Partly just to be seen with Graham, then, Lenox came here to lunch at least every fortnight. Then, too, he liked to discuss his cases with his old friend; Graham had always been insightful about these, a first auditor. Now, over lamb pie and redcurrant jelly, they discussed Jenkins’s death—Graham was very solemn in mourning their old friend—and then Wakefield’s, teasing out ideas about the possible connection, going over clues.

“Have you spoken with Inspector Jenkins’s wife about his movements in the last week of his life?” asked Graham.

Lenox considered this. “Not directly, you know. Nicholson spoke to her. I really ought to call upon her anyhow, to offer my respects. Perhaps I might see if she’s receiving visitors after I leave here.”

“She may know something significant without realizing it.”

“You’re quite right.”

Their plates had been cleared away by now, and the waiter came with a small list of desserts. Lenox asked for trifle, and both men for coffee. When it came some moments later, the conversation had shifted again toward Parliament. There was a small bill up for vote that would add “Empress of India” to Queen Victoria’s long train of titles. Many members of the Liberal party were opposed to this act, which they called a kind of backdoor annexation, but Graham wondered whether it might be pragmatic to lend it his support. It wouldn’t make a difference to the ultimate outcome of the bill, and it might prove to some of the House’s most traditional Members that he was not a progressive firebrand, eager to deprive them of their inheritances, but someone with whom they could reasonably deal. Lenox was forced to admit the savvy of the idea, though India made him uneasy. It was a large country, a long way from home. Who knew how long it would submit to the control of Queen Victoria—or how bloody the revolt might be when it came. They sipped their coffees and discussed the positives and negatives of such a vote at great length.

After ninety minutes, Graham said he had to return to the floor for a vote. Before he left, however, he asked if they might quickly go up to his office together.

“Of course,” said Lenox. “Why?”

Graham had a valise, which he opened now. He took a folder from it. “There’s one last piece of business I’ve been intending to conduct as your secretary,” he said. “They’ve asked me more than once if you could fill out this form. You can do it at my desk, if you like—it shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. As you know, there was never such a place for record-keeping.”

Indeed, the form was bizarrely thorough. It ran to eight pages, and asked Lenox questions about all of the places he had once lived, about his sources of income, about his close and his extended family, about his personal habits (Do you take port or brandy in excess after supper?), and about his staff, including Graham.

Graham read a blue book as Lenox filled in the pages, and when the form was done, congratulated him—he had rounded off the circle, at last, and concluded his final act as a Member of Parliament.

“Unless you mean to stand again one day,” said Graham, smiling. “We could use you, of course.”

Lenox returned the smile, and the sheaf of papers, with a feeling of lightness. “No,” he said. “I think I’m best off leaving it to you. And now you’d better hurry, if you mean to get to that vote.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Between the end of this midday meal with Graham and his scheduled meeting with Dallington and Nicholson at Scotland Yard, Lenox only had about an hour and ten minutes; it was perhaps just enough time to squeeze in a visit to Madeleine Jenkins. At any rate, he could be fifteen minutes late to the Yard without very much guilt, were it necessary.

His carriage trundled across the river, and as he looked back at the lovely golden stretch of Parliament, at the high clock face of Big Ben, he realized that he didn’t regret driving away from it. Good to know, he thought. He’d meant what he said to Graham. He had no desire to stand for Parliament again. Whatever LeMaire might decide, whatever a newspaper might write, he was a detective once more. That was reward enough on its own.

Time, now, to find out who had shot his friend Thomas Jenkins.

Fifteen minutes later he stepped out of his carriage into a bright, leafy street, and paused for a moment to study the Jenkins house, which signified, everywhere, its recent grief: Its windows were closed, even on this lovely day, there was a black velvet knot on the door, and each of the five gray alder trees on the lawn had a cross at its foot. All of this was at odds with the first spring beauty of the green grass upon the small lawn, and the tiny buds on the flowering bushes near the house’s broad porch. Lenox glanced up at the windows of the second floor. Behind one of them, he knew, was the body, which by tradition would be kept in the home until the funeral. That was scheduled for tomorrow. With a heavy heart, he went and knocked on the door.

A housekeeper answered, and behind her, crisp and businesslike, was a woman of about fifty, with gray hair in a tight knot and a manner that suggested visitors were unwelcome. She admitted to being Madeleine Jenkins’s sister before asking Lenox rather shortly what business brought him here.

Just as Lenox was about to answer, Madeleine herself floated into view, her face distracted, distant. She just barely made eye contact with Lenox. “Oh, hello, Mr. Lenox,” she said. “Please, come into the sitting room. How kind of you to visit.”

“Mrs. Jenkins,” he said, approaching her quickly, “I cannot adequately express my sorrow at your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Please, sit. Clarissa, would you ask if the maid could fetch Mr. Lenox some tea? He was a colleague of … of my husband’s.”

Lenox sat down upon a hard small couch. It was stiflingly warm in the room. All of the mirrors were covered, all the clocks stopped, further traditions to honor the dead. He hated them all, for some reason, though he understood that others might find them comforting.

Madeleine was dressed in the habiliment that was called deep mourning, a black weeping veil, a house cap, a long black dress. It would be a year and a day before she could enter second mourning, the stage at which she might add small bits of color to her person, even a piece of jewelry, though black would still predominate. That might last another six months, and then it would be half mourning—gray dresses, or lavender, though still always with some black added at the waist or the shoulders.

These were the forms. In truth Lenox doubted, from her broken face, whether Madeleine would ever come out of deep mourning, at least in the sense of deep anguish. She was still a pretty woman, with long dark hair and soft eyes, and by rights she might marry again within two years. But he couldn’t imagine she would. He had rarely seen a widow who looked more surprised, or more hurt. Their children were very young.

They spoke gently to each other for a few minutes. Finally, Lenox said, “As you may know, I am helping to investigate Thomas’s death.”

She glanced up at him. “I saw that in the newspaper this morning.”

“I hope you don’t believe that I would ever compromise the—”

“No, no. He trusted you completely, too, you know. He would have chosen you himself.”

Lenox had believed this, and the letter in Jenkins’s shoe indicated as much—but it was still meaningful to hear it from her, a relief. Saddening, too, because their breach had been so pointless. “Thank you for saying so,” he said.

“Not at all.”

“As you may know from Inspector Nicholson, the difficulty we’ve had is that we cannot find your husband’s case files. He was working on something substantial, I believe. He left me a note—”