The Last Passenger - A Prequel

by Charles Finch

  Lenox wrapped a hand around his teacup and felt its warmth. There were charities for those without a home; officers of the church traveled poor areas, offering shelter to anyone outside, or blankets and hot soup if they would not come.

  Yet he had felt the whistle of the cold cruel wind through tenements ten miles east of here, and guilt occupied him. In the end, which of them was a Christian who lived in warmth while others were freezing? And yet who was virtuous enough to trade away their place in that warmth?

  In the midst of these contemplations, he had lost pace with Graham. Hearing the crisp shear of his scissors (Graham’s articles were always cut very precisely; it was his that went into the archive, not Lenox’s), he turned his attention back to the papers.

  There had been a rash of petty thefts in Bethnal Green.

  “Have you ever felt inclined to steal, Graham?” Lenox asked. “As a boy perhaps?”

  “I do not remember it if so, sir,” said Graham. “Although there was an orchard near our house where all of us took apples now and then.”

  “You can hardly call that a career of crime. Edmund once stole another boy’s cricket bat. I think we both thought we were going to be taken to the Tower of London and beheaded. There’s an awful lot of beheading chatter when you have a tutor just down from Oxford and writing a history of the monarchy.”

  “Did Sir Edmund need a cricket bat, sir?”

  “No—but the other boy was a scrub and a taunt.”

  “I wonder if he still has it, sir, your brother.”

  “I don’t think so. I recall hazily that we left it in a pub or a shop somewhere, somewhere that it would be found and returned to the boy. Geoffrey Gogg. He had painted his name on the handle in black.”

  “What prompts the question, if I may ask, sir?”

  Lenox took another sip of the dark and fragrant tea, slowly waking out of the deep sleep he had fallen into after his cold journey home from Sussex. “I suppose because of this article. But it has been on my mind. Due to Hollis, actually.”

  “Indeed, sir?”

  “Yes. We were at lunch not long ago, you may remember. As we left, I saw him slip one of the teashop’s spoons into his pocket. Nothing special—a spoon you might find anywhere.”

  “It might have been absentmindedness, sir.”

  “No. It was the second time I saw him doing such a thing.” Lenox paused. “And yet in all other respects he seems an honorable man.”

  “Strange, sir.”

  Lenox nodded. “Mm. Well, he has gone back to America now. I shall never know why he did it, unless by some unlikely chance our paths cross again.”

  It was a long, quiet day. Lenox relished the solitude after the bustle of Markethouse, sitting in his study and catching up on reading. As for Graham, with most of the staff given the day off, he was organizing Lenox’s wardrobe to his satisfaction, a job that was never finalized but that brought him great joy.

  It began to get dark early—at only half past four or so. Lenox fell asleep in front of the fire before dinner. When he woke he was cold, even as the embers burned next to him, and he knew that it must have fallen off another few degrees outside.

  This was why it surprised him when not long afterward there was a knock at the door.

  Graham went to answer it. Lenox stood, curious, near his desk, almost venturing into the hall. It was a bad day to be outside.

  Graham entered a moment later. “You have a caller, sir, who wishes to present himself to you.”

  “A caller!” said Lenox.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “He would not confide that in me, sir.”

  Lenox gave Graham a look of consternation. “Is he respectable?”

  “Very, sir. Though he seems angry.”

  Lenox thought. “I will meet him in the hall I suppose. Will you stand close by?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  In the hall was a man of perhaps thirty—a gentleman by his dress and bearing. Yet Graham was correct, the man’s expression was full of a strange furor.

  “Good evening,” said Lenox. “I do not believe I have the pleasure of knowing you.”

  “Nor shall you,” said the man.

  With dark hair and dark eyes, he was good-looking in an overweight, brutish kind of way. “You have come to see me, not the reverse.”

  “I will not trouble myself by remaining here long. I have come to demand that you leave off your attentions to Miss Catherine Ashbrook.”

  “Miss Ashbrook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I must ask your name,” said Lenox. He drew himself up, crossing his arms. “It is already the demand of a blackguard—made anonymously, it becomes also one of a coward.”

  Rage flared in the man’s face. “You have heard what I said. I cannot answer for the consequences if you disregard me. Or if you call me a coward again.”

  He turned and went back into the cold, slamming the door behind him.

  “Quick, Graham—what do you see of his carriage?” said Lenox, running up to the window.

  Graham had already gone into the breakfast room, across the hall from Lenox’s study. “A coat of arms, sir—but impossible to make out.”

  Lenox crowded in behind him. “Four horses. We shall have to ask Mrs. Huggins if he was here before. You heard the exchange?”

  “I could scarcely prevent myself from doing so, sir.”

  “What an absolute madman!” Lenox shook his head wonderingly. “If I’m murdered, give them a description of that person.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “You’re supposed to reply that I’m not going to be murdered.”

  “Ah! Of course, sir. In all likelihood you won’t be murdered.”

  “In all likelihood!”

  Graham nearly smiled, and Lenox did; the exchange with the visitor had been absurd enough that he needed some kind of relief after it.

  Four horses, and a coat of arms: money. A title, too, probably. Anyone who had one might put their family’s coat of arms on their carriage, but in general only those who held or stood to inherit titles did so. If it were a second or third or eighth son or daughter who did it, they were either quite pretentious or came from the very, very upper reaches of the aristocracy, the children of dukes and royalty.

  Bewildered and a bit overawed, Lenox returned to his study. He was to dine in half an hour or so, but he was composing a letter to Deere, who had written from Gibraltar. (Nobody on board plays chess, Deere had written, nor of course is any of the gentlemen in the stateroom my wife—meaning that the diversions of Hampden Lane are still, whatever the joys of shipboard life, unsurpassed on these travels as yet.)

  Lenox had become deeply involved in his reply once more, with all the news he had of London and of Deere’s friends, when he heard another knock on the door.

  His body went taut. This was really too much—an impossible intrusion. Graham was in the hall, and Lenox immediately went to the door of the study. He was ready to see this impudent person off very harshly.

  But to his surprise, the visitor sounded—sounded, at least, from the study’s doorway—like someone different.

  Lenox glanced at the clock on the wall. Half past six, and now two unexpected visitors on the last and coldest day of the year; strange indeed.

  Graham came into the study, and from his bemused look it was clear that he was no less surprised than Lenox. “It’s not the same chap?” Lenox said.

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope this one’s not as angry,” Lenox said.

  “No, sir.” Graham held out a card. “He’s a detective. He called two days ago hoping to meet you, but was informed by Mrs. Huggins that you would be away from London until today.”

  Lenox took the card from Graham. “A detective? He called himself that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But not one that you know? It seems impossible.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, sir, he’s American.”

  CHAPTER T
HIRTY-ONE

  A small, neat, prematurely gray gentleman trailed Graham into the study. He wore a practical gabardine suit and had a hat under his arm. He walked with a just perceptible heaviness in his left leg, as if he carried an old and familiar wound in the hip.

  “May I present Mr. Winston Cobb, sir,” Graham said.

  “Good evening, Mr. Cobb,” said Lenox, and they shook hands. Graham withdrew. “Charles Lenox.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, though sorry to call upon you on a holiday.”

  “Not at all. I only hope that I can help you in some way, given how cold your trip here must have been.”

  “Starting with a cold passage across the Atlantic!” said Cobb, and smiled gratefully. “Fortunately I have a heavy cloak, which your butler was kind enough to take from me.”

  “Goodness, have you sailed here from the States? Please, sit. May I offer you a glass of brandy, or a cup of tea?”

  “If it’s not too great an imposition, I would be most grateful for coffee, most grateful. I have the American habit, and my day has been a long one.”

  “Of course. The days are often longest when the light is shortest, as my father once remarked.”

  Lenox went into the softly lit hall and asked Graham if he might get them some coffee, and perhaps something to eat as well.

  “Right away, sir,” said Graham. He disappeared through the small door near the front entrance that led down to the kitchen.

  Alone in the hall, Lenox borrowed a moment for himself, trying to assess the situation. Then he shook his head and went back in. He couldn’t parse it.

  Cobb had sat down on the blue leather sofa in the center of the room and was setting out two groups of papers on the table. For a dreadful moment Lenox wondered if he was a salesman.

  “How can I help you?” he said.

  “I am here on behalf of the United States government, Mr. Lenox. My charge is to provide them with an account of the deaths of Mr. Abram Tiptree and Representative Eleazer Gilman.”

  “Gilman!”

  Though he reacted with surprise, the name had never been far from Lenox’s mind. Indeed, he thought of it daily, contriving to discover some clue that might lead them to Robert “Bert” Smith, the accomplice of the murderer Winfield Bell. But even as Bell’s body had been falling, Lenox had considered the case essentially solved.

  “Yes—Mr. Gilman,” Cobb said.

  Lenox was conscious that he must be cautious. He had immediately taken to the small American—he had no side, as the saying went, nothing officious or arrogant in his manner—but his aims were still unclear.

  “What I can tell you is that I was there on the night the body was discovered, and that the same man pretending to be the conductor of the 449 later fell from the rooftop of the White Horse Tavern.”

  Cobb nodded seriously. “I have heard something like that, and am glad to have your confirmation. Well—I have found it best, since I arrived here earlier this week, to declare my bona fides immediately.” He gestured at the papers he had laid out. “If you would care to study them.”

  “Of course.”

  Lenox took up the larger of the two sets of paper. In a scrolled Gothic script, it said at the top:

  Commissioned, hereby, for a term of three (3) months, as a Federal Marshal, United States Army Sergeant (ret.), Winston Cobb who, in the execution of his duties, agrees, First,

  Thereafter it enumerated a long list of duties. Lenox read through them carefully. The government had temporarily relieved Cobb of his duties as a member of the Militia of the District of Columbia and provided him with wide latitude and a (quite generous) daily payment of fifteen dollars, plus matching funds for his expenses when in England, out of the United States Treasury, in addition, of course, to travel to and from London.

  It was signed by no less a dignitary than President Franklin Pierce. Apparently his philosophical differences with Gilman’s party ended at the water’s edge.

  Lenox turned to the second document. This proved to be a scrupulous and thorough set of papers of identification issued by the American consulate in London, which had received by separate ship a detailed physical description of the newly commissioned marshal and a password that he was to give them upon his arrival. Two signatories attested that he was the man the government in Washington had sent.

  “This looks like they have made a very serious business out of Mr. Gilman’s death,” Lenox observed.

  “Indeed they have, Mr. Lenox,” Cobb replied gravely. “As well as Mr. Tiptree’s.”

  “I thought Mr. Pierce was an opponent of all for which Mr. Gilman stood.”

  “All—except America, I think,” said Cobb. “He was a United States congressman. We do not take the death of one of those lightly.”

  “May I ask without offending you what the Militia of the District of Columbia is?” Lenox asked.

  “Of course you may. It was our Thomas Jefferson who created it, Mr. Lenox. He was the first president to live regularly in the District. The American army of his time was small, and he wished to create a standing guard for the city and its politicians—in particular the president—so that they would not be susceptible to surprise attacks by small foreign parties. Or domestic parties, for that matter.”

  “I see! And you came to this militia through the army?”

  “Yes, I did. President Jefferson recruited the first officers of the militia himself, and they have generally drawn on the recommendations of their friends from the army and navy when they selected new members. There is some prestige in the uniform—I hope.”

  “I see,” said Lenox. He looked across the table at Cobb. “But you are not a police detective?”

  “No.” Cobb met Lenox’s look, and a deep intelligence flashed somewhere in his eyes, lurking some long distance behind his good manners. “However, it has occasionally fallen to me to investigate crimes. Including murder. It is something of a specialty of mine.”

  “How interesting.”

  “I should hasten to add that my presence implies no rebuke at all to the work done by Scotland Yard. Or yourself as a private consultant, for that matter, though it was not until I met with Mr. Hemstock and Sir Richard Mayne that I came to appreciate your role in the case fully.”

  Lenox nodded. “I should speak with those gentlemen before you and I discuss this matter.”

  “Ah!” Cobb reached into his jacket pocket. “I thought you might say that. You may still do so if you wish, obviously, but this might save us each some time.”

  Here the American produced a letter from Mayne enjoining Lenox to help. He recognized the handwriting of Mayne’s assistant, but it had a postscript, under seal—Americans are bloody serious about this. Tell him all you can. Mayne.

  As Lenox read this, Graham knocked and entered with coffee, sandwiches, and toast. Cobb was very earnestly grateful—in that particular American way, which made such sincerity tolerable.

  “Very well, then,” said Lenox, going over to his desk. He took a key out of his pocket and retrieved his papers relating to the Gilman murder. “But it may take an hour or more to tell the whole story.”

  In fact it took four. Cobb was a determined and curious questioner, Lenox a willing respondent, and they discovered they had a great deal in common—so much so, as they exchanged stories of investigation from that capital and this one, that by the end of the evening there was a real amity between them.

  It was just shy of 1856 when at last Cobb left, having taken down perhaps a dozen pages of notes. Lenox was tired, and a little perplexed, but not unhappy. He told Graham about the long meeting. They were involved enough in their conversation that the clock took them by surprise when it struck midnight. They wished each other many happy returns through yawns, and soon Lenox retreated to bed, for he had a New Year’s breakfast to attend the next morning at Lady Jane’s.

  He woke at the first light, however; no problem in rising. But with his awakening he felt a strange unsettled suspicion in his mind.

 
What had caused it? Something pressing, yet indistinct. He stared through his window at the view of distant trees, swaying against the pale morning sky.

  Was it about Bert Smith? No; he thought not. He felt the answer close at hand, and he spent some time chasing it fruitlessly through his thoughts. It was nothing Cobb had said, for Lenox had done most of the talking. Cobb had had very little new information—was still in the stages of gathering it.

  He had to fall asleep to find it again. His alarm rang at eight o’clock, jerking him from an unexpected second slumber, and he realized he knew what it was that had been on his mind.

  Gilman: That was the problem. They had missed something. He knew it by instinct. None of it added together just so—with that click of perfect transparency one felt in some cases. They had gotten it wrong—not all wrong, no, it had been Winfield Bell whose face he saw in Paddington Station and at the White Horse Tavern.

  But they had gotten enough wrong that Lenox knew, prompted to relive the case by Cobb’s visit, that someone, somewhere, had gotten away with murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Missed what, sir?”

  Lenox and Graham sat across from each other at the breakfast table, their old battle stations. There was a pot of tea between them. Each had a cup, and their newspapers lay to the side, neglected, as Lenox tried to formulate what he meant. He was dressed for the breakfast next door, though wishing he could skip it.

  “It’s the bones of the thing,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Why kill Gilman? The answer seemed so clear that I never questioned it: Bell and Smith were driven by racial prejudice. They’re pro-slavery, anti-abolition. But scratch deeper and you realize that if that were their motive, their actions make little sense.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “For instance, why write a letter to Gilman, then go to such lengths to conceal whom they had killed?”

  Graham raised his eyebrows slightly. A hit. “Perhaps they didn’t expect Gilman to bring the letter.”

  “Very well. Yet you must admit a strange tension between their writing him directly and then the ruthlessness with which Winfield Bell murdered the conductor, Haase, and then impersonated him, in order to eliminate any sign of who Gilman was. The very labels on his clothes.” Lenox warmed to his subject. “Were they trying to make a public statement of politics or avoid notice? It must be one or the other—it cannot be both. And for that matter, why Gilman? There must have been a dozen emissaries of the abolitionist movement in America this year alone. Stevenage said the Patriots Abroad threaten them all.”