The Fleet Street Murders (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

W

ell, Graham? What did your new friends think?”

It was the evening, and Lenox and Graham sat at a table in the Queen’s Arms, eating supper together as they had many a time in their younger days, during Lenox’s early years in London. In fact, Lenox remembered the first day he had slept in his new house—now his for some twelve years—when he and Graham had eaten a supper of wine and cold chicken amid the boxes and debris of moving house.

They were seeing each other for the first time in several hours. After the debate Lenox had gone to three separate receptions (including, to his own amusement, one with the famous corn and grain merchants) while Graham had done what were now his usual rounds, among the pubs and shops.

“There is no doubt that Mr. Roodle has made himself a figure of fun, sir. Nearly every man I met either did an impression of the gentleman or asked for an account of his behavior.”

“That’s good, I expect,” said Lenox glumly. “I’d infinitely prefer a fair fight.”

“I would concur, sir, if Mr. Roodle had chosen to fight fairly as well.”

“Yes, that’s true—and politics is a dirty thing, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were saying?”

“His temper has made Mr. Roodle a figure of fun, sir, but I was going to say that he still has strong support. Some men laughed right along with Mr. Roodle’s imitators and then said they’d vote for him anyhow.”

“That’s to be expected, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir. Though your reputation in Stirrington is high, I fear that the voters you haven’t met are still suspicious of your motives and character.”

“Then I shall have to be sure to try to meet them all.”

Indeed, over the next several days Lenox worked as hard as he ever had in his life. He slept no more than five or six hours a night, and aside from a hearty breakfast each morning, when he remembered to eat it was usually a hasty sandwich with a glass of beer. Heretofore he had stuck to the town of Stirrington, but now he and Sandy Smith visited the countryside around it, stopping at small farms, villages with a dozen houses in them, and the pubs and coach stations that served these places. More than once Lenox despaired of finding votes among such sparse populations, but Smith always assured him that these men would remember their five-and ten-minute visits with the candidate. Roodle had deemed it beneath his dignity to visit the thousand voters who might make a crucial difference. Smith and Lenox hoped it was a grave error.

As they rode over the countryside in a coach and four, Lenox read the news from Lonon, devouring each dated article but especially those concerned with Inspector Exeter, who had knocked Hiram Smalls, Simon Pierce, and Winston Carruthers off of the front page. There were few details of his shooting, however, and each day the articles grew more restless and more speculative. The facts that they all confirmed were these:

• Exeter had been in Brick Lane, a poor part of East London where gangs ran riot and police kept their heads down.

• He had been shot in the back, just below the right shoulder.

• Despite the street’s crowds, nobody had witnessed—or anyway admitted to witnessing—the assault.

• Officials from Scotland Yard confirmed that Exeter had been working on the Fleet Street murders.

The strangest part of all this to Lenox was, of course, that his investigations had taken him so far away from Fleet Street and the two houses in the West End where Pierce and Carruthers lived. Smalls had lived in the East End, too, but in Liverpool Street, twenty minutes’ walk from Brick Lane. It was perplexing. He must have perceived something Lenox had not. Either that or he had been off on a wild-goose chase. Lenox hoped it hadn’t been that.

Immediately after Exeter had gone into the hospital Jenkins had been reinstated, a fact that he relayed with much happiness in a telegram to Lenox. Unfortunately, he didn’t have—or wouldn’t offer, after his recent trouble—any more detail about the shooting of Exeter, other than to say that he felt sure it was tied into the Fleet Street murders. Lenox agreed and wrote back to say so, but he felt frustrated at his lack of access to the case’s finer points.

Still, it was good to have his mind on Stirrington. Election day was drawing precariously near.

On the fourth evening after the debate, Lenox had dinner with Mrs. Reeve again, though an entirely new and more agreeable set of guests joined them. Her influence was tangible, he saw as he grew more intimate with the town, and he was grateful for her good opinion.

Afterward he sat in the empty bar of the Queen’s Arms, drinking a companionable glass of port with Crook. He asked the bartender a question he had refrained from asking his entire time in Stirrington. “Am I going to win?”

Crook shrugged philosophically. “You have a chance, anyway. It all depends on this town’s feelings about Roodle, really. If they dislike him mildly, resent him mildly, then he’ll be elected. There’s a powerful instinct to stick together in your northern towns. If on the other hand there is deep resentment toward Roodle, you have a damn good chance.”

“That makes my time here seem rather futile,” said Lenox with a rueful smile. “If it all depends on Roodle.”

“On the contrary—you’ve done it all perfectly. You have a light touch with people, Mr. Lenox. I’m sure it has helped in your first career, at times. You’ve introduced yourself to the people of Stirrington and within a week become familiar and acceptable to them. Without having done that, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest what the opinion of Roodle was. A sluggish turnout and a victory of a few thousand votes for him, were you a different man.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

Crook, lighting a cigar, said, “Mind, Mr. Graham has helped, and Sandy Smith and I long had a theory that if you visited the outlying farms and villages you would find undiscovered votes. It’s all gone well, I must say. It never mattered when Stoke was in the seat, but Sandy and I are excited to see if the strategy works.”

“All things being equal—two wonderful candidates, neither of whom had ever traveled a foot outside of Stirrington—is this place Liberal or Conservative?”

Crook grimaced and puffed at his cigar. “Certainly we’re conservative in our morals, here. There are those who recognize that Liberal policies favor our kind. Myself, for instance. In the end, though, yes—Conservative.”

“An uphill climb for us, then.”

“You’ve known that since Mr. Hilary left, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said Lenox. “To be honest, I thought it was all lost then.”

“The party is fearful of looking as if it really tried for a seat it might lose. Better that the onus falls on you, a dilettante, or me and Smith, locals. Harsh, I know, but true.”

Lenox saw the verity in this. He took a sip of the amber port. “I hope we can give them a surprise, then.”

“So do I, so do I. It’s wonderful finally to get my hands dirty and play at real politics, I can tell you. Stoke never had any juice in him.” After taking a sip of port he added, “May he rest in peace.”

Graham came in at that moment.

“A telegram, sir,” he said to Mr. Lenox.

“Who from?”

“Inspector Jenkins of Scotland Yard, sir.”

“Hand it over.”

“What an inundation of telegrams has come to my pub since your arrival!” said Crook with a belly laugh. “We ought to send a wire straight to your room. It must cost a pretty penny to stay abreast of the London news.”

“Worth it to me, though,” said Lenox. He opened the telegram and read it.

He gasped.

“Sir?” said Graham.

“Just a moment, Graham.”

Lenox read it over. “Gerald Poole has confessed. He killed Winston Carruthers.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

T

he news that followed the next day was scarce and overwrought. According to the papers Lenox could find, all of London was in an uproar about Gerald Poole’s confession. Each front page ran a long recapitulation of Jonathan Poole’s treason, and the names of the few tradesmen and servants who had met Gerald popped up again and again, uniformly to say how surprised they were. The more febrile stories called the shooting of Exeter a second treason.

There was no confirmation that Poole had indeed employed Hiram Smalls as a mercenary, but given the two men’s meeting at the Saracen’s Head pub the evening before the murders of Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers, there was little doubt in most minds about their complicity. With Lenox, however, the idea sat uneasily.

“The question is, why on earth would Poole have sent that letter to Smalls?” he asked Graham as he read that evening, another long day of campaigning behind them. “Does it make any sense that he would meet Smalls in a public place, only to write a letter containing the same plan they had agreed to the night before?”

“No, sir.”

“Still, people get nervous when they mean to commit a crime.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“He may have been agitated and written the note to give himself some activity, I suppose. I hope Jenkins sends word of the contents of Poole’s confession. I fear he’s treading the line, however, after his suspension. Needless to say, I can’t blame the man for it.”

Indeed, in the forty-eight hours after he received the initial telegram, there was no word from London except another letter from Lady Jane, which predated Poole’s confession, and a stout and strongly worded telegram from Dallington.

IT SIMPLY CANNOT BE TRUE STOP I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE
RETURN STOP DALLINGTON

Lenox answered:

THERE ARE ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAINING UNTIL THE
ELECTION STOP I SIMPLY CANNOT LEAVE STOP GATHER ALL
THE INFORMATION YOU CAN AND THE MOMENT I CAN I WILL
FLY TO LONDON STOP BEST LENOX

He felt guilty writing it but equally felt how impossible it was to write anything different.

Originally another debate had been set for that day, but Roodle had pulled out of it. With Crook and Sandy Smith satisfied that they had covered all the countryside there was to visit, Lenox turned his attention again to the local tradesmen and Officials who would be influential among their peers. He heard a long soliloquy by Mayor Adlington about wool prices and another from a pig farmer about pork prices, all over one endless lunch at Stirrington’s social club. He toured stockrooms and the fruit and vegetable market and commiserated with the fishmonger about rising costs.

For all this, the encounter that moved him most was with a small child, a boy of no more than nine or ten years, who was guiding a herd of cattle down a lane toward the public fields. It was at the very edge of the town of Stirrington, where a few buildings straggled out into empty meadows. Lenox and Sandy Smith were sitting on a wooden fence, eating roasted beef sandwiches, after attending a small gathering at the blacksmith’s house. Lenox nodded politely to the boy, who stopped. The cattle did, too, after he made a
thock
with his cheek.

“You’re the Parliament?” said the lad.

“I’m trying to become a Member of Parliament. A parliament is a whole group of men.”

“I thought you were the Parliament.”

“No,” said Lenox. “Are these your cattle?”

The boy laughed, and Lenox realized that his own question had been just as preposterous as the one he had answered.

“They’re my uncle’s, my father’s brother, as was.”

“What about your father?”

“Dead.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it.”

The boy shrugged and with a nod beckoned the cattle again, and they moved onward down the lane.

“Shouldn’t he be in school?” Lenox asked.

“I don’t know that you’ve quite grasped the nature of people’s lives here, Mr. Lenox. School is a luxury, in many of their cases.”

Now, Lenox was a gentleman of his age and thought himself enlightened, thought himself progressive; indeed, vowed to fight for the enlightened and progressive causes he had long believed in. Yet it was only now that he truly realized what life in Stirrington was like—and with a burst of insight realized that perhaps Roodle was correct, in some way. Perhaps he wasn’t fit to represent these people. It was jarring. The slums of London he could comprehend, and he had grown up among rough men and women in Sussex, but for some reason the boy’s utter abstraction from Pall Mall, from Grosvenor Square, from Bellamy’s Restaurant and the House of Lords, gave Lenox a shock.

A shock for the good, though; for from that moment he had a deepened and more profound sense of the responsibility of his undertaking. For his entire adult life he had moved so easily among men who made large decisions, whether admirals or cabinet ministers or bishops, that he had forgotten to some extent what a privilege it was to stand for Parliament. The sense of honor overwhelmed him. He felt it keenly.

So the days passed, with every moment another hand to shake, another tale to listen to, until it was the day before election day.

In the late morning Crook appeared in the bar and announced that he was taking two days off, much to his patrons’ surprise. He had found a replacement barman from a pub in the countryside, however, brought in for a little urban experience, and the grumblings in the Queen’s Arms soon fell off.

Outside of the pub on the High Street there was a tremendous clatter. They were constructing a high hustings, and it was when Lenox saw this undertaking that he began to have butterflies in his stomach. He sent Graham to find a mug of tea and a piece of toast to settle himself, even though he had already eaten that morning.

“Nervous?” said Crook. He nodded in an approving, businesslike fashion. “It’s for the good. If you weren’t nervous I’d think something had gone wrong.”

“What is it for?”

“For speaking, of course. We have a succession of gentlemen who will speak there this morning, and then around lunchtime, when people are on the streets, you’ll give a speech. Another one this evening, and all day tomorrow we’ll have a rotating group of people speaking from it.”

“Does Roodle have one?”

Crook nodded. “Yes, a few streets down. Ours is in a better position, though. It may prove an advantage.”

“Good,” said Lenox. “Good.”

Just then Nettie, Crook’s niece, came out, dressed in a pretty muslin frock and with her hair in braids. Lenox saw the immediate softening of Crook’s features, the unlining of his forehead, and began to walk away.

“Mr. Lenox!” said Nettie before he had gone very far.

He turned. “Yes?”

“I said a prayer for you at mass this morning.”

“Why, thank you, Miss Crook. I’m very honored.”

Crook colored, but Lenox pretended he hadn’t noticed.

“I certainly hope you win.”

“So do I!”

Lenox bowed to Nettie Crook and walked inside.

So, Crook was a papist. It occurred to Lenox that this might be helpful, in a way, if it meant he had allies in the Catholic community of Stirrington. Then he cursed himself for the cynicism of the thought.

He stood at the door of the pub pondering all of this.

“How do, Mr. Lenox?” said a passing man. He wasn’t past thirty, a wave of fair hair pushed off of his pink, sunburnt features.

“Very well, thank you,” said the candidate, looking up.

“I’m voting for you tomorrow.”

He felt a surge of affection for Stirrington. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.

“Lower the beer tax,” the man responded with a laugh, walking on. “That should do. Good morning, now.”

So the day began, and as the sun slowly rose and slowly set there were speeches, emergency strategy sessions, and dozens of pints bought for potential voters, until at last at 1:00
A.M.
, exhausted, Lenox and Crook went to their respective beds.

At six the next morning Lenox was dressed and watching the day break—the day he hoped would change his life forever.