Gone Before Christmas Read online

  “Are you?” said Lenox curiously. “Interesting.”

  “To be expected, I would have thought?”

  Lenox looked at his notepad again. “Did Austen have a girl?”

  “Austen? I should say so. He’s married.”

  That was a new piece of information to Lenox. “Billeted here?”

  “Yes. Well, in quarters near Sloane Square. All the married officers are there, the bachelors here.”

  Just at that moment, Larchmont came in. “The colonel has a moment to see you now,” he said to Lenox.

  The detective nodded, first at the Inspector, then to Boothby. “Very well.”

  What he knew, from the inquiries that he had made that morning, and what Larchmont likely did not, was that Boothby, the suave and confident young officer in front of them, was in desperate debt—some thirty thousand pounds, a sum whose tenth part he had no hope of procuring—and that it was not a debt to gentlemen, but to men who would attempt its collection in very violent ways, in preference to forgiving it.

  “Thank you very much, Lieutenant Boothby. Your account has been valuable.”

  Boothby dipped his head with the same elegance all his physical motions had. “Not at all.”

  * * *

  By four o’clock it was as good as midnight. The lamps along the street were losing the same battle they set out to lose every night in winter; on this one, at least, there was some sparkle from the shop windows, which had brightened themselves into gayness for the Christmas season—in one a display of a toy train set, powered by a very small engine, in another a row of handsome books bound in morocco leather, in a third a display of pomades and scents for “the dandy gentleman.”

  These included one that caught Lenox’s eye because it had upon the lid of its tin a positively terrifying image of a man bedeviled by dandruff, his face wracked with misery. It announced that it was “an agreeable magnolia balm and effectual scurf,” the kind of phrasing that might have had more charm if their model didn’t look as if he were being eaten from the feet up by rats.

  He thought of Larchmont’s beef suet; Boothby’s delicately scented coiffure.

  Lenox turned up Chancery Lane from Carey Street. These shops—appealing to well-to-do men and women of the middle class, with ample money for Christmas spending—matched the neighborhood, which was near the courts and therefore various law offices and counting houses. The men he passed were uniformly well-dressed and well-shaved.

  This was where the offices of Lenox’s detective agency were. And though their flourishing staff was somewhat reduced, because of the holiday, there were still some half-dozen men at work at slanted artists’ desks in the large central room of the offices. Lenox nodded to them, then went to one of the private offices that branched off of this room and knocked on the door.

  “Come in, unless you’re going to make me angry,” a woman’s voice called out.

  Lenox opened the door. “Hard to predict.”

  Polly Dallington smiled at him—wearily. “Hello, Charles. No, it was Winston, he was asking too many questions about something he should have been able to handle in a trice. Simple factory theft.”

  Jonathan Winston was one of their junior detectives. “He’s got it now?”

  “Yes, finally. What has happened about Austen?”

  “Answer me something, would you?”

  “Only too happily, if I can.”

  Polly was one of the agency’s three partners. Lenox was another; the third was his protégé, though perhaps that word had become superannuated, since the relationship had lasted so long, and the protégé’s own abilities grown significant in that time. He was a young Lord with a terrible reputation as a rake: who happened, now, to be the most devout husband, home by six each night, rarely happier than when turning down an invitation, eyes for no woman but one—Polly. His name was Lord John Dallington. He was in West Bromwich at the moment, working.

  Polly was the most organized of the three, in all essentials their manager or “boss,” as the modern industrialists might call her in the new slang, though Lenox had the most brilliant deductive mind of the three, and Dallington a kind of instinctive derring-do that often led to results. They made a good trio. Polly had introduced countless innovations—a botanist, an expert in poisons, a portrait artist who could draw very sharp likenesses, and numerous other helpful experts, on permanent retainer and at their disposal. She had also closely supervised the hiring of associate detectives, who proved, with their eagerness to win “case bonuses” for successfully resolved issues, efficient and valuable.

  All three of the partners were going to finish 1877 richer than they had started it, somewhat startlingly.

  “How much do you think the French would pay for the right piece of information?”

  Polly tilted her head thoughtfully. She was a slender woman in a muslin dress, sleeves rolled back above the wrist so that she could write without getting ink on it. Her expertise was in domestic crimes—missing fiancées, stolen silver—but recently the agency had taken several high-profile cases which brushed up against the loose confederacy of British spies.

  “You would know better than I,” she said. “An almost unlimited amount for the right information. The schematics of a British garrison, for instance, or the schedule of its shipping passages.”

  France and England were rather like an unhappy couple out to supper at friends’: not presently at war, except in the sense that they were continually at war. “Unlimited.”

  “Ten thousand pounds? Fifty thousand pounds in African gold? I have no very definite idea. LaFargiere is lurking around Eaton Square these days. There was a party he threw only the other evening that the Earl of Westmoreland attended as blithely as a maiden in spring. If only they knew what that man was capable of.”

  LaFargiere was a French agent, with perhaps sixty bodies to his credit; or his debit, if you were to think of it religiously.

  Lenox nodded, thinking. “I see.”

  Boothby possessed only two things of value: his commission, and whatever intelligence had been entrusted to him as an officer. (That gold cigar case and its cousinage, his cufflinks and tiepins and so on, could perhaps have fetched a couple hundred pounds in a pinch.) He could sell out his commission in the Grenadiers for eight thousand pounds or so, perhaps ten to the right buyer. A very fine sum, of course—many people could have lived whole lives one end to the other comfortably on the interest from it—but far short of what his lenders were asking.

  Whereas a piece of intelligence—well.

  Lenox had stopped here on the way to Sloane Square, where Austen’s wife was billeted. He had several active cases, and he wanted to leave instructions for their management, since the Austen business was evidently going to be a complicated one. Pointilleux, their young French associate, could handle his other work for now.

  Lenox sat for a while with Polly, describing the course of his day to her. A second set of ears was always helpful in these circumstances.

  The colonel of the Grenadiers, he told her, had been a remarkably precise rendition of a colonel of the Grenadiers. That was to say: He’d had a bushy moustache, a clear direct gaze, and looked as if he would happily lead his men on a charge over any hill you care to point out, at any latitude. His name was Sydney.

  Lenox had asked him if Austen’s family was present in London.

  “Only his wife, Mr. Lenox. His father and two sisters in Suffolk have been informed. Scotland Yard wired them in the immediate aftermath of the event, and an hour later I wired them myself.”

  “What did they reply?”

  “Thus far we have had no reply.”

  Lenox glanced at Larchmont, who nodded to indicate that the Yard had received no word either. “Can you give me Austen’s character?” asked Lenox.

  “Unimpeachable. My second best officer.”

  “Who is your best?”

  “Anthony St. Pearce. The men are in love with him, which is occasionally of help in battle. Otherwise he and A
usten are on a par. Austen’s men like him very much—they just aren’t in love. A small difference, but it’s the answer to your question.”

  Sydney spoke with the absolute certainty of someone who had seen hundreds of men die and live and win and lose for hundreds of reasons. “You would not suspect him of treason,” Lenox said.

  “Quite literally the last man in the regiment,” said Sydney crisply.

  Larchmont leaned forward. “If you could give us some indication of which units of the French military might be adversarially inclined toward Lieutenant Austen, Colonel, it would—”

  Sydney had shaken his head. “I’m afraid I cannot.”

  The conversation had ended shortly thereafter. Very little useful information. Larchmont, increasingly desperate, had decided to return to the central investigative office to see if any corpses had turned up. Lenox said he was going to see Austen’s wife.

  First he had stopped here, however.

  With a thoughtful look, Polly said, “Do you find it odd that the other two officers, Curbishley and Price, simply carried on with their plans for leave?”

  “I don’t know. Leave is very precious to these fellows from what I gather.”

  She nodded. “Mm.”

  “Boothby made it clear that he was settling for a London leave primarily because of a young lady here. A jolly Christmas they’ll have together, too, no doubt.”

  Polly smiled wearily. “I hope Lady Jane will make ours jolly. I could use an hour away from my desk.”

  The Dallingtons were due to come to Christmas supper. “What are you hoping to be left in the tree?”

  “I?” Polly stretched her arms back, and he saw again the tiredness around her eyes. “I would only like John to come back from West Bromwich, curse the place. No, who can say. I’ve gotten him a new walnut inkstand. I’ve no doubt he’ll hate it. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “He’ll love it.”

  “In my dreams I envision the two of us leaving on a honeymoon at last.”

  “A honeymoon.”

  She smiled. “Yes, Venice was my fancy. But obviously we could never spare two weeks from the agency.”

  “True, alas.”

  “In a year or two, perhaps. That is my hope.”

  Polly and Dallington had returned straight to work after their wedding. Her office was comfortable—closer to a sitting room than either Dallington’s or Lenox’s offices were, paneled with soft blue velvet, comfortable seats here and there, comfortingly lit. But not a home, still.

  Polly daydreamed for a moment, gazing into a space above and behind Lenox, then turned her gaze sharply on him. “I know you, Charles Lenox. Something is bothering you. What is it?”

  He was quiet a moment. Then he said, with an amused smile, “You’re quite right. Do you know what it is? Well—there are several things. But do you know what the first of them is, the one that I can’t let alone?”

  “What?”

  “It’s that third-class ticket. A lieutenant of the Grenadiers, from a family of means. Traveling home by third class.”

  She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled, no weariness in her face this time. “You’re splendid.”

  “Splendid?”

  “I wouldn’t have noticed it, but you’re entirely correct—third class. It’s unthinkable that a lieutenant of the Grens should have been traveling third class. It’s like picturing a leopard on the underground. Impossible.”

  * * *

  Austen’s wife was a beautiful woman. She had raven-black hair, and large, tender dark eyes. Lenox just wondered, from the way she walked as she led him into their flat, if she might be with child.

  She had received a wire that Lenox might come to see her, and had therefore greeted him without surprise. Dully, she invited him in. She pointed to a chair by the potbelly stove—the kitchen and living room opened into each other uninterrupted—and herself sat on a deal chair in front of a closet door, leaving a long, tightly upholstered blue sofa between them.

  This was generous, since Lenox’s spot was where it would be warmest, and the flat was cold, cramped, and dark.

  Still, it was a slightly awkward distance across the room, and he had to lean forward as he offered his commiseration: a difficult time for her; a happy outcome by no means improbable; Christmas still to be salvaged; and so forth.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lenox,” she said, hurrying him through these kindnesses. “Were there questions you wished to ask me?”

  Lenox nodded. “Only a few.” He glanced around the room, which was spartan in the extreme, indeed, nearly undecorated. “How long have you made your home here?”

  “Five months.”

  “From the date you were married?”

  She nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

  “How did you and Lieutenant Austen meet?”

  “We are from the same part of the country originally.”

  Lenox frowned. “Did you not consider going to Ipswich with your husband for the holiday?” he asked.

  She hesitated; in her face was a look of uncertainty.

  At last she spoke. “I wish I had, now, of course,” she said. “He intended to see his family quickly and return on the morning of Christmas day to see me. I was to prepare our dinner here. Homier, that way.”

  There was nothing homey about this room whatsoever, though. “I see. If I could ask, had Lieutenant Austen ever expressed any anxiety over being abducted?”

  “Not to me. He was very careful not to worry me with details of his work.”

  “Sometimes couples find that sharing a problem halves it.”

  “I suppose so,” she said. “It gives the other person half a problem, too.”

  Had it been so comfortless a marriage? Lenox smiled, though. “Yes. I hadn’t thought of it quite in that way.”

  “In any event his work was secret.”

  Lenox nodded. “I wonder, do you know why your husband would have been traveling third class?”

  “Pardon?”

  “By train. His ticket was a third-class one.”

  She looked bewildered. “Is that not—Is there something wrong with it?”

  Now it was Lenox’s turn to look at her oddly.

  The classes of a British train were an apt metaphor for the country’s entire steel-strong social order: in first class, aristocrats and gentry, in second, the middle and business class, in third, the lower. Invariably. There were men who had made enormous fortunes, yet still didn’t dare to move up from second class to first. At least one heard as much anecdotally.

  An officer of the Grenadiers, by definition of excellent birth, by profession a confirmed aristocrat, would never have traveled anywhere except in the first-class carriage. Second, at a great, great financial pinch.

  Never third.

  “Were your own parents acquainted with Lieutenant Austen’s?” Lenox asked. “I take it you met in society.”

  She reddened. “What? Oh—yes. The usual country way.”

  “Do you often dine with your husband’s brother officers, Mrs. Austen?”

  “From time to time. My husband had a great friend named MacLean, but he was seconded away to Canada. They were friends, Lieutenant and Mrs. MacLean.”

  Lenox’s face did not change; though Boothby had said the Azores. “I see.”

  “The colonel’s wife is extremely kind. We have a sewing circle for the children of the orphanages, all of us officers’ wives. I am a very good hand at that kind of thing, you see.” She was brightening slightly. “For Christmas there was a great lot to do, and Lieutenant Price’s wife—Margaret—became a friend.”

  “Lieutenant Price was with your husband at Olivetti’s on the day he went missing.”

  “Yes. We had hopes of making a match with them, you know—as couples will. Allen—my husband—liked Tom Price a great deal. And, as I say, I liked Margaret Price.”

  Lenox smiled sympathetically. “It must be difficult to enter a new regiment.”

  Her pale cheeks reddened
again. “Yes, I suppose. I have my husband, on the other hand. He is everything to me.”

  There was a passion in her voice that gave this declaration credibility—and yet was somehow at odds with the earlier parts of their conversation. “Are you sure that you have not overheard anything odd your husband said? Or that he has not told you anything?”

  “No. No! The inspector asked me the same, as if I did not wish I could help—no, nothing!”

  “Nothing about France, for instance.”

  “No! I—” She stopped short. “France?”

  “Had he referred to France recently?”

  She looked troubled. Near at hand there was a little scrap of sewing on a round table, and she rearranged it unnecessarily, squaring it off, avoiding Lenox’s eye. “I can’t quite recall.”

  “Mrs. Austen,” he said gently.

  Reluctantly, she met his gaze. “Yes?”

  “Had your husband mentioned France recently?”

  “It barely seems worth mentioning.”

  “Everything is worth mentioning.”

  “I had dreamed once of him taking his leave to go to Paris with me. Women like a dress, you know. Anyhow, he told me a week or two since that soon such a trip wouldn’t be possible.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s all.”

  Lenox nodded. “Mm.”

  “I doubt very much that—I do not know who attacked him, but I doubt very much that it had anything to do with that meaningless conversation, Mr. Lenox.”

  “Are you well-acquainted with Lieutenant Boothby, Mrs. Austen?” Lenox asked.

  Her face went cold. “No, sir.”

  He was staring at the hem of her dress. It had been mended recently. He glanced around the room again—its few creature comforts—a larder that looked as if it could have used a Lenox goose. A small portrait of the Queen. A traveling bag in the kitchen, open, with a sewing kit atop it. The remnants of a small meal.

  Was this poverty?

  If her husband was declared dead, his commission would be sold out at auction, and she would receive ten thousand pounds or so, free and clear. The law was crystal clear: The money went to the wife.

  It made her a suspect, alas.