The hour had just ticked over to three, and Lenox found that he was hungry. He and Leigh had been explaining to Polly and McConnell, as succinctly as possible (which was not very) the history of the Mysterious Benefactor. He let Leigh carry on and popped out to the main room of the offices to hail one of the young boys who worked there, handing him a few coins and asking him to go out and fetch sandwiches for the four of them.
As he returned to the meeting room he saw that Leigh and McConnell had again been diverted into a scientific discussion, as Polly, ever assiduous, looked over her notes.
Seeing he had returned, she asked, “What were the three candidates’ names?”
“Brewster, Townsend, Ashe.”
Leigh looked up and shook his head. “Brewster died many years ago. It can’t have been him.”
“Your uncle, then, Ashe, and Townsend,” said Polly.
Leigh looked away. “Yes.”
Sitting, Lenox glanced at his own notes. “Robert Roderick was your uncle’s name?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Leigh again.
“What was your mother’s Christian name, if I might ask?”
“Regina,” said Leigh. “Why?”
“Oh—only trying to remember.”
But that wasn’t quite true. He could tick off one mystery: RSR, the embossed seal on the envelope of Leigh’s letter. It must have belonged to his mother. No profit in pointing out this memento of Leigh’s grief, however.
“Well, then,” said Polly. “What time did you leave Middleton’s offices two days ago?”
“At half past twelve. After that I went to the British Museum. It was upon leaving the museum that I was attacked.”
Leigh explained that he had dined with an acquaintance from the staff and then stood politely for a while before Lord Elgin’s marbles, while this friend deplored the Greeks who were so importunately demanding their return. (It would all be settled very soon, at least, the friend had added.) He estimated that he had left the British Museum at three.
“It was still light out?” Lenox asked.
“Yes, just. I walked through Bedford Square. It was very empty—that was the day the snow began—and very austere, with nobody about and the trees utterly bare, you know. It saved me, because I could see my assailants stalking me from a few hundred yards off, couldn’t possibly have missed them, didn’t like their look at all. And so I turned toward Oxford Street, where I knew it would be busy.”
“Why did you think that they were after you?” Polly asked.
“It was something in their step. You would have thought so, too. And of course Bloomsbury is not an altogether savory area. At first I assumed they were thieves.”
Lenox nodded thoughtfully. “They caught up with you?”
“Yes. It was very near-run—I was half sprinting down a little alleyway and they nearly had me by the back of the coat when I stepped out into Oxford Street, and suddenly we were surrounded by people. It was a jarring moment. One of the two fellows gave me a hard shove anyway, and I stumbled down into the gutter. There was a commotion. They had vanished by the time I regained my feet, though it was only an instant. I looked around for them but they were long gone.”
“And how do you know they weren’t simply thieves?”
“Well, so, it was this way. After our little chase I was shaken, but not too badly. I’ve run into ugly customers over the years, you know—anyone who has been aboard a ship has—and after I had dusted myself off it didn’t seem so bad as all that. I returned to my hotel, dined very pleasantly with my friend Lovell, then turned in and had a good night’s sleep.
“The next morning I was to return to Middleton’s office to sign a few more documents he had prepared—he wanted to know which bank would receive the money, when I could take receipt of it, et cetera, et cetera.
“As my cab pulled up to his street, though, I spotted none other than the two chaps who’d come so close to setting about me the day before.”
Lenox raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”
“Yes, ‘ah,’ you describe my thoughts to a very nice exactitude, Charles.”
“What did you do?”
“I ordered the cab to proceed on its way without a stop, needless to say. I returned to my hotel. That was when I wrote you.”
“You were interrupted in the middle of writing the letter, though.”
“Yes, I had a caller. They left the name ‘Smith.’ I asked for a description, and it matched one of the two fellows too finely to be anyone else. As you can imagine, I was not eager to receive him. I finished writing to you, gave the letter to the bellman to post, and escaped through the back door. Or so I thought.”
“Only thought?”
“In fact the other fellow was waiting there by the door for me—with a knife out. He came after me, hell-for-leather. I swear there was an unnatural ferocity in his eyes. If I hadn’t thought quickly we wouldn’t be speaking right now.”
“Why a knife and not a gun?” asked McConnell.
“Noise,” said Lenox. “There are more bobbies than civilians in that part of the West End. Leigh, my goodness! What an ordeal. This was when you went to take cover at the coffeehouse?”
“Precisely. I paid a passing boy to take word to Middleton that I had witnessed two ugly-countenanced fellows outside of his offices and that I would prefer to conduct the rest of our business by the mails, thought of writing to you but didn’t want to draw attention to your house—they already had the solicitor’s address, obviously—and then retired to the coffeehouse.
“At first I thought I would attempt to see you. But more and more this morning it has struck me that I had better just go. They keep a Bradshaw’s at the counter of Mr. Covington’s establishment, and just before you came I was going to consult it to find the next train that departs for Dover, and thence to France. It was a relief to contemplate leaving all of this terrible business behind me. That knife will live in my nightmares forever. It came within the width of a—of a microbe, of my eye.”
Lenox leaned forward, frowning. “Did you not consider alerting the police to your situation?”
“I tried! With two constables I tried. Both of them moved me on. So I gave up.”
It was true that Leigh, with his tobacco-stained fingers, in scruffy collar and grizzled coat, was not a classic picture of respectability. The average London policeman heard twenty outlandish tales a day, the majority of them designed to distract him from his beat so that some other crime could be peaceably conducted nearby.
“Has anything strange happened to you in the last few months, may I ask?” Lenox inquired.
“Nothing other than this inheritance.”
“Can you think of anyone who might wish you harm?”
“Nobody at all,” said Leigh.
“Except perhaps the person who would have twenty-five thousand pounds were it not for your existence,” said Polly.
“Correct.”
“And these two men—describe them, please, if you would,” said Lenox.
“One was an Englishman, I think, and one, I believe, an Indian.”
“An Indian.”
“At any rate an Easterner.”
“Dressed in Oriental clothes?” Polly said.
“Quite the reverse—he wore a highly respectable suit and a bowler hat. He might have been a clerk in Mr. Middleton’s office.”
“And the other?” Lenox said.
“The thing that stands out about him to me is that he had flaming red hair, and a beard to match it. A short beard.”
Polly put down her pen and glanced at Lenox. He returned the look, but with caution in his eyes: better not to say anything right away.
Still, they both understood now that Leigh’s position was more precarious than they had realized. These men were known to them, unless there had been a very profound coincidence. Anderson and Singh, they were called. Not pleasant chaps.
Lenox asked him to elaborate. Leigh had the scientist’s natural attentiveness to details of appearance and typology, which made him a useful forensic witness. He remembered several small points that few witnesses would have—accent, shoes, even the length and style of the knife, which Lenox, who had made a point of studying such things, immediately recognized as being the standard blade issued by most army regiments.
As Leigh was searching for any last fleeting niceties within his memory, McConnell stifled a yawn. Lenox, remembering that the doctor had been awake all night at work at the hospital, urged him to go home and sleep.
“No, no. I’m wide awake. But tell me, Mr. Leigh—would you consider taking up residence in my guest room? My own wife and child are away in the country, snowbound, and I even have a small laboratory. I know you would be comfortable, and there would be numerous people about the place.”
“It is very kind in you, sir,” Leigh said, dropping into the earnest and old-fashioned Cornwall language just as he occasionally had at Harrow, “but I mean to stick to my plan. Straight back to France, where nobody has ever tried to stab me with a knife. Long may that record remain unblemished.”
Polly frowned, pushing a wisp of light brown hair behind her ear. “Anybody who hopes to murder you in London will hardly be deterred by a channel twenty-five miles across.”
Leigh smiled. “That’s only to Calais, or Lille at best. Then they have to get to Paris.”
“I only—”
“No, I understand. And I thank you. My hope is that by rejecting the inheritance I can put an end to the whole business. I have more than enough to live on—and they are very generous to scientists in France. I want for nothing. Excepting good tea, perhaps.”
And excepting a new jacket, Lenox thought, and felt a surge of affection for his friend.
He was just about to tell Leigh who Anderson and Singh were, the Indian gentleman and his red-haired companion stalking him, when Dallington came in. He was holding a pair of brown gloves and brushing snow off the shoulders of his coat.
“They said you were in here! Hello, McConnell, capital to see you. And who is this?” Dallington put out his hand for Leigh, who shook it. “Not the internal revenue, I hope? Ha, only joking. I’m sure we’re quite paid in. Polly, we are paid in, aren’t we?”
“This is my friend Gerald Leigh,” Lenox said. “He’s found a bit of trouble.”
Dallington’s face fell. “Oh, dear,” he said. “You’re in the right place at least. Welcome. But I say, Lenox, Polly, did you hear the news down on the street? A shooting, only a few blocks away. He’s dead, the poor soul, in his own chambers.”
“Who was it?”
“A solicitor, according to the fellow who sells whelks on the corner.” Dallington squinted, trying to remember the name. “Middleton, I think it was?”