No Honest Gentleman

Chapter One: The Sealed Room

The fog came in off the Thames like something with intent, swallowing the gas lamps along Pall Mall until they were little more than smudges of amber floating in grey wool. It was the kind of London night that made honest men bolt their doors and dishonest men feel invisible. Inspector Bartholomew Pike of Bow Street pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders and stepped down from the hackney cab, his boots meeting the wet cobblestones with a sound like a slap.

The Avalon Club occupied a handsome Portland stone building set back from the street behind wrought-iron railings. It was the sort of establishment that Pike had walked past a thousand times without being invited inside—a fortress of wealth, breeding, and the particular brand of English arrogance that came with both. Tonight, however, the fortress had sent for him. Murder had a way of levelling the social order, if only temporarily.

A liveried footman met him at the door with an expression that suggested Pike might have arrived to clean the drains. Pike ignored it. He was forty-three years old, the son of a Bermondsey tanner, and he had long since stopped caring what men in powdered wigs thought of his origins. What mattered was that he was good at his work—perhaps the best Bow Street had—and that somewhere inside this building, a man was dead and the reason why was waiting to be found.

"Inspector Pike," he said, showing his warrant. "I understand you've had some trouble."

The footman's nostrils flared, as though the word "trouble" were indecently understated. "If you'll follow me, sir. Mr. Pembroke is expecting you."

Pike was led through a grand entrance hall panelled in dark oak, past a reading room where several gentlemen sat in leather chairs pretending not to stare, and up a broad staircase to the first floor. The air smelled of beeswax, tobacco, and old money. At the end of a carpeted corridor, a stout man with the ruddy complexion of a port drinker stood wringing his hands outside a closed door. This was Mr. Pembroke, the club's steward, and he looked as though the evening had aged him ten years.

"Inspector, thank God," Pembroke said, his voice low and urgent. "It's Sir Walter Crayne. He's dead. Murdered, we believe. In the card room. The door has been locked since we discovered him, and the four other gentlemen who were playing are being held in the smoking room downstairs. No one has been permitted to leave the premises."

"Good," Pike said. "Who found the body?"

"Stubbs—one of our servants. He was stationed outside the card room door all evening, attending to the gentlemen's needs. At approximately midnight, there was a commotion inside. Stubbs entered and found Sir Walter slumped in his chair. The others were in a state of considerable alarm."

"A commotion?"

"Raised voices. Mr. Graves called out for assistance."

Pike filed the name away. "And this Stubbs—he watched the door the entire evening?"

"He did, sir. It's his regular duty when we have private card games. The gentlemen prefer not to be disturbed, but they want refreshments available. Stubbs sits on a chair in the corridor and waits to be summoned."

"Is there another way into the room?"

Pembroke shook his head. "One door. The windows are shuttered and barred from the inside—the gentlemen insist on it during high-stakes play. They're quite particular about privacy."

Pike studied the door. It was solid mahogany, fitted with a heavy brass lock. He took the key from Pembroke, turned it, and stepped inside.

The card room was smaller than he had expected—perhaps fifteen feet square, with dark green wallpaper and a single chandelier casting warm light over a round card table draped in baize. Five chairs were arranged around the table, and in one of them sat a dead man.

Sir Walter Crayne had been a lean, sharp-featured gentleman of perhaps fifty-five, with iron-grey hair swept back from a high forehead. In life, Pike imagined, he had possessed the kind of face that gave nothing away. In death, his expression was one of mild surprise, as though he had been interrupted mid-sentence. He was slumped slightly to his right, his left arm hanging at his side, his right hand still resting on the green baize near a scatter of playing cards and a tumbler of brandy.

Pike circled the body slowly. The wound was not immediately obvious. Sir Walter's dark coat concealed it, but when Pike carefully parted the fabric, he found it: a thin puncture wound beneath the ribs on the left side, angled upward. The blood had soaked into the waistcoat and the lining of the coat but had not pooled visibly on the chair or the floor. It was a precise wound—narrow and deep, delivered by something slim and sharp.

"A stiletto?" Pike murmured to himself. He looked around the room. Against the far wall stood a writing desk, the kind clubs kept stocked with paper, ink, and sealing wax for members who wished to dash off correspondence. On the desk sat an inkwell, a blotter, a small tray of quills—and a conspicuous empty space where something had recently been removed. A faint rectangular outline in the dust told him an object had sat there for some time.

"Mr. Pembroke," Pike called. The steward appeared in the doorway, carefully averting his eyes from the corpse. "What usually sits on that writing desk? There, in the gap."

Pembroke peered across the room. "The letter opener, sir. An ornamental piece—silver handle, very thin blade. It's been there for years."

"It's not there now."

"No, sir. It is not."

Pike returned to the body and examined the wound again. A thin blade, consistent with a letter opener. He straightened up and surveyed the room once more. One door. Shuttered windows, barred from inside. Five men had entered this room for a game of vingt-et-un, and one of them had not left it alive.

"I'll need to speak with each of the surviving players," Pike said. "Separately. And with Stubbs. Have a room prepared for me—somewhere private. And send for the coroner."

"Of course, Inspector."

Pike took one last look at Sir Walter Crayne. The dead man's cards lay face-down on the table before him, and Pike turned them over: a king and a nine. Twenty-nine points. A losing hand. But then, Sir Walter had lost far more than a card game tonight.

Pike closed the door behind him and locked it again, pocketing the key. Whatever had happened in that room, the answer was inside it somewhere—hidden among the cards, the furniture, and the lies of four gentlemen who were, at this very moment, composing their stories downstairs.

He intended to pull every one of those stories apart.