Lenox had been at innumerable crime scenes over the years, and if the last several days had been a whirlwind of new impressions, the scene that awaited him at the bottom of the wooden staircase was oddly familiar. As he descended the steps, he felt a ready calmness.
It was a rocky, windswept beach, the shore curving gently inward for about a mile’s length until it suddenly jutted out, forming a striking green cape at the end of the island.
But it was the houses above that stood out.
They sat about twenty or thirty feet higher than the water, just as Blaine had described. They were immense, most of them blindingly white, though a few were stone, and one halfway down toward the cape was painted in an eye-catchingly hideous black-and-white checkered pattern. Some sat quite close to the cliffside, others farther back, but each was on a large expanse of close-shaven grass.
Lenox had known grand houses, to be sure, but he had never seen anything quite like this. Castles and manors in England were generally ensconced within woodland, far from other inhabitants.
Here, though, the houses sat nakedly visible to one another, serried in stark, handsome formation, some close enough that you must have been able to see quite clearly into fourteen or so of your neighbors’ bedrooms. It was disorienting, as if fifty castles dotted around England and Scotland had all been relocated brick by brick to the same small peninsula in Cornwall.
“Are the cottages farther inland?” Lenox said to Blaine.
“Excuse me?” said Blaine, next to him on the steps.
“Schermerhorn mentioned his cottage.”
Blaine looked at him blankly, hand on the wooden rail. Then he said, “These are the cottages, Mr. Lenox.”
Lenox stopped. “These houses?”
“Yes. These are the cottages of Newport.”
Lenox stared at the houses for a moment. “That one with the marble columns must have thirty bedrooms in it,” he said, nodding toward a house a quarter mile away. “You call that a cottage?”
Blaine reddened. “That is my family’s cottage, as it happens.”
Good lord. “My apologies.”
“None required.”
“The word cottage is an affectation, then. Not in your family’s case, that is to say, but in—”
“Yes.”
Like Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid, to call such an edifice a cottage: an enticement to fate. He wondered, not for the first time on this voyage, since it was a great subject in the American papers, whether there would be a second revolution in this country before the century saw itself out.
At that moment a large, officious-looking gentleman in a wool suit approached the bottom of the stairs, anticipating their descent.
“Good day, sir,” he said, stepping onto the lowest stair. “Good day, Mr. Blaine. Mr. Clark.”
“Please allow me to introduce you to Mr. John Welling,” said Clark, stepping forward. “He’s the mayor of Newport. Jack, this is Charles Lenox, the detective Mr. Schermerhorn has hired.”
“Consulted,” said Lenox.
The mayor put out a hand and Lenox shook it. “It is a very sad scene, Mr. Lenox, very sad. The quicker we can see to justice the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
They had reached the beach. Lenox said he was pleased to meet the mayor, and asked to be introduced to the dozen or so men standing around, trampling things hopelessly, blast their eyes—two local constables, the police chief (a reedy fellow named Partridge, looking utterly overwhelmed), and various other busybodies.
He asked if he might have the scene cleared. Welling said certainly, of course, though in the end it was Clark who began the job, not the mayor.
No one questioned Blaine’s presence there, or even remarked on it, somewhat to Lenox’s surprise. He stored this away to remember. Money: That was what counted in Newport, Rhode Island. Of course, it was what counted in most places, but in some more bluntly than others.
“Mr. Blaine, perhaps while these gentlemen are taking their leave of each other you would be kind enough to give me an overview of this town—what we can see of it—so that I have my bearings.”
“Of course,” said Blaine. “We might go back up the steps for a moment. It would be easier from there.”
Lenox wondered if this was a good idea for his young companion’s leg. “Certainly, if you choose,” was all he said.
From the top of the steps they stood level with the cottages, a biscuit’s toss above the men slowly shuffling away from that eloquently motionless white sheet on the shore.
Blaine pointed inland, directly ahead of them. “Do you see that crowding of masts across the island?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That is the harbor, which you saw from the other side as we rode on the train. It’s a fifteen-minute walk west from here, no more. The wharves are very active. Some of the fishermen still live there. Between here and the docks lies the chief part of the town, including Bellevue Avenue.”
Lenox looked at the sweeping shoreline to their left, the beautiful cottages. “So the summer residents stick to this side of the island.”
Blaine nodded. “Mostly. There are forty cottages or so, I suppose, and another forty houses that would not be deemed cottages, perhaps, but are fine enough—this side of Bellevue. More of both kinds of houses are going up every day. The price for the existing ones has gone all out of proportion, too—absurd. But you know how fashion is.”
Lenox studied the grand houses for a moment. He saw now that there was, indeed, a small explosive commotion of construction every so often, new houses being squeezed on to the Cliff Walk. He wondered what Blaine considered an absurd price. Lord Eddings, his transplanted friend, had told him that a row of particularly eligible seats at St. Bartholomew’s Church had fetched $320,000 the year before, an amount of money so large it was hard to imagine for a non-American. For a moment Lenox felt almost intimidated by the fortunes that surrounded him—but that was only atmosphere, he remembered, and shook it away.
“How long have these houses been here?”
“Southern families have been coming here since before the war, mostly from Georgia and South Carolina,” Blaine replied. “But it is only in the last five or ten years that New York has taken to Newport. Now there is nowhere else to be, however.”
“Five or ten years!”
Lenox, coming from England, was accustomed to villages that hadn’t seen a new family in the squire’s house since the time of Edward the Second. “Yes,” said Blaine.
“All of them look as if they have been standing there since before Rome fell.” Lenox’s eyes swung across the south point of the island. In the distance, there was a lighthouse. “How long would it take to walk there?”
“Twenty or thirty minutes, I suppose,” said Blaine.
Lenox turned right, in the opposite direction of the lighthouse. Up there, past the picturesque little village where they had made their arrival, the island ended in a rocky outcrop covered with small houses, boats bobbing in the water.
“Another part of the village?” he said.
“Yes,” Blaine replied. “Most of the servants who don’t live in the cottages live there. Locals, too, and the majority of the men who still make a living by fishing. A handful of retired whalers. There are several boardinghouses, too.”
It couldn’t have been farther than a mile or two, but it sounded like a different world. “Does anyone from these cottages ever go up there?”
“Once in a while. There is gambling there and other … other vices.”
Lenox nodded, staring hard at this little agglomeration of dwellings, barnacled to the cliff at a safe distance from the imperious cottages. “It is a small place, Newport.”
“Oh, very small.”
“And what of Mr. Schermerhorn?” asked Lenox. “Which is his house?”
Blaine looked surprised yet again. “Why—you are standing on his land now, I believe. I’m sorry, I assumed Mr. Clark had told you. That is the Cove.”
All of Lenox’s internal alarms went off. “You mean to say that Miss Allingham died on Schermerhorn’s own property?” he asked.
“The beach is a public way,” said Blaine, frowning. “But yes—just in front of it.”
Lenox gazed at the nearest house—the Cove, evidently, or Cove Court more formally. It was both less grand and somehow also more substantial than many of those around it, a handsome clapboard structure set forty or fifty yards back from the cliff, with numerous small outbuildings of matching design. Two handsome chestnut horses were grazing near one of them.
A dead young woman, found next to the family house of the young man who had been courting her. Lenox was highly conscious that such a circumstance usually turned out in just one way.
“Mr. Lenox,” a voice called behind him from the steps. Clark. “The area is clear.”
He looked, and indeed the beach was empty now but for the mayor, the police chief, and a single constable.
“Tell me,” said Lenox to Blaine, “this walking path along the top of the cliffs here—does it not intrude upon private properties?”
“It is the Cliff Walk,” said Blaine. “It runs across the properties to be sure. But by ancient tradition anyone may walk here. The townspeople are fairly biddable, but they would revolt were that to change.”
“I see,” said Lenox. He spared one more moment to survey Newport, finishing with a glance toward Cove Court, where someone moved behind a window. “Very well. Let us descend. The time has come to inspect the body.”