“Yes, saying that you ought to consult his papers.”

“You have no idea where they are?” Lenox asked gently.

“I wish I did. They wouldn’t be here—that’s the only thing I know.”

“Did he have a safe?” asked Lenox.

“Yes, but we’ve looked in it twice now. It has a few certificates, locks of the children’s hair, and my jewelry, along with a few oddments. Nothing professional.”

“He never brought his papers home, in your recollection?”

“No.”

“Did he work from home?”

She shook her head. “Very rarely. Once in a while he sat up late in the kitchen thinking over a problem. He liked to be alone. I would make him a pot of tea and he would take his pipe and his tobacco. The kitchen fire is warm all night, and he would sit in a soft chair I keep there.”

“Did he write while he did this?”

To Lenox’s surprise, she said that he had. “Sometimes he asked me for pen and paper. But he always burned his notes. It was an aid to thought for my husband, writing.”

“I take it you haven’t seen any papers he left lying in the kitchen?”

She smiled faintly. “No. Believe me, Mr. Lenox, I am conditioned to be on the lookout for papers, for any piece of paper Thomas might have left behind. You cannot imagine how dearly I wish I could find one for you. The moment I see any kind of paper at all it is yours. It’s only that it hasn’t happened yet.”

“You have been in and out of the kitchen recently?”

Her smile widened, wanly. “Only two or three hundred times.”

It made sense that she would spend a good deal of time in the kitchen, even at a time like this. The Jenkinses would have kept a single maid, Lenox imagined, and perhaps hired another in special circumstances. Madeleine would have been in the kitchen a great deal—a working wife, not a sitting room wife. “Did Jenkins stay up late any night this week or last?” he asked.

For the first time she looked slightly surprised by a question. “Well, yes, I suppose he did. I think Tuesday. I heard him come to bed after midnight.”

Tuesday, two days before his death. “Could I see the kitchen?” he asked.

They walked down the narrow staircase in single file, but the kitchen itself was slightly less overheated than the sitting room; near the ceiling was a row of small windows, one of which was open to let in the breeze. Something was cooking slowly on the stovetop in a closed pot. Rabbit stew, perhaps? It smelled wonderful.

“This is the chair?” asked Lenox.

“Yes,” said Madeleine. She raised a hand to her mouth and for a moment looked as if she might break down, but composed herself. “That’s where he sat.”

“Can I ask—without wishing to seem a narcissist—whether he had mentioned me recently? I wouldn’t, usually, except for the note he left me.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said.

Lenox stood up and looked under the cushion of the chair, then shook out its pillows. No piece of paper fluttered away from them, alas. He stood, trying to think of what would have preoccupied Jenkins down here. “Your fire’s gone out,” he said, gesturing toward the gray ashes.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ve been distracted.”

Then he saw something. He bent down; the fire was in a small cradling grate, much smaller than the hearth itself, with brick all around it to catch any sparks. “There’s a piece of paper back behind the grate,” he said. “It’s in a ball.”

“Is there? No, there can’t be.” She bent down to look, too, and saw the balled-up paper. “Can you reach it?”

He could. It was charred but mostly intact. He unfolded it and read for a moment before he realized, with disappointment, that it was a recipe. “Is this your handwriting?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. He started to ball the page back up, but then she said, hesitantly, “But on the back—might that be Thomas’s? I think it might, you know.”

Lenox turned the page over and saw, with a thrill, the heading of a list.

Wakefield

PP 73- 77 ; New Cav 80-86; Harley 90-99; Wey 26-40

“This is Thomas’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Yes, do you know what, it is,” she said. Her face was eager. “Could it help?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “It could, perhaps. I hope.”

“What do you think this code means?”

“It’s not a code.” Lenox had seen immediately what the shorthand meant. “Portland Place, New Cavendish Street, Harley Street, Weymouth Street. These are addresses, all within a few blocks of each other.”

And all within a few blocks of where your husband was killed, he almost added, but thought better of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On the ground floor of Scotland Yard was a long room of democratic usage. There were desks at which men could work; there was a corner dominated by armchairs and newspapers, which looked almost like the nook of some rather down-at-heel gentleman’s club; up toward the opposite end was a great urn full of tea with a tottering stack of cups next to it.

Within the Yard everyone called it the Great Room, and it was here that Lenox met Dallington and Nicholson twenty minutes after the hour. He apologized for his lateness, though perhaps with a note of self-forgiveness in his voice—since after all he had something to offer them, the list of addresses he’d found behind Jenkins’s kitchen grate.

Nicholson took the list and looked at it for a moment, then expressed his irritation that his men had missed it. “I’ll have a word with Armbruster. Not to mention Jenkins’s own sergeant and constables, who have been around there for a second look.”

“What do the addresses mean?” asked Dallington.

Nicholson shook his head, staring at the paper. “I’ve no idea, except that Wakefield himself lived in 73 Portland Place, obviously.”

“They could be witnesses Jenkins wanted to call on,” said Dallington.

“To what?” asked Lenox. “It’s such an unusual assortment. Why not 71 Portland Place, right next door? And what could anyone have seen at 99 Weymouth, two streets away?”

“Shall we have constables knock on all of these doors and ask them whether they have any information about Jenkins or Lord Wakefield?” asked Nicholson.

Lenox considered the idea. “I suppose you’d better.”

“I’ll just arrange it, then. Back in a moment. Have a cup of tea.”

Dallington and Lenox made their way down toward the table of refreshments, talking quietly. “I’m free,” said Dallington. “Perhaps I’ll go along.”

Lenox thought for a moment. “Might we send Pointilleux?”

Dallington frowned. “Do you think it’s the right time to train him, on such a sensitive matter?”

“He’s inexperienced, but he’s bright, and I’d like to reward him for his loyalty to us. He’s made it plain that he would like to get out of the office and do some work. On top of that, whether it’s you or he who goes, the Yard will insist upon taking the lead.”

“True enough.”

“That would also give the two of us time to step over to McConnell’s laboratory.”

Nicholson returned after a few moments with Sergeant Armbruster, the rather portly, worried-looking officer who had so dearly wanted hot soup for himself and his men as he was managing the scene of Jenkins’s murder. He had also conducted the canvass. Nicholson reintroduced them and said that the sergeant and his men had already visited most of the houses on the list.

“Which ones haven’t you visited?” asked Dallington.

“I’m not entirely certain, sir,” said Armbruster. “It will be in the report we made. I’m happy to go out again, though as I said to Inspector Nicholson, we found little enough the first time, and I generally work here, in the back offices, not out in the field. Perhaps it would be better to send a fresh pair of eyes.”

“Sometimes it only takes a second round of questions,” said Nicholson sharply.