The Fleet Street Murders (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T

he pub was crowded, cheery, and warm, with red-nosed, white-haired fellows lining the bar, trading bawdy jokes and laughing uproariously, as only men in their cups will. The front room, which contained the taps, was narrow and brightly lit, with a fire reflecting off of the brass above the bar and long time-scarred benches opposite, under a series of paintings of idyllic country scenes. A plaque under the paintings proudly declared that the Great Fire of 1666 had leveled the place. From the back emanated the unmistakable smell of the stables.

The bartender was a keen-eyed, sturdily built chap with sallow cheeks and dark hair.

“Ransom?” asked Lenox when he caught the man’s attention.

“No, I’m Stevens. He’s weekdays.”

“It’s all the same—I came to ask a question.”

“Yes?”

“I understand that Winston Carruthers often worked here?”

“Aye, many a night. Who are you, may I ask?”

“Charles Lenox. I’m helping Scotland Yard. Could you show me where he worked?”

“It was a little room in back. Here, Billy!” He motioned to a lad passing by with a tray of glassware. “Take these gents up to the burgundy room.”

Billy led them up a narrow flight of stairs and down a hallway. The burgundy room was a smallish, windowless place that fit four tables. Three of these were evidently open to patrons, though none of them was taken, but the fourth, in the back left corner of the room, boasted a scratched old brass sign that read
RESERVED FOR W. CARRUTHERS
.

It was apparent instantly that this corner of an old room at Fleet Street’s traditional public house was in fact the dead man’s office. There was a box full of pencils, India rubbers, and bits and bobs, and on a little ledge next to it there was a stack of clean paper. The table itself was covered in a thousand old wine stains and glass rings and was darkened with years of cigar smoke and splashes of tea.

“What’s this?” said McConnell. He had gone around to the other side of the table before Lenox was finished looking at the room.

“What?”

“I think it matches your idea of the thing.”

The object McConnell was pointing to was a squat wooden box in two tiers, each with a drawer.

“Terrific,” said Lenox. “The yard haven’t been here, clearly.” He pulled open the top drawer and started flipping through the papers it held. “Files on article subjects and public figures.”

“What are you looking for?”

Lenox paused. Of everyone in the world, only Graham knew Lenox’s suspicions. “I know I needn’t ask, but can you keep a secret?”

“I hope I can, yes.”

“The file I want is about George Barnard.”

McConnell laughed incredulously. “Why?”

“I think he may be behind all this.”

“He can’t possibly be. He had nothing to do with that dead girl in his house, did he?”

“No,” said Lenox. “Theft is more in his line, on a grand scale. Murder is a new one, in particular if he had Exeter killed. I fear he may be desperate.”

“Good heavens, why?”

“I don’t know yet.”

McConnell turned and scanned the room, as if to make sure it was still empty. “Well, let’s find it, then. Are the files alphabetical?”

“I don’t know.”

They were. Winston Carruthers’s physical life had been overfull of drink and food, his rooms messy and rich and abundant, but his files were at odds with that image of the man. They bespoke a different and more ascetic intellect. All of the papers were neatly filed and precisely written.

None among them pertained to George Barnard.

“Damn,” said Lenox softly.

“Perhaps he’s in the
G
section?” said McConnell.

“I doubt it. Let’s check.” A lengthy pause. “No, nothing here. Perhaps Barnard has been here after all.”

McConnell laughed. “That scarcely seems—”

“One does well not to underestimate him, I’ve learned,” said Lenox rather sharply. “Let’s go back to the
B
’s and make sure.”

McConnell sighed and seemed to look longingly out toward the stairs—and perhaps down to the bar.

“Here’s something odd. A file marked g. farmer.”

“In the
B
section? A middle name?”

Lenox frowned and opened the file. “No, he hasn’t got a middle name.”

It was a thick file, and he began to leaf through a seemingly endless series of random articles, nearly all of them by Carruthers. One was about a broken church steeple in Cheapside and the plan to replace it. Another concerned a shipping accident, and a third was about crop yields in Northumberland. It was a bizarre miscellany.

“Farmer,” muttered McConnell. “I wonder—Lenox, I wonder whether it’s a pun?”

“What?”

“Barnard—it sounds just a bit like the word ‘barnyard.’ A farmer has a barnyard, after all.”

Lenox laughed. “I think you’ve hit it.”

“That’s why it’s filed under
B
, too.”

“You’re right.”

Confirmation came a moment later—one of the articles was about Barnard’s tenure at the Royal Mint, a profile.

“I’ll just borrow this, I think,” said Lenox. “Let’s go.”

McConnell asked whether they might have a tot of whisky, and Lenox, won over by the mood of the place, agreed to it. They fell into conversation with the men at the bar and stayed for half an hour, then shared a cab back to Mayfair and their respective homes.

Lenox entered his own exhausted and slightly on edge, the knowledge that Barnard was involved raising the stakes even higher. He thought briefly, as Graham greeted him, of Stirrington and then pushed the memory away, a painful one, something to be forgotten.

“It’s Barnard,” said Lenox wearily.

“Sir?”

“The Fleet Street murders. It’s Barnard.”

Graham, usually so imperturbable, inhaled sharply. “I’m surprised, sir.”

“I’ll need your help.”

“You shall have it, of course.”

“Thanks.”

Lenox spent a happy half hour with Lady Jane then, before returning to his library, where by low light he pored over the file on G. Farmer late into the night. At two he stood up exhausted and decided that he needed to sleep.

It was a disappointing haul. He had looked at every sheet of paper in the file, and only six of them mentioned Barnard by name. There were two articles that caught his eye because they were more recent: one about the history of the building that housed the Mint, which quoted Barnard, and another about a series of thefts from ships near the docks.

Ultimately, however, neither provided him with any insight into the case, and he fell asleep frustrated, puzzled, and certain that the elusive truth was closer than he realized.

CHAPTER FORTY

T

he next afternoon he was reading through the file again when there was a knock at the door. It was Dallington. He looked downcast and ill, wearing the same clothes he had been the day before.

“Hullo,” said Lenox.

“Before you ask, yes, I’ve been drinking.”

“Am I so draconian?”

“I can’t get Poole out of my head.”

“I’m sorry, John.”

“What bothers me most is Smalls! If he had killed Carruthers in a fit of passion—well, I don’t know, it would be somehow less appalling. Still appalling, of course, but less . . . less cold-blooded.”

“It’s the worst part of our profession, seeing all of this up close. I liked Poole.” Lenox hesitated. “In addition, I’m not as certain as you are that he did the murder.”

“Oh, he did it.”

“How can you say?”

“He was persuasive.”

“He was also persuasive when he told us that he was innocent.”

“What makes you doubt his word, anyway? He’s nothing to gain from confessing to murder.”

“There’s another lead.”

“What is it?”

Lenox sighed. “I don’t know if I should say anything until I’m more sure of what I mean. I don’t want to raise your hopes.”

“I see,” said Dallington.

It was an awkward moment. “I have full faith in you, of course,” said Lenox, “but I simply want to be sure.”

“What can I do to help?”

Lenox looked at the clock on the wall. “Shall we go see him together? There are one or two questions I might ask him.”

“If you wish,” answered Dallington, looking miserable at the prospect.

“Or I could go alone,” Lenox said.

“No, I’ll come.”

“Then let’s have a spot of tea while they rub down the horses. Graham, are you out there?” he called into the hall. The valet came in. “Will you bell for the carriage and bring in some tea, please?”

“Sandwiches, too,” said Dallington, in a voice so disconsolate that it was almost humorous to hear him ask for a sandwich with it.

Lenox laughed. “Come, the world will turn again, you know.”

“Wait until you see him,” said Dallington.

It was true. They had their tea and sandwiches and soon enough were on their way again to Newgate Prison. It was a bitterly cold January day, of the kind that seems never quite to warm into afternoon before it falls again into night. A few flurries fell, vanishing as they hit the cobblestones, coating the stone buildings of London in a white stubble.

Poole, when he came into the visitors’ room, was a different man. It was as though he had kept the facade up as long as he could and then collapsed under its weight.

“How do you do?” asked Lenox gently. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Plenty of food? Warm enough?”

“Yes.”

“I thought we might have a word, since your confession took me by such surprise.”

“Every word of it is true,” said Poole sadly.

Yet Lenox had his doubts, even after seeing the lad. “Will you describe it to me?”

“The maid, Martha, helped me slip into the building,” said Poole dully. “Win—that man was sitting at a round table, writing. I stabbed him in the back, like a damned coward. I left as quickly as I came, sobbing the entire way. It was a despicable act, and I deserve to swing for it.”

“What was your motive?”

“Revenge.”

“On your father’s behalf.”

“Yes.”

“Pray tell me—how did you learn of Carruthers’s involvement in your father’s trial?”

Poole shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s—it’s common knowledge.”

“On the contrary, I’ve lived here since before your birth, and I never heard of it. You only returned a few months ago.”

“Naturally I would take a greater interest in the matter than you, Mr. Lenox.”

“I concede that. Still, I insist that it wasn’t common knowledge.”

“As you please.”

“Another thing, Mr. Poole. What about the paper Carruthers was writing on? Did you dispose of it? Burn it? Take it.”

Poole looked genuinely baffled at this. “I didn’t think twice about it, of course.”

“Yet it was missing from the table and hasn’t been discovered anywhere among his personal effects.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Did you truly kill Winston Carruthers, Mr. Poole?”

“Yes, I did.”

There was such conviction in the lad’s voice that Lenox believed—

Suddenly a possibility occurred to him.

“Your father was in Parliament, I believe?” said Lenox. “Before the Crimean War began?”

“Yes,” said Poole cautiously. “Why?”

There was a long pause. “Did he ever know—or did you ever know—a man named George Barnard?”

Poole’s face crumpled, but he managed to choke out the word “Who?”

“George Barnard?” said Dallington with a disbelieving laugh. “That codger.”

Lenox continued to stare at the prisoner, however. “Barnard? You knew him?”

At length Poole nodded very slightly.

“Then you really did kill Winston Carruthers?”

“I told you, yes.” Poole began to cry softly.

“My God,” Lenox whispered.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

G

eorge Barnard?” said Dallington again, uncertainly this time. Poole spoke as if he hadn’t heard his friend. “For the last months he has been my only friend in London.”

“He knew your father?” said Lenox.

Poole nodded. “Yes. He came to see me the moment I arrived here from the Continent. Soon we were together most afternoons, talking—first of generic subjects but then more specifically of the past. I had never been interested in what my father did or didn’t do. It was too painful, and I tried never to be interested in the world—the world at large, I mean. Friends, a roll of the dice, books, all of those things occupied my time. Mr. Barnard told me every detail of my father’s death, and the sudden exposure to something I had studiously ignored all of my life—it opened a wound. A deep wound. It changed me.”

“So you killed Carruthers?” asked Dallington doubtfully.

“I’ve a feeling there were many intermediate steps,” said Lenox, “but tell me—why did you confess, after denying it at first?”

“The guilt became too much.”

“How could you have done it?” asked Dallington.

“I don’t have any idea. It sounds funny, but truly I don’t . . . I go over it in my mind and can’t quite puzzle together how it happened. It seems like a dream.”

“Why have you been protecting Barnard?” said Lenox.

A stubborn look came onto his face. “An informer killed my father. I never want to be a rat.”

“Is that what Barnard preached to you? The nobility of protecting a scoundrel?”

“A scoundrel?” said Poole. “He’s been a friend to me.”

“No,” said Lenox. “He hasn’t. Let’s leave that aside and tell us how you went from a mild friendship with George Barnard to killing a man in cold blood.”

“In hot blood,” said Poole. “I’ve never been drunker or angrier in my life.”

“Well? I want to help you with the police and the judge, Poole, but come now, why did you act as you did?”

“It’s a secret, but George told me—he told me that this man Carruthers framed my father.”

“What?” said Dallington.

Poole sat back triumphantly, and a deep sadness, a pity, rose up in Lenox’s breast. How eager we are to rewrite our fathers’ stories, some of us; the delusions of the heart.

“I think your father was very probably guilty,” said the detective quietly.

“No,” said Poole, shaking his head confidently.

“Well, leave that aside, too. How did Barnard persuade you to kill Carruthers?”

“He didn’t do a single damn thing, Mr. Lenox, except listen to me talk, and tell me how good a man my father was, and concur that he was undeserving of his terrible fate. I tremble to think of him, my poor father, knowing that he was innocent as he walked to the gallows.”

“Barnard never incited you to violence?”

“On the contrary, he advised against it.”

Clever fiend, thought Lenox. “Then how did you find Carruthers? How did you come to kill him?”

“It was the strangest coincidence. One night I was drunk, and on the street I bumped into a woman—or perhaps she bumped into me.”

“The latter, I reckon,” said Lenox, who knew what would come next.

“It was a woman I knew from my years in Belgium, who had run a tavern near our house.”

“Martha Claes,” said Lenox.

“Yes,” answered Poole with some surprise. “I never liked her all that well when I was a child, but we fell into talking about old times, and I asked her what she did now, and she said she kept house for six tenants. She described them all to me in detail.”

“Including Carruthers,” said Dallington. “You were set up, Poole! He was set up, Lenox!”

Poole’s confidence seemed to falter slightly. “No, it was a coincidence.”

“Barnard found her somehow and installed her as Carruthers’s landlady—money will do a great deal, and combined with a dangerous mind can do evil more quickly than anything else . . . So he put her in your path,” said Lenox. “May I hazard a guess? She hated Carruthers. She thought he was the very devil. He beat his mistress and stole from the poor and threatened her children. Is that about the whole of it?”

“Yes,” said Poole, now less certain, “and that he blackmailed people. She described all of the lives he ruined through the knowledge he acquired as a journalist. You think George—what, paid her to do that?”

“I’m certain of it, in fact,” said Lenox. “So Martha Claes—what? What happened?”

“At last I let slip about my father.”

“She suggested revenge?”

“Not precisely—or I don’t think so—I can’t remember, Mr. Lenox.”

“What about Simon Pierce, though? Didn’t that baffle you?” asked Dallington.

“Not especially,” said Poole. “It was an odd coincidence, of course, but I never heard of the man, and I thought the newspapers had the wrong end of the stick, describing the two as linked. I knew they weren’t, in fact.”

Lenox laughed bitterly, but all he said was, “What about your meeting with Smalls?”

“That happened precisely as I described it, queerly enough.”

“You haven’t put any of this together, Mr. Poole? You’re an innocent indeed.”

“Listen—I’ll never believe ill of George Barnard.”

“That’s your business,” said Lenox. “What happened on the day of the murder?”

“I was at George’s, and somehow I got drunker than I usually did—got quite badly drunk, in fact.”

“Listen to yourself, you fool!” said Dallington. “I haven’t the slightest notion of how George Barnard is involved in all of this, but Lenox has it right!”

Poole ignored the outburst. “He gave me a present that day—it was—” Suddenly true doubt dawned on his brow. “It was the knife.”

“Did you pay Martha? When you went over that night?”

“I gave her a little something, as a token of old times.”

“Barnard must have, too,” said Lenox. “He managed it terribly well. You were seen with Smalls, he had someone who matched your appearance buy the knife under your name, and best of all he must have had Martha burn the document Carruthers was writing and anything else she could find. Christ.”

The doubt in Poole’s eyes had become full and panicked. “What an idiot I’ve been! What a drunken idiot! But then my father—he—he can’t have been innocent, can he?”

These last words he said more to himself than to either visitor, and without another glance in their direction he went to the door and asked the guard to return him to his cell.

It was awful. Dallington looked shocked to the core of his being, and Lenox felt with something approaching fear the powerful mind that had orchestrated the journalist’s death.

But why? Why?

There was one thing that pleased Lenox in a small way; Exeter had been right. Hiram Smalls and Gerald Poole had murdered Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers. It was a vindication. Was it for this, though, that he had died? Or had he discovered something else?

He and Dallington had left Newgate Prison and were walking down the street. The younger man, plainly shaken, was silent.

At length Lenox said, “There are times when this work destroys my affection for humanity. Look at this gang—the father a traitor to England, the son weak willed and impulsive and drunken, Barnard half a devil, even Carruthers a corruptible old toad.”

Dallington didn’t respond, except to nod in a distracted way.

“I daresay that’s the peril of choosing a job you think will do good, whether it’s government or the military or the clergy. Neither a baker nor a banker ever sees the same ugliness.”

“Who is Barnard?” said Dallington. “That is—I know the man, but what have I missed?”

“What everyone else has missed, too,” said Lenox.

He explained at length his initial suspicions of Barnard and then his lengthening dossier of evidence against the man, explained the nature of his small crimes and his large ones, and how they intertwined; explained the mystery of Barnard’s great wealth and the money that had gone missing after the murder of his maid. They walked through the bitter cold, impervious in their respective sorrow and anger, until they had reached Lenox’s home again.

“How about a whisky?” said Lenox. “It’s early, I know, but nonetheless—”

“Are you mad?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you not listen to Poole talking about his drunken fury? No, I scarcely think I need a drink at the moment.” Dallington muttered something about troubles coming home to roost and then said, “Well? How do I help?”

“Do you wish to?”

“I take it as a given that I will.”

“It’s not a pleasant matter.”

“You explained it to me when I first came to you—that it wasn’t all heroic or happy work.”

They were in Lenox’s library. “Then find out what Barnard has been doing for the past few weeks, if you wish. I already have a man tracking him down in Geneva.”

“Geneva?”

Lenox explained.

With a determined scowl, Dallington nodded, said good-bye, and went out.

Lenox stood for a moment and then poured himself that whisky.