It was time to interview Schermerhorn.
Lenox slept so late that he didn’t have time to query O’Brian about his scouting from the night before. He just had time to eat a piece of toast and swallow a sip of tea, and then he was on his way, in a carriage whistled up to the front door by Mrs. Berry’s carbuncular boy (a grandson, it turned out), to the Cove.
Accustomed to Dallington’s friendly shadow, Lenox felt a pang of compunction over proceeding without young Blaine. Still, he had told the lad that he would be leaving from Mrs. Berry’s no later than nine o’clock. Likely Blaine was ensconced at home. Few people wanted to be a detective for longer than it took to see their first body, Lenox had found. Far more agreeable to sit on a train discussing crime as if it were an abstraction.
In the carriage, he studied his notes, wanting to be sure his command of the facts of the case was complete. It was a short drive, and it proved to be the old soldier Mr. James Clark—the shrapnel scars on his face limned by the weak morning light—who awaited Lenox at the grand doors of Cove Court, two heavy oak slabs with a stylized tulip carved deeply into each.
“Good morning, Mr. Lenox. Mr. Schermerhorn is in his study, if you’ll follow me.”
The house through which Clark led Lenox was plain by the palatial standards of this town, but sturdy to its last nail. The floors of the broad, airy hallways never once creaked; the alabaster walls, hung with portraits of sober old New Yorkers of a different epoch, seemed to whisper a quiet word of remonstration against all things modern, all things adorned, anything but plain wood and white paint.
Yet this plainness was a show. Lenox could read a house, and he knew when there were difficult choices to be made about the cost of maintenance. Here, a hundred hands were at work; the garden alone, its quiet, colorful flower beds (no topiaries, unlike many of the cottages—the more solemn Knickerbocker spirit again, he supposed) occupying half of them.
Schermerhorn’s study confirmed Lenox’s impression. It was the largest room he had yet seen in the house, a cavernous chamber with a view of the gardens through tall glass windows. All the latest newspapers—twenty, at least—were fanned out on a table easily twenty feet wide, along with a hundred magazines and journals from all over the world. The tulip in its field, and that family motto, Indefessi Favente Deo, were embroidered in an intricate tapestry on the wall. Unwearied by the grace of God. Well, no, it didn’t seem a very wearying life. There were gentlemen’s clubs in London with less polish and profusion in their lounges. It smelled like a gentleman’s club, too, furniture wax and something else Lenox couldn’t quite catch until he realized what it was—hair pomade.
The family patriarch, no doubt the source of this minor vanity, had risen from his desk when Lenox and Clark entered. He removed a pair of reading glasses and held them in one hand, which made him look rather like a headmaster.
“I am glad to see you at last, Mr. Lenox.”
“Good morning,” said Lenox, approaching the desk.
Schermerhorn waited for more—perhaps even for an apology?—but at Lenox’s silence, went on. “We must discuss your fee.”
“Ah, yes. I fear I must decline to take one. As I mentioned, I am in America on the Queen’s business.”
Schermerhorn paused. He seemed discomfited. “Certainly from the perspective of Welling and Partridge, it would be better were you in my official employ. Indeed it is why I sent for you.”
Lenox bristled against the phrase sent for you. Perhaps he was not so immune to vanity himself. “I came because I thought I might be of some use to the local constabulary,” he said. “I suppose we shall have to see whether that is the case.”
Schermerhorn seemed to sense that he had struck the wrong tone. “Clark, give us a moment, would you?”
Clark nodded and left. Schermerhorn pushed a silver cigar box toward Lenox.
“Thank you, no,” said the detective.
“Surely you will sit, at least?” said Schermerhorn, managing a smile.
Suddenly Lenox placed the smell that lay underneath even the pomade and the soap and polish: spirits. Gin? Whisky? It was too vanishing a scent to say, but Schermerhorn had been drinking that morning. Lenox scanned the desk and the table to its left. No sign of a glass.
“Of course—thank you.”
“Can I offer you anything to eat or drink? A cup of coffee? A glass of wine?”
“I cannot drink alcohol in the morning,” said Lenox, with a face that said he regretted it.
“Nor I. If I have plans to sail I take a glass of port with an egg beaten in it, but never more. We are a very enthusiastic sailing family.”
They were seated across a desk from each other. “I had hoped to speak to your son,” said Lenox.
“He’s ready to speak to you whenever he is required. I hoped we might have a word first.”
“As you please.” Lenox pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “You were quick to call me here, Mr. Schermerhorn.”
“Yes. It was evident right away that we needed someone from the outside.”
And indeed, in the same morning light that had shown Clark’s scars so clearly, Lenox saw that Schermerhorn himself was, though he concealed it well, full of agitation and concern.
“You were fond of Lily Allingham?”
“I knew her socially.”
“And her parents?”
“Socially,” said Schermerhorn once more, stiffly.
Lenox nodded, writing in his notebook. He didn’t need it for a meeting like this one, but a notebook often had a strange effect of authority on witnesses.
“How long has your family been in Newport, Mr. Schermerhorn?”
“The Cove was built in 1822. We were one of the first families from New York to come here.”
“The town must have changed a great deal since then.”
“More than you could possibly understand.”
“From what I understand, Lily Allingham was something of a new type?”
Schermerhorn frowned. “I suppose. She was a very sweet girl.”
Clearly Schermerhorn disliked questions. Lenox knew he would gain no points for subtlety, and so, after a lingering pause, he said, “I understand she was likely to become a member of your family.”
Schermerhorn stiffened, then flushed pink.
“I knew it would come to this!” he burst out. He stood up from his chair. “My son would never have touched a hair on Lily Allingham’s head. It’s up to you to prove it. And if you will not take money to do it, you shall do it out of honor!”
Lenox’s reaction to this explosion was silence. Finally, it was Schermerhorn who broke off their mutual gaze.
“I apologize,” he muttered.
Lenox glanced down at his notebook. “So you have heard that your son is a suspect.”
Schermerhorn, still standing, turned away and walked toward the window. “It is the ordinary gossip,” he said. “They were intimate. Willie was contemplating a proposal, you may as well know. And people are only too happy to bring up that foolishness about the yacht club last year.”
Lenox knew nothing about the yacht club. “I see.”
“But one knows one’s children,” said Schermerhorn, staring out the window. “Willie could not have murdered anyone. Let alone a woman.”
“Where was he last night?”
Schermerhorn turned back to him. “That’s the trouble! He followed the—he followed Miss Allingham out of the ball they were attending. She was in some sort of a temper. He has no idea what it was about. Nor did he ever find her.”
“What did he do after his search?” Lenox asked.
“He came home. I wish he had returned to the ball.”
“Did anyone see him come back here?”
“I don’t know. He has his own keys of course.”
“I imagine that in a house of this size, there are always servants about.”
“Yes. They are giving their reports to Mr. Clark’s people now,” Schermerhorn said curtly.
“And you, Mr. Schermerhorn? Where were you last night? Not at the ball?”
“Certainly not. I was here in my study, of course. My wife is traveling. I stayed up and read.”
“What did you read?”
It was a truly innocuous question—Lenox tended to ask it reflexively when anyone mentioned reading, in criminal circumstances or otherwise—but Schermerhorn stared at the question from his British guest. “You cannot possibly think I was involved in the murder.”
“No,” said Lenox gently.
Schermerhorn went on staring, until at last he said—after having had time to think about it? or honestly?—that he had been reading a sailing journal. He couldn’t recall any of the articles—perhaps one about how far to stay off a lee shore. He’d been tired. He supposed he had gone to bed at eleven o’clock or so. No, he hadn’t heard any noise; no, the servants hadn’t either. They had all been informed there was a reward to be had from the head of the household for helpful information, but none yet emerged.
All Lenox knew with certainty as he listened to this was that someone was lying. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. But he couldn’t say anything about who, or why; intuition took you only so far.
“Perhaps I could meet your son,” he said at last.
“Of course,” said Schermerhorn, and Lenox observed the peculiar perfection of the American’s clothing, the sharp crease in his collars, the perfect pleat of his jacket, as he went over and rang a silver bell.