Lenox walked home. His path took him through Green Park, the quiet warmth of the sunlight falling through its trees. When he arrived, Graham met him at the door—uncanny, how he did that—and opened it, taking Lenox’s gloves, hat, and jacket.
“A pleasant morning, I trust, sir?” he asked.
“Very pleasant, thank you,” said Lenox. “Did you pull the newspaper clippings from April, by any chance?”
“I did, sir. They’re in the sitting room, along with the papers we clipped this morning. I have cleared away everything else except the Times.”
“Thank you.”
“You also have a wire from Lenox House, sir.”
“A wire?” Lenox frowned. “Let me see it, please. And bring me a cup of black coffee if you would.”
He needed his mind sharp, and he had consented to a festive glass of hot brandy and spice at the end of breakfast. “Right away, sir,” said Graham.
Loosening his tie a quarter inch, Lenox went and sat down at the round table by the window. He noticed from this higher vantage that the skies toward the east had darkened a little. It might well rain before long.
There were two neat stacks of paper at his chair. At the top of one was the telegram from home, with that morning’s clippings beneath it, and at bottom the Times; then, next door, the thick stack of irregularly shaped April clippings pulled from the filing cabinet, dating from the window of time when this perfect criminal claimed to have committed his perfect murder.
The first thing Lenox did was open the wire. Letters from Sussex took only around thirty-six hours to arrive, so a telegram was relatively rare.
This one brought welcome news rather than bad, thankfully.
Bound for London tomorrow STOP Wallace STOP Savoy as quick visit STOP arriving by 2:22 STOP dinner Edmund’s STOP will be by yours before to pick you up if you cannot come to me sooner STOP all love STOP Mother STOP oh and happy birthday my dear dear dear STOP Mother
This telegram would have been impenetrable to most, but it was clear as a June sky to Lenox. What it indicated was that his mother was coming here to see the family’s solicitor, Wallace; the family’s town house, which they kept open from September to April, wasn’t worth reopening for just a night or two, so she had taken a room at the Savoy; she would like to see Charles straight away, but understood that he might be occupied; the latest she would see him was in the hour before their family dinner at his brother’s house, but perhaps he would come to the Savoy earlier if it was convenient.
He was pleased at the news. He had plans to visit Lenox House in a few weeks, for the first weekend of summer, but he and his mother were, as both his brother and father had observed, like a pair of old shoes. He composed a quick reply saying that he would meet her at Charing Cross. Then he tore the wire in two and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.
That done, he turned his attention to the articles he and Graham had clipped from the morning’s papers.
Nine of their ten selections had overlapped, a high number. Graham had noticed something he hadn’t, however—a small article, four paragraphs, about a sailor who had failed to report for duty in Plymouth, a notable occurrence only because he was a generally very reliable hand, a bo’sun with nine years aboard the Culloway who had never before failed to report.
Lenox wondered why he had missed it, then realized, looking at Graham’s careful notation, that it was because it had been on a page with a larger story, about a crime in the West End. He twisted his lip in disappointment at himself.
On the other hand, it meant that he had spotted one article that Graham hadn’t.
He looked to see which—ah, the dog thefts in Parkham Court. No, Graham wouldn’t have considered that notable (dog theft was very common), but Lenox liked anything strange, anything aslant of common experience. In this case, slight differences: These dogs were all domestic, some of them quite doted upon. That was rather out of the ordinary run of things. The clipping would go in today’s file, and he would remember it as he tried to weave, in his mind, thread by slender thread, a tapestry that contained a full picture of this great city’s crime. Each article they cut out was another thread, its own unique shade. The names of streets as they recurred, which neighborhoods saw which types of crimes, the first and second and third most common ways thieves were caught.
He wanted to know all of it; he was young and ambitious, and very certainly determined to know all of it.
Graham returned with a cup of coffee on a silver tray. Lenox thanked him and, taking a sip, leaned back in his chair. The rain had just started, light and steady. He gazed through the window for a moment.
Then he looked up. “Well, Graham,” he said, “what about this perfect crime? The letter from the Challenger?”
“I was not able to make a connection based upon the articles from April, sir. Perhaps you will perceive something that I have not, however.” Graham reached down and arranged the array of clippings that was on the table from one month previous, seventeen in all. “The single prominent murder was the Singley one, sir.”
“That,” Lenox said distractedly.
The Singley case had been solved immediately; half a dozen witnesses who had seen a baker in Bromley beat his next-door neighbor on the street over a matter of honor. The neighbor had lingered thirty hours on this side of the veil before succumbing (the papers never used any other word) to his injuries.
Lenox skimmed the remaining clippings. None of them recorded anything close to as memorable as an unsolved murder.
“Very little in that period, sir, as you can see,” said Graham.
Lenox leaned back, thinking. “Hm.”
“Perhaps it really was a perfect murder, sir. Entirely unremarked, thought to be a natural death even.”
“Interesting.” Lenox sighed. “Or else of course it’s the editor of this reckless newspaper stirring the pot, hoping to give everyone a fright.”
“A likelier possibility, no doubt, sir.”
Lenox was unsure. There had been something just authentic about the letter, something sinister. On the other hand, he might have been willing that into existence, since he was desperate for work to do. “Ah well.”
Then he remembered something, though.
What was it? He narrowed his eyes, thinking.
It was the Singley manslaughter that had called it to mind. There had been something else around that time, something—
He jumped out of his chair, pushing it back. “Graham!”
“Sir?” said Graham.
But Lenox, wasting no time on a reply, hurried across the room to the filing cabinet. “The letter was printed today, May second,” he said, riffling through papers quickly. “But that doesn’t mean it was sent yesterday. We have no idea when it was sent. There was no date on it.”
“Sir?”
“We may have pulled the articles from the wrong time, since we assumed it was sent yesterday, sheerly because it was printed today. Yes, look.”
Graham leaned over Lenox’s shoulder. “What is it, sir?”
Lenox held up a clipping, waving it in his gripped hand. “March the twenty-ninth. Here it is. We both clipped it. Of course, given the circumstances. Walnut Island.”
Graham’s eyebrows rose. “Walnut Island.”
Lenox nodded grimly. “If the letter is referring to this, it means we are already three days past the date the letter was sent, perhaps longer.”
The meaning of this dawned on Graham. “Oh no.”
“Yes. If any of this is real, a second murder may be committed at any moment. Come, get your jacket, Graham, and I’ll pull all the files on Walnut Island. We must fly.”