“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Lenox. We’ve never been formally introduced.”

“It’s an honor for me too,” Lenox said to the inspector.

Thomas stepped to the left and took a sip from a flask, while Jenkins hurried after him.

“It’s down here,” he said.

“I know,” said Thomas. “In houses of this design the servants’ bedrooms are always to the left, and the kitchen is always to the right.”

Lenox smiled to himself and followed the two men.

They were walking along a clean well-lit hallway, slightly wider than Lenox had expected, with small drawings of flowers in between each set of doors. Some of the doors had small personal details-an embroidery that said SARAH, a garland pinned against a hinge. The noise from the kitchen receded behind them, but they could still hear the business of the house being conducted.

At the end of the hall, a door was slightly ajar. Thomas stopped and asked Jenkins if it was the correct room, and Jenkins answered that it was. Both men stepped back for the first time, and allowed Lenox to come forward. He put a leather glove on his right hand and opened the door.

“Why do you wear a glove?” Jenkins asked.

McConnell answered for his friend. “There’s a new technology emerging-fingerprinting. Have you heard of it?”

“No.”

“A chap named Herschel, magistrate in India, started to put prisoners’ handprints next to their signatures. At first he did it just to scare them into being honest. But then he noticed the individuality of the fingers and decided he would focus on them rather than on the entire hand. Ingenious, really. Still rather hit-and-miss, the whole thing, but Lenox and I agree there’s potential in it.”

Jenkins looked at the back of his hand. “The prints from your fingers?”