Page 54 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

“Empty,” I said.

"He read the papers, or he was told. Either way, I wager Marsh was out of that house before the body had cooled." Finch shook his head slowly. "And here's my difficulty. I can't tell you which sort of leaving it was."

"Explain."

"Her wages were left on the kitchen table in an envelope, which is a decent man running. The clothes press upstairs is half empty, which is a hasty pack. The beds were made, but there was food in the larder going off. No carrier in Camberwell moved a trunk out of that street last week. I’ve asked all four of them." He set the notebook down. “The boy was at a day school two streets over. A father who bolts writes to the school, if only to stop them asking. Nobody wrote. He simply stopped coming, and they've been wondering about it ever since."

I said nothing for a moment.

"So either a frightened man got his family out of London in a hurry and was careless about the school," Finch said, "or somebody removed five people from a house and made it look like a frightened man. I've been at this thirty years and I couldn't swear to you which."

“Somebody thought Marsh could be bribed into naming his master."

"Aye. But someone got there first." Finch's mouth was flat. "One other thing, and I don't like it either. He hadn't shown at the Argosy since Crane died."

"And the club staff?”

"Slower. But a waiter's memory improved for half a crown. Marsh dined there a dozen times in the last year—always midweek, always the same private room, and never alone. The same gentleman each time. Arrived before him, left after him. The staff know the man by sight but not by name, which in a gentleman’s club that prides itself on knowing everybody takes some doing."

A gentleman with no name, in a club built on names. Above Marsh, then, the ladder held at least one more rung, and the rung declined to be counted.

"Whitfield?"

"Elbow-deep in bank transactions and happier than I've ever seen him. He asks another week and promises a pattern at the end of it."

Another week. It was sound work, patiently done. I could find no fault in it—except that it moved at the pace of honest men, and the man we hunted did not.

Finch came to his feet. “I’ll let you know what else I find.”

“The sooner the better.”

I had my proof of the enemy's pace by noon.

"Inspector Graves, Your Grace,” Milford announced.

He came into my study but did not take the chair I offered. Some news a man delivered standing, especially if it were the kind that would not be welcomed.

Milford closed the door with hardly a click.

I came to my feet. “You have news?”

“I do, Your Grace. Yesterday morning a witness presented himself at the Yard and asked for the officer in charge of the Kew matter. Dodson had him sworn within the hour." His voice was flat. "His name is Loftus. Retired out of the India trade, comfortable fortune, a house in Bayswater. Not a debt nor a stain on him that anyone can find. A member of the Argosy these eleven years."

The Argosy. Of course it was the Argosy. “Go on."

"On the evening of the quarrel, Loftus was in the club's small library, which shares a wall and a badly fitted door with the private dining room. He heard raised voices. Crane, whom he knew, and a second gentleman whom he did not.” Graves paused. “He heard the word blackmail followed by a lady's name. Lady Edmunds. And then he heard the second gentleman say the payments would end that day, a sound he took for a man being struck, and a chair gone over. The last thing he heard was Crane telling the other gentleman he would regret it."

He let it sit between us while he looked at me. If he was waiting for me to respond, he would be disappointed.

"He didn't know the second man at the time. When it went quiet, he came out into the passage and saw a tall red-headed gentleman going down the stairs. Some days after, he mentioned the business to another member. The member named the red-haired gentleman as Rosehaven." Graves turned the hat once. "He thought no more of it until he read in the papers that Crane had been found at Kew with the Earl of Rosehaven's pistol beside him.”

"He’d held his tongue out of delicacy—a club matter, with a lady's name in it—until murder made silence a weight his conscience wouldn't carry. He came in of his own accord. Asked for no consideration. Dodson's men couldn't shake a detail of it." He let out a breath. "Having read the statement, Your Grace, I don't believe the man is lying."

Neither of us said more. There was no need.

It might be nothing. A man's conscience can turn over on its own. But I didn’t believe it for one moment.

"He needn't be." The words came out level, which cost me something. "An honest man can be encouraged toward his honesty. A word at the club. A paragraph pointed out over a newspaper. A friend's murmur that the law is being made a fool of and decent men owe it better. He arrives at the Yard burning with conscience, swears to every true syllable, and there is nothing in his manner to shake—because nothing in his testimony is false."