Home by Nightfall (15 page)

In truth he ought to have been the first person they suspected—he was LeMaire's nephew—but as the partners had walked back to Chancery Lane from the Cadogan a few hours earlier, all had agreed that it couldn't be him. It seemed impossible, that was all.

“He's too … too unimaginative,” Dallington had said.

“I think it's more than that,” put in Polly. “I think he has honor. We've come to know him, haven't we?”

Lenox had agreed with both of them. Now he went on, describing new security precautions to the employees, urging them to come forward if they had any idea about the crime, and finally promising whoever had done it that if he had the full list and returned it now, he could avoid criminal prosecution—a promise that would not hold should the partners discover the person's guilt independently, which they believed they were within a day or two of doing.

After the meeting was over, a chattering buzz had broken across the room.

“One other thing,” Dallington said.

Everyone quieted down and stared at him, including Lenox, who wasn't sure what his young protégé intended to say.

“This morning, the agency made a major breakthrough in the Muller case. The Yard has officially hired us to investigate it, at one and a half times our normal rate. All three partners will be dedicating at least some of their time to it in the coming days, so there may be a bit more work for everyone, later nights. I don't expect to hear any grumbling about it, or I'll have Anixter drag you under the keel of a ship.”

There was a laugh, and immediately a louder, more insistent conversation. What was the breakthrough? Had they found Muller? That had been smart of Dallington. Better to leave them on a note of optimism than doubt.

Dallington, Polly, and Lenox went to Polly's office, where there was tea on the desk, and closed the door. Dallington poured three cups of tea, dashed some sugar into his, and then sat back heavily into an armchair, crossing his legs and stirring his tea moodily. “We're in for it if someone has that full list,” he said. “No chance they'll come forward.”

Polly, stirring milk and sugar into her own tea with the precision of a chemist, said, “We have to hope the person who stole it is a coward, and fears jail more than the loss of his job.” She sat down on the front edge of the seat behind her desk, thinking. Her hair was pulled back with a gray ribbon.

Lenox smiled at the two of them, so well mismatched. “We can only wait,” he said.

Dallington shook his head. “I hate waiting. I've never had any patience.”

“Do we find it odd that Mayhew and Davidson are so close?” asked Polly in a low voice.

“Yes,” said Lenox. “They're very different.”

“They eat at the same slap-bang every day, down Cursitor Street.” Slap-bangs were popular among law clerks and other penurious professionals in this part of London for both their cheapness and speed—many only took fifteen or twenty minutes for lunch. They took their name from the sound that the busy waiters made dropping off the food. “I see them there every time I pass it on the way to the Beargarden for my own lunch.”

“Could they be conspiring then?” asked Polly.

“We simply can't know yet,” said Lenox. “At any rate, our trap may work.”

Among the precautions for security that Lenox had enumerated before the employees was a new safe in Dallington's office. It contained a sheet with the name of a lawyer and the password (“Chancery”) that would allow him to release their client list. In fact, it was Lenox's own solicitor; anyone who approached him with that password would be held there by the bailiff under presumption of guilt.

“Leaving this aside,” said Dallington, “my question is, what do we do next on the Muller case? If we could only solve it, clients would line up to India for us.”

“We must be close now,” said Polly. “If only McKee and LeMaire weren't working on it, too.”

“But Broadbridge must give us first whack, after this morning,” said Dallington.

Lenox shook his head. “I don't think he cares who solves it.”

The three partners looked at each other in silence for a moment.

Lenox thought back to that morning. Theaters were odd places, full of lost rooms, winding backstage corridors, unexpected closets. Above the main dressing room, apparently, there was a small tunnellike space.

They had taken down the woman, as carefully as they could, Broadbridge's nephew assuming the bulk of her weight, and laid her on the sofa.

Thurley, the theater manager, had gone pale. “That's Margarethe,” he'd said immediately.

“Who?” asked Broadbridge.

“Margarethe. Mr. Muller's sister.”

“What in damnation—did we even know she was missing?” said Broadbridge.

Thurley shook his head. “She was here on opening night—she traveled with Muller as his assistant. But after the first performance, she went on to Paris, his next destination, to book his rooms and make sure everything was in order there.”

“Christ alive, man, are you telling me that we may have a
pair
of dead Germans?” Broadbridge said, a look of despair on his face. He glanced over at McKee. “You've had this room for a week.”

“Yes, sir,” said McKee—and then, because blame runs downhill, he shot a sidelong glance at LeMaire.

Lenox was examining the body. “Nothing on her person, no money, no identification. No signs of violence either,” he added.

“Poison, perhaps,” said Dallington.

“Do you think Muller killed her?” asked McKee.

Lenox shrugged. “I couldn't guess. But your constable ought to fetch the medical examiner—and then, gentlemen, I propose that we investigate this tunnel that passes above Mr. Muller's dressing room.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Broadbridge had been reluctant to climb the stepladder and investigate the tunnel himself. McKee, meanwhile, had been the opposite, raring to lead the inspection. In the end, Bailey, Lenox, Dallington, and McKee climbed through the small square in the ceiling, in that order. Each had a candle.

They entered a dim corridor, just barely high enough to walk down, not wide enough for two people to have passed each other. At its distant end, Lenox could see a spark of light—some kind of exit.

First they looked around the area where Margarethe's body had lain. They didn't find anything there until Bailey's large boot made a hideous crunch.

They crowded around and saw, beneath his foot, broken glass.

“A wineglass,” said Dallington. “You can see the stem.”

“Blimey,” said Bailey.

“A second wineglass,” Lenox murmured.

There was a moment of silence, and then McKee said, “Let's move along, unless there's anything else.”

Slowly, they proceeded away in a single line down the corridor.

“Is this the only entrance from above or below?” Lenox asked.

“It's all uncommon smooth so far,” said Bailey.

“One entrance, one exit,” Dallington said.

Indeed, as they had gone down the corridor, Lenox had looked closely for another drop door, anything rough or uneven along the four walls, and found nothing.

There was a moment of nervous laughter when Bailey tripped again, but they walked, hunched, without too many missteps, until the light grew brighter.

They came to a wooden panel with slats. Lenox felt a fluttering in his stomach. It was not large, barely big enough for a thin man to slip through. In fact, Bailey's shoulders were nearly too large to pass through it.

But he thought he would just be able to squeeze himself, he said. “Shall I go first?”

“By all means,” said Lenox.

“Any guesses where we are within the theater?” asked Dallington.

“I don't know it well enough,” said Lenox.

“We've been going in the direction of Took Street, the side street,” said McKee. His voice was tight and unwilling, but apparently he had decided their help was worth having. “I can't say exactly where we'll come out, though.”

Soon they knew. They emerged into the light, one, two, three, four, to find that they were standing in an office—and staring into the dumbfounded face of the theater's owner.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “How in heavens have you gotten into the aeration system?”

“Aeration?” said McKee.

Fifteen minutes later they had reunited with Broadbridge, Polly, Thurley, and the others, and told the theater's owner—his name was Greville, a handsome broad-chested man with a brown beard—how they had come to be in his office.

He came and looked at the drop door himself, leading them back to the dressing room through the backstage area. “I didn't have the faintest idea it was there,” he said. “I didn't build the place, of course.”

Lenox looked at him sharply. “No idea at all?”

Greville shook his head. “None. I have thought for five years that the wooden panel in my office was part of the theater's aeration system, which I was assured when I bought the theater was the most modern thing going. No risk of disease among the actors or stagehands.”

“Where were you for Muller's final performance, may I ask, Mr. Greville?” Dallington said.

“I have told these gentlemen a dozen times—I was in the audience! It was the finest concert I have ever heard, I've told them that, too! I never went backstage.”

McKee nodded. “Yes, we've confirmed it. He was in the owner's box the whole time, with a party of fifteen.”

“Mr. Muller never played more sensitively, more beautifully,” said Greville. “It was transporting, gentlemen, the beauty of his gift—I could have listened to it forever. What a loss, if he is gone. And Margarethe, a quiet but sweet—I am at a loss, I am terribly perturbed, gentlemen, terribly perturbed.” He looked it. He ran a handkerchief across his pale brow, and sat down in a chair near the door.

“And after the concert?” said Lenox.

“And here she is upon this very sofa! My God. The poor woman. In my own theater.” Greville shook his head. “What were you asking, though—yes, the concert. After it ended, I stayed for a moment in my box, joining in the applause, and then I made my way backstage, to add my congratulations to those of the other people present. Of course, I was never able to see Mr. Muller.”

Lenox nodded. It seemed clear, now, that the German had left his dressing room through the corridor, gone to Greville's office, and from there gone directly to the street by the theater owner's own door, which led outside.

Muller could have slipped straight in among the departing crowds by such a stratagem. Lenox saw Broadbridge realizing that he had received both a solution and another problem: Why on earth would anyone wish to kill Muller's sister? And where was Muller now?

Back at the Yard, they discussed this for a long while—a conversation that had culminated in Broadbridge hiring them on, and Polly shrewdly holding out for a higher rate, since, as she pointed out, the case would draw them from their usual work. Broadbridge had agreed to her terms without protest.

“Just find this blasted German,” he said.

“Certainly we will try,” Polly had said.

“I can scarcely bear to think about tomorrow's newspapers. Margarethe Muller? They'll turn her into a saint within the next eight hours, and her death into the bloodthirstiest thing this side of the Crusades. Damn them all, Fleet Street.”

Now, in Chancery Lane, Lenox, Dallington, and Polly sipped their cups of tea, rain still beating loudly against the windows. Hadley seemed miles and miles away, both literally and figuratively—Lenox had scarcely been back in London eighteen hours, and yet he was wholly absorbed by the two puzzles here, the one at their office, the other at the Cadogan Theater.

He considered this and felt a wave of guilt: Edmund. He didn't want to linger in the capital while his brother needed him. The days were shortening; dinner would be terribly lonely at Lenox House, Edmund and his papers and the portraits, the awful small talk with the servants, somehow more solitary than solitude.

Still, Muller, the agency, another few days, two or three days …

As if reading his thoughts, Dallington said, “How shall the three of us proceed, then? Charles, will you stay in London? For my part, I can abandon all of my other work. The one case that needs urgent attention I'll give to Atkinson.”

“Yes, it's the same with me,” said Polly. “Anixter can keep everything in hand for a day or two. Honestly, I cannot imagine anything better for the agency than solving this case, short of us laying our hands on the treasure of the
Flor de le Mar,
and that's in Sumatra, and probably doesn't exist.”

“Which makes it harder to find,” said Dallington.

Polly smiled. “Precisely, my fair fellow. The point is that it's worth more than money to us to solve the case. With any luck it will be in the evening papers that the Yard has hired us.”

Dallington looked at her quizzically. “How?”

“I've written to the reporters I know, that's how, you gull.”

The young lord laughed. “Well done.”

“I'll stay,” said Lenox, “and I have an idea of where to start.”

“Oh?” said Dallington. “Where?”

“With Greville and Thurley.”

“They both have alibis,” Polly pointed out.

“That's fine,” he said. “What I want to know, then, is why both of them are lying. And who else knew that you could remove that chandelier in Muller's dressing room so effortlessly, and what was above it?”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There was a thick fog the next morning, the kind you could find only in London; Lenox thought of Esther Summerson in
Bleak House,
arriving in the city and asking whether there hadn't been some enormous fire. It was somewhat wistfully that he told Jane over his soft-boiled egg about all the fresh air he had inhaled, riding upon the heaths of Sussex.