The two brothers and their mother stayed up late that night, talking over local matters from their hometown of Markethouse. Every name that came up was as familiar as their own; when Edmund and Charles heard that Mrs. Carter was marrying yet again they rolled their eyes at the same instant.
At long length, when the last bits of cheese, fruit, and biscuit on the tray had been eaten, when the teapot was empty and all three were yawning, and Mrs. Huggins seemed at last satisfied that she had discharged her responsibilities toward Lady Emma, Sir Edmund rose and said he ought to be getting home, and that he would drop their mother at the Savoy—where she always stayed when she didn’t want to open her own London house. She added before she left that she would be by in the morning to inspect Lancelot.
“You won’t like what you see,” Charles warned.
“Neither of you were as angelic as you seem to believe.”
“I was,” said Edmund.
“Ha!” said Charles.
“Charles!” said their mother. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t tease your brother.”
“Well, you may go on wishing if it pleases you,” Lenox said in a grumbling way, and saw them to the door, closing it after they were in a carriage with a tremendous yawn.
Before he turned in, he decided to quickly check his desk. It was piled with notes and telegrams. He sifted through these until he saw one that attracted his attention.
It was a letter from a woman named Mrs. Anderson Withering, posted at Cowgate, Scotland. That was, if Lenox recalled correctly, the long thoroughfare that lay between the old town and the university in Edinburgh.
7 June
Dear Mr. Lenox,
Thank you for your solicitous concern about my brother. He is here at Mrs. Walsh’s House for the Incurably Mad. (It is not a name I like, but offered the best care that was recommended to my husband, who sought several medical opinions.) He has a private room there and I visit him twice a week. He is a lovely companion—but as you have apparently witnessed, erratic in his behavior. He had known for some time that we were to resituate him in Scotland, and he was displeased with that. Perhaps it was this that motivated him to approach you.
The name Captain Tankin Irvington means nothing to me, and my brother has no naval background, nor has he spent any time in Australia—to answer your three questions. You are welcome to visit either him or me should you happen to be in Edinburgh.
Best wishes,
Kitty (Belmont) Withering
PS: I write this having just seen your second telegram. I was never required to sign a visitor log at Bedlam. I do not know why.
Lenox quickly dug through the rest of the letters on the desk. He checked the previous wire—the Edinburgh Asylum. He had written to the wrong institution. A creeping feeling of dread, just the initial stage of comprehension, crept up the back of his neck.
He knew he must act or he would sleep badly; he wrote out a few questions for Dr. Hansel and sent a sleepy footman out to send the telegram and pay for return post, so that Hansel could write as voluminously and as quickly as he wished.
This done, Lenox sat in his chair, holding the letter and thinking about Belmont. He fell asleep there—and it was long after two in the morning when he woke, stumbled heavily upstairs, and, a cool breeze running in from the windows, took with gratitude to his bed.
A reply from Hansel awaited him when he woke, just after seven. It was tucked under a glass of apple juice with chips of ice in it, next to his teacup. Lenox slid into a dressing gown and, picking up a piece of bacon with his fingers simultaneously, tore open the wire.
Dear Lenox STOP received your wire and shall endeavor to answer all questions STOP in first place families have not for some seven hundred years been required to sign in STOP shame of association STOP only medical visitors and so forth STOP in second place Belmont was indeed billeted with a former member of the navy for a time STOP full name Carleton Wexford unsure rank STOP standard lunacy STOP finally Mrs Walsh an excellent home by all accounts STOP smaller and more discreet STOP in hopes this helps STOP Hansel
This was a tremendously expensive number of words, but Lenox didn’t care a fig. He flattened it on the table, running over its folds with the side of his hand, and read it once more.
“Graham,” he called.
The valet appeared, already dressed in his crisp gray suit, hair newly clipped. When did he find time to go to the barber? Before Lenox awoke, obviously. There was an old man who walked from house to house with scissors and mirror. “Sir?”
“Will you fetch me the naval register from the study—the big blue one on the upper shelf near the windows—and then come and join me?”
Lenox ate his eggs and pondered Belmont until Graham returned a moment later. Lenox leafed through the oversized book until he came to the name Wexford. There were two of them.
Only one he needed: “Midshipman Carleton Wexford, sometime officer of Her Majesty’s ships Isabelle, Livia, Victory, Roseanna, Julia, Victoria, retired Her Majesty’s service 1844, living Cable Street, Portsmouth.”
And later Bedlam, it would appear.
Lenox saw immediately that Wexford had been on at least two ships upon which Captain Irvington had also served, the Livia and the Victoria.
“That settles it, Graham,” he said.
“What’s that, sir?”
Lenox sighed. “I have been made a goose of—by an inmate.”
“Belmont, sir?”
“The same.”
They sat and picked over the news as Lenox picked over his eggs. Obviously Belmont had picked up Irvington’s name from his bunkmate; obviously he was no more unfairly asylumed than most men at Bedlam; obviously his sister cared for him greatly.
Lenox felt very, very stupid. It was unlike him to be so credulous. He said so to Graham.
“Perhaps there is a lesson in it, sir,” said Graham.
“Not to trust the passing comments of insane people? Most people learn that lesson some time before the age of twenty-six.”
Graham smiled. “That sometimes there are simple, unsuspicious reasons behind a mystery, sir, I would venture. The profession you have chosen cannot always be portraits of Shakespeare.”
Lenox speared a sausage moodily. “I suppose. It’s not as if even that was very satisfying.” He considered his lunch with the duke on Monday. “I wonder if we shall ever see that play in England again.”
At that moment Lenox felt, out of absolutely nowhere, a sharp pain on his chin, like a bee sting. It took him a bewildered second to realize what had happened, and then he stood bolt upright.
“Lancelot,” he shouted, as the boy, with his peashooter, sped away upstairs to his hideous den.
“Shall I fetch him, sir?” Graham asked.
Lenox sat down, rubbing his face. “No. I deserve it for falling for Belmont.”
“You are done with him, then?”
“I shall ask a friend in Edinburgh to verify what the letter says. But I have no doubt it will all prove out.” Lenox grimaced, rubbing his chin. “It really does hurt, that little hellion.”
“I can fetch ice, sir.”
“Oh, sit down, bother you, pour yourself some tea.” Lenox thought for a moment. “Do you know, of the numerous arguments that I have seen London make that the world is a cruel and meaningless place—murder, theft, fraud—none is more profound than that Mrs. Huggins should love that boy.”
“She is childless, sir.”
“And that is the child to make her regret it? No—mark my words, I will never have children, Graham. Poison my soup one supper if I ever tell you otherwise.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Make it some quick and painless poison, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“To be sure, sir.”