Leigh was not destined to make it back to France that evening.
Cohen arrived in Chilton Street. He hailed a wagon from the local station and they were transporting Rowan to the surgery at the Yard. All the blood had drained out of the man’s face; but he had recovered consciousness, more or less.
From his stretcher, Rowan made a final gambit, though it cost him an enormous amount of energy. “You mustn’t let Gerald Leigh claim credit for my work!” he cried. “He’s a thief!”
It was hard to say whose benefit this was for—the constable did not look like someone who kept closely abreast of the latest researches into the nature of microbial organisms—but perhaps Rowan only wanted to plant the seed.
Lenox wanted to harvest one, meanwhile. “You sent those letters with the farthings in them, Rowan?” he asked. “To Middleton? Two to me today?”
Rowan, gazing at him impassively from the stretcher, didn’t reply. But a swift flicker in his eyes, before they moved away, told Lenox the whole story. The first farthing that morning as a threat; the second to distract Lenox long enough that he could isolate Leigh and lure him away from the protection of the crowds at the Society.
After Cohen, Frost arrived. “What, then?” he asked. “Mr. Rowan? I’m baffled, I have to say.”
Lenox nodded. “As am I.”
“I have rarely met a more solicitous man. You believe he killed Middleton?”
“I do.”
They were in the solicitous killer’s drawing room, just beyond the front door of the residence. “Why?” Frost asked.
Lenox explained the scientific ambition which had driven Rowan to madness. “The proximity of this place to the central turf of the Farthings cannot be an accident,” he said. “It must be how they came to be involved as Rowan’s hired intimidators. He couldn’t have guessed that we would be able to identify Anderson and Singh from their descriptions so easily.”
“They ought to separate those two,” said Frost reflectively. “Too easy to spot when they’re together.”
“Don’t tell them and I won’t.”
Frost chuckled grimly. “No. Certainly not. And yet—I cannot imagine such a distinguished man living here! Who is this fellow?”
Across the room, Leigh, who was reading a book, glanced up. “Here you are,” he said.
The book was Who’s Who. Leigh had it open to Rowan’s entry.
ROWAN, Alexander George; born 1834, 2nd son of S. Wellington Rowan and of Elizabeth Wright, daughter of Windsor Wright of Calamine Manor, Hants.
Address: 28 Green Park Terrace, W.1.
Educated: Eton College; Peterhouse College, Cambridge.
Recreations: Historical research, botany, chemistry, hunting, chess.
Clubs: Beargarden; Boodle’s; Carlton; Oxford and Cambridge; White’s.
Arms: Ermine, 3 Rowan Trees Courant, argent; motto: Floreat Rowanensis.
Lenox read this out loud, and then said, “You can see that his listed address is in the West End. This was his private, secondary place.”
“Do you know anything of the family?” asked Frost.
“I have always understood him to be very well-born,” said Leigh. “I’m sure he was elected copresident of the Royal Society partly on the back of that public school accent I loathe so much.”
Lenox sighed. “Well—certainly the Wrights are well-known in Hampshire. They are connected to the Windsor earldom, which must be how his grandfather came by that name. I do not know anything of the Rowans, but all the signs are there. An aristocrat; pressed by his own ambition, and his own inadequacy, into this mad course. For more information I think we must speak to Bartram.”
That was not his first priority, however. He wanted above all to see Jane, and tell her she was safe.
As Frost and a small contingent stayed behind to investigate the contents of the house for information, Lenox wrapped himself in his coat. He had sent the fly and horse home long before, and wondered whether he would be able to get a cab—but Cohen, seeing the question in his face perhaps, informed him that there was a cabstand just around the corner.
“Shall I go with you?” Leigh inquired.
“By all means. Unless you want to stay here?” asked Lenox.
“I see no reason to.”
Frost, listening from across the room, only asked Leigh to remain in London so that they could speak with him again soon, and before long the school friends were in a rickety taxi bound for Grosvenor Square.
“Tell me something,” Lenox said as they started on their way. “Did you ever confide in anyone else but me about the Mysterious Benefactor?”
Leigh cocked his head, thinking. “I suppose I have over the years, three or four times. In any event I have never been secretive about it.”
“Any of them in the Royal Society?”
“No, I think not.” Leigh pondered this for a moment. “Wait—yes! I was once on a long trip to Java with a fellow named Milstone. A surgeon, an indifferent lepidopterist, too. We were the only two English-speaking men in a Dutch company—many long hours together, though each of us picked up enough of their language to make do at the officers’ supper table. I did tell him of it. I recall that distinctly.”
“And do you think he kept the secret?”
Realization dawned on Leigh. “Do you think he told Rowan?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was no great friend, Milstone, weak in many of the usual ways you find among seafaring gentlemen—a braggart, a drinker, lonesome at bottom. Decent company. I believe he’s in Plymouth now, grounded. But he might well have encountered Rowan in London a dozen times since our voyage.”
“I wonder, then,” said Lenox, “if Rowan has been inquiring after you since last fall, looking for a point of pressure to draw you outside of your Parisian university. That would explain how he knew that you might give credence to such a bequest.”
“Yes.”
“And of course, too, the use of that phrase: ‘a friend,’” said Lenox.
“How devilish. Yes, I would have told Milstone about those words. No doubt of it—they have always stayed in my mind.”
“Mine, too.”
London was quiet in the soft night, inwardly drawn, cold. When a case had concluded, Lenox always felt a certain melancholy. The futility of the crime was often part of it. The prospect of going without work, too. He dreaded his return to the papers and records of Chancery Lane. He half wondered if Dallington wanted a companion at his solitary vigil in Parliament.
But this was a happy day, he forced himself to think: Leigh was safe, Frost had agreed that the Farthings were both far too scared and too self-interested to pursue a vendetta outside of their own precincts, and especially with Rowan now decommissioned. Indeed, it wasn’t even clear whether they knew of Lenox at all. London was safe for him again.
At McConnell’s house, Lady Jane, whose face was stony when Lenox first appeared, greeted this news by relenting slightly: a promise kept! Leigh, for his part, immediately sat down cross-legged opposite Sophia and Georgiana McConnell and became engaged in the small construction project they had undertaken.
“This is the portcullis,” he said. “Very nicely made.”
“Yes, that’s the portus to be sure,” George agreed seriously.
Sophia glanced nervously at her older cousin, and Lenox felt a huge torrent of tenderness for his daughter, who didn’t want to reveal her ignorance of this piece of architecture. But Leigh had moved on, and soon the girls were explaining every element of their castle: where the princess lived; where the princess’s father; where the dragons were to be docked.
“I’m having a sister,” said George.
“Well, she won’t fit in this castle.”
The little girl nodded. “No.”
Standing above them, Jane said, “Incidentally, Mr. Leigh—where are you staying tonight?”
Leigh looked up. “I hadn’t thought of it. Not the place I stayed last night, anyhow. Nor the Collingwood.”
“You must stay with us, of course.”
Leigh looked prepared to offer some polite cavil, but at that moment Sophia leaned her head against his arm, absorbed in connecting two locking blocks, and he looked up, laughing. “Very well,” he said. “That would suit me perfectly.”