They would still have Polly’s clients, and Dallington’s intermittent ones. But those weren’t enough to keep them afloat in anything like their current form. Things had grown precarious very, very suddenly.
Lenox closed his eyes, feeling rotten. Sooner or later he must have fallen asleep — the room was drowsy, with the fire burning quietly, the sofa soft beneath him — because when he woke it was with a feeling of disorientation, and with the thought that he was in his house in London, but that it didn’t look right.
After a moment he realized where he was, and his breath slowed again. He blinked his eyes several times to open them — and then it came to him, with breathtaking clarity.
“Edmund,” he said, “I have to get to London immediately.”
“Because of these clients?”
“No, no. Because I know where Muller is.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He spent the ride back to London thinking not about the German pianist, whose whereabouts he thought he now knew, but about who had betrayed the firm. That was the question that had carried him through the trip, from the silken fields of Sussex to the bright din of King’s Cross Station.
It was so hard to say. The names and files of their clients were all held securely in a safe in Lenox’s office. Only the three partners had access to that safe and therefore the list, though obviously each of the agency’s detectives, Atkinson, Weld, Mayhew, and Davidson, knew some of the names on it, since each was responsible for the day-to-day needs of four or five of the companies who retained the agency’s services.
Of the three clients that had taken their business to LeMaire, one had belonged to Mayhew and two to Davidson, the new fellow.
Could it be that Davidson had turncoated them? He had come with impeccable references; had an honest, open face; worked very hard.
He was also close with Mayhew, however, and despite his best precautions, Mayhew might have let a name slip.
Or Davidson might have — two names, and Mayhew, who was talented but mercurial, a bit of an enigma, perhaps too smart for his own good, could have sold them to LeMaire …
In a way, that would be the best thing. It would mean that the damage was contained. What was really frightening was the idea that someone had the entire list and was selling it piecemeal to LeMaire, or his backer, Monomark, the cross-grained, eagle-eyed old lord.
As his train pulled into King’s Cross, Lenox was so deep in contemplation of this question that it took him several minutes to notice that they had arrived and to disembark, one of the last men on the platform. He nearly directed the cab he hailed to Chancery Lane, and the office — then thought perhaps he would go straight to Dallington’s, in Half Moon Street.
But home won out.
Soon he was pulling into Hampden Lane. In the upper windows of the house there was the yellow flicker of gaslight, and upon the door a pretty garland of evergreen boughs. Through the front curtains he could just see the pale blue wallpaper of the forward drawing room, and the edge of the dainty spruce pianoforte that stood near the window there, surrounded by armchairs and sofas of light green velvet.
He slipped inside. “Hello?” he called out.
“Charles!” said Jane. She happened to be close and came into the front hallway, her reading glasses folded in one hand, a book beside them.
He kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, my dear. How are you?”
She looked uncertain. “Is there any trouble? Is Edmund well?”
“Oh, perfectly, yes. I wired before I left — didn’t you receive it? I’m back for twelve hours, no longer, alas.”
She shook her head. “I was out. I only arrived home a few minutes ago. I was just about to look in on Sophia before she goes to sleep, in fact. Come along, let’s go upstairs. But why have you come back?”
As they walked upstairs he told her that he thought he had an idea about Muller that he wanted to look into (“I knew I selected those clippings beautifully,” she said) and also about what Dallington had wired.
They came to Sophia’s buttercup yellow nursery. At the unexpected sight of both her parents, her plump face broke into a smile of delight, and she waved her arms up and down furiously and cried out their names. The nurse gave them a severe look. They lowered the volume of their greetings apologetically, but Lenox couldn’t help lifting Sophia up and kissing her, giving her warm little body a squeeze to his shoulder.
When he and Jane left the nursery twenty minutes later, he felt happy. They walked downstairs together, talking, for while they had only been apart for four days, there was an infinite amount to discuss — what each of them had been doing, Edmund’s state of mind, Jane’s forthcoming luncheon, whether the Queen might come, all the hazy news on Muller, Sophia’s hair-pulling activities. Lady Jane kept Lenox company as he ate a quick supper, and then they moved into the drawing room, where there was a little fire against the chill on the windowpanes.
He poured himself a whisky. “Then there’s this mysterious business down in Markethouse, though I only wrote you about it yesterday, so you may not know about it yet, depending on the mail.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about it. I can’t think what the postman has been doing. Burning your letters in a grate, I suppose, the moment they reach his hands. What mysterious business?”
So he told her about Hadley, about the gamekeeper’s cottage, and about Edmund’s absorption in the problem, which Charles hoped was a useful distraction. “It’s better than the two of us moping around the house.”
“Which is what he will do while you’re gone,” Jane pointed out.
“I rather hope not. I asked him to go to Snow’s cottage again tomorrow morning and see what he can find. That will at least occupy his time — and who knows, he may find something. I have little enough faith in Clavering, the constable in Markethouse, though he’s a well-meaning fellow.”
Lady Jane shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t like it. What is the meaning of that drawing chalked on Mr. Hadley’s step?”
“There you have me. Child’s mischief?”
“And the gemstones,” said Jane. “And the knife you found in the cottage. No, I don’t like it.”
“Nobody has come to any real harm in Markethouse since the Glorious Revolution. Anyhow, whoever was staying in the cottage left the knife behind, which must surely be a good sign, mustn’t it?”
“What if he has a pistol?”
“What if he has a unicorn?”
“You laugh, but he has your two horses.”
Lenox shook his head. “Really, I give you my word that I think you may rest easy about us.”
She was curious about his thoughts on Muller — it was still the talk of every drawing room — but he told her only that he wanted to have a look at Muller’s dressing room for himself, that LeMaire’s involvement had raised his competitive hackles. It was true, too. Of course, he also didn’t want to tell her his idea — in case he was wrong. If he was right, she would know tomorrow, a few hours before the rest of the world, and then he could return to Sussex triumphant.
What a thing it was, vanity!
The next morning, when Lenox woke up in his own bed, he was again momentarily confused as to his whereabouts, that old feeling. Then almost in the same instant he remembered that he was home, and he would therefore be able to breakfast with Sophia, which was great fun as long as you managed to dodge the flying porridge.
It was at around nine o’clock, when his daughter was asleep for her morning nap, that Lenox, dressed in a woolen autumn suit, his beard shaved close and his cloak over his arm, went down his front step and in the direction of the City. As he often did when he had thinking to do, he felt the urge to stroll — what Dickens, that most inveterate and observant of London walkers, had joyfully called “a little amateur vagrancy.”