Free A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch Page A

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Chapter 11
    T he man who walked up the stoop of 11 Hampden Lane that afternoon, just before four o’clock, was not, his friends would agree, Charles Lenox at his best. He had been forced to walk the better part of the way home, and a fringe of snow covered his coat, the brim of his hat, and his scarf. One of his feet, he was convinced, would fall off soon, and the other one, though near-perfect by comparison, felt as if it was stepping barefoot on the street as he walked.
    Add to that his perplexity about Prudence Smith’s murder, his eagerness to solve the case for his dear friend, and the fact that he was worn out and hungry from his walk, and one might begin to understand his circumstances.
    But when an upper maid opened the front door to him, he said hello as cheerfully as though he had been out for a lazy walk in late spring. She took his coat, his hat, and his scarf and asked if she ought to bring tea to the library, to which he assented. Only when he had walked through the hallway, turned right, and shut the doors of his sanctuary behind him did he sigh and wince and gingerly remove his mutinous boots.
    Things soon began to improve. The fire was warm, and hehad changed into a spare set of hunting clothes—a houndstooth suit—that he kept in a drawer in the back of the room. And when the tea came, he felt warm enough, and cozy in his high-backed chair, watching the snow fall outside, with a paper in his hand that he might choose to read or not, as the mood took him, and a happy heaviness in his eyes, as of contentment.
    He asked the girl for his slippers, and she fetched them, and in the space of fifteen minutes, happiness had returned to his face, and before he had even had a chance to read the headlines the newspaper had fallen from his hands and he had dozed off pleasantly into sleep.
    He awoke thirty minutes later, first half-sleeping and then gently opening his eyes. As he gazed into the whitened street, he thought drowsily that it had been a perfect nap—the sort a man runs into now and again by chance, when he has had a difficult day but comes back to his hearth to find a brief moment of peace and rest, the sort that leaves him renewed, still sleepy, and at ease with the world.
    There was a knock on the door, and he heard the maid walking briskly across the hallway to answer it. It occurred to him then that Graham must not have returned yet from the two tasks he had set out to do.
    The maid tapped on the door to the library, and Lenox said, “Come in.” She swung the double doors open, and Lady Jane, who was on the threshold, said to her, “Bring the tea now if you would, my dear.”
    Lenox stood up and smiled.
    “I’ve only just woken up,” he said, “from the loveliest nap.”
    “What a lucky thing!” Lady Jane said, pulling off her gloves and leaning back, with an exhale, into the red sofa. She was wearing a pale blue dress that brought out the flush in her cheeks.
    “Oh, it was very nice.”
    “Such a horrid day, too. I saw you coming back home from my window, Charles, and I saw your poor leg was drenched,and I thought I would give you an hour to rest, but it’s only been forty-five minutes and here I am already. I hope you don’t mind.”
    “Never,” he said. “Or, if ever, I would have minded forty-five minutes ago, when I first came in. But at the moment nothing could bring me more pleasure. Now, have you had your tea?”
    “I haven’t.”
    “Neither have I.”
    “I know,” she said. She smiled. “Your maid told me that she brought it in, but you were asleep. She’s bringing a fresh pot now.”
    “I thought I heard you say something to her.”
    “It will only be a moment, I think.”
    “It seems ages since lunch. Though the company was good; I was with my brother.”
    “Edmund!”
    “I enjoyed seeing him, of course, but it was hours and hours ago. You’re lucky you didn’t find me fainted dead away on the sidewalk.”
    “Did you have a trying day, otherwise?”
    He