The Last Passenger - A Prequel

by Charles Finch

  A stony look came onto Mrs. Huggins’s face. “I can attempt to ascertain the answer to that question now if you wish, ma’am.”

  Lady Jane glanced over at Lenox, eyebrows raised. “Mrs. Huggins, I wouldn’t have it in my house, personally,” she said. “There are limits.”

  “It’s a disgrace,” said the housekeeper.

  “Mrs. Huggins!” said Lenox.

  She looked implacably firm—ready to lose her job. “I cannot apologize, sir.”

  “Nor should you,” said Jane indignantly.

  “I mean to say, perhaps she should!”

  “She can’t.”

  “I cannot.”

  Lenox looked between them in consternation. “This treachery! From two of the people closest to me!”

  “The curtains come out more wrinkled than they went in, sir,” said Mrs. Huggins.

  “I don’t know that we should be in such a headlong rush toward the second half of the century, Charles,” said Jane.

  “I couldn’t have put it better, ma’am,” said Mrs. Huggins.

  When the housekeeper had gone, Lenox gave up and said that he would go to the salon; he could not hope to beat Lady Jane in a battle of wits.

  Jane had been correct that his introduction into Kitty’s household offered no difficulty. Miss Ashbrook and her mother, a trim and sympathetic widow of forty-four, herself very likely to marry again soon, one thought, greeted Lenox with great solicitude, insisting that he come again, which he did.

  The mix of people there was lively and included many of the mother’s friends. But it was plain—if concealed in a very fetching way—that they were in London to get the daughter married. They had her looks, her manners, and her ten thousand pounds with which to do it—and that seemed to be a very good combination to many a gentleman. Eight or ten of these passed through on each of those Monday and Thursday mornings, often in the company of sisters or mothers. They ate toast with preserves from the orchards of the ladies’ cousin the Lady Cumberland; they lingered beside a charming small fireplace and made chat. They complimented the scenes of cottage life framed on the wall nearby, which might have been painted from Miss Austen’s novels.

  At the center of this mannerly commotion, Kitty Ashbrook sat tranquil. She was sympathetic, witty and friendly and well read. She was dependably polite.

  Yet it was easy to glance off her surface. Only on the third formal occasion they met did Lenox glimpse the human beneath again, as he had when they danced.

  Jane had ceased to come with him after their first visit, and for just a few moments, this time, Kitty and Lenox stood alone by the fire, Mrs. Ashbrook entertaining two gentlemen at the windows by pointing out who else lived near them in Eaton Square, house by house.

  “Do you go to a dance or a supper every night?” Lenox asked during this rare opportunity for private conversation.

  “Nearly,” she said, holding a teacup and saucer as they stood. “And you?”

  “I? No. When I was younger, perhaps.”

  “Of course, a gentleman may dine out anytime he pleases, and expect to find congenial company—at his club. Women are not quite so fortunate. We must roll the dice each new night.”

  “That’s true. Yet I think you must enjoy being out.”

  She smiled, a bright and even smile, exceedingly pretty. “Say rather that when you have seen me I have been enjoying it,” she replied.

  She was dressed in a green velvet dress, with a diamond pin holding her chestnut hair back from her forehead. “I am fortunate, then.”

  “Or else you bring good fortune.” Though she had rarely been even this direct, he felt what he had occasionally felt—a sense that he was favored, yet no possible way of moving into greater intimacy. Except that now she added, “I often find that I look for you when I arrive at a dinner party.”

  “Do you?” he said—stupidly. It was not at all a gentlemanlike question, uttered only because he was taken aback.

  “I do,” she said. “You are generally not there, alas. Yet I cannot seem to pass eighteen hours without the pleasure of Mr. Campbell’s company.”

  Lenox grinned. Campbell was at the window, and in age more suited to the mother than the daughter of these rooms—though his aims were fixed squarely upon the latter.

  “Since you are so kind, I will say that I do the same. And I will add you one better.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because of you I have been reading Thackeray.”

  “Have you?” she cried.

  “Yes, and it takes an inconvenient amount of time, too—since the novels are so very hard to put down.”

  “How lovely!” This was the first moment when he felt as if their gazes met naked. “And you find him agreeable?”

  “Agreeable? I don’t know if that is the word. He is not easy on his fellow man.”

  “At bottom it must be agreeable to see the world in its true nature,” she said. “For who could wish to be told a lie?”

  “Some readers, I think.”

  The bell rang. She smiled at him with some strange and real warmth and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “There I suppose you must be correct,” she said.

  During subsequent calls they revisited this subject, and with this key unlocked the last door of formality that had been bolted in front of them. By early December Lenox would have said they had grown genuinely close, as close as good friends, yet still far apart enough that he often found he was heartsick for her. He began to ask Lady Jane (whose prestige in the social world this winter, though Lenox was only dimly aware of such motions, had never been higher) to find a way for him to be invited to certain evenings at which he knew she would be present.

  Was that love? He thought it might be, yes. On the whole, he thought it was. He was in love with her beauty; of that there was no question, for each time he saw her now he marveled at himself for ever thinking her merely pretty. On some mornings, visiting the Ashbrook apartment, he felt a sudden (and of course impossible) urge to take her in his arms, to press his face into her hair and kiss her slender neck.

  And he was in love with her mind. He knew this because they exchanged letters, and the letters were as of lively an interest to him as could be. Her charm to him did not rest exclusively upon her looks.

  Yes: This must be love. What he didn’t yet know was how much love and marriage had to do with each other, or how well he had to know her before he declared himself.

  It was Deere in whom he confided that doubt, as they were playing chess one evening.

  Deere was to leave the country shortly. The decision had been taken, and Lady Jane, in this one case, had turned out to be mistaken—even her influence could not overcome the duty that Deere felt toward his Queen’s commands. His wife protested that they were not even her commands, but he could not see them any other way. It was a funny, stubborn purposeful self-delusion, upon which, Lenox faintly discerned, much of the character of the officer class must have depended. Deere was so liberal-minded in all other ways, yet so fixed in this one.

  “I suppose the question is whether you can imagine life without Miss Ashbrook,” Deere asked Lenox.

  They were in a very evenly matched contest, and for some time the young detective didn’t reply, contemplating his move. At last he pushed a pawn one place forward. He had improved.

  Then, as it was Deere’s turn to lean over the board, Lenox took a moment to fill his pipe. It was a frigid evening. They had warmed brandy next to them, and were sat close enough to the windows that it actually made some difference. All the way on the opposite end of his study was the large, blazing hearth, filling the room with its inimitable scent of burning firewood.

  “I can, of course,” said Lenox. “I am living it now. Aren’t I?”

  “No,” said Deere. “Because you have the hope of seeing her tomorrow. And the tomorrow after.”

  “Yes. Yet I do not know that there is one single person for each of us, for whom we are destined. Do you?”

  “I believe I do,” said
Deere lightly, still not looking up from the board.

  “So did Gillham. Not to draw the comparison with you—but to myself.”

  There was a divorce in the papers at that very moment—the handsome, tempestuous Earl of Gillham and his beautiful, tempestuous wife. The law was still such that only aristocrats were permitted to divorce.

  “You are no Gillham,” said Deere.

  “Thank you.”

  “He’s much better looking.” The young lord moved a piece and then looked up, gazing frankly at Lenox for a moment. He had a face full of interest in others, its thin features, which might so easily have turned contemptuous and unkind in one so privileged as an earl, transformed into gentleness because they were continually animated with empathy. “You may yet come to believe that there is one person for each of us. And it may be Miss Ashbrook for you. I suppose only time will decide.”

  “Of course.”

  “As I said, I do. But of course, I married dizzyingly far above myself in temper and intelligence and goodness. I admit freely that my luck may have colored my opinion.” He gestured at the board and picked up his brandy. “Go on, Charles—your move.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As the weeks before Christmas passed, a debate was occurring at a level of mild heatedness between engineering experts, and argued much more ferociously by the nonexperts who waged their war in the letters section of the newspapers.

  It was this: London was certain to have some underground means of transportation built within these next ten years. But should it be a system of underground trains, or should the proposed tunnels be filled with water and have barges running between stations?

  “It makes me think this country is mad,” said Josiah Hollis.

  He and Lenox were walking up Three Colt Lane together. They were to take luncheon together at a teahouse Lenox knew near Canning Town. Hollis had moved into lodgings not far away, near his friends the Thompsons as well as a significant number of other Quakers. They were among his most supportive allies here in England, it seemed. The Quakers had always been among the staunchest abolitionists. It had been a Quaker dwarf who convinced Benjamin Franklin to turn anti-slavery—making him, along with John Jay, the most famous of what America called her Founding Fathers to protest the institution.

  “The argument for the barges is that they would cost less, I believe,” said Lenox.

  “Until the water begins to break down the soil, and thousands of bodies buried during the Middle Ages begin to float up.”

  “Goodness, you’ve a morbid imagination, Mr. Hollis.”

  “So would you, had you lived my life.”

  This was their second meeting since the capture of Winfield Bell. The bandage was gone from Hollis’s head. Hair had grown—patchy but healthy—over the scar. There had been no further attempted assaults upon him, though he had given two public lectures and participated in half a dozen salons at which he was the primary speaker. A poor substitute without Mr. Gilman’s corresponding efforts, he said, but he was nonetheless glad the weeks had not been wasted.

  “And yet I fear it’s a far cry from what you envisioned when you set out from Washington,” Lenox said a bit later, as they walked.

  Hollis nodded, then was silent for the length of a block. “It bothers me not to have an explanation of their motivations.”

  Lenox shrugged. “They are a group of bad men, and at least two of them, probably more, were outraged by Gilman’s presumption in coming here. His visibility gave them time to plan. It seems uncomplicated to me—tragic, but uncomplicated.”

  “Yes,” said Hollis.

  “You must not underestimate the tremendous popularity of Miss Stowe’s novel, either,” Lenox said.

  “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

  “Yes.” This was something he and Graham had discussed. “It has been the bestselling novel in every shop month upon month. The ground for an anti-slavery movement is strong here. Anyone strongly pro-slavery must be alarmed.”

  “Yes,” said Hollis thoughtfully, “I have had that sense.”

  “You seem as if you had a caveat to add.”

  “Only that I am not sure England’s influence is so great as my friend Gilman hoped. He was an optimist; I am a pessimist. I fear bloodshed will precede any resolution to the question of slavery.”

  “You would know better than I.”

  Hollis glanced over at Lenox. “The owners of the plantations in America have too much to lose.”

  “Yet you carry on trying.”

  “I carry on trying,” Hollis affirmed, nodding once, cane still behind his back. He stopped. “I believe this is the address you mentioned?”

  Later in that week, Lenox happened to be playing cards at the Oxford and Cambridge Club when Wilt Sheridan came in. He was the MP whose father had owned those hundreds of slaves in Jamaica, the one with whom Gilman had been scheduled to meet.

  Lenox wasn’t sure why—there could be no point in bringing up anything with Sheridan that didn’t have to do with horses—but out of some irresistible impulse, he said, “Sheridan, I wanted to mention. I dined with a former slave on Tuesday. An American.”

  “Did you! Gilman’s slave, you mean?”

  “Not Gilman’s slave, but—yes, Gilman’s friend. I thought I would let you know that you are well out of that business. I know you said they seemed happy to you when you visited Jamaica as a child, but the tales he told me were so horrible that—well, I know you are a broad-minded sort. It’s up to us, I suppose. Our generation.”

  “This was in your capacity as detective?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Lenox.

  “I see.” Sheridan smoothed the sides of his mustache upward, grimacing his cheekbones to make it easier. “They shall settle it in America one way or another, I suppose. I don’t think our generation will have much of a say in that. At any rate I want no part in the problem.”

  He lifted his glass in salutation, clearly unmoved by Lenox’s little speech, and returned to his friends. Lenox didn’t regret the attempt. Let anyone who pleased call him a detective, and see if he cared.

  The next days went quickly, until as he always did he went to Lenox House on the twentieth of December.

  He and Lady Jane traveled together to Sussex, both wrapped in heavy rugs. She had seen Deere and his regiment off two days before. The particular object of her ire at the moment was Captain Catlett.

  “Fallen ill, my foot.” Her carriage moved over the rattling ground just south of London, on the way to Sussex. In four hours it would drop her at her father’s house, and then Lenox would be just half an hour from his brother, his mother, his family. “He has a mistress in Carnaby Street—everyone knows it.”

  “Does he! Do they!”

  “Yes, including the Queen, probably. And for this my husband must travel to India. The military is intolerable. Thank goodness for you Kitty Ashbrook isn’t in the army.”

  “Do you wish you had gone?” Lenox asked.

  “That’s the worst of it, you know. I don’t. I wish I were with him, but no, I am happy to be in England for Christmas. Is that not disgraceful!”

  “Not at all.”

  She looked out through the window. “I feel a horrible sort of wretchedness when I think of him opening the presents I packed so carefully—alone in his little cabin at sea on Christmas Day.”

  “He will toast you quite a lot to his friends.”

  “There’s that consolation.”

  “And we shall toast him.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I might even win at chess, if I stick to playing my nephews.”

  Christmas was very dear to the heart of Markethouse, the small town that had lain under the protective gaze of Lenox House for some six centuries. During the next week, Charles spent a great proportion of his time out and about, the town green’s lampposts festooned with wreaths, Edmund on the church steps handing out a Christmas goose to every family that wouldn’t have had one otherwise, frost dotted in white paint on
the window of the local pub. It was a bright, cheery week. Molly’s sister and her family were staying at Lenox House, too, and so as a group they were some dozen in all, loud, a nightmare for the servants no doubt, usually a child crying in one corner of the house and two laughing in another and a fourth investigating the pigs (they would all insist upon sneaking away to visit the pigs at any conceivable opportunity).

  In the happy occupation of the previous several days he had nearly put Kitty out of his mind. On Boxing Day, however, Lenox received a letter from her.

  25 December 1855

  My dear Charles Lenox,

  I believe I promised to write you in Sussex when last we met. Here I discharge my obligation. Strictly speaking I needn’t add anything, I suppose, but of common manners, I will say that my mother and I are happily situated in Hampshire with my cousin Martha and her family. I am the much-adored aunt here, and I confess that it is nice for once to be an elder, rather than a youth, in the eyes of the world. Only temporarily, of course. As Augustine said—make me good, Lord, just not yet.

  Do write and let me know how you are; and I shall be disappointed if you are not with us at Eaton Square on the day the year turns. 1856! I had just gotten used to writing 1855 on my letters. Hadn’t you? Every year one says it, but then every year it’s true.

  As I am, in friendship to you,

  Kitty

  Inside, unmentioned in the letter, was something that made Lenox’s heart skip: a lock of dark hair. He studied it in his hand, and then before he knew what he was doing pressed it to his lips, before quickly returning it and the letter to the envelope and tucking them in the front left pocket of his jacket, just over his heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was New Year’s Eve when Lenox finally arrived again in London. He was happiest to see Graham, who had taken six days in Oxfordshire to visit his family. Now they were back in their usual places at the breakfast table, going through identical stacks of newspapers across the table from each other.

  Each had a cup of tea, and it was a day when one wanted a cup of tea, for outside it was again awfully cold, so cold that even a minute outdoors began to cause a strange dizziness. The Thames had frozen.