That evening, Lenox dined at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. He had invited his friend Courtenay, the one who had provided him with medical expertise on criminal matters and pointed out the textbooks that would offer more.
“I’m pleased we’re going to dine together,” said Lenox right at the outset, “but I must offer warning that I had a mercenary reason to ask you.”
“Did you? How mercenary?”
Lenox laughed. He liked the young, forthright, hardworking physician. His father was a clergyman in the Cotswolds. He was disappointed that his eldest son hadn’t followed him into the profession, but Courtenay was a scientist to his marrow, a positivist, a scion of the Enlightenment. The second half of the century would bring miracles, he’d told Lenox once, and he hoped to be in the first row for them.
“Not very. It’s about surgeons. I would like to know who the best are—the very best, regardless of whether they’re here or in … in Burma.”
“They’re not in Burma.” They were in the wide, red-carpeted entry hall of the private club, and started the climb up the steps to the dining room. Courtenay had been at Magdalene College, Cambridge, before moving to St. Bart’s. “But it depends what you mean by a surgeon.”
“Does it?”
As they sat down, Courtenay began to explain. “There are a great number of white-haired consulting surgeons whose opinion I would value very highly.”
“Such as?”
Courtenay named half a dozen. “I see. And what is the other kind of surgeon?”
Just then a waiter came with a mirror-topped trolley of decanters, offering drinks. Courtenay asked for a brandy and soda, and Lenox, though he had felt strongly that very morning that the best course would probably be to join one of those Christian societies you saw in Hyde Park crusading against the evils of alcohol, found it didn’t sound all that bad now that ten hours had passed, and asked for the same.
He also took a water with lemon, however. His friend Almondsley-West swore by the true cross that this was a panacea.
Courtenay took a draft of his drink once it had been poured, then put it down, pulling his cheeks back in a satisfied grimace, and said, “The other side of the coin is the actual surgery. For cutting—for sheer cutting—there are many excellent men, but only two at the very pinnacle.”
“Sheer cutting,” Lenox repeated.
“Yes, it’s different. You need someone about twenty-nine or thirty-three, in that range, to begin with. Not past forty-five or so certainly.”
“Why?”
Courtenay thought. “Hm. Well, at that age a chap has plenty of experience. But he’s still young enough to have his hands. Surgeons are like sportsmen, you see. They’re as good in their ways as the cricketers. When you watch them, their hands are half a step ahead of anyone else’s. It saves lives. I’ve seen it myself, or I would think it nonsense. And even beyond that, there are always a few whose hands are—it’s otherworldly, in a way—their hands are so good you can’t quite believe it.”
“Interesting. And do you have it?”
Courtenay shook his head ruefully. “About average, I’m afraid. Useful enough for ninety-eight of a hundred procedures, but—well, take one of these two fellows I mentioned, Anthony Callahan. Interesting tale, Callahan’s. He never even intended to be a physician. He was going to be a veterinarian.”
“A vet!”
“Yes. Comes from somewhere in the North. Great ruddy large fellow, solid working class. Had prepared himself quite happily to spend his life as a vet, administering to cows and horses.”
“What happened?”
“Ah, so. Vets are usually apprenticed. But Callahan, being fairly bright, came down to a two-year school in London for specialization. Sort of place that produces vets for Goodwood, you know—the best. If the Queen’s dog is ill, that kind of thing.”
“All right.”
“Well, on the first day of class, everyone received a frog to dissect. The professor was a medical surgeon. He stood there at the head of the gallery for the fifty minutes, instructing these thirty young men how to cut the frog.
“He taught the class quite normally. The instant the class was over, however, he pulled Callahan into a cab without saying anything, drove across the town, and walked them both into the office of the Dean of the Royal College of Surgeons. As Callahan tells the story, he thought he was in trouble. But it was quite the opposite. ‘The best two hands I’ve ever seen,’ the professor said. That was all. ‘The best two hands I’ve seen in my entire life.’”
Lenox whistled low. “My.”
“The rest is history. Now Callahan’s charging thirty pounds for an afternoon’s work. Still a lovely fellow, mind you. No airs to him.”
“You said there were two. Who’s the other?”
“A Scot named Thomas McConnell. Equally gifted, I think.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, people scrum to watch them.”
The menu lay forgotten in Lenox’s hands. “What do you mean?”
“There are seats in the theater. Generally not hard to come by. But for Callahan and McConnell, students line up an hour or two beforehand. I’ve done it myself. Even then it can be hit-or-miss. I saw Callahan do the prettiest excision of a diseased liver about a month ago, though, you wouldn’t have believed it.”
“I wouldn’t have had any idea what I was looking at.”
Courtenay grinned. “No, true.”
They ordered, and the conversation moved on to other matters. Courtenay was very good company, the second brandy and soda far silkier than the first. After they ate dessert, Lenox asked about petechiae and poisoning, the ghost of a self-doubt in his mind, but his friend confirmed his suspicions entirely, and then they spent a great deal of time talking in confidence about the case.
“Get me the coroner’s report on the first body if you like,” Courtenay said.
“I doubt it will even be ready. The backlog is disgraceful—eight weeks more often than not. But could there be anything to learn?”
“Oh, certainly, always.”
“I will try, then,” said Lenox. “I say, thank you.”
“Not at all.”
They lingered with cigars after supper, drinking port in the billiards room and watching as two older men cleansed the table of its red and white balls over and over, their expertise unerring. At last Courtenay and Lenox took a free table and tried their own impression of the feat; unconvincing. Not bad fun, though.
The next morning, very early, Lenox went to Harley Street, the slender thoroughfare where every doctor in England of consequence had an office, armed with a list of addresses. Like a broom salesman, he went door to door making his inquiries; by nine o’clock, he had booked two people to travel to Lenox House that week to see his father, on successive days.
One was named Sir Riley Callum; he had white hair, and fell into Courtenay’s category of consultants. The other was Thomas McConnell. (Callahan, fine anatomizer of frogs, was vacationing in Somerset for two weeks.) The idea was that if Callum advised cutting, McConnell would be there the next day to do it. Lenox saw neither of them—they each had secretaries. He met their outrageous prices for traveling so far and losing a day’s work without demur or negotiation.
He felt better when that had been done.
He thought back to seeing his brother the afternoon before. Their mother had already boarded the train home. They were in Edmund’s front room, which was strewn with souvenirs of the country—a horsehair chair, portraits of dogs they had known, walking sticks suitable for a heath but not a cobblestone street—all across it.
They knew the same information now, though they had received it in a sequence to which only Charles and his mother were privy.
Edmund had poured his brother a glass of ginger ale (at this point, a few hours before his dinner with Courtenay, Charles was still at the tail end of his previous night’s regrets) and come over to sit down, his face full of sadness and strength.
“What a dreadful hand to have been dealt,” he said. “For father, I mean.”
“Mother, too.” Lenox looked at his elder brother. “And you, you shall have to be the baronet.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Now it was Edmund’s turn to pause. “I wonder how he’ll take it.”
“Very calmly,” said Lenox without any doubt.
Edmund nodded. “Yes, he will, won’t he.”
Their father was a trim, crisp sort of person, with a clipped gray mustache and short hair, his wife balancing his occasional tautness with her sense of humor and creativity; they were a match.
The quality Lenox thought of as belonging to him more than any other was that he was true blue, down to his fibers. He was only ever himself. He would sooner have put his head beneath a guillotine than told a lie, or cheated a man. He was known across Sussex for his generosity—just as an example, he leased his lands for five lifetimes, generally, rather than three, and his tenants thus had a sense of continuity like few anywhere else—but it was also known that he would come down very, very hard on anyone who stepped out of line. He would evict a man in a day if the fellow didn’t live up to his standards—a thief, for instance, or anyone violent.
He had declined to come to London to get a second opinion on his condition, according to their mother. Charles had decided (and told his brother, over the ginger ale) that London would have to visit the country. He himself planned to go down to Lenox House that week, as soon as he had seen to one or two things about the case.