Lenox lifted the rug. The floorboards were solid, seamlessly joined. He tapped on the floor in a few different places and heard a thick, dull sound. Well, that was no less than he had expected.
He was just knocking the floor in the corner of the room when there was a noise in the doorway. “What’s this!”
Lenox turned and saw McKee. He was Scottish, an inspector at the Yard, a small man with freckles and bright orange hair. With him was LeMaire. Lenox, from his crouched position between the sofas, inclined his head toward the two men in greeting, but neither returned the courtesy.
“We have already checked the floor,” said LeMaire. He turned his gaze to Broadbridge. “I have been trusted with the consultation of this matter, sir, but now I find a competitor of mine on the scene — tampering with the work I have done. Who is to answer for this?”
McKee looked disposed to voice a similar objection, though Broadbridge was a station above his own, so he remained silent — clearly outraged, but silent.
Broadbridge seemed to puff up. “I would hear out a goat-boy from the circus if he had a plausible idea about where this blasted German has got himself to. Mr. Lenox — is this all mere showing away? Or can you help? My patience is running short.”
Poor Nicholson, who knew he would have the consequences of that impatience to deal with, looked at Lenox. “It’s certainly not showing off, Mr. Broadbridge, I will vouch for that. But Lenox, I hope you have something, however. Do you?”
Lenox rose to his feet, dusting his hands off. “Four things,” he said. “First, where is the wine bottle from which Muller poured his glass? Second, why is there a stepladder in this room? Third, why has it been moved out of the corner and moved back to the corner in the past week?”
“And fourth?”
“And fourth, who would like to help me use it now?”
The room was silent. Dallington smiled, and Nicholson, looking relieved, glanced at Broadbridge. Broadbridge said, “Use it now?”
“What makes you think the stepladder’s been moved?” asked McKee.
Lenox looked at it. “There are four rectangles in the dust, in the shape of its feet, where they must have rested for a long time previously — just slightly off from where it currently stands, you can see for yourselves.”
“Muller himself moved it, then,” said McKee.
Lenox smiled. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Look closely at the books on the stepladder. It has three steps, as you can see. On the first, all of them are alphabetized by their authors’ last names, from G to R. On the second step, from A to F. On the highest step, from S to Z.”
“So?” said McKee.
“They are Muller’s books — most have his name on the flyleaf. Clearly he was scrupulous about how he ordered them. But these are out of order. Someone, I think, took the three stacks, put them on the sofa, used the stepladder, and then replaced the books — with the three stacks in the incorrect order.”
There was a pause in the crowded room as everyone absorbed this.
“Well done, Lenox,” said Dallington.
“Someone other than Muller used the stepladder, then,” said Broadbridge. “Why do we care?”
Lenox looked up at the chandelier. “You say this comes down easily, Mr. Thurley?”
The manager nodded. “Yes.”
What Lenox’s slumbering mind had told him, back in Sussex, had been simple: if everyone was agreed that Muller hadn’t left the room, then it must be the case that Muller hadn’t left the room.
Mustn’t it?
He took the books off the stepladder, setting them carefully on the floor, and brought it underneath the chandelier. This he removed. It was surprisingly light, only glass, as Thurley had said, and easy to hand down to Dallington, who stood beneath him. Lenox looked up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes.
“There’s a latch there!” said Nicholson.
“I’d no idea that was there,” said Thurley, voice astonished. “No idea at all. I’ve been here nine years.”
McKee looked ill. “Hm.”
Broadbridge shot him a look of disbelief. “A door in the ceiling!” he said. “McKee, of all the hellish incompetence!”
Lenox allowed himself a moment of sympathy for the fellow. McKee had tried the floorboards, which showed some resourcefulness. And a chandelier is such a grand object that it would have been hard to imagine it moving. This one, however, made of cheap glass and brass …
He tried the small black handle, which was embedded in the door but pulled out. There was a lock in it.
“Do you have a key?” he asked Thurley.
The manager shook his head. “I don’t think so. Here, you can try my skeleton key. It works in most of the locks in the building.”
It worked in this one, too.
Lenox, heart racing, pulled down the door. Nothing fell, as he had half expected. “Hand me a candle, would you?” he said.
Having taken it, he stepped onto the highest footing of the stepladder and popped his head above the ceiling.
What he saw confounded him, and he inhaled deeply, pondering it — a mistake, because there was the beginning of a smell.
“There’s a body up here,” he called down.
“Muller?” shouted Broadbridge.
“No, I’m afraid not. A woman.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
That afternoon it began to rain, and when the employees of Lenox, Strickland, and Dallington gathered in the large central room of their offices, leaning aginst the various slanted clerks’ desks, or sitting in their chairs, their chatter was matched by the steady thrum of the drops on the window.
The three partners of the agency stood at the door, facing them.
Fourteen men in all. There were the four hired detectives, Atkinson, Davidson, Weld, and Mayhew; six clerks; Pointilleux, who occupied a position somewhere between clerk and detective; Anixter, the immense, dark-browed, and ominously mute ex-seaman who had accompanied Polly wherever she went as long as Lenox had known her, and presumably made it safe for a woman to be a detective in a city that could be unfriendly to both detectives and women; and two boys, Jukes and Chadwick, each around thirteen years of age. Both had been more or less urchins, well known in Chancery Lane for running errands for small change. With the regular pay of the agency, each had ascended to the highest sign of social acceptability he could imagine, the ownership of a hat — a gently used black bowler for Jukes, a wide-brimmed soft cloth cap for Chadwick. Neither had removed his in Lenox’s sight since obtaining it, indoors or out. Hats mattered a great deal, of course. Lenox had once seen a man being released from Newgate prison refuse to acknowledge his family, who were eagerly awaiting the reunion, for fifteen puzzling minutes, until a friend found and handed him a hat. Then he turned to them and embraced them all, as if he had just spied them and it was the most natural and spontaneous thing in the world to say hello
It was Lenox who cleared his throat, waited for the chatter to subside, and then spoke. Though the partnership was equal, he was the eldest of the three, and perhaps for that reason the employees paid him the greatest deference.
“It has come to our attention that someone may have passed proprietary information belonging to the agency to an outsider,” said Lenox.
Everyone looked at him blankly.
“More specifically, the identities of at least three of our clients have been passed to LeMaire and Monomark, we believe.”
That drew a stronger reaction. “How do you know this?” asked Pointilleux.