He bowed slightly. “Your Lordship, Mr. Lenox, how do you do. Can I help you?”

“We had a few more questions we wanted to ask you, and perhaps the other servants.”

“By all means, sir—though I should say at the moment Lord Wakefield’s cousin is here, Mr. Theodore Murray. I have been attending to him.”

“What is he doing here?”

“I am given to understand that he is arranging Lord Wakefield’s business matters,” said Smith quietly. They were standing in the front hallway. “In preparation for the new Lord Wakefield’s arrival tomorrow—my employer’s son. He has been informed of his father’s death and is coming to London by an early train.”

This was the Earl of Calder, at Cambridge, Lenox recalled. “We needn’t come all the way in,” said Lenox. “We are primarily curious about His Lordship’s daily habits, and you might just answer our questions about those.”

“His daily habits, sir?”

“His meals, for instance. You mentioned that he often ate out.”

“Not breakfast, sir.”

“He ate breakfast here every morning?”

“Yes, sir, in his rooms. He took two pots of tea and four eggs, poached on toast. It was a very regular thing with him, sir.”

“And his lunch? His supper?”

“I don’t think His Lordship ate either meal here more than a dozen times in the year I’ve been working for him, sir. He was very constant at the Beargarden and the Cardplayers.”

“Did he return home in between? Did he have a glass of wine before he went out?”

“He sometimes returned home between lunch and supper, sometimes not, sir. As for a glass of wine—no, his preference before supper was for ale. We always keep a great supply of it from Hatting Hall, where they make it themselves. It’s very strong.”

“Do you know if he drank wine at supper, at his club?” asked Lenox.

“I couldn’t say, sir. He didn’t generally drink wine, though I know that he was fond of port, Lord Wakefield. He had it by the case from Berry Brothers. He kept it in his rooms.”

Lenox looked at Dallington. Port—that could be it. “Could we see the bottles of port he drank?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to fetch it, or would you like to come up to his rooms for yourselves?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather we went up.”

Wakefield’s rooms were tidy and as impersonal as the rest of the house, with the exception of his desk, which was covered with loose snuff, chits of paper, all manner of debris. Smith, observing them take in the state of the desk, said, “We were under orders not to disturb it.”

“Did Nicholson and his men look through the desk?” asked Dallington.

“Oh, yes, sir, very thoroughly.”

Near the fireplace in the second of the two rooms Wakefield used for himself was a stand of liquor, and there on top of it was a bottle of ruby port. Lenox opened it and sniffed it. “Could I take this?” he asked.

Smith looked doubtful. “Perhaps if you could ask Mr. Murray?” he said. “Only I know that port is very expensive, sometimes, sir.”

Lenox had a small glass phial in his valise. “Here’s a bargain for you—I’ll take a thimbleful and leave the bottle.”

“Oh, in that case—yes, that should be fine, sir.” As Lenox shook the bottle hard (McConnell had told him the litharge of gold might sift down to the bottom) and then took his sample, Smith went on, saying, “You can see, under here, sirs, where he kept the rest of the case.”

He opened the cabinet to reveal a wooden crate with an open top, which must have held six bottles once. Now it held two. Dallington pulled it out and inspected it. “It’s stamped with Berry Brothers’ seal on the side, right here,” he said.

Lenox closed the phial, put it in his valise, and took the crate from Dallington. He held it under the lamp to look more closely. “Look,” he said to Dallington, “an invoice.”

Glued to the underside of the box was a sheet of paper. Lenox pulled it off and read it. His eyes widened, and he looked at Dallington. “What?” asked the young lord.

“Look at the order.”

Dallington took the sheet of paper. After a moment his eyes, too, widened. “We need to take this as well,” he said to Smith.

“As you please, sir,” said the butler. “It was only that I didn’t want anything that the heirs … that might be of value.”

Not much later Dallington and Lenox walked out along the street, passing the convent as they strolled toward Regent’s Park. It was not quite eleven thirty. “I’m disappointed in Nicholson and his men that they missed the invoice,” Lenox said.

“It was glued to the underside of the box, in fairness.”

Soon they met the inspector at the gate, where he was waiting, and together they took up their chilly post. They stayed until twelve thirty, but there was never any sign of Francis.

Softening the disappointment of this, however, was that invoice, which they showed Nicholson before they went their separate ways—for it gave the address of the person who had bought the potentially fatal port that Lord Wakefield had spent his last weeks of life drinking: one Andrew H. Francis, of Mornington Crescent.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning at the offices of Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire, the four principals of the agency gathered for their weekly meeting. Though they had been awake late, Lenox and Dallington were the first two to arrive, as if in accidental obeisance to the order of their names upon the brass plate outside the office’s door. They sat and were halfway through a cup of tea by the time Polly and LeMaire entered the room, each with a polite hello.

It was the loveliest day yet of 1876—the sweet o’ the year, as Shakespeare had called this time in April. The sun shone a mild gold through the lightly shifting trees, and the streets below, still wet from a cleaning, sparkled brightly. The mood of the city on mornings like this one was somehow brotherly, amiable, ineffably unified. Through the windows of their second-story offices it was possible to see the small conversations that took place on every city street—the cabman calling down a joke to the fruit seller, the banter between a nurse pushing a pram and a constable swinging his whistle. Sometimes Lenox loved London very much indeed.

Polly seemed tired. Anixter was speaking to Pointilleux in the next room, loudly enough to be overheard, and as she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Mrs. O’Neill had made she looked testily toward the door. Lenox watched concern fall across Dallington’s face.

LeMaire, meanwhile, had a large sheaf of papers. He set these down on the table in front of himself.

“New business first, then?” said Dallington, when Polly sat down. “Charles has a case that we’re working on together, as you both know. Polly, I hope you’ve been able to manage without me?”

“Somehow,” she said, though she smiled to reduce the bite in this reply.

“I have a piece of firm business first, if you would not mind,” said LeMaire.

“You do?” asked Dallington. “What about the order of the meeting?”

It was usually LeMaire who was most conscientious about sticking to the schedule by which these meetings always ran. “My patience is not long at the moment,” said LeMaire. From his sheaf of papers he pulled a newspaper. “I wonder if you have seen the Telegraph this morning.”

“No,” said Dallington.

From her eyes, Lenox could tell that Polly had. It wasn’t fatigue in her eyes, it was worry. He hadn’t—he’d woken late and quickly absorbed the main headlines of the Times on the way here, but the other papers were arranged in a neat half-moon on his desk, awaiting him. “We are mentioned,” said LeMaire. “Not as favorably as might be wished.”

Lenox’s heart fell. LeMaire had slid the paper across the table in the general direction of the other three, and Lenox took it.