What would he be like, Leigh, thirty years on?
Their friendship had begun when they were schoolboys at Harrow. In this age that valued education so highly, there were now a dozen or so great British public schools, among them famous ones such as Charterhouse, Westminster, Rugby (which had already lent its name to a sport), Shrewsbury, and Wellington—but two stood preeminent still, Harrow and its infamous rival, Eton, each ancient, each situated upon beautiful grounds, each a nursery for the aristocracy.
Eton was the more hallowed of the two, Harrow the more sophisticated and smarter. Each was snobbish about the other. The nation and the empire bent the knee to both—one needed only look at their cricket match, the oldest in the world, played each year since 1805 upon the hushed springy turf of Lord’s Cricket Ground, with the batting and bowling skills of carbuncular little boys drawing, for a day, the attention of an entire globe and its news services.
Harrow lay ten miles of rural road north of London, a miniature Oxford. Lenox’s family had always gone to Harrow, and despised Eton, and his older brother, Edmund—now Sir Edmund, having ascended to a baronetcy upon their father’s death—had cut the trail there ahead of him, smoothing Charles’s way into a group of amiable fellow students, most neither too brilliant nor too athletic nor too brutally arrogant. It had been a soft transition from home.
Not quite so for Leigh. He had been one of the school’s strangest fellows, and by some stretch Lenox’s most unusual friend. Also one of his dearest, however, even if the two had barely spoken in the decades since their long afternoon rambles across the countryside.
Leigh had been famous within the houses for the most part as a singularly awful student. Indeed, it was commonly accepted that he was one of the worst students in the history of Harrow School. That was never thought to be an exaggeration: The beaks said it themselves.
A dimwit, though, was one thing—plenty of space remained for them at the school, if they had other qualities. Half of the education was Latin or Greek, and the boys understood intuitively that Latin and Greek did not form half of the sum total of life’s potential achievements. There were young ladies, for one thing; the school nurse, Miss Farquhar; and cricket, for another.
But an awkward boy was another kettle of fish. Leigh had been shy, undersized, hopeless at sport, and had had an unfortunate, fatal tendency to color brightly the instant anyone mocked him.
On top of that he had arrived late. The four forms at Harrow, from youngest to oldest, were numbered Third to Sixth, though by common parlance they were called Shells, Removes, Fifth, and Sixth. Leigh hadn’t come in until Removes, the second year, after all the friendships of Shells had already been consecrated by the things that tie boys at boarding school together so tightly: rising on miserable winter mornings to trudge to chapel, unfair canings, shared sweets from home, minor triumphs on the game fields, late-night chatter between beds.
If Leigh had been either a sportsman or a swot, he would have found his group, no doubt. But neither had been the case.
And so he had been utterly alone for the entirety of his first year at Harrow; alone in a way it is possible to be only among four hundred other fellows of your age when you are fourteen, and even the teachers despair of you. So alone that he hadn’t even been among the regular targets of the older, bullying chaps, because he was such a diffident specimen. They gave him the occasional jibe—his background was undistinguished for their taste—but for the most part he was simply undetectable, isolated. Nobody.
How, then, had Lenox found himself friends with Leigh, for the five months the latter had ultimately survived into Fifth Form?
Thereby hung an hour’s tale.
As Lenox sat huddled upon the bench of his carriage all these years later, wind slicing remorselessly through its smallest points of contact with the outdoors, like sad memories late at night, and Rackham up on the box guiding the horses toward the Collingwood, he brought Leigh into his mind.
Trouble.
They approached the hotel swiftly, the horses moving well over the untrammeled snow. Two men in greatcoats stood outside of the Collingwood’s brightly twinkling glass doors. Both stepped forward to the carriage as it pulled to a stop.
Lenox, after he had climbed down the two weak steps, called up, “Give me five minutes, Rackham, don’t stable them if you can help it. I’ll send someone out if I mean to stay longer.”
The driver touched his cap. “Aye, sir.”
As he entered the hotel, Lenox felt an immediate and welcome warmth, originating from the enormous fireplace, taller than the average man, which stood next to the stairwell. Everything was clean and comfortable at the Collingwood, shined wood and shined brass, a fine series of portraits of racehorses along one wall. None of the dust of an old coaching inn. There was a splendid oceanic crimson rug across the whole stone floor. A few discreet groupings of armchairs and sofas were ranged upon it.
Hard to picture Leigh here, Lenox thought again. He had never been overly solicitous of his own personal comforts. Nor had he been rich.
Lenox approached the hotel’s counter, which was spaced evenly with small brass bells. There was no occasion to use them, however, since a nattily dressed young man, one hand resting on an open ledger, had been observing him since he entered.
“Good evening, sir,” he said as Lenox approached. “May I help you?”
“I hope so. My friend Gerald Leigh is staying here. I wondered if you might ring up to him for me.”
Looking as if he wished for no more from life than that he might, the clerk shook his head, rueful. “Mr. Leigh is out, sir.”
Lenox frowned, wondering if they had crossed each other’s paths, and Leigh was at Hampden Lane after all. “Did he leave just now?”
“This morning, sir. I would be happy to take a message for him on your behalf.”
Behind the young man there was a large wall hived with pigeonholes, some full, most empty, each with a number upon it and about half with keys hanging from hooks above them. “I would appreciate it. You may tell him that Charles Lenox called. Here is my card.”
The clerk accepted it. “Of course, sir.”
He transcribed the name, tore a page theatrically from a small notepad, folded it, and placed it along with the card in the pigeonhole belonging to room 29.
Where faithfully sat, Lenox saw with a sinking in his heart, his own letter from earlier that day. He could have recognized the dark blue trim of his envelopes from a hundred paces.
“Can I ask what time Mr. Leigh left this morning, if you were here?” he said to the clerk.
“I was, sir. It was just after eleven o’clock.”
“Alone, was he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you are absolutely certain he hasn’t returned? I only ask because I was meant to dine with him.”
“All but certain, sir. His room key is still behind the desk. I could check his room, however, if you liked?”
Lenox nodded. “I would be extremely grateful.”
The clerk gave a signal to the bellman by the door that he would be gone a moment, took the key to 29, then left. He returned very quickly, without ever giving the slightest impression of haste—very good at his job, indeed. “He is out, sir.”
“But his things are still there.”
“Oh, yes, sir. He is booked with us for several more nights.”
Lenox thanked his stars that this clerk’s professionalism didn’t make him closemouthed—but then, he didn’t know he was speaking to a detective, and Lenox was a gentleman and had given his name. “Thank you very much. Please do tell him I’m sorry to have missed him.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Lenox went back out to his waiting carriage in an unsettled state of mind. As Rackham led them slowly away from the hotel, Lenox thought that he wished he knew more of Leigh’s habits, his circle of acquaintance.
He was briefly distracted from these contemplations, as the carriage turned onto Hampden Lane, by an unfortunate list in its posture. Lenox tapped hard on the roof of his small chamber to wake Rackham up—the driver being an unrepentant dipsomaniac, who had concealed within his cloak and breeches at all times, like a pirate with never fewer than thirteen knives stowed away upon his person, various bottles of alcohol. He was completely safe from the sack, too, because he had once, his most glorious moment, flown into action when some scoundrel tried to rob Lady Jane as she stepped from the carriage, thrashing the fellow and then standing on his supine form until a constable arrived.
“Thank you, Rackham,” said Lenox dryly when they were in front of the house again.
“Not at all, sir.”
Having survived this ride and come into his front hallway again, Lenox took off his cloak and hat in a brooding mood. Kirk greeted him; Lenox returned his word with a clipped hello, then went off to his study. He sat there late into the night, nursing a glass of ruby port, without hearing anything from Leigh.
The next morning he awoke early, dressed quickly, and set out into the streets on his own, stalking heavily through the drifts of snow upon the pavement. It would be quicker to walk back to the Collingwood himself than to wait for the horses.
On the corner of Hampden Lane was Pargiter, the newsman. “Out again after the blizzard?” Lenox asked.
“I was out yesterday, wasn’t I?”
“Were you, though? I’m amazed.”
“Sold seven bleeding papers in two hours and called it quits.” Pargiter shook his head moodily. “Even the regulars not about.”
Lenox smiled. “I’ll take the four usual, at least. Anything worth reading?”
“No,” said Pargiter firmly, pulling copies of each of the morning newspapers from his small wooden stand, which had two wheels. He couldn’t read and was deeply biased against the practice. Somehow he always knew the contents of the papers, however. “A little pother at the Parliament, that’s your lead in three of’m. Broken window. Vandals suspected, ’n’all.”
Lenox frowned. That was a matter of some professional interest to him, as it happened. “I didn’t see it in the Times.”
That was the paper he subscribed to, and Pargiter shook his head. “I always tell you if you want the final edition you have to come here, Mr. Lenox. I’ve told you that up and down, you know.”
Lenox handed over a few small coins. “So you have, yes. I have myself alone to blame.”
He scanned the headlines as he walked toward the Collingwood, then, realizing that he was cold, folded the papers over and began to walk more briskly. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the hotel. Despite being heavily enfolded, gloved, booted, scarved, he was freezing. It gave him a new feeling of tolerance for Pargiter’s habitual gloominess.
He entered the hotel. There was a small group of gentlemen in the armchairs this time, each with a pipe and a cup of tea, each positioned comfortably behind a newspaper.
None of them Leigh, as Lenox took in at a glance. He approached the desk—a different clerk this morning—only to perceive, with an unnerving jolt of recognition, that his letter was still waiting in the pigeonhole of room number 29. The key was there, too. Apparently Leigh hadn’t returned to his hotel since writing to his old friend for help.