A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch Read Free Book Online Page B

himself a cup.
    The window by which they sat overlooked a small garden, full of banks and rows of flowers less fantastically unusual than Barnard’s orchids but beautiful nevertheless, and Lenox stared into it until his host saw fit to speak. The moment came at last, after eggs and bacon had been served and Lenox had eaten a good deal of them.
    “I’m getting a new man in here,” Barnard said, to open their conversation.
    “Are you?”
    “To replace Jenkins.”
    Lenox’s heart fell. “Why?” he said.
    “Incompetent. Getting a man named Exeter. Jenkins insisted that it was murder. Nonsense, I told him. The girl was probably jilted. Happens all the time.”
    “It was murder, George.”
    Barnard paused and looked him in the face. “I disagree.”
    “Do you feel no responsibility to the girl?”
    “I do. But I think your facts are wrong. You’re only an amateur, Charles.”
    “That’s true,” Lenox said.
    “And Exeter seems to be leaning toward my theory on the matter.”
    “Exeter.” Lenox sighed.
    “I want the plain facts, Charles, and I don’t think you’ve got them. Due respect. Bringing Toto’s failure of a husband in as a witness. No jury would believe a drunk. And Exeter’s a good man. Jane has no need to worry. Tell her it will be solved. Or, better yet, I’ll stop by.”
    “No, I can tell her.”
    “As you please.”
    Lenox stood up. “All the same, George, you won’t mind if I look into a few of my ideas?”
    “Not at all. But in the end, we’ll see what the Yard thinks of it.”
    “Of course.”
    “Have you had enough to eat?”
    Lenox took a last sip of tea. “Delicious, as always,” he said. They drifted out into the main hallway, where he saw a familiar face.
    “Mr. Lenox, sir, how do you do?”
    “Very well, Inspector Exeter”—for it was the sergeant himself—“though this matter weighs on my mind. We must do our best for her.”
    “Aye, well said, Mr. Lenox.”
    Barnard said, “You know this man, then?” Lenox nodded. “Look here,” Barnard went on, addressing Exeter, “you’ll figure this out straightaway, won’t you? I’ve no doubt you’re as incompetent as the rest of them.”
    “No, sir,” Exeter said. He glanced at Lenox with a sort of uneasiness.
    “Sure you are. But on this one you suspend your usual stupidity, all right?”
    “Yes, sir. It’s in good hands, sir. You can trust me.” He smiled weakly.
    Barnard turned his attention to Lenox. “I hope you’re coming to the ball next week?”
    “Of course.” The ball was an annual event at Barnard’s. Of the winter balls it was the best known, and while during the season there would usually be several such affairs on a single night, nobody dared to throw one opposite his.
    “Farewell, then,” said Barnard. He looked intently at the flower even as he said it, and Lenox was left with the inspector from Scotland Yard.
    Exeter was a large man, with black bushy eyebrows, a matching mustache, and thick pink features. He wore a full uniform wherever he went, and his helmet drooped over his eyes. He swung a blackjack around by its leather hoop seemingly without cessation, excluding the times when he put it to other use, most often when he dealt with what he called the lower orders.
    London’s police force was barely thirty-five years old. Sir Robert Peel had organized the first Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, when Lenox was a lad, and as a result the men who joined were called either peelers or, more likely, bobbies. Its powers were new and uncertain, and Exeter represented both the good and the bad in the institution: the better chance of public order, and the risk of the abuse of the power needed to maintain it.
    When he entered the force, Exeter had recently retired from the military and had chosen to become a beat man, walking the streets at night and taking the word beat for each of its several meanings. A quick series of retirements and deaths within the Yard had seen him promoted beyond his