The Fleet Street Murders (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

C

hrist,” said Edmund, sitting forward in his chair. “Can it be true? From all I had heard his wounds weren’t that severe.” Lenox shook his head, frowning, as he pored over the note. “Apparently he worsened overnight. An infection reached his blood, and he died quickly.” He looked up. “I hope not painfully.”

“What was he like, Inspector Exeter?”

“Did you never meet him? A bluff chap, proud—as a policeman he was determined and hardworking but never imaginative. He was a bully, I’m afraid. No use eulogizing him. Still, say this for Exeter,” said Lenox, thinking of the few times they had worked together, “he was always on the side of the law. He wanted what was best for London. People forget that Scotland Yard is still a young institution, bound to make its own mistakes before it improves.”

“Yes,” said Edmund.

Lenox shifted uneasily. “It’s a selfish thing to say, but I hope he wasn’t shot because of the case. I feel a sense of foreboding about my return to London.”

“It hadn’t even occurred to me,” said Edmund, a look of concern on his face. “Good heavens. Well, it’s simple enough—you mustn’t do anything more about the murders.”

Lenox shook his head. “No. I can’t do that. If Poole is guilty, I have to confirm it; if Poole is innocent, I have to prove it. I’ve deferred Dallington’s requests, but I cannot any longer. He saved my life, remember.”

“For which we’re all in his debt—but surely he wouldn’t want you to go about risking what he had saved, would he?”

“I’m afraid I must do what I think is right, Edmund.”

With a sigh, he answered, “Yes, you must.”

“Come, let’s go see Stirrington. The election doesn’t seem such a serious thing any longer, somehow.”

The two brothers spent the midday walking around town. At first they were somber and discussed the implications of Exeter’s death, but life is fluid in its nature, and it’s a rare mind that cannot cope with death, however sudden, however sorrowful. Soon their congenial natures took over, and they conversed as they were wont to do. Something funny happened, too—all day long people walked up to Lenox and congratulated him, as if he had won. Almost nobody offered condolences. He remembered that it was something in itself to run, to push the democracy along, and felt slightly better.

Soon enough it was time for the train. Graham had packed Lenox’s things, and all that remained left to do was say good-bye to Crook; he had already parted with Sandy Smith, promising to keep in touch and inviting Smith to visit him should he ever happen to be in the capital.

He ducked his head into the Queen’s Arms while Edmund smoked a pipe in the sun, but Crook was absent from the bar. Lucy, ever helpful, told him that Crook had asked that Lenox be referred to his house next door. So the detective went to the small house and made his way again into Nettie’s parlor. The maid went off to fetch Crook, and for the last time Lenox looked over Nettie’s embroidery and her watercolors, and he felt strangely moved by it all. It was an honor to have been accepted by these people. He was glad he had done it, win or lose. There had been so much generosity toward him, where there might have been suspicion or indifference.

“Well, how do you do, Mr. Lenox?” said Crook, coming into the room. He settled his great heft into a deep armchair and set about lighting his pipe. “Do you want a cup of tea or a cake?”

“We have to catch the train, unfortunately, and I can’t linger. Thank you, though.”

“Do you regret having come to Stirrington?”

“On the contrary, I was only just thinking how glad I was that I had.”

Crook furrowed his brow. “I’ll never understand how we lost, Mr. Lenox.”

“However it was, it was despite your efforts, Mr. Smith’s efforts, your friends’ efforts.”

“And your own. I mean it, though—we ought to have won. Really. It puzzles me more the more I think about it.”

“In any event.”

“I hope you take fond memories away, anyhow, and perhaps even visit again.”

“I shall,” said Lenox.

Crook stood up. “Well, I suppose you had better be on your way.”

Lenox stood up and felt the queer consciousness that he would never lay eyes on Crook again, though for two weeks they had been in constant conference, even friends. He tried to treat the moment with the dignity it demanded.

“Good-bye,” he said, “and thank you for everything you have done. I shall never forget it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lenox. Next time, eh?”

On the train several hours later Lenox, Edmund, and Graham shared a medium-sized compartment and soon littered it with their newspapers and books. Edmund had read for an hour or so and then, because of his overnight train ride, had fallen asleep. Graham was taking a thorough inventory of the news (the train carried that morning’s papers), and Lenox spent his time reading and glancing out the window.

He had said the election didn’t seem as important after Exeter’s death, but despite the nobility of that sentiment the vote kept sliding back onto the edges of Lenox’s vision, a dark specter he hadn’t wholly confronted, a decisive disappointment at the crescendo of his lifelong hopes.

They were nearing London, finally. It was dark and, he felt through the window, cold out, with the small houses and farms near the tracks bright orange with light, a thousand human lives contained in them, a thousand stories. As they drew up on the edge of the city, outside the old gate, each new geographic signpost recalled a past case, and he thought that whether it was dangerous or not, at least he had his work. He loved being a detective.

Naturally, his mind turned to what they were calling the Fleet Street murders, and he spent the last part of the trip in grim silence, going over the details of the thing in his head.

In the end the truly strange thing was the dichotomy that Pierce and Carruthers presented. The former was thin and gray, the latter fat and red; the former was religious and ascetic, the latter corruptible and drunken. Only two things united them: their profession, of course, and also—and then Lenox saw it all.

He looked up at Graham.

“Sir?”

“Gerald Poole is innocent,” said the detective with complete conviction.

“Sir?”

“I’m certain—but then, what desperate villain killed the journalists and Smalls, and perhaps Exeter?” he murmured, talking to himself. “What stakes would be worth the risk? Not money, I would guess. Well, maybe money, but I really think it must be reputation—or livelihood—or family.”

“May I inquire, sir, how you have proved Mr. Poole’s innocence to your satisfaction?”

“It’s intuition, but I feel pretty confident, all right. The secret of the thing is that Carruthers was the true target. Pierce was only killed as a cover for the true motive, to falsely point Scotland Yard toward Gerald Poole.”

“I don’t follow your line of thought, sir.”

“Because Carruthers and Pierce are so strongly linked by Jonathan Poole’s treason, naturally an investigator would assume that their murders had something to do with that. Pierce is the perfect red herring.”

“Then you mean the murderer wanted to kill Mr. Carruthers and killed Mr. Pierce simply to place suspicion on Gerald Poole?”

“On Jonathan Poole’s recently returned son, of course! In fact, the motive for the murders wasn’t anything to do with Jonathan Poole’s treason. The murderer merely wanted it to seem that way, and so in addition to killing his real target, Carruthers, he killed Pierce, who I’d wager wasn’t involved in all this muddle.”

“It makes sense, sir.”

“Doesn’t it follow, then, that Gerald Poole is innocent? He was set up!”

“Yes, sir, it seems plausible when you put it so.”

“Is there another way to put it that I haven’t thought of?”

“I have one question, sir,” said Graham.

“Yes?”

“Why do you believe Carruthers was the real target? Is it not just as likely that Pierce was the real target and Carruthers the cover-up?”

“I don’t think so. Pierce was incorruptible and untainted, and Carruthers was utterly corruptible, utterly tainted. There’s something more important, though.”

“Yes?”

“The piece of paper missing from the desk in front of Carruthers. Do you remember I told you that he had ink all over his hands and a pen, but that there was no paper before him? I reckon Carruthers was blackmailing somebody, writing something incriminating—he was killed for that missing piece of paper.”

“Whereas Pierce died on his doorstep, and the killer never could have gone inside,” murmured Graham thoughtfully.

“Precisely. I feel sure we’re right. Please go see Dallington when we get back and tell him that I think Poole is innocent. Fetch him to me then, would you? I haven’t the patience to wait for a note to find him.”

“Very good, sir.”

“What’s all this?” said Edmund, stirring.

“Gerald Poole is innocent,” said Lenox, eyes blazing.

Edmund blinked. “How long was I asleep?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T

hey arrived in London in late evening, and the station discharged the three men, a ragged procession laden with bags, into a thick, cold rain. Lenox grabbed the first newspaper he could lay his hands on and read the opening line of its lead article, on the subject of Exeter’s death: “A lion has vanished from the halls of Scotland Yard, and our nation’s capital is inestimably poorer for it.” All of the news stories about Exeter ran in that way, and by the time his carriage had reached Berkeley Square Lenox was persuaded that the man might as well have been Alexander the Great, such was the tenor of the tributes to him. It gave him a queer feeling, to imagine poor Exeter dead; it can never be pleasant to mourn for someone that you’ve had equivocal feelings about.

When they reached Hampden Lane and Lenox’s house, Graham handed the luggage to a footman and then was instantly off in a cab to find Dallington. The two brothers, meawhile, dragged their tired bodies into the library.

“Welcome back,” said Mary in the hallway, curtsying. “Coffee?”

“Wine,” said Edmund.

“Whisky,” said Lenox.

The fire was warm and made him drowsy, and Lenox felt a sluggish pleasure at being home after the dual calamities of Exeter and Stirrington.

“Thanks for coming up to Stirrington,” he said to Edmund. “I was so awfully low. It saved me.”

“Of course,” murmured Edmund.

There were a few long minutes of silence, during which Lenox assumed they were both ruminating on the past day or two. It came as something of a surprise, then, when Edmund’s head rolled back a little and he gave a great snore.

Lenox laughed quietly and pulled the wineglass from his brother’s hand. Then he crept out to the hallway and said to Mary, “Leave the library alone, would you, and have someone make up a fire in the Ugly Room.”

Now, in Lenox’s house the Ugly Room was rather an institution; it was situated toward the back of the first floor and had a few small windows overlooking the thin strip of garden behind the house. It took its name not from its situation, which was in fact rather pleasant, but from its contents. They were the debris of Lenox’s life. There was a giant, hideous wardrobe that he had somehow convinced himself to buy when he came to London, a large oil painting that he had bought from a friend’s exhibition and couldn’t get rid of, a pair of ornate silver candlesticks that stood about two feet high and looked as if they had come from somebody’s nightmare. Bad books lined the walls. Sooner or later every uncomfortable and creaky chair in the house found its way to the Ugly Room. Lenox went back there to wait for Dallington and surveyed it with some satisfaction. Most people had their terrible things spread throughout their house, but he liked to concentrate them all in one place, where he could make sure they never moved back into his life on the sly. He didn’t come in here more than once a fortnight.

Soon Dallington and Graham had returned, and the former came in to sit with Lenox, who had been reading.

“How do you do?” said the detective when Graham was gone again.

“Why have we been evicted from the library?” He squirmed. “I feel as though this chair bears a personal grudge against me.”

Lenox laughed. “My brother fell asleep in there. Sorry.”

“What’s all the cloak and dagger, then? Graham pulled me out of a decent game of whist.”

“That’s probably for the best,” said Lenox. He couldn’t help himself from lecturing his apprentice now and then.

“Yes, yes, and I should only drink barley water and meditate on the Sabbath. Still, it’s damn hard to find a game of cards in this town!”

“I think Poole is innocent.”

Dallington furrowed his brow. “Well, of course.”

“You say that despite his confession?”

With that the younger man looked uneasy. “Well—”

“I have a theory that Poole is the victim of a plan to frame him for the murders of Pierce and Carruthers.”

“So do I—Hiram Smalls asked him for a meeting.”

“That relies on Poole’s word, you know. Let me tell you what I think.”

Lenox repeated what he had said to Graham—that Carruthers was the murderer’s real target and Pierce an unfortunate casualty, the murderer having known that the two men were connected by Poole and that Gerald Poole was in London again.

Dallington whistled, impressed. “Could well be,” he said. “So they may not be the Fleet Street murders after all, then.”

“Precisely—we can’t quite say what sort of murders they may be, except that with Exeter and Smalls dead, too, they’re for very high stakes.”

“Speaking of which—shall you be safe?”

“I hope so,” said Lenox. “I don’t speak to the papers, so I hope it’s not widely known that I’ve interested myself in this business. Still, I mean to speak to Scotland Yard about it tomorrow. They may give me assistance.”

“There’s such a public outcry over Exeter, I’m sure they’ll be desperate to do anything to find his killer.”

“Yes,” said Lenox grimly. “God, but it’s an ugly thing.”

“What can I do?”

“Find out why Gerald Poole confessed.”

Dallington stared at Lenox for a moment and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see him first thing in the morning.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Yes—I’ll come here when I’m done.”

“I may be out during the day, but wait, if you would.”

“Of course.”

Dallington left then, perhaps off for a few more rounds of whist to brace him for his morning task, and Lenox checked on his brother—still sound asleep. Molly and their sons were in the country, and he decided to let Edmund rest.

“Put him upstairs, would you, if he should stir?” he said to Graham. “Tell him I won’t hear of him going home.”

“Very good, sir.”

Then at last, blessedly, he could go see Jane.

He fairly bounded next door, hoping it wasn’t too late to catch her. Her telegram had been brief but consoling, and he felt a powerful desire to see her, to remind himself that he had a wonderful life, well worth living, even without Parliament.

Her house, imperiously tall from across the street, seemed from their own sidewalk to be no more than a homely, silent thing, with one room dimly lit and all the others entirely dark. Before he could knock she opened the door and, without speaking, wrapped him in her arms. For a moment he remembered how it had been when his mother was alive, even into his thirties—that childlike comfort she was able to give him long past the age of scraped knees.

“Are you terribly disappointed?” she asked. Now she led him down the hall and into her rose-colored drawing room, from whence that solitary lamp had been visible from the street.

“It was more of a sharp, quick pain,” he said, “than a long, dull one. I thought it would have been the other way around.”

“How unfair, though! Will you tell me about it?”

In such a way that he had barely noticed, she had maneuvered him into his favorite chair and then sat beside him. In a torrent, then, he told the entire thing to her—about Mayor Adlington and his long watch chain, about Roodle’s squeal during the debate, about their impromptu exchange in Sawyer Park, about Sandy and Mrs. Reeve and Nettie and Crook and Lucy the waitress, about the awful dinner parties, the endless days out in the countryside, the hustings in front of the Queen’s Arms and the speeches. The two old friends laughed at the funny bits and felt solemn together at the serious bits, and when he was through telling the story it felt as if he were finally through the experience. He had had his chance and lost. So it goes, he thought. Perhaps there will be another, but even if there isn’t—if there isn’t that’s all right as well.

And here, he asked? What was the news?

“Thomas and Toto are doing the best they can,” said Lady Jane.

“I’m glad to hear it, of course, but you know what I mean—London, the chatter, I’ve missed it all.”

“It’s my turn to entertain you?” she said. “Well, the Duchess is having her house redecorated, and the whole family is moving to the country for six months while it’s done . . . let me think . . . Deborah Trice is going to marry Fordyce Pratt.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea who either of them is.”

“He’s a judge.”

“That ancient lump of flesh I see at the Devonshire? Surely he doesn’t have it in him.”

She laughed. “Yes, in fact,” she said, “and you ought to know that Deborah is a very respectable widow, just returned from some part of India where her husband was posted.”

“A tiger ate him, I assume?”

“Fever,” she said, though still laughing. “What else? George Barnard was to have a party, but he’s gone to Geneva instead, some sort of conference, and people are terribly disappointed. You know he has that ballroom.”

“Humph,” said Lenox, or some grumpy noise approximating that.

“Yes, yes, I know you don’t like him. Oh! Frederick Fleer was in a duel, you know, but neither man was hurt.”

Slowly, then, Lenox and Lady Jane resumed their lifelong conversation. An hour later, thoroughly exhausted, she led him to the door.

He gave her a chaste kiss on her red lips. “Thank you for staying up,” he said.

A serious note returned to her voice after much laughter, and she said, “Oh, but of course.”

They agreed to see each other the next day, and as he walked back up the steps to his house Lenox thought happily of all the long hours he would sleep on his own soft bed. Tomorrow there was work to be done, but tonight he could truly rest. Maybe for a while in the morning, too.

The house was quiet. He hung up his coat and began to make his way upstairs, only to check himself and return to the door of the library, through which he peered to find Edmund sleeping still, and before Lenox traipsed up to his bedroom he stood and felt a deep swell of affection, of true kinship, for his brother.