Lenox nodded. “So would I. I mean to go back to his office at the Yard and check again there. For the moment, however, I think we must assume that they’ve been stolen.”

“Who would have done that?”

Lenox sighed and took a draught of his coffee. “The man I’d like you to find, actually. William Travers-George.”

“Oh hell, Wakefield?” said Dallington.

“Wakefield.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mrs. O’Neill came to clear their plates soon—not quite daring to tut at the fullness of Dallington’s, for she could sense the sobriety of the mood in the room—and filled their cups of coffee again before she left. She had interrupted Lenox’s account of visiting Jenkins’s wife, or rather now his widow.

“She was not hysterical, then?” asked Dallington.

“No. The other way, lifeless, dull. Very polite.”

It had been a small, attractive, clean house in the leafy southern precincts of London, with a row of five uncommonly lovely gray alder trees giving it privacy from the street. Perhaps because of these the small plaque on the brick walkway to the front door named the house TREESHADOW. Lenox, who had grown up among houses with names bestowed upon them by the length of years, rather than the aspirations of their owners, had paused and stared at this as they entered, feeling intrusive. Who could now know what Jenkins’s private dreams of stateliness had been. Certainly it was a fine house.

“And she was no help at all?” asked Dallington.

“Not for lack of effort. She showed us Jenkins’s study, unlocked all of the drawers in his desk, let us go through the pockets of his suits. We were very, very thorough. Thank goodness for Nicholson—he has a gentle touch, and they know each other socially, I believe.”

“How many children? Two?”

“Three, the third very young.”

Dallington sighed. “I suppose the Yard will do something for them.”

“Yes, I suppose. We might donate—the office.”

“Or you and I, since we knew him. That might make more sense.”

Lenox perceived underneath these words that his friend thought it might be wiser not to ask LeMaire, and even Polly, to part with any more money, which he ought to have considered himself. Briefly the frustrations of his position here returned to him, but he dismissed them. “Just so, you and I. Absolutely.”

Dallington rapped the table with his knuckles. “Right,” he said. “What are we to do today, then, you and I?”

“You’re free to work?”

“Polly has agreed to take on all of my little cases.”

“In that case I think you might try to find Wakefield. The timing of his departure is suggestive, obviously. I wish we knew where the scoundrel had taken himself.”

Dallington nodded. He had heard all about the location of Jenkins’s death, and knew from the past years about the marquess’s reputation. “And what will you do?”

Lenox took the small envelope Jenkins had left for him from his pocket. “I stayed up late, trying to match this ticket to the left luggage counter of a hotel or a train station. Without luck. I have seventy-odd samples, all quite distinct, but none of them match this one.”

“How will you find it, then?”

“I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. We need Jenkins’s notes. I might try to speak to his subordinates at the Yard. In the meanwhile someone ought to assemble a précis of the crime that has occurred around Portland Place in the last month, as well as any mentions of Wakefield that have been in the press. Something took Jenkins up to Wakefield’s neck of the woods—something attracted his notice.”

“We can have Marseille do it.” Marseille was what Dallington called LeMaire’s nephew Pointilleux.

“He doesn’t like that nickname, you know.”

“He should have been born English and not French, in that case. The initial error was his.”

“He’s from Paris anyhow.”

Dallington smiled. “I know, it’s only a joke. I’ll try to call him by his name. Only he gets so superbly annoyed.”

There was a knock at the door then. “Come in,” called out Lenox.

It was LeMaire, leading McConnell, who smiled and lifted a hand. LeMaire nodded, stiffly, and said, “You have a visitor. We entered the building at the same moment.”

“Thank you,” said Lenox. Both he and Dallington had risen.

“I am sorry to hear about Inspector Jenkins,” said LeMaire. “If there is any way in which I might help—please, do not hesitate to ask me.”

“Thank you,” said Lenox again. This formal civility was awkward. The worst of it was that LeMaire wasn’t at all a bad fellow. Only a pragmatic one.

When LeMaire was gone McConnell came in and poured himself a coffee, after asking if he might take some. “I’m due at the hospital,” he said, stirring in some sugar, “but wanted to come by. It was the bullet that killed Jenkins, I thought you ought to know. He was as healthy as an ox until the moment he died. No poison in his system, nor any alcohol, nothing unusual in his stomach. Sometimes the body throws up a surprise, but not in this case. It was a .442 Webley that shot him. Disappointingly common gun.”

Lenox was still holding the claim ticket, and he stared surreptitiously at it as McConnell spoke, willing some idea of its origin to come to him. Nothing did, but he could feel the back of his brain working on the problem. “What about the wound on the hand?” he asked, looking up.

“Ah. That was slightly more interesting.”

“What wound?” asked Dallington.

Lenox explained that there had been a cut, two or three days old, on Jenkins’s left hand. “I asked his wife, and she said she didn’t know about it, but that he had been much out of the house, not sitting to supper with his family, this week.”

“I am all but certain that it was made by a short serrated knife,” said McConnell. “The sort carried by a sailor to cut rope and sailcloth or a cook to chop vegetables.”

“Or a police officer, perhaps?” asked Dallington.

McConnell thought for a moment. “I cannot see why. Of course the most likely thing is that he cut himself.”

“We can ask his men if Jenkins carried a knife,” said Lenox. “I don’t ever remember him doing so.”

As Dallington was about to reply, LeMaire came to the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “may I ask if this room will be free in fifteen minutes?”

“Do you need it?”

“If the trouble would not be too great.”

Dallington, whose casual faith that the world would be well sometimes made him blind to awkwardness—or perhaps merely made him seem that way—said, “LeMaire, come and have a look at this claim ticket. We can’t make anything out of it.”

“A claim ticket?”

“Yes, and who knows, there may be a bag of money sitting out there that only this particular ticket can fetch. All hands on deck, you know.”

LeMaire stepped forward; Lenox handed him the ticket unwillingly, and he took it and studied it for a moment. He was a handsome fellow, with dark hair that fell in a shag down below his collar, a gallant small pointed beard upon his chin, and a liveliness in his eye that bespoke quick intelligence. In many regards he was the Englishman’s idea of a canny Frenchman. Certainly it was this veneer upon which he had built his business.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “I cannot make anything of it.”

“Call in Pointilleux,” said Dallington. “Perhaps he can exercise his brain upon it. We’re supposed to be teaching him something anyhow.”

LeMaire raised his eyebrows but turned his head around the door. His young nephew appeared, a tall, straight-backed, superior young man with light brown hair. They gave him the claim ticket and like his uncle he studied it, though perhaps more thoroughly, turning it over, holding it up to the light. He was a very particular young fellow, who spoke dreadful English; Lenox rather liked him.

“I cannot make sensible of it,” the boy said at last, in his heavy Parisian accent, handing it back to Lenox. “SRKCLC#AFT119. No. I am mystify.”