Two nights later, Lenox sat in his study, playing chess with his next-door neighbor, Lord Deere.
This study was a large, high-ceilinged, rectangular room that overlooked the street from just a few feet above it. At the other end of the chamber a fire burned in the grate; books and small paintings lined the walls.
It was a rare night away from the social round, made possible by a thunderstorm—and not just any thunderstorm, but a hard one, almost moralizing in its intensity. A whipping rain was falling across the ancient gray stones of London; water flushed days of autumn grime from every narrow fissure and channel in the cobblestone streets, eddying around clots of fallen leaves until it loosened them all at once. An October storm. The last stale heaviness of summer heat being rinsed clean away.
“One of the troubles with cinnamon toast is that the edges never have much cinnamon on them,” said Lord Deere.
Lenox glanced over the board, irritated. He liked Deere, and loved Deere’s wife, Jane. But he was about to lose, and it had been extremely close this time, too. “One of the troubles? What are the others?”
“Where to begin. It doesn’t dunk well.”
“Doesn’t dunk well.”
Deere grinned. “In tea.”
“Doesn’t dunk well in tea.”
“No, it falls to bits immediately.” He gestured at the board. “Rather like the little triangle of pawns you set up around your king.”
“That’s a very dishonorable comment, if you ask me,” Lenox replied darkly, staring at the board.
“I am detestable in victory. Everyone must have his flaws,” said Lord Deere in a cheerily philosophical tone, munching a piece of the cinnamon toast with what appeared, despite his objections, like great relish. In his other hand was a cup of tea, steam drifting upward from it in a loose coil. “Listen, why don’t we start over?”
Lenox was not prouder than the typical young man of good education, ample means, and a strong intelligence. Alas, even the average pride of such a specimen of person must be very high.
“That is the most cowardly offer I ever heard.”
Deere was a tall, thin man with fair hair and striking blue eyes. Somehow, in whatever the circumstances, he always looked crisp and tidily arranged.
He protested. “I was only hoping we might fit in another game!”
Lenox glanced at the gold carriage clock on his desk. After a hostile pause, he knocked over his king. “Fine,” he said.
“There you are, see?”
“Hm.”
They began setting up the pieces, or rather Deere did, because Lenox had started hungrily eating toast and sipping his own tea.
He had never been a soul to hold a grudge, even in childhood, and before the pieces were up the last game was forgotten, replaced in their conversation with Lenox’s frank admiration for his opponent’s skill. Somehow he always managed to slip through the narrowest slivers of logic when they played, Deere. He might be two important pieces down, yet invariably he found a way to recover his balance and best Lenox. Or so it seemed anyhow.
“Don’t forget that I am in the army,” he said, after Lenox pointed this out. “Much of our training is calculated for dire strategic situations.”
“True. I wonder if chess in the military is played to a higher standard than among us civilians.”
The young lord looked contemplative. “I could not promise you that. We have our share of dullards. I suppose all professions do.”
“Of course.”
“Indeed, I would wager many among the infantry would get the better of their officers. It’s a great hobby—they all have pocket boards. Handy when you are stuck on some hillside for a week with nothing to do.”
When Lenox had learned that Lady Jane had married a military man, he had been predisposed to look upon the gentleman as something of a cavalier, one of those soldiers who marry and then return home but rarely, glad as they may be when there.
But of course Jane—always the smartest person he had known—would never have married for less than true love, and Deere, as Lenox had very slowly and somewhat reluctantly learned, was a special sort of person.
He was entirely open with others, entirely generous; wanted to see only the best in them; above all, wanted to learn what they were like, what they loved, who they were. For instance, he delighted in Lenox’s profession, pressing questions upon him about it in a way almost no one else did. When he did travel, he brought home innumerable local objects, which he studied and collected with careful attention. He knew the names of flowers, grasses, trees, and stars. He especially loved dogs: He knew every breed, and though an earl, and thus entitled to be extremely haughty, would stop with anybody in the street who happened to be walking one for a long chin wag.
He was commissioned as a captain in the Coldstream Guards, a demanding position. He was away from home more often than not, but hoped that he would be here for a decent stretch now. (He was still awaiting new orders.) It was commonly agreed that he had a very bright future.
Halfway through the next game that he and Lenox played, there was a sharp knock at the front door.
The young detective frowned. He wasn’t expecting anybody. Lady Jane—whom he would normally have suspected—was at the bedside of a friend in South Kensington, who had just been delivered prematurely of a son.
“I wonder who could be abroad in this weather,” Lenox said.
“The devil knows.”
After a beat, Graham appeared at the door of the study. “Inspector Hemstock wishes to call upon you, sir.”
“Hemstock!” Standing up, Lenox glanced at his friend. “You’ll have to forgive me, Deere. Graham, would you ask Elliott to get the horses warmed, please?”
This was the groom. “Of course, sir.”
Lenox held up a hand. “No. On second thought, don’t. But please show Hemstock in.”
“Very good, sir.”
He didn’t need to go out on a rainy night at Thomas Hemstock’s whim.
Deere knew something of Lenox’s business—indeed, it sometimes seemed to Lenox that all of London did. “Not in the mood for a case?” Deere asked.
“No. I have rarely been busier.”
It was true. After long stretches of idleness in previous years—though he tried his best to stay busy during these, through an improvised course of self-instruction—at present Lenox had two cases, besides his conjectures from afar about the Claxton murder. Both were minor. Still, he was pleased to be occupied.
Graham returned with Hemstock, who had left his hat and his cloak in the hall but was nevertheless dripping wet.
As usual, he was in a state that you might certainly call jolly, if you wished to be polite—outright drunk, if you were blunter.
“Hullo!” he cried. “What’s this? Chess? Sport of kings, chess.”
That was horse racing. No matter. “How are you, Mr. Hemstock?” Lenox said, putting out his hand. He liked the inspector, taken all in all. “Much occupied this evening?”
“Yes! Thought you might want to come round with me, learn a trick or two. It’s a murder.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Paddington Station.”
Some piece of ha’penny violence, Lenox supposed. A burglar, a gang member, a sailor. The motive probably petty vengeance or drunken ire.
“Unfortunately I don’t think I can. I have a guest, as you see.”
Hemstock looked surprised. It was the first time Lenox had refused such an offer.
An affable, short, solid fellow, about forty, with a squashed face and an infectious gaiety, Hemstock was the worst detective Scotland Yard had. Indeed, the job belonged to him only because his late father had been one of the original Peelers, a figure of legend and lore, revered at the Yard. The son did little harm in his sinecure—if not, unfortunately, much good either. Lately, however, he had been allowing Lenox to solve his cases, under the guise of his “helping” the young squire, showing him “a trick or two.” Most men at the Yard despised the idea of Lenox’s amateur involvement in their work, but Hemstock had noticed that he could be useful.
“It’s a strange one,” the inspector said.
“Perhaps I could come in the morning and see you about it then,” said Lenox.
“Of course. Until the morning.”
“The morning. And I say, I am sorry. Thank you for stopping by.”
Hemstock had recovered from his surprise. “May be dry by then, eh? Or else we’ll soon be boarding the animals two by two. Any time after ten o’clock.”
He accepted a drink to see him on his way—a brandy, which vanished quickly—and left.
Deere, surprised, watched Lenox take his chair again. They were not quite close enough that he could ask why Lenox had declined. (If Jane were here, she would have done so without hesitation.) Instead they played out their muddled, unsatisfying third game.
The instant it was clear that Deere had won, the detective stood up.
“I’m sorry, Deere,” he said.
He called for Graham. “Sir?” said the valet—somewhere between a butler and a valet, really—appearing at the door.
“I’m sorry, Graham,” said Lenox, who was handing out apologies this evening at such a rate that he would soon run short of them, “but could you get the horses warmed after all? I think I must go to Paddington Station, or I won’t rest.”
“They are ready in front, sir.”
Lenox gave a look of surprise, then a rueful smile. “Thank you, Graham,” he said. “I suppose I am predictable after all this time under the same roof.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Just give me my hat and my cane then, if you don’t mind. I bet I can beat him there.”