“Who on earth is Mr. Rupert Clarkson?” Lenox asked.
She did not know. “I cannot say, sir. He offers his card.”
Lenox took this. “How strongly does he smell of drink?”
“Not at all, sir,” said the housekeeper indignantly. “Over the years, I have—”
“Is he selling any variety of unguent or tonic out of a briefcase? Play straight with me, Mrs. Huggins.”
Mrs. Huggins looked scandalized. “Indeed not, sir! He appears to be a respectable person—appears to be a—”
Lenox sighed dramatically, but the card bore out this informal assessment. It was a gentleman’s card, with a gentleman’s address near Oxford Street. “Ship him in, ship him in,” Lenox said, interrupting. “But don’t immediately start offering him roast beef sandwiches or he’s liable to stay forever.”
“As you please, sir.”
“I’ll ring if there’s anything we need.”
Almost all of Lenox’s guests fell into one of three categories, distributed into about equal parts: Elizabeth, Edmund, or Someone Else, generally a friend or relative. Five or six times Lenox had hosted small dinner parties, usually as a prelude to some evening out—a ball, for instance (there was one this week), or a concert. Two had been arranged expressly as a favor to his friend Hugh, who, having been for a long while ardently and unrequitedly in love with their friend Eleanor, and being of a poetic bent, had made all the arrangements on those occasions himself.
At any rate, none of his visitors were like the Mr. Rupert Clarkson who entered the room now: ancient, apparently foul tempered, and present without explanation.
He was for some reason in high dudgeon. “You’re Charles Lenox?” he asked with suspicion, as if someone had been passing bad checks under that name.
“I am, Mr. Clarkson,” said Lenox, rising. “I don’t believe we’re acquainted.”
Clarkson stared at him very baldly, toe to cap. “You’re young.”
Lenox was sorely tempted to reply You’re old, but that would have been unkind, and he was not an unkind person, even when the situation justified it. (“That will get you shot one day,” Edmund had predicted when Charles first moved to London, in their initial conversation about his decision to become a detective. “You’ll be in a pub, on the verge of arresting a murderer, and he’ll beg you to let him have a swift half of porter, and then while you’re paying for it, he’ll shoot you.” “Thank you for that cheerful prognostication,” Charles had said. He had added with some vehemence that he wouldn’t pay for the drink; though in his heart he knew that it was true he would let the fellow have his drink, his brother had got him at least that right.)
Instead of replying, he merely waited for Clarkson to state his business.
After a moment or two, the old man removed his hat and sat down, making himself very free with one of Lenox’s armchairs. “Please, sit,” Lenox said, settling down opposite him. “Can I help you in some way, Mr. Clarkson?”
“A private detective, the papers said you were.”
“Oh! The papers!”
“That’s what they said. Were they wrong?”
Lenox shook his head. “No. It’s true.”
Lenox’s mind had done a strange little flip. It was some push-me-pull-you of regret at having appeared in the paper, but tinctured with pride, and surmounted by an immediate excitement. Could this be a case, a veritable case?
“Much experience?” said Clarkson.
“A fair amount,” said Lenox blithely.
“Well, you’re what I need. A private detective. The police have no interest. And they shouldn’t have any interest, what’s more. No crime that I can discern has been committed.”
Lenox was curious. “I would be happy to hear more.”
“What are your fees?”
“Negotiable.”
“Would a pound a day do?”
It was something Lenox hadn’t even considered, especially; a privilege, he was conscious. Hugh was fearfully poor, a situation he had no expectation of changing, since his parents were also poor, unless he found his way into some viable concern.
“At the moment, Scotland Yard has retained my services. There’s also the matter of expenses.”
Clarkson took out a billfold. He put two ten-pound notes down on the side table. “When my credit has run out from these, you will let me know.”
“I haven’t accepted the case yet, Mr. Clarkson. Would you care to tell me about it?”
“Picky, are you?”
Lenox frowned. “Yes, as it happens, I am.”
Clarkson shifted his chair, and seemed to really look Lenox in the eye for the first time. He had close-cropped white hair and wore round spectacles. His clothes were expensive and new. His watch chain was gold. A rich fellow.
“I need help,” he said.
This piqued Lenox’s sympathy. “What kind of help?”
Clarkson leaned forward in his chair with both his hands on his cane, which rested on the floor and came up to about the level of his chin. “That’s more difficult to say.”
“Start wherever you like.”
Clarkson nodded. “Very well. A word about myself. I am an engineer, a retired engineer now. I was born in Shropshire and educated in London. I married early in life, but my wife died thirty years ago, of influenza. After that loss, my business became the primary interest of my life, and I did handsomely out of it. We’re a firm that designs agricultural equipment. We possess several dozen patents. Three years ago, I retired and sold out to two young men, though I still consult with them for an annual fee.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know any of this to be relevant, but it gives you a sense of my history.”
“Did you and your wife have children?” Lenox asked.
“No,” Clarkson said. “Nor did I remarry.”
“And your problem?”
Now Lenox’s interlocutor looked less certain of himself. “It’s—well, it’s this way, Mr. Lenox. I have a house in town here and another in Dulwich, where I often spend a day or two a week. It’s a good practical arrangement for a gentleman at my time of life.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
“I often entertain friends at both—Dulwich if they like fishing, London if they like dining, as those are my two chief interests in retirement. Wine, especially. I have several congenial former colleagues who were erstwhile active in the city, too, and share one or the other of these two interests.”
Lenox nodded. “I see.”
Lenox knew Dulwich, a village north of the city, picturesque and very green, with a brook running through it. It would have taken only fifty minutes or an hour to get there, though in its rural beauty, it felt as if it were much deeper into the countryside.
“I wouldn’t have said anything odd could happen to me, at my age. I’m seventy-one, I may add. My medical man pledges to me that I have the fitness of a fellow two decades younger. The fishing, I believe—and a temperate appetite.”
“And what’s happened?” Lenox pressed gently.
Clarkson looked discomfited. “It sounds mad, but I assure you I am in control of my faculties, Mr. Lenox.”
“Nothing could be plainer.”
The older man looked relieved, and it was clear that at least some of what Lenox had perceived as ill temper was nervousness. “Well, quite.”
“And so?” said Lenox.
At last Clarkson came to the point. “About a month ago, I was in Dulwich for four nights. I returned home to London, and the house was as I had left it, with one small exception. There was a five-pound note in an envelope on my desk.”
Lenox frowned. “That was not yours?”
“That was not mine.” Clarkson looked at him sharply. “I know what you’ll say—that I’m an old man, and forgot I had left it there. It’s not true. For one thing, I am very careful about money. For another, it was not my envelope—did not come from my stationery drawer. And most important: I returned to Dulwich the next week, and there, on my desk, was the same exact thing. A five-pound note in an envelope.”
“Was anything written on either of them?”
“No.” Clarkson reached into his jacket pocket. “Nor on any of the four subsequent envelopes. Six in all.”
He presented them to Lenox triumphantly. He took them. They were exactly as described: identical plain white envelopes, each with a single five-pound note in it and nothing more.
“That’s queer,” said Lenox. He looked up. “It’s rather a lot of money.”
“I know.”
Thirty pounds was around the annual salary of many servants, and would have gone very far indeed outside London in particular, where a handsome house could be had for seven or eight pounds a year.
“Do you have servants?”
“Yes, but they travel with me between Dulwich and London, except for the charwoman in each place, who only comes in for the day.”
“Was there any lock broken in either place? Or window? Anything missing?”
“No. I was very, very scrupulous in ascertaining to my own satisfaction that nothing was missing, no lock broken or window left open.” Lenox didn’t doubt that. Clarkson seemed generally scrupulous. “The last time I went to Dulwich, I left my valet behind to guard my home in London. He reported no intruder, nothing unusual. I asked him to wire me each evening with news of whether anything had appeared on my desk. Nothing had.”
“And?”
“And when I returned, there it was, the fifth time.”
“And this valet—”
“Ha!” said Clarkson, thumping his cane slightly. “I thought the same thing. He was the guilty party—if guilt you can call it. I therefore returned to London but left behind a young housemaid, Lily, whom I hired expressly from an agency in Dulwich for the week I would be away.”
“And?”
“Her experience was identical to my valet’s. The wire each evening. No intruders, no visitors. And there, when I arrived: the last envelope. This was yesterday.”
“Who has keys to your residences?”
“Only my servants and I.”
“I see.”
“I am going mad, Mr. Lenox. I have no idea what to do. I saw your name in the paper, and here we are.”
Lenox frowned. “These are deep waters, I fear, Mr. Clarkson.”
“Can you help me?”
Lenox had two ideas of what might be happening. One sinister. “I believe I can, yes. You will have to be patient, however, and for that reason you may want to seek assistance elsewhere. I am due in the country for a few days this week, and I am assisting the Yard, as you know.”
Clarkson looked incalculably relieved. “No, I leave it entirely in your hands. I am not someone money is winkled out of easily, but I would spend ten times what I am giving you to know what is happening, and how.” He caught himself. “Not that you have license—when I say ten times—but I see that your own circumstances seem comfortable, and I know you will not swindle me.”
“I am not engaged in the business primarily for financial reasons,” Lenox said stiffly. He stood. “Leave the envelopes with me, and do me the favor of writing down, here, on this pad, your two addresses, the names of all your household staff, and the names of your usual round of acquaintance—the people you see most often, the shops you frequent, that sort of thing. Anything that could conceivably be germane, however remote the likelihood may seem to you. Then we shall see what we can do.”