“Did you not say that Gilman was the most illustrious, sir? They may have wished to instill fear in future visitors.”
“True.” Lenox continued to stir his tea, for the distraction of it rather than to any practical end. “It just … doesn’t seem right. That’s all I know.”
“Perhaps it’s the arrival of Mr. Cobb that makes you think so, sir.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“And yet…” Graham was frowning.
“What?” said Lenox.
“Your doubts make me wonder, sir: Why make attempts on the life of all three?”
Lenox snapped his fingers. “Yes! Graham, you wonderful fellow—yes, why on earth would these patriot fools, or whatever they’re called, elect to kill all three of the party? It triples their danger. More than triples. And at separate times, in separate locations. Abram Tiptree, the secretary, as soon as they arrive, in Liverpool. Gilman on the train from Manchester to London nearly a week later. And then, shortly thereafter, Hollis. Deeply irrational if they wished to send a message. Only Gilman could have mattered to them.”
Graham nodded. “It’s strange.”
Lenox stood up. “And if Gilman’s death was to make a point, why cut out the labels of his clothes? Why attempt to leave him to be discovered the next day on the train, so that he might have been mistaken for a vagrant, or a nameless gang member from Manchester?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Graham.
“It must be because something was at stake larger than anger at Gilman’s politics.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.” Lenox took a last sip of tea and began to gather his things to go out. “A wish to silence him, perhaps? What I know is that I have been criminally idle in not going to Liverpool. Abram Tiptree was murdered first. I have neglected that fact for too long.”
“Then you don’t think it was Bell, sir?” said Graham.
They had moved into the hallway, and Lenox was wrapping a scarf around his shoulders. “Oh, it was Winfield Bell. I saw him—conversed with him—in his guise as conductor. And Willikens confirmed that it was Bert Smith who bought all of his stock.”
“That is also strange, sir,” Graham observed, helping him into his coat.
“What?”
“That Smith, the accomplice, should clear the newsboy away from the platform.”
Lenox nodded. “Yes. And do you remember what Willikens said? He tried to talk normal, but he was shamming it.”
“His accent, sir?”
“Yes.” Lenox shook his head. They were standing at the door. “I can’t make head nor tail of anything they did, now that I actually, properly think it through. These are deep waters.”
“How can I help, sir?”
“Could you find out what you can about Bell? Without risking your own neck, please. Don’t go speaking to his friends at the White Horse.”
Graham nodded. “Very good, sir.”
Lenox sat through a breakfast at Jane’s house that in other circumstances he might have enjoyed, but now yearned to have over. As soon as he could excuse himself he did, and ventured out to see Cobb.
It was slightly warmer than the day before, but still very cold. Ragged clouds unraveled across the pure blue sky. Lenox was confounded but energized; once he had hailed a cab, he took his seat and went back to the very start of his notes from this case.
He must not assume he understood a single fact about it clearly, he reflected—must return to the very first questions he’d had that night on the platform at Paddington.
The hansom jounced out of Mayfair on the uneven cobblestones and made its way into the heavy traffic of Regent Street, which eventually made a great swooping curve at Piccadilly Circus. From here it was a short trip to Cobb’s lodgings in Leicester Square.
It was a section of London that Lenox visited infrequently—he was not an avid theatergoer, which was the main reason to stop there, and paid no visits at all to the well-known brothels off the square, being still, at bottom, no matter how urbane he became, shocked in his country boy’s Sunday heart that they existed so openly.
There was a porter at Cobb’s lodgings, which, though not quite a hotel, had many of a hotel’s amenities. He took him to the American, who met him with gladness but surprise. He was dining on eggs and kippers, dressed in a sober blue suit, the slight halt in his step perhaps more pronounced when he rose to shake Lenox’s hand. A day of activity, out in the cold.
“Was there something you forgot last night?” he asked curiously.
“No—it is that our conversation has made me rethink things. Entirely, truth be told, or almost entirely.”
“My heavens! You’ll have to sit down.”
Lenox did. “I still think Winfield Bell our murderer,” he said, “and Bert Smith his accomplice. But I’m confident of very little else.”
“Please, go on.”
And so Lenox detailed, in slightly more orderly fashion than he and Graham had flung their thoughts together, all that struck him as out of kilter about the murder of Eli Gilman as they currently understood it—and as the papers, with declining frequency, reiterated its particulars.
As the young Englishman spoke, Cobb, breakfast finished, lit a pipe and listened, with an open, intelligent concentration.
At last, when Lenox had finished, he nodded slightly. “My mind has been following the same track as yours.”
“Has it!”
“Yes. Though you must remember that I have the advantage of coming in after the fact, and thus being able to see the whole field of play without prejudice or confusion—at least, I hope.”
Lenox had reached an age—or perhaps more importantly, had confronted enough obstruction from recalcitrant inspectors and sergeants at Scotland Yard—at which, while he was still confident in his ideas, he was more generous when they were wrong than perhaps he once had been.
“You have seen more already than I did the whole time,” he told Cobb. “I’m heartily sorry—and very glad you came.”
Cobb shook his head. “It was you who pieced together Mr. Gilman’s identity, and you who led Inspector Hemstock to the White Horse, Mr. Lenox. At every turn I seem to discover some tidy piece of detective work that turns out to have been yours.”
“Then perhaps we can join our efforts.”
“With pleasure,” Cobb said seriously, and to Lenox’s surprise reached out a hand.
Lenox shook it, with a sense of reinvigorated energy and obligation. It was New Year’s Day, after all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The two men devised a plan. Cobb had been preparing to go to Liverpool that day. They decided that he would carry on, while Lenox reopened his investigation into the case here.
First, though, Lenox returned home, for in his haste to catch Cobb he had left several letters and invitations unanswered to which he wished to reply. Besides, he wasn’t dressed warmly enough. He took the omnibus again. It was one of the more and more common kind painted a bright cherry red. When he had first moved to London, just several years before, they had been of different colors depending on their destination, a rainbow of vehicles trailing their way through the city. He rather missed that.
After a brisk twenty-minute ride, he walked the short distance from Grosvenor Square to Hampden Lane. About to duck into his house, he noticed that there was a soft light flickering in the front room next door and turned his steps there, almost without thinking, to see Lady Jane.
No matter how much she insisted otherwise, he knew she had been in low spirits. It had not truly abated even over Christmas, though she had put on a creditable simulation of seasonal gaiety.
He knocked on the door. Kirk, her butler, a large young fellow with a round face and the look of an all-county ale drinker, escorted him inside.
“Charles!” Jane was in her light blue morning room, writing letters on a small rosewood secretary. She had on a white dress, with a gray ribbon drawing it in around her rib cage. “I wish you the happiest of
new years.”
He bowed. “And you. Am I interrupting?”
“I hope so. It’s a letter to my father, and I never know what to tell him, because the only news he really wants to hear about is who’s won the snooker at the Carlton Club. And they still won’t have me as a member.”
“You would be the first woman.”
“Someone must be. Anyhow, what are you doing? Nothing, I suppose? Not a single thief caught yet today?”
“It’s still morning. Although I have been busy, since you mention it.”
She stood up and crossed the room to a rose-colored sofa, inviting him to sit.
“Tell me all about it, please,” she said. “Put my mind to some use other than wondering about the weather in the Aral Sea, or wherever on earth James finds himself this morning.”
So he described Cobb’s visit the night before. Lady Jane expressed surprise at Lenox’s reconsideration of the case, which she had followed in the newspapers as everyone else had. She remarked that the assassination had in fact had the opposite effect than presumably the assassins had hoped: It had reignited the debate about whether Great Britain ought to pass a resolution of the kind that Gilman had come in part to propose to lawmakers, or even ought to break off trade with America.
They talked about this some while—before Lenox said that he wished he knew more about Bell, the murderer. “He’s a mystery to me.”
“Yet one sees so much about him.”
“It may seem so, but it’s always the same few facts. That he was dishonorably discharged from the American navy, that he moved here—to avoid prosecution, they say, though that is speculation—and that he fell into crime.”
“And Lady Elaine.”
“Yes, and that.”
This was a relatively new personage in the whole saga. Lady Elaine (no known last name) had been Winfield Bell’s consort—probably, in common law, his wife. She was a lifelong resident of the east side. The name was an affectation. She was, nonetheless, at least somewhat grand; she managed the tenement where the prostitutes under the “protection” of Bell’s gang lived.
They had been well known as a couple for at least three years. Not well liked, however. Even in Whitechapel, where very few people were inclined to speak about each other to the police, plenty had been willing to describe the general rottenness of Winfield Bell and his Lady Elaine.
Dunn had interviewed Lady Elaine at length and concluded that she knew nothing of interest. Now, though, Lenox mentally added her to his list of witnesses to revisit.
The question, as he told Jane, was how Bell had leapt from his low-grade fever of criminality to the full raving illness of savage and calculated murder.
“The influence of the White Horse?” she suggested, naming the tavern that had quickly become infamous.
“Perhaps,” said Lenox. “Perhaps. By the way—I had nearly forgotten myself, but I received another visitor yesterday evening, too.”
“Who was that?”
“I hoped you might be able to tell me. He wouldn’t give his name. He only came, stood in my entranceway, and instructed me to stay away from—can you guess? Kitty Ashbrook.”
Lenox said this lightly, but Lady Jane’s eyes widened. She was cradling a cup of tea in her hands. She took a sip, and as he observed her, sitting in the gentle slanting yellow light of the late morning, he felt grateful that he had a friend like this—that her eyes widened, that she was as concerned as he, or more.
She quizzed him for an exact physical description.
“A coat of arms,” she said finally, a puzzled look on her face. “Was Graham sure?”
“I think so. He’s not often wrong.”
“No, he’s not.” She set her tea down on the small flute-edged end table next to her. “But I don’t know who would behave that way over her.”
“Who are her suitors?” he asked.
“You would know as well as I.”
“I did not recognize him, certainly.”
Lady Jane frowned. She was unaccustomed to aught but victory in the social battles she waged. “We must find out who he was. I shall call on her mother this afternoon.”
“I like her, Mrs. Ashbrook,” said Lenox.
Lady Jane nodded. “Yes, I do, too. She is hard done by, yet uncomplaining. To lose a husband at her age, too late for more children, yet early in life, and two years of mourning to endure—that is no easy thing.”
“I have not had the courage to ask how Catherine’s father died.”
“Catherine! You are on intimate terms.”
Lenox blushed. “Perhaps that’s true.”
“Are you in love with her?”
He didn’t answer right away but turned and looked through the window, eyes narrowed in thought. “I can’t be sure. What does love feel like?”
She smiled tenderly. “It doesn’t feel like that question.”
“Then perhaps I am not.”
“I would not encourage you to marry without love, you know, Charles. But do you feel—are you capable of love, just at this moment in your life I mean, do you think?”
He looked back into her eyes. It was the nearest they had ever come to discussing the fact that he had once declared his love for her—and the additional unspoken fact, nevertheless known to both of them, that on that occasion he had felt no doubt at all.
“I think I am,” he said. He thought of his joy at getting Kitty’s letter over Christmas, with the lock of her hair. It sat in a small gold box on his desk now. “Yes, I think if I knew she loved me—if I felt safe in her love—mine would come forth readily.”
“Have you declared yourself?”
“No. Indeed, she has committed herself more than I have, I think—unless I am mistaken.”
“How could you be mistaken?”
He told her about the letter, though not about the lock of hair. He meant to keep that to himself—always—in case they married.
Lady Jane said it sounded as if Charles were very much in Kitty’s heart.
“I hope so. As much as I would hate to prove you and my mother right at one time.”
“What do you feel when you think of her?”
He thought of her: her kind eyes, long hair, and slender shoulders, her bright even teeth, her smile. And his heart skipped as he realized, yes, she was a person he knew, whether she was forthcoming of herself or not, he knew and understood her—and loved her.
“I think I do love her.”
Lady Jane reached over and squeezed his hand, then let it go. “Good. Do you know, they never spent much time in London before this. I think your visitor must be some country acquaintance of theirs, sure that he has first claim on her. But if you love her and she loves you, you shall have her. I promise you that.”
He laughed. “What a veritable Athena you are, Jane, intervening in the affairs of us mortals. Thank you. I should prefer to know who he was before I see her again on Thursday. Not that I would ask her—but for myself, I would like to know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In 1560, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain, sent a present back to his king. It was a healthy young plant, and along with it he sent some seeds for further cultivation. The plant’s use was medicinal—promoting a clear mind and preventing the plague, it was said—and the young ambassador, who had previously been known mostly for negotiating a marriage between a five-year-old French princess and a six-year-old Portuguese prince, became famous throughout Paris for his discovery. The great Linnaeus himself named the plant after Nicot de Villemain: nicotine.
The last Lenox had checked, the plague was not abroad in London—in general one knew very quickly when it was around, as he understood—but he did feel deeply in need, after he had stopped by his house, ordered his carriage, and departed, of clarity of thought.
With the window of the carriage just ajar, he lit the scarred but (thanks to Mrs. Huggins!) shining old pipe, with its circlet of gold binding bowl and stem, that had belonged to his father.
With this done, he threw his undivided concentration upon the murders of Abram Tiptree and Eli Gilman, and the assault upon Josiah Hollis. By the time he had reached his destination, the questions he had cumbersomely formulated with Graham, then articulated more clearly with Cobb, had grown clear in his mind. He knew—he thought—exactly what he wanted to know.
He entered a small stone police waystation in Coke Street, which served as a local headquarters.
“Mr. Lenox!”
This was the voice of Constable George Batch. “Hello, Batch,” said Lenox, with real friendliness. “How have you been?”
“Quite cold. You?”
“Cold on the trail of Winfield Bell. That’s why I’m here.”
Batch frowned. “Bell? Isn’t that all finished by now?”
In the course of their three nights of surveillance of the White Horse Tavern, leading up to the climactic sightings of Winfield Bell and Bert Smith, Lenox, Graham, and Hemstock had come to know Batch quite well—and Lenox to admire him as a smart, straightforward, physically intrepid young agent of the Metropolitan Police.
Stevenage had noticed the same qualities. They were in the East End now, not far from the infamous Whitechapel, where the poorest of the poor scraped by. It was here that Batch hailed from—a true local—and here that he primarily worked. Stevenage had relieved him of the burden of a regular beat and given him the more serious job of helping to track the gangs, patrol the streets as he wished, and assist in special cases, like the one involving the White Horse.
“Not quite finished,” Lenox responded. “In fact I was hoping I might ask you, or an associate, to make a quick trip back to the tavern. I don’t feel quite easy going on my own.”
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