By the first of April, Lord John Dallington was once more able to walk.
Not well, however. “Nor will he ever,” said McConnell. He and Lenox were passing along Carlton Terrace, with its beautiful wisteria-lined alabaster houses, sunstruck on this mellow morning, on their way to have lunch at Lenox’s club. “The left leg took too brutal a splintering.”
“Will he be able to run again?”
“No.”
That was a hindrance to a detective—and to a person, of course. “And yet he looks very well.”
There were still ugly raised scars on Dallington’s hands and arms, as well as one that ran up the back of his neck—and no doubt on his legs, too. But his face, always so alert and youthful, had mostly healed.
It was true on the other hand that it looked dimmer now, less full of light. His betrothal to Polly had been announced in the Times, a date set that summer for them to be wed at Marchmain House, and yet despite this good fortune, Dallington’s manner seemed singularly joyless to Lenox these days. He had no interest in work, though he offered his dutiful thoughts on the cases Lenox tried to interest him in, and smiled with inauthentic enthusiasm when one suggested that he would return soon.
McConnell, perhaps reading Lenox’s thoughts, said, “There is always some period of despondency to be endured during such a recuperation.”
“Is this the length you would expect?”
The doctor frowned, his long strides slowing slightly. “Perhaps. Perhaps it is slightly longer. I am not yet worried.”
After they had eaten, Lenox asked McConnell if he wished to come and see Leigh. He had that morning returned from a week in Cambridge—of the two universities the more scientific in its strengths, whereas Oxford’s lineage was in politics, letters, classics, history—where he had been meeting with colleagues. McConnell was very happy to say yes; and inquired, how did it go with Rowan?
Strangely, was the answer.
A city by all rights ought to spread rumors like fire, indiscriminately and evenly, without regard for whom they harmed or what they wrought. There was the famous story of the Dublin theater owner who bet a friend he could coin a new word: He wrote a random one on a few hundred pieces of paper and had his lads spread them all over town, waiting to see when the neologism would return to his ears. It had done so within a few hours—people thinking it was some kind of test, which was how the word, “quiz,” had earned its meaning.
Rowan had shown that he had a bizarre immunity to that kind of circulation. It was a skill, perhaps; within the Royal Society, by all accounts, he was considered a wronged man, and in London at large there was some vague sense of injustice surrounding his case. He maintained his innocence steadfastly, and had many friends who did the same—and above all, Lenox suspected that some of the great fortune he held within his control, the one that extended so far and wide over the East End’s racked tenements, was being used to defer unfavorable coverage in the newspapers and encourage favorable. He had attempted to find some explicit evidence of this, without luck. One of those conspiracies of omission, instead, which are so difficult to prove.
Nor had he and Frost been able to establish any definitive link between Rowan and Middleton. And both men had a great, great deal of other work to draw their attention away.
Thus Lenox and Leigh were in the bizarre position of knowing that a man who had held them at gunpoint might be restored without comment to his prominent life, and the esteem of civic opinion.
“He has not even been unnamed as president of the Society,” Lenox told McConnell.
“Has he not?”
“Duties suspended temporarily. We could not wish for a better ally than Mr. Bartram—though perhaps a more prestigious one.”
McConnell shook his head. “How mad it is.”
The trial was to begin in a week. Lenox’s hope was that the eye of the journalists must finally be drawn, the case too thrilling to ignore. But it was a slender reed.
They found Leigh at home in Hampden Lane. There was a small, dark room toward the west side of the ground floor, never of much use to anyone, which had gradually become his personal study in the last months. He popped his head out and greeted them cheerfully.
“Hullo!” he said. “Come in here a moment, would you?” The little room had a small yellow lamp lit, playing lazily over the book-covered wooden desk, and there was a comforting aroma of dry tobacco—a little ship’s room, within the airy house. “Sit, if you would.”
The months Leigh had been in London had been special ones. Friendship had always been very dear to Lenox; to have a friend so close at hand, and one who loved Jane and Sophia too, who was excellent company but never obtrusive. Occasionally he had asked if he was in the way, but had gracefully accepted their word that he was not, and soon become a thoroughgoing member of the little household.
As for he and Lenox, they had spent many afternoons of the dawning spring in long walks together, prolonged lunch hours for the detective. Even in the densest block of the city, Leigh could spot a bird or a little shoot in the concrete, and name it, give its history—a naturalist to his bones. It reminded Lenox of their old walks at school. There was a fine joy in learning things like the ones Leigh taught him, which he never otherwise would have known.
All of this left Lenox’s decision to investigate the MB a little uneasy in his mind—but only, he thought, defensively perhaps, because the result had been so personal. He remained unsure of how to disclose what he had learned to his friend.
In the study, Leigh handed Lenox and McConnell each a small pamphlet bound in plain brown paper. He had a stack of them. Lenox frowned. “What is that—have you taken to tracts? I am happy with the church I attend.”
Leigh laughed. “No. A solution to a more earthbound problem.”
Lenox opened the pamphlet and read through it, first with some confusion, and then with a growing sense of—of what? He was impressed; satisfied; and relieved. Also slightly overawed.
He and McConnell had apparently apprehended the document’s meaning at the same time, because McConnell looked up just then. “Goodness me, Leigh,” he said.
The scientist glanced at Lenox. “Charles?”
“We need to go and see Rowan.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But I wanted to wait until I spoke to you.”
“Has anyone else seen this?”
“Only Bartram. He helped.”
“I can’t imagine the effort this must have taken.”
Leigh shrugged. “I enjoy work.”
“But what about the microbe?”
Leigh smiled. “The microbe has been taking care of itself for quite a while. Anyhow I find that my interest in it has waned, somehow, since this whole sordid business began.”
McConnell looked alarmed. “I hope that isn’t true. Your work is indispensable.”
“The cemeteries are full of indispensable men, they say. In fact I find that I have a very great yen to return to Cornwall.”
“Cornwall?” said Lenox.
“I’ve been daydreaming about the birds and plants of my youth. Birds especially. I remember them very vividly. I can’t imagine there is much left to discover there—but then, I don’t pine for that particular glory, and it would give me pleasure to conduct my own investigation. Count eggs, track mating patterns. Who knows what I might find. It has been quite a time since I was in England for long.”
Lenox said, guardedly, “Have you heard from there recently? Cornwall?”
Leigh smiled, looking at him directly. “Yes, this morning. From an old family solicitor.”
McConnell, unaware of the import of this last interchange, said, “Shall we go to Newgate and visit Mr. Rowan?”
“Yes,” Leigh said immediately. “It is only fair to show him the pamphlet.”