The Fleet Street Murders (23 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

L

enox was peering down the long, narrow stairs that led to the basement and the servants’ quarters. He had rung a bell as soon as he woke and heard noises below.

“Graham? Graham?”

“Sir?”

“Come here!”

“Just a moment, sir.”

“Hurry!”

Poor Graham, who was a deep sleeper, struggled as quickly as he could to fit into a suit and appeared a moment later.

“Yes, sir?”

Lenox explained.

“What do you propose to do, sir?”

“Go there, of course! Don’t be daft! I need you to go fetch Jenkins—there’s not a moment to lose!”

“Yes, sir. Are you certain that you wouldn’t prefer to wait for the inspector?”

“No,” said Lenox. “It will be dawn in two hours, and Barnard’ll only feel comfortable working at night—probably he’s been there every night since he supposedly left for Geneva. I only hope he isn’t gone already.”

“Are you certain of all this, sir?”

“Of course I am—he wants to make one last fortune before he leaves London, Graham. And I was also thinking as you dressed, do you remember that I found all of the articles under Barnard’s file in that pub?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of them was about the history of the building, the layout and architecture! What if Barnard asked Carruthers to write that article, as a way of obtaining the information without asking for it himself?”

“Perhaps, sir,” said Graham doubtfully.

“Oh, bother—listen, I know it! I know his mind! He won’t be easily able to extricate his investments if he disappears, which he’s evidently chosen to do in a great hurry, and every fiber of his being will be yearning for more money! I know his mind, I tell you!”

“Yes, sir. I shall be close behind you.”

“Will you get my brown leather kit?”

“Of course, sir.”

It was a long ride east, just past Tower Bridge, to get to the Royal Mint Court in East Smithfield, and Lenox spent it contemplating the Thames through his window and slowly rubbing out the imperfections of his reasoning until it was satisfactory to him. His mind was roiling with possibilities.

At length he directed his driver to stop, one street short of his destination, and walked the rest of the way. He stopped when he saw the broad facade of the Mint; it was a long building made of limestone, with a high, stately arch at its center, a building that managed to seem at once distinguished and entirely uninteresting. A black wrought-iron gate, firmly clasped shut, stood between its courtyard and Lenox on the sidewalk. He began to walk the fence, looking for a point of access.

The Royal Mint held an exalted place in the history of England, and it had been a great pride of Barnard’s to know its history inside and out. It was Alfred the Great who had first gathered in hand the muddled system of moneyers’ workshops in Anglo-Saxon times and founded the London Mint, in 886. By 1279 the Mint was firmly entrenched in the safest single place in England—the Tower of London, where it remained for five centuries. In 1809 it had moved to a vast, golden-stoned building in East Smithfield, where it stood regal, imposing, and remarkably well guarded.

It had been a coup for George Barnard to attain the post of Master, which was traditionally held by a great scientist or an aristocrat—and occasionally, as in his case, by an important politician. (The leader of Lenox’s party in the House of Commons now, William Gladstone, had been one of these, Master of the Mint from 1841 to 1845.) The greatest of these Masters had been Isaac Newton, who held the post for nearly thirty years, until his death.

Yet now what a threat it was under! Lenox had assumed even after he began to suspect Barnard’s nefariousness that the Mint was the one sanctified aspect of his life, his own fortress of immortality.

It seemed, however, nothing was inviolable.

Lenox had some idea of what it was like inside; he had never entered it himself, but when he had asked Graham to do his research on Barnard, Lenox had conducted his own about the Mint’s building and the Master’s place in it. At the Devonshire Club he had asked old Baron Staunton, a distinguished Liberal politician who had sat in Parliament for many years but had once been Master himself, about the place—all ostensibly in the guise of polite interest but in fact with keen attention to Staunton’s rather rambling and sentimental reminiscences. Thus Lenox knew that the machines and the money they made were kept in the lower floors, under heavy guard, and that the upper levels of the building contained the Mint’s offices. He had also learned that the Master’s office itself had a view of the Thames, which meant it would be situated toward the western part of the building.

Then again, Staunton had been Master twenty years ago, and as he walked Lenox felt a twinge of anxiety; it could be that all of his information was out of date.

At last he concluded that there was nothing for it but to shimmy up and over the gate. He had in his right hand a doctor’s kit bag, the one he had asked Graham for, a battered pebbled leather case with an ivory handle that unclasped in the middle. It was light but spacious, and he had had it since he was twenty-four.

He set this down beside him and pulled from it a long, stout piece of string, which he tested by quickly jerking it in the middle with both hands. Satisfied, he made a loop at one end and after several attempts managed to hook it on one of the (unpleasantly sharp-looking) spikes that lined the top of the fence. He tossed his bag over the fence and with a deep breath pulled himself over.

It was sweaty work, and he slipped back to the ground twice, but eventually he just managed to make it to the other side. He quickly pulled the rope down (he had loosened it when he was coming over the fence) and packed it carefully away in his kit before stealing across the empty courtyard to the grand, dark building itself.

At the front of the building was a series of heavy black doors, but Lenox knew he stood a better chance of gaining access through a side door and, trying to minimize the clack of his shoes on the stones, began to look around the perimeter. About halfway around he found something promising—a white door marked
CARETAKER
that had a window at eye level. If worse came to worst, he could break the window, but he didn’t want to make the noise.

Instead he opened his case again and took two small tools from it. Fortune was on his side; it was an old-fashioned lock, and within about a minute he had managed to jiggle it open. As he had expected, it wasn’t impossibly hard to break into the building (and a good detective, as he had once said to Graham, always needs to be in some small part a good housebreaker, too).

He imagined the vaults would be a different story.

With slow, careful steps he walked up the stairway in front of the door, ignoring the caretaker’s closet to the left. At the top of the stairway was another door, and opening it he found himself in a wide, marble-floored corridor, which he saw in the dim moonlight was of regal bearing, with busts of past Mint Officials and portraits of past monarchs along the walls.

He paused, suddenly slightly discouraged. He hadn’t any clue how many night guards there were here, or what their beats were, and he hadn’t any clue either where he would find George Barnard. Or
if
he would find George Barnard. Somehow in his own bed it had seemed so intuitive, so correct, that the man would return to the place he had been most comfortable. The illusion of fleeing London had seemed to dovetail so well with his insight—and the fact of his keeping an office here—his long history of thievery—his emptied bank accounts.

Now, however, it all seemed insubstantial, even implausible.

His nerves on edge, Lenox stepped into the hallway. He had worn his soft-soled boots, which were much quieter than his others, but he still made noise. Walking west down the corridor, toward where he knew the Master’s office to be, he stopped to examine the brass nameplates on each of the doors of the nicest offices. None of them bore a name he knew, and he decided to turn left at the corner.

Suddenly, he heard a soft whistling.

He froze and then pressed himself tight up against the wall. The sound drew closer and closer, coming toward him, and soon he saw coming from the corner he had meant to turn a guard, clad in black.

Just as this guard was about to discover the Mint’s intruder, however, he abruptly stopped. Lenox saw him check his watch and turn on his heel to walk in the other direction.

His heart blazing, the detective forced himself to gulp deep breaths of air and steady his frayed nerves. He let one minute pass, then two minutes, then three. Finally he decided to go.

Just as he stepped away from the wall, an arrogant, cultivated voice spoke.

“Charles Lenox!” said the voice with a smile in it. “Now what on earth could you be doing here?”

Lenox turned, his hands raised.

The security guard stood there—and beside him the man who had spoken. George Barnard.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

C

ouldn’t sleep,” said Lenox with the hint of a smile, his hands still raised. “Thought I’d go for a walk.”

“I can’t congratulate you on the place you chose for it,” said Barnard, hands clasped behind his back.

Lenox decided to speak to the guard directly. “I’m here on behalf of the police,” he said. “Mr. Barnard is wanted at Scotland Yard.”

The guard made no move, and Barnard laughed hollowly. “Who do you think hired this gentleman, Charles? Use your intelligence. Half of the people who work in this building owe their jobs to me.” He paused. “It’s disappointing that you’ve found me so soon. I thought I had several weeks.”

“You should have had your horseshoes changed after you pretended to go to Geneva,” said Lenox.

Barnard didn’t respond to this. “Well, we shall speak soon enough. Westlake, take this man up to my office. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. If you want any tea, Charles, let Westlake know.” He chuckled. “Must maintain the civilities, eh?”

Barnard’s office was small and graceful, with a beautiful view of the Thames, exactly the sort of office—second best in the building, perhaps third—that an emeritus director would have wanted. There were coinage charts on the walls, and a long bookcase was full of volumes on recondite subjects: a history of the shilling coin, the memoir of an old currency designer.

Lenox had time to examine all of this as he and the crooked guard sat in the office, which was lit only very dimly by a single, muted lamp. He wasn’t tied up, and he still had his bag at his side. If he could get into it, then perhaps . . .

Barnard appeared in the doorway and dismissed Westlake to the hall. He sat in the chair behind his desk and poured himself a stiff Scotch. He offered Lenox a glass, which was declined.

Barnard was a bluff, large man, with pink coloring and a bristle of the straw-colored hair older men who have been blond in their youths develop. He had a strong chin and eyes that seemed slightly too small for his head but were undeniably sharp and intelligent. His dress tended to be pompous, if not showy, and at the moment he had on an immaculately tailored suit, which managed nonetheless to look secondhand and lived-in, comfortable. He was usually the liveliest and loudest man in the room, with a blunt, bullying manner, but now he seemed suddenly sunken, diminished.

There was a long, long silence, during which the two men very frankly observed each other—rivals and enemies for more than a year, though only one of them had known it all that time, now finally face-to-face, both in full cognizance of the stakes. Their lives.

Finally, after a great, heaving sigh, Barnard asked Lenox, “How did you know?”

Lenox didn’t know what to say; he could play his cards close to the vest, or he could tell Barnard everything. Did it matter? If he did the latter, he might make time for Jenkins to come. For he felt certain Barnard planned to kill him.

“Poole confessed to me, in fact, the other—”

“No, no,” said Barnard. “That’s all immaterial. How did you know about—about all of it?”

“All of it?” said Lenox.

“Listen, Poole would never have implicated me. I beat it into him day and night that there was nothing worse than a rat. Think about his father! He confessed to the Yard—only to
you
did he admit that I was his friend, or that I was involved.”

“Why should there be anything else?” asked Lenox. “The murders aren’t enough?”

“Ever since that damn maid died in my house . . . I’m not stupid, Lenox. I could see in your eyes the revulsion you felt, feel it in your handshake, after that. Still I figured I had time . . . I thought I had time. I covered my tracks so well.” Barnard took a sip and sighed again, the sigh of a man at a crucial moment of his life, who knows that nothing can be as it was. “How did you know?”

“It’s a difficult question to answer. I knew you stole that money, back then, and suddenly—well, nobody ever quite knew how you got your money, George, and I somehow doubted it was your first theft, especially because I knew you were connected to the Hammer Gang. I have since you set those two Hammers to thrash me, when you wanted me to stop looking into the maid’s murder. Their tattoos gave them away.”

“You knew that?” asked Barnard, astonished. “I thought you might have an inkling—I told them again and again they should never get those laughable tattoos. Why mark yourself for what you are?” It was a philosophy that encapsulated Barnard’s rise through the world. “You knew about the Hammers and me?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“Then a man died in vain.”

Lenox felt his stomach plummet. “Exeter found out?”

Barnard nodded. Almost casually, he pulled open a drawer of his desk and pulled a gun out of it.

“That’s why he died in the East End near the gang’s base.”

“Yes.”

Lenox felt sick. “Then—why haven’t you killed me? I knew worse than he did.”

“You’re a gentleman,” said Barnard. “I couldn’t kill a gentleman. A journalist, a police officer, perhaps—if it were crucial.”

Lenox almost laughed. Saved at the last by Barnard’s snobbishness; saved at the last by Barnard’s insecurity about his own tenuous relations to the upper class of his nation. It was remarkable how a brilliant mind could in one aspect have been so blind.

“Yet you mean to now?”

Barnard seemed to sense Lenox’s incredulousness and bridle against it. “Then there was a practical side to it. If I killed you I felt sure that letters would be instantly dispatched to the proper authorities. That what proof you had against me would be laid out—that—well, any of the ruses a clever man would have devised to ensure either his own safety or his enemy’s downfall.”

Lenox nodded. “You were right there, but why not flee sooner, George?”

“I knew you weren’t the precipitate sort. You would tease out whatever information you could until you were certain. I knew I had time. More time, if it weren’t for Carruthers and Exeter. It was those two who . . . hastened my plans, shall we say.”

Here they came to it. “Why did they die?” asked Lenox in a carefully neutral voice, inviting the confidence of the man with the gun.

Barnard laughed. “You’re awfully good, you know. I quite forgot for a moment that we were anything other than old acquaintances. No, it’s not important.” Suddenly he became businesslike. “Look, in”—he checked his pocket watch—“in fifteen minutes this will be over. Here’s some paper. Why not write a note to Jane?”

Lenox felt a wave of panic that almost prostrated him; he thought in sudden succession of his brother, of his childhood, of his little house on Hampden Lane, and above all of Jane—and suddenly life seemed so dear and so wonderful that he would have done anything to hold on to it.

“Simon Pierce—that was to mislead the Yard?”

Barnard laughed yet again and checked his watch. “Yes, of course,” he said.

“How did you find out that Carruthers and Pierce had both been witnesses against Jonathan Poole?”

“Carruthers told me. He was a fearful talker, you know. Told me the first time we ever met, practically. Trying to impress me.”

“He was the real target, then? Carruthers?”

“Yes,” said Barnard. “Of course.” He looked uneasy. “I never heard much good of Pierce, either.”

“Hiram Smalls was trying to become a Hammer?”

“Yes.”

“His mother’s debt?”

This unnerved Barnard. He had been speaking in a rather bored way, but now he looked at Lenox inquiringly. “How much do you know?” he said.

“Some.”

“I didn’t kill anyone, of course.”

“Of course. Only your proxies did.”

“Well—but that’s important. Gerald Poole was a crazed young man.”

“Who happened to run into Martha Claes, a tavernkeeper from his adolescence.”

“Now, how in damnation do you know that?”

“From Poole,” said Lenox. He decided to be as honest as possible. It might unsettle Barnard; might buy time.

“Well, there’s no use denying that I had a hand in all of it.”

“Why Carruthers, George? What did he suddenly discover?”

Barnard looked at Lenox, again with that smirk. “He found out I was going to rob the Mint. Found out I was going to leave England.”

“How?”

Barnard laughed. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” he said. “Life, I mean. He found out because of an article I paid him to write. I needed some research on the architecture of this place and didn’t dare ask for it myself. I must have overplayed my hand with him. Asked him about getting in and out of here unnoticed. He twigged to it and challenged me face-to-face with what he suspected.”

“He threatened to expose you?”

“Yes,” said Barnard. “Unless I paid him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I would have. He knew too much, though.”

Suddenly a man in a low black cloth cap came in. “Ready,” he said, not sparing a glance for Lenox.

Barnard did, however, and grinned. “Coins are awfully heavy things,” he said, almost as if he were showing off.

“Notes?” said Lenox.

“White notes are quite lovely. We meant to come back tomorrow night, too, but why be greedy?” He laughed loudly and then turned back to his man.

A dozen years ago, the pound and two-pound notes of England had been handwritten; now they were printed in black on the front, with a blank white back. They would be infinitely more portable, of course. With any concerted effort Barnard might make off with a hundred thousand pounds, enough to make his entire career of thievery irrelevant by comparison.

“Don’t do this, George,” said Lenox.

Barnard ignored him. “All loaded?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Then all of a sudden two things happened.

In the hallway a voice—Jenkins’s voice—shouted, “Lenox! Where are you? The building is surrounded, Mr. Barnard!”

Lenox, taking advantage of the surprise and consternation on the faces of Barnard and his compatriot, pulled from his leather kit bag a tiny, pearl-handled revolver, which held one bullet—and shot George Barnard, certain that it would have been the other way around if he waited a moment longer.