The Fleet Street Murders

by Charles Finch

  Dallington nodded with an anguished look on his face. “Furthermore, what’s worse, Poole denied buying it at first. Now he says he can’t remember. It’s all so dreadfully suspicious—but I know he didn’t do it.”

  “This looks black, Dallington. Exeter can prove the murder weapon was Gerald Poole’s knife?”

  “The shopkeeper who sold it entered all of Poole’s particulars into a ledger.”

  Lenox sighed. “I’m afraid he may be guilty,” he said.

  “He’s not. I can tell you that flatly.”

  The older man looked at the younger with pity. “Yes,” was all he said.

  “What can we do?”

  “I must go to Stirrington.”

  “What! You can’t think of leaving, can you?”

  “Indeed I can.”

  Dallington looked dumbfounded. “An innocent man goes to trial in a week’s time.”

  This pierced Lenox. “I will write to Exeter,” he said. “Forcefully.”

  “You must stay!”

  “I cannot. If you keep me apprised of every detail you learn, I will try to help. Yet if Poole is convicted, I can always return and try to exonerate him. Still, if he is truly innocent—then I hope he won’t be convicted.”

  “Hope?” said Dallington, and a faint look of disgust passed across his face. “Parliament will go on forever. This is a man’s life!”

  Lenox knew the justice of what Dallington said, but he thought as well of all the people who were paid to be discovering who had killed Pierce and Carruthers, and the thought of his visit with Hilary that morning—you’re pulling even in local support—and wondered why he had to be the one who fixed everything; and a small selfish voice rose in his mind. He wanted to be in Parliament.

  “John,” said Lenox in an utterly reasonable voice, “you must understand. I have obligations. I came down expressly against the wishes of those with an interest in my campaign and have done my best. We know Smalls must be guilty, don’t we?”

  “Because of the note? Everybody may write anything they please on a piece of paper.”

  Lenox sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Stay, Lenox. You must.”

  “I can’t, but you shall have all of my attention when you write, and as goes without saying I shall follow every detail of the case in the newspapers.”

  Dallington threw his hands in the air. “I can only ask you to stay,” he said.

  “I can’t. You can handle this.”

  “I don’t think I can, Lenox. I’m afraid I simply can’t.”

  “I must go, Dallington. Keep in close contact.”

  “If you must, then,” said Dallington, his face suddenly forlorn. “I’ll write to you this evening.”

  Lenox turned, ran for his platform, and just in time caught the train headed north.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I

  t was a busy afternoon. Guilt gnawed at Lenox, but he knew Dallington’s request had in its own way been unreasonable, too. It was important to do the work of the nation, and if he could make it to Parliament, what untold good might he not accomplish? It was an uncertain business, being an adult, trying to be responsible. Nonetheless, he wrote Exeter a letter full of the precise details of Lenox’s day in London, congratulating him on apprehending one murderer—Hiram Smalls—while on the other hand cautioning the inspector that Gerald Poole’s role in the business was far from certain. Alas, his cajoling would likely be futile, unless Exeter’s theories were somehow thwarted, when he might turn to it. He was a bullheaded man.

  Lenox sent that letter and then wrote a telegram to Dallington, half-apologizing for the scene in the train station and asking him to keep in close touch. He also advised the young lord to continue investigating Carruthers’s and Pierce’s history on Fleet Street. Something besides Jonathan Poole’s treason years before had to link them.

  Lenox wondered about the knife, though. He felt uneasy about Gerald Poole. The young man was hiding some secret.

  After he had written this letter and this telegram, there was nothing left to do but turn his attention to the work at hand. Fortunately, Graham had been on the job.

  “How do you do, sir?” Graham had asked when Lenox stepped off the train in Stirrington.

  “Tired,” the detective had answered, “and sorely tried.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, sir.”

  “And here?”

  “My task went tolerably well, sir.”

  “You bought everyone beer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What about Crook? Is he upset?”

  “He reconciled himself to your absence, sir.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Graham nodded and said, “Of course, sir.”

  They bumped through the small town, and Lenox found that he recognized certain shops, even certain faces, and it increased his affection for the place. He would be honored to represent it should they let him.

  The Queen’s Arms remained as he had found it on first arriving in Stirrington; the fire burned hot and high toward one end of the bar, and a chalkboard menu offered venison with applesauce for the midday meal. Crook, his massive bulk and great red nose intact, nodded in a cursory but friendly manner to Lenox. One thing was different, however: At Lenox and Graham’s entrance, a cry went up and people crowded around them.

  Am I so beloved so quickly? thought Lenox.

  A moment later he was laughing quietly at his vanity—for they were all talking at once to Graham.

  He ought to have known; Graham had the most extraordinary way of listening, such that his interlocutors felt grateful to him when they parted, and he had evidently been true to his word, had stood any number of rounds, and become intimate with all the usual inmates of the pub. No fewer than seven men came up to them. All had looked slightly suspicious, slightly aloof, when Lenox first entered the Queen’s Arms, and all now cheerfully clasped his hand and vowed that a friend of Mr. Graham’s was a friend of theirs. It was an unlooked-for success and encouraged Lenox greatly.

  “Mr. Crook,” he said, approaching the bar.

  “Pleased to see you, Mr. Lenox. London?”

  This lone word was evidently a question, so Lenox said, “Yes, it was good I went back.” He thought of Jane. “Very good I went back. Do you think my absence dooms us?”

  Crook chuckled at that. “I reckon not,” he said. “It didn’t hurt to leave Mr. Graham behind. You shook every hand you could within Stirrington city limits?”

  Lenox laughed and remembered his promise to do so. “I did, yes,” he said.

  “Then we shall be all right. Sandy Smith has spread it around that you were in Durham, speaking with the right people.”

  Lenox shook his head doubtfully. “I can’t say I like that.”

  “It’s politics, you know,” said Crook. “You will speak to them within this next week or two, but folk around here would take it poorly if they knew you had scarcely been here any time at all before you felt the call back to London.”

  “I understand.”

  The candidate and the political agent (though he was still a bartender when Mr. Smith, at stool seven, asked for another pint of bitter) then spoke about the day’s schedule, and about their strategy for Roodle, and about the further handbills and flyers they would print up, and Crook confessed to writing Hilary with the promising news of Lenox’s popularity—in sum spent fifteen minutes or so in the pleasant and easy conversation that men who love politics are able to expend an infinite amount of time on. The last thing Crook said was to remember the importance of that evening’s dinner. Now, Lenox didn’t remember with whom he was dining, or why it was important, but, eager to stay in Crook’s good graces, he nodded solemnly and resolved within himself to ask Graham what dinner it was.

  “Then I’ll see you at the meeting of corn and grain merchants, Mr. Lenox?” Crook said.

  “Certainly.”

  Lenox nodded to Graham then, and the valet extracted himself from a large group o
f friends to accompany the detective upstairs.

  “You know what I’m to do today?” asked Lenox when they had reached his room.

  “The corn and grain—”

  “Yes, yes, but for supper?”

  “Oh—yes, sir. You have supper with Mrs. Reeve, sir. Many local merchants and officials will be in attendance. Men who determine public opinion, sir—for instance, Ted Rudge, the wine merchant, who dislikes Mr. Roodle intensely. Mr. Crook impressed upon me that these men are the sort who determine elections, sir, and that you might not meet them without Mrs. Reeve’s patronage.”

  “I’m not a pet, Graham.”

  “No, sir,” said the butler, nodding to indicate the verity of Lenox’s statement. “Nonetheless, these men are far more important than the corn and grain merchants, for example, sir. Although the corn and grain merchants do—”

  “Blast the corn and grain merchants,” said Lenox grumpily.

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Save your corn and grain stories for the long winter nights, Graham.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If I lose the respect of the corn and grain merchants, life will go on, you know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I’m suited to politics, you know.”

  “Sir?”

  “I wish they wouldn’t tell everyone I was in Durham.”

  “Men often need time to settle into political life, sir. The story about Durham is an exigency of your position.”

  “I know it.” Another sigh. “Anyway, Graham, what about you?”

  “Sir?”

  “What are you going to do today?”

  “I thought I would discharge my usual duties, sir, now that you are returned.”

  Lenox waved a hand. “We can’t have that. These chaps would elect you if they could. No, you must stick by me. Unless you mind?”

  “Not at all, sir. The servants at the Queen’s Arms are most competent, I have found.”

  “Capital, then. The blue tie?”

  “Here it is, sir.”

  “With this tie I could face a legion of corn and grain merchants,” said Lenox, putting it on in the mirror.

  “Excellent, sir,” said Graham.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  W

  ith every person he met, Lenox could feel himself gaining ground. In his absence, ironically, the town had adjusted to his presence. The speech in Sawyer Park—and the subsequent talk of it—had doubtless played its part, as had the confident energies of Crook, Smith, and Graham. Whatever it was, Lenox was well met everywhere, men and women stopping to shake his hand as he passed. Each stride through Stirrington encouraged him further.

  He expected the worst when he met the corn and grain merchants but found them to be in fact a pleasant lot, and when he stopped in for an afternoon cup of tea at a teashop along Foul Lane he had a long and interesting conversation with the proprietor, a woman named Stevens who promised she would have her husband vote for him. Lenox’s ideas on the cost of beer would persuade Mr. Stevens, she said, while his plan to lower taxation persuaded her.

  By the time of Mrs. Reeve’s dinner, then, Lenox was feeling assured and happy; Roodle seemed an altogether smaller figure in his mind, and the cacophony of good and supportive voices that had followed him through the day rang in his ears.

  All of that lasted about ten minutes into the party.

  Now, Mrs. Reeve herself was perfectly nice, a fact from which Lenox took some solace. So was Mr. Rudge, the wine merchant who detested Robert Roodle. Here were two supporters.

  Not so nice, on the other hand, were several of the other party guests, whose personalities seemed calculated to grate on Lenox’s nerves. Worst among these was a woman whom for years afterward he thought of with a shudder. Her name was Karen Crow. She was a fervent Roodleite.

  “Mr. Lenox,” she said when they were all sitting at the table for supper, soup before them, “is it true that you have never visited a brewery?”

  “That is true, yes,” he said.

  “Mr. Roodle has been in the brewery all his life.” She said this with great significance—greater than Lenox could perceive it to have—and turned her head from side to side, as if to say to her neighbors, “Now, did you catch that?”

  “I understand that beer is important in Stirrington?”

  “Mr. Lenox,” she said, “is it true that you have always lived in London?”

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “Surely Mr. Lenox’s provenance is well enough known?” said Mrs. Reeve.

  “But you have lived in London most of your life,” clarified Mrs. Crow.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Mr. Roodle has lived in Stirrington all his life.”

  After relating this wonderful anecdote, she set to her soup with a dainty ferocity.

  “His factory hasn’t, though,” said Rudge, the wine merchant. Lenox shot him a grateful look.

  After this Mrs. Crow retracted her claws until dessert was served, when she again began to delineate the biographical differences between Roodle and Lenox. Picking up the baton in the meanwhile was a man named Spronk, who managed a clothiers on the High Street. Spronk’s plan of attack was to associate Lenox with every misdeed of any member in the history of the Liberal Party. All of his sentences either began or ended with the phrase “Now, isn’t it true . . .” For instance, he said, “Now, isn’t it true that Gladstone visits prostitutes?”

  “In an attempt to reform them, I believe,” murmured Lenox, “though I scarcely think that in this company it is appropriate to discuss—”

  “The party betrayed Russell, didn’t they? On his reform bill? He was a radical, to be sure, but nonetheless it indicates a certain slipperiness. Now, isn’t true?”

  “Perhaps,” said Lenox. “Who better to be a radical than the son of a duke, however, like Russell?”

  “Now, isn’t it true as well that Palmerston was a Tory first, and only changed parties to gain power? You can scarcely claim credit for Mr. Palmerston, I think, Mr. Lenox,” Spronk said with a chastising chuckle, as if Lenox had been taking credit for Palmerston all over Stirrington.

  “He shifted parties wisely, in my view,” was all the candidate managed.

  After several other questions of this variety, Spronk sat back with a satisfied “humph.” Thus he and Mrs. Crow between them spoiled Lenox’s appetite before the lamb arrived.

  Almost worse than Spronk and Crow, though, was the way in which Mrs. Reeve, after having invited him into this lions’ den, constantly tried to “save” him by interjecting a soft word or two when the assaults on him became intemperate. He appreciated her intent but bridled against her proprietary manner. It made him feel a slight snobbery. It occurred to him that, having lived in his own small circle in London for so long, he had without knowing it narrowed his social life to exclude the Mrs. Reeves of the world; and then it occurred to him in the same moment that perhaps the men and women in Stirrington who were suspicious of him for being from London were right. He didn’t understand them as well as Roodle did, in all probability. Previously he had assumed it was an unenlightened and fearful sort of instinct in the locals, but maybe they knew their business. It was a depressing idea.

  According to the Bible, though, all things pass under heaven, and despite Lenox’s doubts that it would, the supper eventually did, too. Mrs. Reeve offered him a few words of consolation as he parted, but he returned to the Queen’s Arms in a foul mood.

  The place was humming, voices and laughter mingling in the eaves of the ancient building. It was warm inside, and whether from that or from drink, nearly all of the patrons at the bar and at the tables were red faced. Crook was dispensing pints at a rapid rate but paused to greet Lenox.

  “How was it?” he asked, shaking hands.

  “Rather like hell,” said Lenox.

  Crook laughed. “I’m afraid we let you in for it. Mrs. Reeve keeps a mixed company—politically, I mean to say. Anyw
ay, now they’ve vetted you, whether they like you or not. You must trust me that it was important.”

  “I do,” said Lenox.

  “We didn’t want to warn you—felt you might do a runner.”

  “I’m not some skittish pony,” said Lenox irritably.

  “There, there,” said Crook with another expansive laugh. “How about a pint of ale on the house?”

  “It wouldn’t go amiss, I suppose. Thanks.”

  Crook drew the dark, golden liquid into a pewter pot and slid it across the bar to Lenox. “There you are,” he said. “Cures what ails you.”

  “Have you seen Graham?” asked the detective after a long pull at the drink.

  “He accepted an invitation to supper as well, just after you left. A few men were off to a chop house and brought him.”

  “He’s been valuable, has he?” asked Lenox.

  Crook nodded. “To be sure.”

  “What do you think our next set of handbills should be?”

  “You didn’t like the last ones? The five promises, Mr. Lenox?”

  “I do like them, but I worry that Roodle’s signs are more direct, more effective.”

  “Vote Roodle—Vote Your Own, you mean?”

  “Hm.”

  “How about Vote Lenox—Vote Your Wallet?” said Crook.

  “I like that. Or Vote Lenox—Vote Your Interest.”

  “Folks care more about their wallets than their interests, I reckon.”

  “Vote Lenox—Lower Roodle’s Beer Tax.”

  “That’s much better. Roodle will hate it.”

  “It’s not quite his, is it?” said Lenox.

  “It don’t do to be too fine in politics.”

  “No,” Lenox said with a smile.

  “We’ll print a few hundred more of the five promises and add in some of the more blunt handbills, then?”

  “Glad it’s decided.”

  “You’ll need to go back to the printers in the morning.”

  “Graham can do it.”

  “I’ll think about it overnight, see what I can come up with. I like Lower Roodle’s Beer Tax, though.”

  “So do I,” said Lenox.

  “We’ll call it settled, then.”

  “And tomorrow?”