The Fleet Street Murders

by Charles Finch

  Walking around the town that evening, Lenox felt heartened. He had given four speeches that day; the first, before a handful of shopkeepers on the edge of town, had been a timorous, uncertain homily about the importance of lending one another a hand. The line he had concluded with, “Friends before treasure!” had earned him only a few disapproving stares, not the applause he had hoped for, and he only realized belatedly that the men in the crowd were primarily concerned with their treasure—of friends they had enough. He had gained confidence as he went, though, and having walked around Stirrington all day, he now recognized some of the faces and many of the shops he passed.

  He stopped into a chop house and had a supper of lamb and wine, talking the whole while with several men at the bar. At first they were taciturn, but Lenox did have one gift as a politician, even though he hadn’t had time to develop more than a raw way about him—he could listen. He liked to listen, in fact. When these men found that one of the quality was interested in what they said, they found their voices. Primarily they talked about Roodle.

  “Bleeding Robert Roodle,” said a thin and thin-voiced one, “I was workin’ in his brewery and lost my job.”

  “Did you get another one?”

  “Well—yes,” said the man, in that particular grudging way of the English, “but no thanks to ’im.”

  Here a jollier fellow, who had introduced himself to Lenox as the local blacksmith, chimed in. “What’s worse was ’is father, ’e was. A reg’lar tyrant.” Then he braced himself for a long soliloquy. “The facts about Stirrington, sir, is that we here like hard work, we like our ale, we like our Sunday service, and we like promises kept. That’s the secret, Mr. Lenox. Don’t make promises you can’t keep; we’ll find you out, sir, we will.”

  “We will,” agreed Roodle’s aggrieved former employee.

  “Beer tax—you’ve made a good start, sir.”

  “Aye, it’s true,” said several of the mute chorus who had been listening to the conversation as they ate.

  “One other thing, Mr. Lenox—there’s nothing to be gained by attacking Roodle. Everyone here knows his faults, we know his virtues—for he does ’ave ’em, Sam, and pipe down—and before anyone votes for you the people of this town will need to know yours.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Lenox. “I hope I may count on your votes, at least?”

  Not so fast, their looks said, though they all nodded agreeably enough

  Finally, after supper, Lenox had time to return to his room and write back to Lady Jane. He sat for some time at the small table at the window of his room; it overlooked a large vegetable garden, but all was dark now, and he felt wracked with doubt. Doubt about Jane herself—never. Doubt in himself. He finally wrote:

  My Dearest Jane,

  Even your doubtful letter was the sweetest part of my day because it came from you, but I cannot lie: These have been difficult hours in my life. Hilary returned almost instantly to London, expressing grave concerns about my chances here before he left. I have constant visions of Thomas and Toto in their sorrow and feel I have shirked my duty in leaving, whatever the purpose. I can’t help but think that the two deaths that I take it still dominate the papers there might have been cleared away under my eye. Yet of all this I feel most sorrowful that you should doubt our marriage in June.

  Which is not to say that I do not understand, dearest Jane; for I have analyzed at greater length than you will have had leisure to my own faults, the defects in my character that would preclude me from making a happy marriage. In fact, I stated them to you before that (indeed happy!) moment when you accepted my offer.

  Nonetheless, I have more confidence in my love for you than in all the rest of this doubtful world put together. My dearest hope, to which all my dreams and aspirations have been bent, is our joint happiness, which will begin in earnest when we marry. I hope that is in June, but I will wait as patiently as you like, unto the end of my days.

  I cannot help but wish I were in London to speak with you in person and to gaze at your wise and serene face; all would be well then, I somehow believe. Until that blessed moment, believe me to be your most faithful and loving,

  Charles

  It was a sentimental letter, perhaps, but an honest one. After he had finally started writing it the words had come easily. He blotted the letter and didn’t read it over but simply sealed it in an envelope and left it on the small table in the hallway where residents of the inn could leave their letters to be sent.

  Going back to his room, feeling somewhat restless, he happened to notice a slip of paper he must have missed coming in. Stooping to fetch it, he saw it was a note from Crook’s niece, Nettie, inviting him to have breakfast with them the next morning. Whether this missive came from Crook or the girl herself, he was grateful for it, alone as he was in this strange town.

  The next morning he presented himself at the door of the small house adjoining the Queen’s Arms, a charming and tidily kept place. A very young maid, not past fourteen, answered the door and took Lenox into a sitting room that was perhaps over-furnished with examples of needlework, with small and amateurish watercolors—in other words, the sitting room of a young woman who spent much time alone and whose diversions were all, or nearly all, of her own making.

  Nettie Crook came in at the same moment Lenox sat down. She was a plain girl but with a healthy look about her, and he was surprised she remained unmarried. She could not be below twenty-five years of age. It was entirely proper for them to be alone together—she was evidently the woman of the house—but Lenox rather wished her uncle had been there to introduce them.

  “How do you do, Mr. Lenox? I’m so pleased you could come.”

  “Thank you, thank you, Miss Crook. I was pleased to receive your invitation.”

  “How do you find Stirrington, if I may ask?”

  “Altogether charming, Miss Crook. I would have preferred to view it at a more leisurely pace, but it has been pleasant nonetheless.”

  “My uncle will arrive downstairs in only a moment or two.”

  Lenox nodded graciously. Here was an odd situation, he thought; although he gazed on the strictures of class with a more critical eye than many he knew, it was plain that two people of very different rank were about to dine together. He liked Crook, liked Nettie, too, for that matter, but he hoped it wouldn’t be awkward.

  In fact, it was not. To Lenox’s shock, the glum, agile proprietor of the pub, the shrewd political leader, was at home as soft as warm butter. The reason was Nettie.

  “Have you observed my niece’s watercolors?” was the first thing he asked Lenox after they exchanged civilities.

  It was extraordinary. The man’s face, which in the bar was screwed into an impassive and calculating glare, was now softened by emotion. He looked his age.

  “I have,” said Lenox, “and cannot recall a more interesting view of that famous clock tower that I’ve seen in all my brief time here.”

  “Tell him about the clock tower, dear heart,” said Crook with great complacency.

  “Uncle,” Nettie chidingly answered.

  “Pray, do tell me,” said Lenox.

  They had moved by now to a small breakfast nook, which just managed to fit three (though it would have been perfect for two), and she put eggs on his plate.

  “I was once very late in running my errands,” she said, “so late I feared I would miss supper.”

  “Miss supper,” Crook echoed softly, gazing with pure love up at his niece.

  “I’m generally inside at that hour, of course, but I happened to be in such a rush that I stumbled—and as I stood up saw the clock hanging just between two houses. It was so beautiful, Mr. Lenox, you could scarcely credit! Well, the next evening I went out and drew a few sketches of it—art is a hobby of mine—and then completed the work you see.”

  Now, as stories go, Lenox acknowledged to himself, this wasn’t much of one. Yet through it all Crook looked as enthralled as Thucydides listening to Herodotus in the town sq
uare.

  “My brother, Nettie’s father, was a fine chap,” said Crook, “but died fighting the Russians.”

  “In the Crimea?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. That would have been 1855, eleven years since. I took her in as a teenager, and she has been my sunshine ever since.”

  “Uncle,” said Nettie again in an undertone. “My mother died in childbirth, Mr. Lenox.”

  “I’m terribly sorry to hear it.”

  “It was a shame,” Crook said. The bell chimed behind him. “Blimey—already? All right, dear, give us a kiss.”

  This received, he took a great ring of keys from his wallet and left with a scant word of good-bye, already, perhaps, the grim and reliable publican that Stirrington knew.

  Lenox was finishing his food when the young girl came in. “Pardon,” she said, “but there’s a visitor at the inn, sir.”

  “Who is it, Lucy?” asked Nettie.

  “I’ve never seen him, ma’am. A gentleman. I’m afraid he’s—” Here she stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Well—been drinking, mum.”

  Lenox had a sinking feeling in his heart. “What’s his name?”

  “He said to tell you, ‘It’s McConnell, the poor sod,’ sir. He said you’d know what that means.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  L

  enox spent the next hour tucking his friend safely away in a spare room above the Queen’s Arms. McConnell, half in stupor from drink and incoherent about his reasons for coming to Stirrington, was nonetheless as clear as crystal about his reasons for being unhappy. Toto had asked him to leave. He had not only obeyed that request but had decided to absent himself from London forever. He talked wildly of returning to his native Scotland and becoming a groundskeeper at his family’s small estate or practicing medicine in the rural parts of the country. Mumbling, he fell into a troubled sleep.

  Lenox spent the morning giving speeches. In his spare moments he read the previous day’s London papers. They were still full of the two “Fleet Street murders,” and amid long encomiums to Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers ( journalists, after all, love to eulogize their own; a way of pushing off their own obscurity a little further) were all the details and speculations that papers, high and low alike, could muster about Hiram Smalls, the mysterious man who had been arrested in connection with the murders.

  The details were certain, if few. He lived in Bethnal Green with his mother. This picturesque detail the papers dwelt on at great length, and they inquired endlessly about Mrs. Smalls’s feelings. In person Hiram was a short, solid, muscular figure, with (purportedly) cunning eyes and without discernible scars, birth-marks, etc. He had never been in legal trouble, and while he liked the life of rough pubs and gin mills, he had never (at least that anybody would willingly say) associated with any of London’s numerous gangs or thief-taking operations.

  For supper one day he had ordered out from prison to a local pub, asking for a pork chop, two large glasses of ale, and a bag of oranges. Ordering food into prison was a common enough activity—for those with money, said the papers with dark suggestion—but these oranges! Such an extravagant fruit! Local markets condescended to quote their price for a single orange to the various papers, and all agreed one could not be had for less than a shilling, the price of several meals. As was customary for prisoners, the pub extended no credit. Where, then, did Hiram Smalls get his coin—not to mention his nerve?

  There were a few quotes from Inspector Exeter about the case. When the press urged him to explain how Hiram Smalls might have killed two men on opposite sides of town at once, Exeter said that the Yard wasn’t ruling out the possibility of a conspiracy between Smalls and several of his local associates. A gang, then, the press very naturally inquired? Possibly a gang, Exeter allowed, though we cannot say more. Did gangs not sometimes have rich or even aristocratic chieftains? Yes, said Exeter. However, it was evident that Smalls was either the sole mover or the leader of a conspiracy—such was clear from interrogation of the prisoner, canvassing of the eyewitnesses, and one particular piece of shocking evidence.

  This piece of evidence was that Smalls and Carruthers’s maid, Martha, had unquestionably met and conversed within the last month. There were a dozen eyewitnesses who could place them at the Gun pub off of Liverpool Street, including one who happened to know both of them—Hiram from nearby Bethnal Green and Martha because the gentleman made deliveries to Winston Carruthers.

  All this Lenox learned from yesterday’s papers.

  Morning speeches given, he returned at two o’clock in the afternoon to find McConnell at a front table in the pub, gazing with a melancholy air through the small window he sat by. A glass of Scotch whisky sat before him, untouched. He stood up when he saw the detective.

  “Lenox,” he said. “How can I apologize?”

  “You’ve had a difficult week,” said Lenox.

  “I had some wild idea of helping you with the campaign, being of some—of some goddamn use in this world.”

  Lenox noticed McConnell’s hand trembling slightly, whether from nerves or drink. “Thomas, you must allow yourself to grieve,” he said. “You’re not at fault.”

  Dismissively, the doctor responded, “Lenox, you—”

  “Thomas—you’re not at fault.”

  Lenox held McConnell’s gaze until the latter looked away. “At any rate,” he said.

  “How is Toto’s health?” inquired Lenox in a neutral tone.

  “She’s recuperating. Jane is with her.”

  “How long will she require rest?”

  “She can move already, but her doctor told me that she must first calm her nerves.”

  “Of course.”

  “It was a fluke, he also said.”

  “Of course it was, Thomas. Nobody could have predicted it.”

  “Well—be that as it may.”

  “Nobody could have predicted it!” said Lenox, driven to a high tone. “Has it occurred to you that Toto asked you to leave because she feels responsible, she feels as if she disappointed you, Thomas? Good Christ, for an intelligent man . . .”

  McConnell looked chastened. “Do you think so?”

  “I know it’s not because she blames you.”

  “Well—thank you, Charles. Excuse me for arriving in that—in that state.”

  The tension in Lenox’s face relaxed slightly. “I’m pleased to have you here. Lord knows I need help.”

  “I hope I can work on your behalf.”

  “I’m running against a brewer. Roodle, his name is. Apparently not well liked, but the local attitude seems to run along devil-you-know lines.”

  “Have you any chance?”

  “Not a week ago the men who proposed I run were optimistic. Giddily optimistic, even; but Stoke’s death has lengthened my odds considerably.”

  “Did you see the Times, by the way?”

  “No, what?”

  “They ran a small piece about you and Hilary leaving in the dead of night.”

  “How funny!”

  “It referred to you as—let me remember—as ‘Charles Lenox, notable for his successful intervention in the infamous murder of Bill Dabney and the disappearance of George Payson, as well as the final capture of the so-called September Society.’ In the clubs there was quite a buzz about your campaign.”

  “What did people think?”

  “That it was celebrity chasing by the Liberals, I’m afraid. Those who knew you emphasized your long interest in politics, but the general opinion was derisive, unfortunately.”

  “I’ve dealt with worse, of course.”

  Lenox saw McConnell eye the Scotch whisky. At that moment Lucy, the energetic waitress, sailed by. “Eating, Mr. Lenox?”

  “I’d love something. Whatever looks good,” he said.

  “Straightaway.”

  “Is there much talk of Pierce and Carruthers?” asked Lenox.

  “Well—you’ll understand I haven’t been lazing about Pall Mall. I only went by my clu
b yesterday afternoon to escape the house. I do know Shreve”—this was the McConnells’ funereal and corpulent butler—“has been censoring a great deal of below-stairs gossip. I can’t imagine there’s any more tact evident in the high houses.”

  Lenox laughed. “Of course not. Oh—I say, McConnell, would you mind if I was rude for a moment? I’ve been carrying this letter about with me all day looking for a moment to read it.”

  McConnell acceded with a wan nod. It was the letter from Lord John Dallington, who for the space of four months or so had been filling an awkward and new role; he was Lenox’s apprentice.

  It was a strange fit. Dallington was well known in London as a dissolute and disheveled, if charming, scion of the aristocracy and the eternal worry and disappointment of the Duke and Duchess of Marchmain, whose youngest son he was. The duchess was one of Lady Jane’s very closest friends, and so for years Lenox had known Dallington without ever paying him undue attention. He was a short, trim, and handsome man, whose face was unblemished by his dissipation, dark eyed and dark haired, something of a dandy; a perfect carnation always sat in his buttonhole.

  Most third sons of the aristocracy chose the military or the clergy, but Dallington, in part encouraged by his parents’ leniency, had repudiated these traditional paths and instead devoted the first years of his twenties to the Beargarden Club and pretty young girls. Then, shockingly, one day in September he had approached Lenox and requested an education in detective work. Lenox had warned the lad that it was a profession whose only rewards were internal, that it took dedication to work at a vocation held in such low esteem. Dallington pointed out that his own reputation was not high, and Lenox had taken him on. Since then, the lad had been surprisingly adept at his new work, and diligent besides, even if there had been several rocky moments. Those, though, were forgotten: Dallington had either saved Lenox’s life or come close to it, and their bond—indeed, their friendship—was now secure.