It would have been impolite to refuse Theodore Blaine’s request, but in the event Lenox had no cause to regret his politeness. Blaine was quiet, respectful, and, in a haphazard but enthusiastic way, knowledgeable. He had little of the entitlement one might have assumed he would from his background. Perhaps it was his leg—the way that sometimes early hardship, if not too profound, could salvage a person from his own privilege.
Still, money never quite hid. Without being asked, one of the men with Blaine had produced a wealth of food and drink: peaches, salted cashews, lemonade, sparkling water, and, though it was not yet ten o’clock, two bottles of cold Rhenish wine, packed on ice.
Over these mostly untouched refreshments, they spent an engaging two hours piecing together the facts of the Wallace murder. It took both of them a moment to look up from the absorption of the study when the train made its first stop, at a small town whose railway signs marked it as Stamford, Connecticut.
“Am I in a new state, then?” cried Lenox, staring through the window with intense satisfaction. “My second one.”
“Many congratulations,” said Blaine, sharing easily in his companion’s happiness.
Lenox took out the little book of maps from Jane, which had a checklist naming all thirty-eight states, and placed a tick next to the pleasingly inscrutable word Connecticut. “Do you know the origin of the state’s name?” he asked.
“I don’t, now that you mention it. I suppose it must be the name of a local tribe. I can tell you that it’s called the Nutmeg State.”
“Is it? Why?”
“The spice trade.”
Lenox was still studying the small soft leather book, with its richly detailed, delicately colored maps. “I had nutmeg last night. And soon enough I shall be able to add Massachusetts. Tell me, Mr. Blaine, have you traveled much in the western part of your country?”
The young man replied that he had—he was particularly fond of St. Louis, he said, Chicago too—but just as he was warming to his subject, the train, which had pulled away from Stamford, stopped.
As the delay began to lengthen, people in the car started to murmur. They weren’t at a station.
“Some congestion on the tracks ahead, I suppose,” said Blaine.
He looked back toward his small battalion, and one of them stood, in his handsome blue uniform coat, with its shining buttons almost military, and said that he would look into what had happened.
But he was saved the trouble—at that moment, the door to the train car opened, and an imposing figure in a police coat stepped on.
“Is there a Mr. Charles Lenox aboard?” he said.
The gentleman making this inquiry was fifty or so, something near Lenox’s own age. He had dark, coarse hair, pale skin, and a rather handsome face, which was, however, marred on one side by the aftermath of a terrible wound, crossed with scores of small white scars, one eye permanently half-lidded.
Lenox recognized that kind of scar. After Crimea you had seen them. Their sad tale wound its way back to 1784, when an imaginative lieutenant in the Royal Artillery had swiped a spare cannonball from the arsenal and started to tinker with it, looking for improvements. Eventually, he hollowed it and filled it with gunshot, small lead balls, until it was just heavy enough to fire like a solid cannonball.
The invention was a devastating success. It scattered hundreds of fiery-hot shards of metal into enemy lines, causing terribly painful injuries as often, or even more often, than death. It was hard to know what the lieutenant would have made of his invention. Whatever it might have been, his name—Lt. Henry Shrapnel—lived on in the weapon he had created.
The tall, forbidding person who had stopped the train to speak with Lenox was one of Shrapnel’s latter-day casualties. The telltale signs ran down one side of his face.
Lenox’s eyes went to his lapel, where he found what he’d suspected he would—a Union army rosette. There had been innumerable shrapnel wounds in that war.
This whole series of observations took the space of a few seconds. The detective stood. “I’m Charles Lenox.”
The gentleman turned. “Ah. I have a message for you, Mr. Lenox.”
He held out an envelope, and Lenox had an awful swift emptying feeling down his spine, his thoughts flying to Sophia, Clara, Jane, his brother.
He took the envelope and tore it open.
March 14, 1878
The Cove
Newport, RI
Mr. Lenox,
There has been a murder here—an unforgivable murder, a girl still not yet 19. I beseech you to come to Newport …
Lenox exhaled. He looked around the carriage, suddenly remembering himself. Wyatt was a few feet behind him, all curiosity. Blaine had stood too. The train’s conductor was nearby, staring with naked interest at the gentleman with the scarred face.
Lenox took in the fellow’s dress more carefully and saw that it was private livery, though it ran near to looking like a police uniform. Like Blaine’s attendants.
“May I ask your name, sir?” he said.
“James Clark, sir. I am an employee of Mr. William Stuyvesant Schermerhorn.” Lenox must have looked blank, because he went on: “The author of the letter, sir. If you are amenable to coming with me, there is a special waiting on the adjoining track.”
“A special train?”
“Yes, sir.” Mr. Clark gestured toward Blaine and his men. “It will comfortably accommodate your party, should you wish them to accompany you.”
Lenox, baffled at this invitation, said he thought that he had better read the letter in full, and sat down again, conscious that all eyes were on him and slowing down to read carefully in reaction to this pressure.
March 14, 1878
The Cove
Newport, RI
Mr. Lenox,
There has been a murder here—an unforgivable murder, a girl still not yet 19. I beseech you to come to Newport immediately. You may name your fee. I remit this letter by special dispatch with a private car, which shall certainly meet you in New Haven if it misses you in New York. You cannot possibly come too quickly. As I say, you may name your fee.
In haste, your servant,
William Stuyvesant Schermerhorn IV
Lenox read this letter twice. At its foot was a coat of arms with what looked like a tulip in a field beneath a sun, and underneath it the phrase Indefessi Favente Deo.
Did Americans have coats of arms? He supposed they must. He turned to Blaine. “Do you know anything about this person, Schermerhorn?”
“Yes, to be sure. I have known him most of my life. A very respectable gentleman.”
“I would appreciate your opinion on this letter.”
Blaine took the letter and read it. As he did so, his expression was overcome with a quick-dawning consternation. “Oh, no,” he said. He looked up. “Yes, I know him—a respectable gentleman, Mr. Lenox. He would certainly not make sport of you.”
“No, the efforts of Mr. Clark”—Lenox nodded to the private guard here—“have assured me of that. Mr. Clark, do you know anything of the contents of the letter?”
“I do not, sir. My instructions were to find you and accompany you to Newport, if you should be willing to come.”
Lenox turned to the conductor. “Is it quite customary to stop the train for private messages like this?”
The conductor, a small, cheery, round-headed fellow with small bright eyes, looked suddenly guilty. “No, sir.”
Suddenly Lenox put together the heavy weight of the letter he held, Clark’s uniform with its silver buckles, Blaine’s words, the name Cove Court, the private car, and realized this was a matter of money. There was probably a jangle of silver in the conductor’s pocket.
He bridled against the impudence of this stranger beckoning him to Newport.
“I’m sorry you have wasted your efforts, but I must decline,” he said, handing the letter back to Clark. “I have plans to keep in Boston and beyond.”
“May I represent to you, Mr. Lenox, that Mr. Schermerhorn was desperate that you should come. He enjoined me to mention that no fee you name could be too high.”
“Yes, he mentioned the fee in his letter as well. I shall have to forfeit it.”
Why was he reacting so severely to this invitation? He couldn’t say himself, as he stood and met Mr. Clark’s gaze. Perhaps because there was an echo of an old slander here, the scorn he had faced for taking up work when he became a detective, the shame he had fought against in himself at the time, the parties from which he had been excluded, the fat-faced fools from Oxford who had cut him dead in their clubs merely because they would never have turned their own hands to any work more arduous than preparing a drink.
“I am sure Mr. Schermerhorn intended no offense,” Clark said.
“Undoubtedly not,” said Lenox. “Nevertheless, you have my answer.”
“And it is final?” said Clark.
There was nothing angry in his tone—only professional. Lenox observed with neutral interest that this was a highly competent emissary before him, James Clark.
Blaine, just over his shoulder, said, “Mr. Lenox, if you like I could wire to—I have known the Schermerhorns for many years, socially. Hello, Mr. Clark. I believe we have met.”
“Mr. Blaine,” said the private guard, inclining his head in a bow.
Lenox hesitated. “Is there a telegraph office in the New Haven station?”
This was the next stop. Lenox could tell there were none at Stamford, from the little engineer’s shack that had been the only building near the platform.
“Oh, of course,” said the conductor. “It’s one of our busiest stations.”
Lenox paused, then nodded. “Is there a later train to Boston from New Haven?”
“We change engines there, so you shall have half an hour. Else there is the 2:49. It follows the same route but stops more often because it has a refrigerated car.”
Lenox checked his watch, thanked the conductor, and then told Clark and Blaine he would be happy to wire for more information from New Haven.
It took just about half an hour to get there. New Haven’s train station was a beautiful, airy structure, with a high pale green half-dome of a ceiling and a line of handsome benches where various respectable-looking passengers sat, waiting for their departures. Lenox looked it over with great curiosity. A busy place, with carts selling hot pretzels, doughnuts, and cider; Yale College pennants and glasses at a little stall (he bought one of the pennants for Sophia); a newsstand with papers.
He realized that these same newspapers must be how William Stuyvesant Schermerhorn the Fourth had thought to seek him out. His appearance (Celebrated London Detective Arrives for Visit to States) had been remarked in the headlines. He sighed to himself. Some accident or misfortune, no doubt, nothing like a murder, and he would lose half the day by it.
He left Wyatt on a bench as Blaine and Clark went to the telegraph office, and decided he would take a turn outside, where he smelled the familiar scent of horses and carriages, heard various happy conversations. In spite of his annoyance, in spite of his relative conviction that it would all prove a wild goose chase, a faint curiosity about this murder—this unforgivable murder—was building in the back of his mind.