Page 38 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

He bowed. “Your Grace. How may I be of service?”

“I wonder whether you might give me a quarter of an hour. Somewhere quiet.”

“Of course.”

He led me to a small reading room overlooking the street. It stood empty at that hour save for an elderly gentleman asleep behind The Times, his breathing keeping slow time with the clock on the mantel. Morris glanced at him, judged him no obstacle, and drew the door half closed.

I came immediately to the point. “A matter of business has been put before me. A commercial guarantee, in which a certain gentleman’s name stands surety. Before anything proceeds, I prefer to take my own soundings of the man. I am given to understand he is a member here. Mr. Walter Marsh.”

Nothing crossed the steward’s face, which told me only that he was good at his work. “Mr. Marsh. Yes, Your Grace. He was put up—let me think—two years ago this spring.”

Two years. The figure sat exactly where Whitfield had placed it. There is a small, cold satisfaction in watching a stranger corroborate a ledger.

“A regular attendee?”

“Tolerably regular. Two or three days in the week, as a rule.”

“And what manner of gentleman is he?”

Morris considered the question with the care of a man weighing loyalty against truth and finding, for once, that they did not conflict. “A quiet one, Your Grace.”

“How so?”

“He keeps very much to himself. He arrives, reads the newspapers, takes luncheon on occasion, and leaves. Sometimes a frame of billiards, if the room is empty.”

“That’s rather odd.”

“He does not play against other members. He knocks the balls about alone.”

A man who came to a club—the one institution in England built for the company of other men—and arranged to be alone in it. “No close companions, then?”

“None that I would call intimate.”

“In two years?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“A man who joins a club generally forms acquaintances. It is half the purpose of the subscription.”

“So one would suppose.” Morris permitted himself the smallest pause. “Mr. Marsh appears to have joined for the other half.”

The newspapers, the luncheons, the quiet rooms. A place to be, without being anything. I moved to the window and looked down at the street, where the afternoon traffic of St. James’s went about its business—clerks and carriages and two young bloods arguing over a horse.

“Does he play cards?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Never?”

“I have never once seen him at a table.”

“Does he drink?”

“A single glass of claret with luncheon. He leaves half of it.”

“Does he owe money in the house? To the wine committee, the kitchen, the servants?”

“His account is settled quarterly, to the day.”