Finally Sarah Ward emerged. Behind her, in a dingy habit, was a middle-aged woman. She looked as if she had been sleeping, not praying. “May I help you?” she asked.

Lenox introduced himself and asked her name—she was Sister Amity, she said—and then asked whether they might interview the sisters of the convent, beginning with Sister Grethe, to whom his assistant would be happy to speak in German.

Sister Amity looked alarmed. “Absolutely not!” she said.

“But if you only—”

“Should you choose to address your impertinences to us again, we will be forced to contact the police! Now—good day!”

Lenox frowned. “I’m afraid then that we, too, will be forced to return with the police—for we really must speak to all of you. You may have been witnesses to a crime without knowing it, and your house was the property of a murdered man.”

“We have a long lease signed upon it,” said the sister.

“Did Lord Wakefield often come by?”

“Absolutely not. Nor should you, if you have any sense of decency. Good day.”

With that, Sister Amity turned and went back into the house. Sarah Ward gave them a gloating look and returned to her lodge. Sister Grethe continued to look at them without any change in her expression, which irritated Lenox so profoundly by this stage that he had to stop himself from slamming shut the gate as they left.

They would return with Nicholson. It was all they could do.

The carriage rolled through the bright morning toward the Yard. Lenox was in a brown study, absorbed in a deep contemplation of the details of the case, until finally Pointilleux said, “Can you not tell me where the papers are, of Inspector Jenkins?”

Lenox looked at him. “Not just yet. I may be wrong.”

Nicholson was at Scotland Yard when they arrived, reading through the results of the canvass upon which Pointilleux had accompanied Armbruster and several other men the evening before. He looked fatigued. “We’ve had the new Lord Wakefield’s solicitor in already this morning, to inquire about our progress,” he said.

“That’s no good,” said Lenox.

“Why is it not?” asked Pointilleux.

Lenox looked at him sternly. “If you have questions while we are speaking to Inspector Nicholson, please save them until you and I are alone.”

Pointilleux raised his eyebrows in surprise, then nodded. “My apologies,” he said.

“Nicholson, I wonder if you could send for Armbruster. I wanted to ask him directly about the canvass.”

“I don’t know if he’s here at the Yard. Let me ask.”

“Tell them to look in the canteen, I suppose.”

Nicholson smiled, then stepped out to send one of his constables off to search for the sergeant. While they waited they discussed the Gunner and the Asiatic Limited Corporation.

At length Armbruster appeared. “Sirs,” he said. Then he gave a not particularly favorable look to the Frenchman. Too zealous the night before, perhaps. “Mr. Pointilleux.”

All three men had remained seated when Armbruster came in, and Nicholson’s office, smaller than Jenkins’s though with the same lovely view of the Thames, barely had room to hold a fourth chair. Instead Lenox moved to a nearby filing cabinet, leaning against it and offering the sergeant his chair.

“You had a question about the canvass?” asked Armbruster, sitting back and looking up at Lenox expectantly.

“A few questions,” said Lenox. “Though my more pressing concern is what you’ve done with the papers Inspector Jenkins left behind.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Papers?” said Armbruster. “What papers?”

Nicholson looked at Lenox with consternation. “You cannot think that Sergeant Armbruster killed Inspector Jenkins?”

“I doubt he did that—or at least, I do not know. He may have. What I do know is that I would like to see Jenkins’s papers.”

“Papers!” said Armbruster again. “I don’t know who you think you’re speaking to, but I’ve been at the Yard for thirteen years. My father and two of my brothers have worked here alongside me.”

There was a crimson flush in Armbruster’s ears, however, a note of hysteria in his voice—this fellow was involved. Lenox pointed at his stomach. “I would bet five quid that you bought your pocket watch this week,” he said. “Am I correct?”

“That just goes to show,” said Armbruster, appealing to Nicholson. “I’ve had this for ages.”

“You really must explain your suspicions,” said Nicholson to Lenox.

“About the watch? Or about Mr. Armbruster? The matter of the watch is simple enough. He wasn’t wearing it Thursday evening, when Jenkins died. I remember specifically seeing a brown stain on his shirt at the time—soup, I think—and there was no watch chain across it.”

“That scarcely seems indicative of any great crime,” said Nicholson.

“I have also noticed across the years—anyone who wears a pocket watch will—that there is substantially more wear at the clasp than anywhere else on the watch. All of those openings and closings, thumb and fingernail rubbing down the metal. Mr. Armbruster’s has no such blemish.”

“That’s easy,” said Armbruster, looking more confident now. “On both counts. I don’t wear it often. Had it for ages.”

“Now you’ve worn it the last two days. And it looks, to my eye, to be made of solid gold.”

“A gold wash,” said Armbruster quickly.

It was here that he betrayed himself.

Nicholson asked, mildly, if he might see the watch. This evidently seemed reasonable enough to Armbruster, but as soon as Nicholson handled the object, it was apparent to the other three men that he did so with a vastly more intimate knowledge than they could have. He had the watch open and its workings under the squinch of his eye in an instant, and after he had turned the watch over and tapped it with his knuckle, then checked the maker’s mark, he passed it back to Armbruster.

“You see?” said the sergeant hopefully.

Nicholson shook his head. “My own father worked in a jewelry shop. I grew up behind the counter with him. Your watch is gold. And new, as Mr. Lenox said; it was made in the year 1876, according to its maker’s mark. What’s more, I doubt there’s a sergeant on the force who has a more expensive watch.”

Armbruster shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I had a bargain, I suppose. And by ages I meant … months.”

“Do you remember where you bought it?”

“Not the exact name of the shop. I hope it wasn’t stolen.”

Nicholson looked up at Lenox. “Still, I cannot accuse a man on the basis of a new watch. Armbruster—sit down.” This latter injunction was given sharply, because the sergeant had started to rise from his seat. “Why do you suspect him?”

Lenox, hands in the pockets of his jacket, leaned back against the filing cabinet. “As you know, it is difficult to gain access to the inner corridors of this building,” he said. “When we couldn’t find Jenkins’s papers, I wondered whether perhaps he had taken them home or had them upon his person when he was murdered. But Madeleine Jenkins confirmed that he never brought work papers home with him, and the note to me suggested, I believe, that he wasn’t carrying them about London with him. They were in his office, then, locked securely away.”

“Except that they weren’t,” said Nicholson.

“Precisely. And there was that space upon his desk—the empty space you and I both saw, where they might have been. Since I saw that, I have believed there must have been someone working within the Yard who took them. Someone with access to the office and a key to its door.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Armbruster indignantly.

“At first I thought it was most likely one of Jenkins’s close associates—perhaps Hastings, perhaps Bryson—but I no longer think so. May I ask where you live, Sergeant Armbruster?” said Lenox.

“In Hammersmith. Why on earth do you want to know that?”