“Jacob Marshall, then,” said Lenox.

“Yes,” said the Frenchman seriously. “Jacob Marshall. I visit his office in Abbot Street, but find nobody present. So I decide to investigate of my own. I borrow these volumes from the library of the French Society, and return here.”

“What did you find?”

The triumphant gleam came back into Pointilleux’s eye. “What I find is that every single house on the list of Mr. Jenkins—of Portland Place, of Weymouth Street, of New Cavendish Street, of Harley Street—is the property of one man: William Travers-George, the Fifteenth Marquess of Wakefield.”

Lenox raised his eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

Pointilleux had a sheet of paper. “I have checked double and triple. I am sure.”

“By jove, you’ve done splendidly,” said Dallington.

Lenox was staring into his cup of tea, thinking. “Wakefield owned all of those houses,” he said, more to himself than to any of the three other people in the room.

Dallington was still offering congratulations to Pointilleux. “Shake my hand. If you don’t want to call them croissants, we shan’t, upon my word.”

Lenox still had Jenkins’s original list in his pocket. He took it out and looked at it for a moment. “Look at this,” he said.

“What?” asked Dallington.

“Look at the list again.”

He held it out for the others to see, and all four of them gazed down at Jenkins’s handwriting on the singed paper.

Wakefield

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

Lenox pointed out what he meant with a finger. “Look at the number 77,” he said. “Jenkins underlined it. I missed that the first dozen times I looked at the paper, I think.”

“Why has he underline it?” asked Pointilleux.

“I’m not sure—but Dallington, do you remember what’s at 77?”

“What?”

“The nunnery.”

Dallington raised his eyebrows. “A witness there, perhaps. Someone he was working with.”

Lenox nodded. “We must go back and see what they know, and I don’t care if they’ve each taken a thousand vows of silence.”

“If you give me half an hour to finish helping Polly, I can go with you.”

“You’re more than welcome,” said Lenox, “but it’s not necessary. I can fill you in later. In the meanwhile, Mr. Pointilleux, you have certainly earned the right to accompany me, if you like.”

The boy’s eyes flew open with excitement. “Of course!” he said, and he stood to get his coat, turning this way and that to look for it.

“I wonder what Jenkins was onto,” Lenox said to Dallington. “It’s a dark business.”

“Yes,” said the young lord.

Lenox shook his head dourly. “What’s more, after all this I have a terrible feeling I know where his papers have gone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

At just after eight o’clock, Lenox and Pointilleux left Chancery Lane. It was a bright morning; passing down the street was a long double line of schoolboys in matching navy jackets, each carrying a slate board with a piece of chalk tied to it. The last two little fellows in line had crimson armbands with the word “Dunce!” written on them—a common enough punishment, though Lenox thought the exclamation point unnecessarily mean-spirited. Still, it was preferable to the bin, a device many London schools still used despite the efforts of the reformers to ban them. These were the cramped dome-shaped wicker baskets in which idle students might be enclosed and then raised to the ceiling by a system of levers and pulleys. They would be gone soon enough, he imagined. Lenox would have shot anyone who tried to put Sophia in one.

Their first stop was the offices of Asiatic Limited, where an elderly clerk named Bracewell assisted them, after they showed a letter from Nicholson with the official seal of Scotland Yard imprinted upon it in black wax. Bracewell could find the records for the Gunner—at the name he looked up at them sharply, perhaps contemplating the money his concern was losing every day that she was in dock—but it would take some time to find out who was permitted to retrieve Lord Wakefield’s goods in Calcutta.

“Two to one, sir, it is the Pondicherry Limited, which distributes nearly every piece of cloth and bottle of liquor we ship. Nevertheless I am happy to check. If you return tomorrow morning someone will have the ledger in question.”

“Thank you,” said Lenox.

“My pleasure.”

This job done, they hailed a cab, and Lenox directed it to Portland Place. Pointilleux looked extremely focused. After they had ridden some blocks, he said to Lenox, “Still you do not prefer to tell us where Mr. Jenkins’s papers have gone?”

Lenox shook his head. “I want to be sure first. We must go see Nicholson. Or I must, I suppose.”

“I am happy to come, too.”

“I’m sure you are.”

When they arrived at 77 Portland Place, Lenox stepped out of the cab and stood still for a moment, looking at it with fresh interest. It must once have been a normal London residence, a low-slung brick house, rectangular in shape. The nuns of St. Anselm’s had made it extremely secure—a fence that reached as high as the roof, bars over every window, heavy padlocks on the black gate in front. He wondered how long they had been there.

As they crossed the street toward 77, dodging an omnibus, Lenox saw a woman standing out front: Sister Grethe again. Behind her in a small lodge near the door was another woman, who must have been the same porter Armbruster had encountered on his canvass.

Lenox approached the gate with Pointilleux behind him, and automatically Sister Grethe pulled a card from the folds of her habit—the same one Lenox had seen before.

“No, thank you, no,” said Lenox, waving it away. He pointed behind her. “We need to speak to the porter.”

Sister Grethe turned and looked at the porter, then gestured in her direction questioningly. Yes, Lenox indicated. The sister went and knocked on the porter’s door, and soon the woman came down. She was young and heavy, with thin, downturned lips that gave her a no-nonsense look.

“Good afternoon,” said Lenox. “My name is Charles Lenox. I’m assisting Scotland Yard in the investigation of the murder of Lord Wakefield, who lived two doors away. We believe several of the residents of the convent might have valuable information—might have witnessed something.”

“The sisters are at prayers just now.”

“So you told my colleague on the evening of the murder. They don’t stop often, I suppose?” said Lenox with a smile.

“They’re right pious, yes,” said the young woman suspiciously.

“May I ask your name?” said Lenox.

“Sarah Ward.”

“Miss Ward, it’s urgent that we speak with the sisters. Or at a minimum with some representative who can tell us when we might have a conversation with each of them individually.”

“They ain’t to be bothered,” said the porter.

Sister Grethe was watching this exchange dumbly. Lenox felt a growing irritation. “In this case I’m afraid I must insist.”

The young woman looked uncertain, and went on hemming at the notion—but at last she said she would try to find someone.

They waited a very, very long time. “Why can this sister not be help to us?” whispered Pointilleux eventually.

“She only speaks German. And she’s taken a vow of silence.”

To Lenox’s surprise, Pointilleux turned to her and said something in German, in a lively tone. Sister Grethe merely stared at him. He tried again, and she handed him the same card Lenox had already seen, then turned back to the street.

Pointilleux read the card. “She behave as if I speak to her in strange language, but my German is excellent,” he whispered unhappily.

“Do you know the term ‘vow of silence’?” asked Lenox.

“I am French. I know about my church more in my little toe than every Englishman put together in their head.”