The Fleet Street Murders (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T

he next morning Lenox woke early, with the sun not yet out and that pale white of dawn covering the sky, gray and blue mingled in silken layers behind it. The rain had stopped and left behind it a new cold, but the coals in the fireplace across the room were still orange. He lay under his covers, warm, drowsy, comfortable, for a few moments longer than he ought to have, savoring the sense of being inside his own home. It meant something—but Stirrington beckoned.

He dressed in a dark suit with a dark cloak and found that Mary had packed new clothes in a tidy overnight bag for him. Downstairs he had coffee, apple slices, and toast, a scoop of marmalade spread over the last. He thought of Jane and wished she were next door, or better yet next to him. He was melancholy, for some reason. An identical note to each of two men, Jenkins and Exeter, informing them of the previous night’s discovery, and he was prepared to leave.

Although there was a small surprise first—an early visitor. It was James Hilary.

“How do you do?” Lenox asked, answering the knock at the door himself. “I’m pleased to see you.”

The young Member of Parliament had a slightly awkward air about him, standing on Lenox’s stoop, but spoke plainly. “Are you?” he said. “I rather wondered whether you would be.”

“Because you left Stirrington?”

Hilary nodded.

Lenox shrugged. “I understood,” he said. “It wasn’t a personal decision.”

“That’s true, but nevertheless.”

“We’ve been friends for a while now, Hilary. It’s politics.”

“That’s good of you, Charles—but it was a bad decision.”

“Oh?”

“Apparently you’re pulling even in local support.”

“We worked hard after you left.”

“I heard about your encounter with Roodle,” said Hilary. “Sounds like you scored one off of him.”

“I had little taste for it, I confess,” said Lenox.

“You oughtn’t to have left, however.”

“I know Crook thought so, too.”

“I hope you don’t learn how precious time is in a county campaign too late.”

“I’m returning now,” said Lenox.

Hilary gave him a searching look. “You’ll stay? Scotland Yard can take care of themselves, you know.”

Lenox laughed. “Yes, I’ll stay,” he said. “I had to come down, James, I promise you I did, but I’ve scarcely been gone a full day, and I won’t leave again.”

Hilary nodded, apparently satisfied with this intelligence. For ten minutes he stayed and discussed strategy with Lenox, promised to keep close track of the election, and generally made himself agreeable in the way he knew how to.

The truth was that Lenox
did
feel slightly betrayed by Hilary, his friend; and yet when he thought of the man as a political associate rather than as a friend it seemed better. He saw Hilary away with a cordial smile, and as he put on his overcoat he had a small smile on his lips.
Pulling even in local support
, the phrase had been.

They would see; perhaps he might nose out Roodle in the end.

As the sun slipped over the horizon and burnished London gold, Lenox was stepping into his carriage, on the way to King’s Cross Station. As he rolled through the streets he silently contemplated his fellow men, those just setting out for their days and those just getting home from their nights—the aristocratic gamblers who were stumbling home in a daze, the elderly ladies who preferred Hyde Park at this unhurried hour, the deliverymen who gave these rich houses their milk and fruit and meat as the day began. A sense of his own inconsequence stole over Lenox. This rented world. He discovered that he did care about marrying Jane sooner rather than later. All he wanted was to be beside her, Parliament and Hiram Smalls both be damned. The low fire of love for her that always burned in his chest flared and filled him.

At the train station he sat at a café with a cup of coffee, his third of the morning, and read the
Times
. According to a lead column, Exeter had definitive proof that Smalls and Poole had acted in concert. “Inspector Exeter had already ascertained that Mr. Poole and Mr. Smalls met in the Saracen’s Head pub,” said the article, “but he now has further proof of their complicity. When reporters asked him to reveal the new information, Exeter said, ‘You’ll see, you’ll see.’ Speculation centers on some link between both men and the Belgian housekeeper employed by Winston Carruthers, Martha Claes, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, with Scotland Yard eager to learn them.”

Lenox sighed. What proof could it possibly be?

Suddenly, across the vast expanse of King’s Cross Station, he heard a shout. It was coming from near the ticket booths.

“Lenox!” the voice shouted. “Lenox!”

Charles stood and turned, patting his pocket nervously to make sure his ticket was still there.

Then he saw who it was: Dallington. The young lad ran up to Lenox, people staring as he passed before they returned to whatever they had been doing.

“What on earth can it be?” asked Lenox. “How are you?”

“Quite well, quite well,” said Dallington breathlessly. “It’s Poole.”

“What happened?”

Dallington gulped the air, apparently unused to the exercise. “I didn’t think I’d catch you.”

“What happened to Poole?”

“The knife they found in the back of Carruthers’s neck? The long one?”

“Yes?”

“Poole bought it. It was Poole’s.”

“How do you know? How did you discover this?”

“Poole sent for me himself.”

“What are the details?”

“It’s a hunting knife with a red and black handle. Poole has always hunted and bought it three weeks ago.”

“Go on.”

Dallington nodded with an anguished look on his face. “Furthermore, what’s worse, Poole denied buying it at first. Now he says he can’t remember. It’s all so dreadfully suspicious—but I
know
he didn’t do it.”

“This looks black, Dallington. Exeter can prove the murder weapon was Gerald Poole’s knife?”

“The shopkeeper who sold it entered all of Poole’s particulars into a ledger.”

Lenox sighed. “I’m afraid he may be guilty,” he said.

“He’s not. I can tell you that flatly.”

The older man looked at the younger with pity. “Yes,” was all he said.

“What can we do?”

“I must go to Stirrington.”

“What! You can’t think of leaving, can you?”

“Indeed I can.”

Dallington looked dumbfounded. “An innocent man goes to trial in a week’s time.”

This pierced Lenox. “I will write to Exeter,” he said. “Forcefully.”

“You must stay!”

“I cannot. If you keep me apprised of every detail you learn, I will try to help. Yet if Poole is convicted, I can always return and try to exonerate him. Still, if he is truly innocent—then I hope he won’t be convicted.”

“Hope?” said Dallington, and a faint look of disgust passed across his face. “Parliament will go on forever. This is a man’s life!”

Lenox knew the justice of what Dallington said, but he thought as well of all the people who were paid to be discovering who had killed Pierce and Carruthers, and the thought of his visit with Hilary that morning—
you’re pulling even in local support
—and wondered why
he
had to be the one who fixed everything; and a small selfish voice rose in his mind. He wanted to be in Parliament.

“John,” said Lenox in an utterly reasonable voice, “you must understand. I have obligations. I came down expressly against the wishes of those with an interest in my campaign and have done my best. We know Smalls must be guilty, don’t we?”

“Because of the note? Everybody may write anything they please on a piece of paper.”

Lenox sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

“Stay, Lenox. You must.”

“I can’t, but you shall have all of my attention when you write, and as goes without saying I shall follow every detail of the case in the newspapers.”

Dallington threw his hands in the air. “I can only ask you to stay,” he said.

“I can’t. You can handle this.”

“I don’t think I can, Lenox. I’m afraid I simply can’t.”

“I must go, Dallington. Keep in close contact.”

“If you must, then,” said Dallington, his face suddenly forlorn. “I’ll write to you this evening.”

Lenox turned, ran for his platform, and just in time caught the train headed north.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I

t was a busy afternoon. Guilt gnawed at Lenox, but he knew Dallington’s request had in its own way been unreasonable, too. It was important to do the work of the nation, and if he could make it to Parliament, what untold good might he not accomplish? It was an uncertain business, being an adult, trying to be responsible. Nonetheless, he wrote Exeter a letter full of the precise details of Lenox’s day in London, congratulating him on apprehending one murderer—Hiram Smalls—while on the other hand cautioning the inspector that Gerald Poole’s role in the business was far from certain. Alas, his cajoling would likely be futile, unless Exeter’s theories were somehow thwarted, when he might turn to it. He was a bullheaded man.

Lenox sent that letter and then wrote a telegram to Dallington, half-apologizing for the scene in the train station and asking him to keep in close touch. He also advised the young lord to continue investigating Carruthers’s and Pierce’s history on Fleet Street. Something besides Jonathan Poole’s treason years before had to link them.

Lenox wondered about the knife, though. He felt uneasy about Gerald Poole. The young man was hiding some secret.

After he had written this letter and this telegram, there was nothing left to do but turn his attention to the work at hand. Fortunately, Graham had been on the job.

“How do you do, sir?” Graham had asked when Lenox stepped off the train in Stirrington.

“Tired,” the detective had answered, “and sorely tried.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, sir.”

“And here?”

“My task went tolerably well, sir.”

“You bought everyone beer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about Crook? Is he upset?”

“He reconciled himself to your absence, sir.”

“Wonderful.”

Graham nodded and said, “Of course, sir.”

They bumped through the small town, and Lenox found that he recognized certain shops, even certain faces, and it increased his affection for the place. He would be honored to represent it should they let him.

The Queen’s Arms remained as he had found it on first arriving in Stirrington; the fire burned hot and high toward one end of the bar, and a chalkboard menu offered venison with applesauce for the midday meal. Crook, his massive bulk and great red nose intact, nodded in a cursory but friendly manner to Lenox. One thing was different, however: At Lenox and Graham’s entrance, a cry went up and people crowded around them.

Am I so beloved so quickly? thought Lenox.

A moment later he was laughing quietly at his vanity—for they were all talking at once to Graham.

He ought to have known; Graham had the most extraordinary way of listening, such that his interlocutors felt grateful to him when they parted, and he had evidently been true to his word, had stood any number of rounds, and become intimate with all the usual inmates of the pub. No fewer than seven men came up to them. All had looked slightly suspicious, slightly aloof, when Lenox first entered the Queen’s Arms, and all now cheerfully clasped his hand and vowed that a friend of Mr. Graham’s was a friend of theirs. It was an unlooked-for success and encouraged Lenox greatly.

“Mr. Crook,” he said, approaching the bar.

“Pleased to see you, Mr. Lenox. London?”

This lone word was evidently a question, so Lenox said, “Yes, it was good I went back.” He thought of Jane. “Very good I went back. Do you think my absence dooms us?”

Crook chuckled at that. “I reckon not,” he said. “It didn’t hurt to leave Mr. Graham behind. You shook every hand you could within Stirrington city limits?”

Lenox laughed and remembered his promise to do so. “I did, yes,” he said.

“Then we shall be all right. Sandy Smith has spread it around that you were in Durham, speaking with the right people.”

Lenox shook his head doubtfully. “I can’t say I like that.”

“It’s politics, you know,” said Crook. “You
will
speak to them within this next week or two, but folk around here would take it poorly if they knew you had scarcely been here any time at all before you felt the call back to London.”

“I understand.”

The candidate and the political agent (though he was still a bartender when Mr. Smith, at stool seven, asked for another pint of bitter) then spoke about the day’s schedule, and about their strategy for Roodle, and about the further handbills and flyers they would print up, and Crook confessed to writing Hilary with the promising news of Lenox’s popularity—in sum spent fifteen minutes or so in the pleasant and easy conversation that men who love politics are able to expend an infinite amount of time on. The last thing Crook said was to remember the importance of that evening’s dinner. Now, Lenox didn’t remember with whom he was dining, or why it was important, but, eager to stay in Crook’s good graces, he nodded solemnly and resolved within himself to ask Graham what dinner it was.

“Then I’ll see you at the meeting of corn and grain merchants, Mr. Lenox?” Crook said.

“Certainly.”

Lenox nodded to Graham then, and the valet extracted himself from a large group of friends to accompany the detective upstairs.

“You know what I’m to do today?” asked Lenox when they had reached his room.

“The corn and grain—”

“Yes, yes, but for supper?”

“Oh—yes, sir. You have supper with Mrs. Reeve, sir. Many local merchants and officials will be in attendance. Men who determine public opinion, sir—for instance, Ted Rudge, the wine merchant, who dislikes Mr. Roodle intensely. Mr. Crook impressed upon me that these men are the sort who determine elections, sir, and that you might not meet them without Mrs. Reeve’s patronage.”

“I’m not a pet, Graham.”

“No, sir,” said the butler, nodding to indicate the verity of Lenox’s statement. “Nonetheless, these men are far more important than the corn and grain merchants, for example, sir. Although the corn and grain merchants
do
—”

“Blast the corn and grain merchants,” said Lenox grumpily.

“Very good, sir.”

“Save your corn and grain stories for the long winter nights, Graham.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I lose the respect of the corn and grain merchants, life will go on, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I’m suited to politics, you know.”

“Sir?”

“I wish they wouldn’t tell everyone I was in Durham.”

“Men often need time to settle into political life, sir. The story about Durham is an exigency of your position.”

“I know it.” Another sigh. “Anyway, Graham, what about you?”

“Sir?”

“What are you going to do today?”

“I thought I would discharge my usual duties, sir, now that you are returned.”

Lenox waved a hand. “We can’t have that. These chaps would elect you if they could. No, you must stick by me. Unless you mind?”

“Not at all, sir. The servants at the Queen’s Arms are most competent, I have found.”

“Capital, then. The blue tie?”

“Here it is, sir.”

“With this tie I could face a legion of corn and grain merchants,” said Lenox, putting it on in the mirror.

“Excellent, sir,” said Graham.