Lenox took the ebony walking stick from Blaine, who had picked up the gun.
“Lily Allingham’s ring,” Lenox murmured, looking closely at the gold band that joined the two pieces of the cane. There were lilies dancing in an endless loop around it, just as Cora Allingham had described.
“Yes.”
Lenox returned the walking stick to Blaine. “You took a souvenir from the scene then. You will know from my research it is not an uncommon thing to do.”
Blaine shrugged, smiling faintly. “How did you spot that it was hers?”
“Your walking stick had a silver band on it when we met.”
Blaine clapped his hands together, with seemingly sincere delight. Like all of his kind, Lenox thought—cold-blooded killers, not hot-blooded ones—he was in the end desperate to talk. “You really are a detective! I should never have guessed you would notice something so small. When I dropped off my cane to be repaired with the new ring, I assumed I would be the only one who ever noticed the little joke. What a pity.”
Lenox stared at him for a long beat. “Just to be clear in my mind, then, you and I met at Delmonico’s. But the same night you slipped up here, killed Lily Allingham, and returned in time to meet me at the train station the next morning.”
Blaine nodded. “Yes, just so,” he said, after the briefest pause.
That admission meant he was going to use the gun, Lenox knew. His job now was to buy himself time.
“Shall I tell you how I put it together? You must be curious—here at the endgame.”
“Yes. Please do. Would you like to smoke?”
He felt weary to the bottom of his soul. Why had he imagined he wanted to come to America? What sort of game had this boy entrapped him into playing?
“No, thank you,” said Lenox.
Blaine lit one. “Then please, continue.”
“Ah. Where to begin. Let me think.” Lenox frowned at the floor for a moment. In truth he was thinking about his position—when they would be missed from the party. “One question, first—what if Schermerhorn had not sent for me? I assume you wanted it to be me who investigated, after all—to match your wits against mine?”
“I would have received a wire with the news when we arrived in Boston,” said Blaine. “I think I could have convinced you to come to Newport.”
“Yes. No doubt you could have,” said Lenox. Then, mostly to himself, “I have grown arrogant.”
Blaine looked bored. “It can’t only have been the ring.”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then what?”
“Your meeting with your father was a misstep.”
Blaine winced. “Ah. Yes. I realized that one at the time, but you didn’t seem to catch it.”
Lenox remembered the article (“The mountain shall come to Muhammad!”) breathlessly announcing that the elder Blaine, the great tycoon, would be coming to Newport on the day of the ball, that very Saturday morning.
But Teddy had used a meeting with his father as an excuse the day before that.
“I might have been telling a simple fib to cover up for some other reason,” Blaine said. He sounded almost as if he were on the stage in a debating society. Lenox ignored it.
“I should have seen from the start how scarce you made yourself—how many of our meetings and my steps in the investigation you missed, from that very first day onward. I assume now it was because you thought someone might have seen you the night you killed Lily Allingham—Vanderbilt, Schermerhorn, anyone really—and wanted to lie low.”
“Yes. I had to appear at the ball at Cold Farm briefly, unfortunately, for my plan to work.”
Lenox thought of the telegram in his pocket. He would hold that back—if he were shot, it could tell its own story.
“It was surprising, in retrospect, how you took the lead in our conversation with Mrs. King. But I suppose you were ready to cut her off at the pass if she happened to be on the verge of saying anything about you being at the ball or knowing Lily.”
Blaine nodded. “Yes.”
“And you told her to get in touch with you, not me, if she remembered anything else, I remember.” Lenox stared at Blaine. “But I am only speculating. Tell me the thing in your own words.”
Blaine grinned. “You’re quite good, you know.”
“Good?”
“For an instant there I thought we were only talking! It’s an impressive skill. I must remember it.”
“So you really mean to be a detective, Teddy?” said Lenox.
“And using my first name. Clever. I shall remember that, too. But it won’t work on me—I don’t feel what other people feel. All that rot.”
Suddenly Lenox remembered what Winthrop Blaine had said. My brother has always been different. Lenox had assumed this was intra-familial snobbery, but it had been a real warning. Fair play to the boy. He must have been trying and failing to alert people against the machinations of his pitiable, retiring brother for many years now, felt that scorpion sting himself.
Blaine’s father, with his overpowering intellect and drive allied to his shy manners; his mother, with her artificiality, glitter, her pressed cheer: Together, they had created this hideous mind.
“What other people feel?”
“In other words,” said Blaine, who was now comfortable enough that he took another small cigar from the spring-loaded silver box on the desk and lit it, “all that sentimental tripe—feeling close to you, or as if I owed you something, or less inclined to kill you because you use my name. Still, as I say, a clever thought.”
“What did you feel for Lily Allingham?”
Blaine carefully blew away a scrap of glowing paper that was clinging to the tip of his cigar. It settled to the rich, intricate Persian rug between them and died. “It is banal to say it, but I had never seen a more beautiful girl.”
“Then beauty is not lost on you,” said Lenox.
“No.”
“And you asked her to marry you.”
“Yes. A Blaine, offering her a hand in marriage! She would have been a princess of New York.”
“Perhaps she laughed at the idea,” said Lenox. “Or you were angry that she might have—behind your back. I know that she could often be rude.”
Blaine shook his head furiously. “Be quiet!”
Lenox obeyed this order. At length, it was the younger man who broke the silence.
“She didn’t laugh. But she ought to have been more polite. A little nothing like that. She barely stopped to say no.”
“Hm.”
If Blaine had noticed Lenox’s methods for encouraging people to talk before, his vigilance had wavered, for he went straight on now, as if he were with an old and sympathetic friend.
“A rejection I could have stood!” he said, standing up from the desk and turning distractedly away in his zeal to be understood. “But for Schermerhorn—good lord, that proud, puffed-up, inconsequential little dullard. Now that I could not abide.”
“I take it you hoped that he would stand accused of the murder,” Lenox said. “That is why you lured her to Cove Court.”
“Yes.” Blaine puffed on the cigar. “First I arranged for her to learn about Willie’s previous attachments I assumed that might loosen his grip on Lily. I had not given up.”
“Maryanne Morris. How did you know about her?”
“Everyone on this blasted island knew. Everyone my age. It was a joke. But Lily was stupid. Once she found out, she broke with Willie. Thus far my plan had worked, you see.”
“But then, instead of choosing you, she chose Vanderbilt,” said Lenox. “She showed you the flask to prove it.”
“Yes!” said Blaine, shaking his head with disbelief. “Vanderbilt, of all people—as flashy, as stupid a man as you could care to meet. She was throwing away her life anyway. If I helped hasten along the end, I see no way I can be blamed for that.”
“Did you plan to kill her all along?”
Blaine shrugged. “If she had consented, I would have married her. As it was, I decided that she and Willie could both go.”
So he had gone into that late-night meeting at Cove Court planning either to marry or murder. “And the flask?”
“She showed it to me, as you said. After she broke off with Willie—ha!—I had a note slipped to her, telling her to come up the Cliff Walk. I sent it on very fine paper, with a diamond ring. I knew she couldn’t resist that. A little mystery. Silly girl.
“It was the perfect time. Nobody about, a cloudy night. I told her again that I would marry her. But she wouldn’t listen. She had been crying. In fact she was drunk, Welling was right about that, Maryanne Morris had shared a glass of gin to console her.
“I asked again. I gave her a very fair chance to accept me. Anyone who was there would have to admit that. But she wouldn’t listen.
“It was no trouble to get her near the edge of the cliff. I had a chunk of rock in my pocket, but then she showed me the flask and it was too—well, it seemed perfect, put Vanderbilt in the mix as well. A perfect crime, really. That was how it struck me as I was walking away down the beach, back home. I was quite satisfied, if you must know. I’m trying to remember whether I wanted to murder her, as you ask. I suppose I did, in a way. You see, I’d been reading about you for so long.”
Lenox felt sick. “About me.”
“Yes. The great detective. And when I saw you were coming to New York! The papers full of your arrival, everyone at the opera talking about your old triumphs … well—I have always been fascinated with crime, you see. I had to know for myself what I would be up against. I knew if she wouldn’t marry me, I had to kill her to meet you.”
Lenox already saw that he would carry this knowledge heavily in his heart for the rest of his days. But there was no time to consider it at the moment, not when this might be his last day itself.
“And now?”
“And now I have met you,” he said. “I admit the ring was a step too far, but it’s been such a lovely few days, you see, having a secret no one else knew, and I thought about coming to the ball, opening the season, and knew I had to have the ring on my cane. Ah, well. More’s the pity. But was there anything else? My father, Cold Farm…”
“There were one or two other details.”
“What?”
“They don’t matter, Teddy. It’s over.”
Blaine smiled faintly. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “It is.”
And with a powerful stride forward, more powerful than Lenox would have expected he could make, he drove something deep into the right side of Lenox’s body.
Lenox was sitting on the sofa’s edge, and for a moment felt nothing. Had it been a fist? But Blaine was rather weak! How could he expect that to work?
Except that then Lenox experienced a sudden, rushing loss of focus, quite unlike anything he had known before. He stumbled backward and fell onto the floor, clutching his ribs, hitting the sofa on his way. He looked down and saw that there was blood where his hands had gone to his side.
Blaine was walking back toward the desk, saying something. Lenox strained to listen.
“The gun would be too loud. As it is, this will make for a good mystery—the person investigating Lily Allingham’s death, murdered himself. I look forward to investigating in fact. My first case. Welling will make no trouble.”
Blaine had stubbed out his cigar and was approaching the detective again now, dragging his right leg. There was something gripped in his hand, and Lenox’s whole being recoiled from it, the wound in his side giving an awful wrench at the sight. Then he saw: It was a long, very sharp knife, which Blaine was gripping so hard that his knuckles were white.
With his last energy, Lenox groped in his boot for the knife Jane had given him. He pulled it out. Even then all he could do was slash feebly at the air, it was enough to drive Theodore Blaine and his knife back for an instant, though how far Lenox had no idea—a foot, twenty feet, to his swimming vision it was all the same.
He slashed again. He couldn’t quite remember where he was. Still, he parried the air, using all his strength in his left arm—his right was strangely useless—did he have a right arm—oh yes—he glanced down—of course—oh blast it all he had forgotten that of course—sensing the approach of a dark large shape, he swung his left arm wildly, just in time to drive Teddy Blaine’s face back an inch or two—he swung it again—but then the light around him was turning black—he was spent, utterly spent—he thought of home—and finally, against his last shred of will, he fell into that void only the mortally wounded have known.