Lenox had begun to carry the little soft leather book of quotations from Shakespeare with him everywhere, and as his hansom cab drove toward Dorset House, he opened it.
Lord, what fools these mortals be.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Well, even he knew that one. He closed the tiny oracle and placed it back into his breast pocket.
Bonden had been in possession of only the most basic facts. The fatal shot had been fired at five in the morning, before first light, and though Dorset had called a doctor instantly, Craig had died after an hour’s struggle. Bonden had come west to tell Lenox—he was apparently an early riser—and ask if he wanted to meet the next day or cancel altogether.
“Tomorrow will do, or sooner if I can get free,” said Lenox. His feeling was that finding the missing painting might yet be very important.
“I will be at the Dovecote tomorrow morning,” Bonden said. “I may be there later today, though I’m not sure.”
“Very good.”
Now Lenox rode in solitary silence toward the river, contemplating this strange case. The streets on a Monday morning were crowded with carriages, and passage was slow—so slow that innumerable vendors had time to approach Lenox’s open window. Whelks, spice cakes, jellied eel, lemonade, plum duff: He declined all of these as politely as he could. Such carts were the cafés of perhaps a third of London’s population, who lived quite poor, and even the remaining two-thirds, up in all likelihood to the Duke of Dorset, partook of their wares at least occasionally.
At last, Lenox assented to a small boy who was selling ginger beer, and whose clothes told against his business being very successful, poor lad. He paid and tipped, then took the stone bottle and drank it—refreshing, actually, sparkly and bittersweet. The boy followed the carriage at a slow trot and took the bottle back with his thanks when Lenox was done.
They pulled clear of a traffic mixup (a “jam,” as the younger constables sometimes called it, because it was so sticky) involving two hansom cabs that had locked axles, and soon enough they were at the great palatial house of Dorset, overlooking the Thames, whose austerely beautiful alabaster front now seemed a marmoreal sepulcher, ghostly and hant.
What could Lenox recall of Craig? He was of middling height; very strong; a faded Scottish accent; curt, never even marginally ingratiating. Shot! He recalled the duke’s tense, nervy state the day before.
There were two unmarked police carts in front of the house, a far cry from most crime scenes, no doubt out of deference to the augustness of this one. Near one of them was Sir Richard Mayne, who had the grim and forbidding look of a powerful man in the last place he wishes to be.
He saw Lenox first and came to the hansom as Lenox was paying the driver. “Exeter would call you a bad penny.”
“What would he call Dorset?”
Mayne jerked his head. “The duke is expecting you. I’ve never seen anything less like an arrest, I must tell you.”
In the entranceway they met Ward, who was ashen. “Hullo, Ward,” Lenox said sympathetically.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Ward, shaking his head. “Truly I don’t. They were as thick as could be, Craig and the duke. One soul in two bodies, I sometimes thought.”
“I wondered if it was an accident?” Lenox said. “The duke seemed wound tight.”
Ward shook his head. “We don’t know. Last night the duke had had all the portraits in his study screwed into the wall by one of the footmen. Then he hid in his closet, sleeping on a chair. Craig was in the process of unscrewing one when the duke woke up.”
“Craig!” Lenox said.
In a way this attempted theft was a bigger surprise than the valet being dead. But Mayne nodded, the three of them in a tight circle just inside the front door. “The duke says he took Craig for a thief. Shot him right away.”
This changed the complexion of the case completely. “Good heavens.”
Just before he had come here, Lenox had quickly charged Graham with the task of finding out whatever he could about Craig—Alexander Arnold Craig, as Lenox had made note of his name when he had asked for details about all of the duke’s staff.
Now he was doubly curious what Graham would uncover.
“The duke is distraught,” Ward said, “though I cannot tell whether he is more upset about the betrayal or the death.”
Lenox kept a dark thought to himself; it was the second time the Duke of Dorset had shot someone accidentally—or “accidentally.” Pendleton’s son had been first.
“Where is the duke now?” Lenox asked.
Sir Richard, leading them through a vast and beautiful drawing room, answered. “In the family’s private drawing room, with his wife and his children. We are taking him into custody shortly, but we permitted him time to shave and dress.”
“Good of you,” said Lenox.
“Nice to be a duke,” said Mayne. “He has also asked for a private word with you should you come. Which you have.”
Lenox glanced around the room, filled with delicate porcelain, medieval tapestries, satinwood side tables, and example after example of fine old Louis XIV furniture—a thin-boned Mazarin desk, just for example, of ebony and copper, inlaid with the most beautiful pattern Lenox could remember seeing in such a desk, and he had been in no few houses with pretensions to attractiveness of interior design.
Not a house for a murder.
The Dorset family was congregated in the smaller drawing room Mayne had mentioned, and they proceeded there.
“His Grace’s son, Lord Vere, is still fragile, but he has risen for this occasion,” Ward said just before they entered, as if they were discussing a lunch party.
Lenox nodded. This was Corfe, whose fever had kept the family in London, in a way beginning this chain of tragic events. “Understood.”
The family was arranged along two sofas. The duke rose as they entered. His son and daughter remained seated, as did his wife. “Lenox,” said the duke. “I requested the courtesy that they wait to arrest me until I could hand you this letter.”
“Letter, Your Grace?”
From the breast pocket of his handsome black suit, he withdrew a thin sheaf of papers, tied with string. Lenox saw that the reddish string was just to the left of a rust-colored stain it must have previously made on the outside of the papers—evidently it had sat somewhere for a very long while undisturbed until recently being reopened.
“After reading this there is little you will not know. Work as quickly as you can, please. Find out what Craig knew. I have instructed the servants to give you all access to the house that you wish. Ward will help as far you both see fit.”
Despite their conciliatory meeting the night before, Lenox was surprised at this act of faith. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
The duke looked more serene now than he had before he killed Craig, oddly. “You are my best hope. Protect it—and find it.”
“Protect what?” said the duchess.
The duke ignored her. “I will be in the Tower of London if you wish to speak to me.” He smiled ruefully. “My schedule there will be clear from as early as this afternoon, I understand.”
As a member of Britain’s nobility, it was his right to be imprisoned in the Tower. (Certain tourists from the continent would no doubt have paid a fortune to spend a night in the Tower—so long as they were allowed to leave in the morning.) He would pass his incarceration in very great luxury, that was a given. It was also the case that no common court would try him, only, if it came to trial at all, the House of Lords.
Goodness, the papers, Lenox thought for the first time. A former cabinet member; more significantly still, for circulation numbers, a Duke of Dorset.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“My daughter has agreed to act as my go-between—she will see my solicitor, call upon my friends. The duchess has a great deal of responsibility in her own right, so please call upon Violet should you need assistance that Ward cannot provide.”
Lenox bowed to Lady Violet, who was sitting with great composure next to her brother. “Lady Vere,” he said.
“Mr. Lenox.”
Lenox watched the constables come to stand at either side of the duke. Time to go, one of them said, and the duke nodded. He looked at Lenox and said once again, to the mystification of all there except the detective, “Protect it.” The fervor in his voice was remarkable; it was easy to believe that he had shot Craig without vacillation.
“I will do my level best,” Lenox said.
“Thank you,” said Dorset.
The elaborate process of arresting the duke commenced. The heir, Corfe, handsomely dressed, stood unsteadily, watching. As for the duke’s daughter, she was full of solicitous suggestions, in a sort of ceaseless soothing chatter, telling her father about the meals that Fortnum would be delivering, naming all the ways they would be sure he was comfortable, asking which books he needed from his study, that sort of thing. None of this prevented the constables on charge from doing their duty, and locking the fifth-highest-ranking nobleman in Great Britain in a pair of scarred steel handcuffs.