkins hurried after him.

“It’s down here,” he said.

“I know,” said Thomas. “In houses of this design the servants’ bedrooms are always to the left, and the kitchen is always to the right.”

Lenox smiled to himself and followed the two men.

They were walking along a clean well-lit hallway, slightly wider than Lenox had expected, with small drawings of flowers in between each set of doors. Some of the doors had small personal details-an embroidery that said SARAH, a garland pinned against a hinge. The noise from the kitchen receded behind them, but they could still hear the business of the house being conducted.

At the end of the hall, a door was slightly ajar. Thomas stopped and asked Jenkins if it was the correct room, and Jenkins answered that it was. Both men stepped back for the first time, and allowed Lenox to come forward. He put a leather glove on his right hand and opened the door.

“Why do you wear a glove?” Jenkins asked.

McConnell answered for his friend. “There’s a new technology emerging-fingerprinting. Have you heard of it?”

“No.”

“A chap named Herschel, magistrate in India, started to put prisoners’ handprints next to their signatures. At first he did it just to scare them into being honest. But then he noticed the individuality of the fingers and decided he would focus on them rather than on the entire hand. Ingenious, really. Still rather hit-and-miss, the whole thing, but Lenox and I agree there’s potential in it.”

Jenkins looked at the back of his hand. “The prints from your fingers?”

“Turn your hand over,” McConnell said with a smile.

“Oh,” Jenkins said. “I think I see what you mean.”

Lenox had by this time scanned the scene and was ready to take a closer look. In front of the three men was a modest room-altogether unremarkable, if you had seen servants’ quarters before, save the fact that the body of a dead human being lay on the bed.

But first, thought Lenox, the room. He usually left the body for last, because the clues surrounding it were so much more likely to vanish in a short amount of time.

The room measured out as a perfect square, no doubt identical in shape and size to most of the other bedrooms on the hall. On the right, fitted snugly against the wall, was a narrow bed. On the left, barely leaving space to walk through the room, were a desk, a bureau, and a small seamstress’s table. High on the left of the back wall there was a window of middling size.

The room was, if anything, more tidy than the house upstairs, which was strewn with the expensive debris of Barnard’s life. The desk was bare except for four objects, which he would examine in a moment; the bureau was bare, though he would have to look in the drawers; the seamstress’s table had a few bits of thread on it, but even those were tucked together neatly.