Charles Finch - Beautiful blue death

“You know the thing you mentioned earlier, Charles? About George Barnard?”

“Which part?”

“You know, about…?”

“Oh, about his liking for you?”

“Well, yes. I was thinking, perhaps I could use that-well, those feelings, though mind you I don’t think they’re actually there-but at least use our acquaintance to spend some time with him and see what I can see. If that makes sense.”

Lenox whitened. “Absolutely not.”

“But Charles-”

“Absolutely not! I won’t have you doing that. For one thing it might be dangerous.”

She was about to speak when they both heard footsteps across the great hall.

“What was that?” Lenox asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Stay here.”

He went to the door, wheeled around, and went quickly into the hallway. He found a small young woman in a nightdress. She looked vaguely familiar.

“Will you follow me, please?” Lenox said.

She nodded, and they walked into the drawing room.

“Excuse me, Lady Grey,” said the woman, “I only-”

“Lucy! Why are you awake at this hour?”

“I only wanted to ’ear a word over Prue, m’lady.”

There was a pause, but then Jane looked at her sympathetically. “You poor thing,” she said. “Charles, this is Lucy, one of our maids. She was Prudence Smith’s close friend. Sit down, dear.”

Lucy looked embarrassed at the thought of sitting down.

“How do you do?” said Lenox.

“Lucy,” said Lady Jane, “we know nothing for certain yet-whatever you may have heard in the hallway-but you will know when we do. And now you should really get some rest. We’ve all had a trying day.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

But Lenox held up a hand; both women waited expectantly. He walked to the desk, found a pen, and quickly scratched a few words across a piece of paper. Then he walked to Lucy and handed the paper to her.

“Does anything strike you as strange about this?”

“Lucy,” Lady Jane said, “you must not divulge what you are reading to-”

But for once, Lucy didn’t listen. She read the note twice, Lenox could tell, because her lips moved with the words. Then she looked up.

“Two things, sir.”

“Two things?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are they, Lucy?”

“The first is she would never call ’im James, formal-like.”

“What did she call him?”

“Jem, always Jem. Or Jemmie, if she was in a mood.”

“But she may have felt formal, if she was going to commit suicide.”

“Maybe, sir. But there’s the second thing.”

“What’s that?” said Lenox.

“Prue couldn’t read nor write.”

G raham, cancel my trip to Villefranche,” Lenox said, when at long last he reached home.

“Sir?” said Graham. He was sitting in small chair in the hallway, still dressed as he had been earlier that evening, reading the late penny paper. When Lenox came in, he folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket.

“Villefranche, Graham, on the Riviera. I must have told you.”

“No, sir. Although I did notice several maps of France on the desk in your library, sir.”

Lenox sighed. “That’s the second trip canceled this year, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Paris in the autumn, before the damned forgery, and now Villefranche. There are many interesting archaeological mysteries in Villefranche.” One of Lenox’s passions was the Roman Empire, about which he read endlessly. From time to time he visited spots where the empire had left its mark, large or small.

“Sir?”

“And beaches, Graham. Warm beaches.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Paris, and now the coast.”

“I’m sorry that the trips have been delayed, sir.”

“Doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“It does not, sir. Your nightcap, sir?”

They walked together into the library, and as Lenox sat down Graham gave him a glass of hot wine.

“That’s the ticket,” said Lenox, taking a sip. He sighed. “I was planning a trip of two weeks. I had the mapmaker order a map of the region.”

“I believe it came this afternoon, sir. There was no opportunity to give it to you before you went to Lady Grey’s.”

“Can you lay your hands on it, Graham?”

“Certainly, sir.”

He left and came back a moment later with a long tube in his hand. Lenox took it from him and cleared off a section of his desk, knocking some books to the floor.

“Ah!” he said, as he unrolled it.

It was a beautiful map of the Cote d’Azur, a beautiful map being one of his favorite things in the world. He had always wanted to be a traveler in his heart, and while he had made it pretty far-Russia, Rome, Iceland-he had never lost that childhood vision of himself, dusty and tired but triumphant, finding something completely new out on the edge of the world.

“Look, Graham,” he said, pointing to the thin edge of the coast. “That’s where we were going to go.”

“Beautiful land, sir.”

“Beautiful.”

Both men lingered over the drawing, and then, with a sigh, Lenox rolled it up and placed it in an umbrella rack, which he had taken from his family’s house as a place to keep his favorite maps. His father had used it for the Japanese scrolls he liked to collect. They were a family of collectors, as the marble busts of ancient Romans in the back corner of the bookshelf attested.

“Graham,” he said, “we shall get there one day, you know.”

“There is no doubt in my mind, sir.”

Lenox smiled and then sighed one last sigh. “Are you too tired for a quick word?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“We had better sit down, then.”

The two men moved toward the armchairs by the fireplace and both sat down, although, while Lenox leaned back into a pillow and took a sip of his wine, Graham perched upright on the edge of the cushion.

Briefly, Lenox related what had happened over the course of the evening: the note, the poison, the fiance, the wax on the floor, the examination, the window, the unused candle. Graham seemed to absorb it all fairly steadily.

“So you see,” Lenox finished, “I must do it, if only for Lady Jane.”

“If I may express my opinion, sir, I agree entirely.” Graham was a fierce partisan of Lady Jane’s.

“Did you know the girl at all?”

“Miss Smith, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I knew her to nod hello to in the streets, sir. Mr. Kirk disapproved of her.”

“Kirk did?”

“Yes, sir. And he is more lenient than some men in our profession.”

Lenox laughed. “I see,” he said.

“At the same time, sir, she was popular with the girls of this house and in Lady Grey’s.”

“They were disappointed when she left?”

“Extremely, sir. They thought of her as slightly exotic, I believe.”

“Graham, I need you to do something for me.”

“Of course, sir.”

“I need you to find out who the five people staying with George Barnard are.”

Graham nodded.

“No doubt you’ve already concluded that they are our best suspects. The open window concerns me, of course. But Barnard’s horrid housekeeper insists that all five guests were in the house the entire time, and that no milkman or anyone of the sort came along in the relevant hours.”

“A claim with definite liabilities, sir. Any house can be penetrated.”

“Yes. But still, I think that they must be our best lead. And I think as well that you could find out about them more easily than I could. There are questions I cannot ask. And you know how much I trust you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lenox and Graham had an unusual bond, often formal, sometimes bordering on camaraderie, much of it unspoken. This bond went back a great many years and was seared into both men’s memories because of certain rather dark events that had taken place. This matter of asking Graham for help on a case was part of that unusual bond-a result of trust in Graham as a man, first of all, and in his competence too. In the end, each man relied on their deep mutual loyalty, which would be hard for anyone to test. Lenox found Graham to be almost perfect in this unique role: honest, respectful but never toadying, willing to make a point that might disagree with his employer’s-always, in short, his own man. Of all the men he knew, he thought Graham among the finest.