The Fleet Street Murders

by Charles Finch

  “They’re my uncle’s, my father’s brother, as was.”

  “What about your father?”

  “Dead.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it.”

  The boy shrugged and with a nod beckoned the cattle again, and they moved onward down the lane.

  “Shouldn’t he be in school?” Lenox asked.

  “I don’t know that you’ve quite grasped the nature of people’s lives here, Mr. Lenox. School is a luxury, in many of their cases.”

  Now, Lenox was a gentleman of his age and thought himself enlightened, thought himself progressive; indeed, vowed to fight for the enlightened and progressive causes he had long believed in. Yet it was only now that he truly realized what life in Stirrington was like—and with a burst of insight realized that perhaps Roodle was correct, in some way. Perhaps he wasn’t fit to represent these people. It was jarring. The slums of London he could comprehend, and he had grown up among rough men and women in Sussex, but for some reason the boy’s utter abstraction from Pall Mall, from Grosvenor Square, from Bellamy’s Restaurant and the House of Lords, gave Lenox a shock.

  A shock for the good, though; for from that moment he had a deepened and more profound sense of the responsibility of his undertaking. For his entire adult life he had moved so easily among men who made large decisions, whether admirals or cabinet ministers or bishops, that he had forgotten to some extent what a privilege it was to stand for Parliament. The sense of honor overwhelmed him. He felt it keenly.

  So the days passed, with every moment another hand to shake, another tale to listen to, until it was the day before election day.

  In the late morning Crook appeared in the bar and announced that he was taking two days off, much to his patrons’ surprise. He had found a replacement barman from a pub in the countryside, however, brought in for a little urban experience, and the grumblings in the Queen’s Arms soon fell off.

  Outside of the pub on the High Street there was a tremendous clatter. They were constructing a high hustings, and it was when Lenox saw this undertaking that he began to have butterflies in his stomach. He sent Graham to find a mug of tea and a piece of toast to settle himself, even though he had already eaten that morning.

  “Nervous?” said Crook. He nodded in an approving, businesslike fashion. “It’s for the good. If you weren’t nervous I’d think something had gone wrong.”

  “What is it for?”

  “For speaking, of course. We have a succession of gentlemen who will speak there this morning, and then around lunchtime, when people are on the streets, you’ll give a speech. Another one this evening, and all day tomorrow we’ll have a rotating group of people speaking from it.”

  “Does Roodle have one?”

  Crook nodded. “Yes, a few streets down. Ours is in a better position, though. It may prove an advantage.”

  “Good,” said Lenox. “Good.”

  Just then Nettie, Crook’s niece, came out, dressed in a pretty muslin frock and with her hair in braids. Lenox saw the immediate softening of Crook’s features, the unlining of his forehead, and began to walk away.

  “Mr. Lenox!” said Nettie before he had gone very far.

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “I said a prayer for you at mass this morning.”

  “Why, thank you, Miss Crook. I’m very honored.”

  Crook colored, but Lenox pretended he hadn’t noticed.

  “I certainly hope you win.”

  “So do I!”

  Lenox bowed to Nettie Crook and walked inside.

  So, Crook was a papist. It occurred to Lenox that this might be helpful, in a way, if it meant he had allies in the Catholic community of Stirrington. Then he cursed himself for the cynicism of the thought.

  He stood at the door of the pub pondering all of this.

  “How do, Mr. Lenox?” said a passing man. He wasn’t past thirty, a wave of fair hair pushed off of his pink, sunburnt features.

  “Very well, thank you,” said the candidate, looking up.

  “I’m voting for you tomorrow.”

  He felt a surge of affection for Stirrington. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.

  “Lower the beer tax,” the man responded with a laugh, walking on. “That should do. Good morning, now.”

  So the day began, and as the sun slowly rose and slowly set there were speeches, emergency strategy sessions, and dozens of pints bought for potential voters, until at last at 1:00 A.M., exhausted, Lenox and Crook went to their respective beds.

  At six the next morning Lenox was dressed and watching the day break—the day he hoped would change his life forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  L

  enox detested the fact, but it was simple enough: In elections for Parliament, bribery mattered. It was no surprise at all when Graham reported that in the Roodle pubs votes were worth two crowns a head.

  “We must do the same,” Sandy Smith advised, nervously tying his tie as he prepared to get up on the hustings and deliver the first speech of the day, at seven o’clock.

  Crook nodded.

  “No,” Lenox said. “Graham, here’s money. If you see anybody accept Roodle’s offer, match the sum and give the person the choice of the thing. Otherwise let’s stick to buying drinks.”

  Crook shrugged, as if to say that it was Lenox’s money, and turned to consult with a growing line of men who had decided they wanted to vote for Lenox but needed assurance they would receive a pint later on. Crook set Nettie to handing out vouchers for the drinks.

  At this Lenox felt ridiculously puritanical and changed his mind. “A few shillings a head, then, over Roodle. If it’s the done thing.”

  Crook laughed. “It is,” he said.

  The day was a blur. A brace of carriages went around the countryside, picking up all the voters Lenox had gone and spoken to and Roodle hadn’t. Lenox and various of his supporters took turns on the stage, all giving rousing speeches that were generally of two varieties: one, that Charles Lenox was the greatest man of his age and would turn Stirrington into an Aztec-like City of Gold; two, that Robert Roodle was the most depraved, ill-mannered, and stupid man alive, the only mistake the otherwise wonderful town of Stirrington had ever produced, and a vote for him would be tantamount to treason—to a vote for the French—to a vote for more expensive beer—why, any number of things.

  All of this was very pleasing to the growing number of Lenox supporters gathered around the hustings, who passed out handbills and pins to passersby. Every sighting of Lenox himself, who was making the rounds of the city when he wasn’t speaking, was greeted with a high cheer. He noticed with satisfaction that at midmorning a small army of women led by Mrs. Reeve had appeared, holding homemade signs in support of the Liberal candidate and stopping to chat with the men and women who passed by on the street, every single one of whom they knew.

  All of this was punctuated by an hourly event almost equally pleasing to the speeches, which was the arrival of a group of Roodleites who had a snare drum and beat on it to drown out Lenox’s proxies, meanwhile passing out pamphlets in favor of Roodle in front of the Queen’s Arms with, as Mrs. Reeve observed, the impudence of highwaymen. It was satisfying to Lenox’s supporters to boo the small group until they left, and by noon or so their arrival was as highly anticipated as the candidate’s himself.

  A little after noon Crook returned from City Hall, where they were counting votes.

  “No numbers yet,” he said, “but I learned two things.”

  “Yes?” asked Sandy Smith in an agitated voice. He was preparing to speak again, as soon as a corn merchant onstage finished his tribute to Lenox’s impossibly various virtues.

  “For one, there are about twice as many voters as the mayor remembers from the last election.”

  “That only stands to reason, given that Stoke ran unopposed,” said Lenox.

  “The more voters, the better it is for the Liberal candidate—there’s a political truth for you, Mr. Lenox.”

>   “Second,” said Crook, “when I was leaving, the carriages we hired to go to the countryside had picked up about twenty men, and the drivers said there were another twenty waiting to be picked up, and another twenty after that, and so on and so on. It’s only a matter of getting them in before the polls close tonight.”

  “That’s wonderful!” said Lenox.

  “There’s my cue,” said Smith and ran off to mount the stage.

  “Now, it’s understood that each of them will receive a shilling or two to cover the missed hours of work.”

  Doubtfully, Lenox said, “I’m not sure I can approve—”

  “It’s absolutely understood,” said Crook gravely.

  The candidate relented. “Very well—but we must send another carriage, if we can find one.”

  “I hoped you would say that. You have the money? Here, good. Lucy,” he shouted at the waitress, “find Samuel Keller and tell him to follow the two carriages from Taylor’s livery out to the country! He’s to pick up voters!”

  Lucy took the money and ran off to the livery company, and Crook shook Lenox’s hand and with a look of determination on his fat, round, serious face said, “I think we may win this election yet.”

  Lenox scarcely hoped—and yet in the very few quiet moments of his day his whole mind was bent on an image of himself in Parliament. He pictured his first speech, the green baize benches of the chamber; he pictured himself shouting down an opponent; he pictured his familiarity with the doormen of that august body, with the secretaries and valets who ran their employers’ lives . . . he yearned to be part of it all.

  He recalled something his father had once said. Lenox had been four, perhaps five, and his father had been preparing to go into London for the start of the new session. Edmund, two years older and preoccupied with his schoolmates, had given his father a handshake and run off with a cricket bat. To Charles, though, it was a sorrowful occasion.

  His father wore a pristine dark suit, and with a stroke of inspiration the young Lenox ran upstairs and found the old, tatty corduroy jacket, patched at the elbows and threadbare in the shoulders, that his father wore around the stables and out on his land. He handed it to his father wordlessly, and when the man realized Charles’s purpose, a look of kindness came onto his often austere face.

  “Oh, little one,” he said. “Don’t be sad.” He kneeled down and took Charles’s hands and looked him in the eye. “Remember,” he went on, “that once a man’s name is entered into the book of Members, nobody can ever take that achievement away from him. It is the highest honor one can receive, to enter Parliament. It may be a little sad for you and—I’ll tell you a secret—for me, but it is for the thousands of men and boys we don’t know that I must go, and serve my country.”

  It seemed like an endless day, but slowly it began to fetch toward evening. Lenox spoke again at three and realized with a start that there were now hundreds of people around the hustings. By four o’clock all three carriages were running at full speed, bringing in thirty more people every thirty minutes, and when at four thirty Crook informed him that there were still far too many people willing to vote who might not make it into Stirrington, Lenox ordered a fourth carriage.

  At five something novel happened, just when things had gotten a little bit sluggish: Roodle came to the Queen’s Arms.

  He had been expecting to find Lenox onstage, perhaps, and looked a little nonplussed when he found instead a grain merchant talking in a heavy northern accent of crop yields, but he went on with his plan anyway.

  “Ask Mr. Lenox if he can take you to St. Mary’s churchyard, where half of our ancestors are buried!” he said.

  Boos.

  “Ask Mr. Lenox if he can direct you to the Martyrs’ Memorial—and not the one in Oxford!”

  More boos, and then someone shouted, “Ask Mr. Lenox if beer is too expensive!” which drew tremendous cheers and drowned out whatever Roodle, who looked furious, was going to say next. When the crowd finally quieted he said, “Only a member of our town’s community should be our town’s Member!”

  The clever little smirk he gave while he said this line infuriated Lenox’s supporters, and they drove him and the small cordon of Roodleites with him down the street, catcalling them as they left, until they were gone.

  At seven o’clock Lenox, hoarse and exhausted, mounted the hustings one last time. A harried cheer went up, but people had become a little weary—not of the man but of the day and its excitement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, whether I win or lose this by-election, today has been one of the most wonderful days of my life,” he said. “Whether I win or lose, nothing I have done these past few weeks will be in vain, because I have discovered the best small town in England!”

  He paused for another cheer. “Thank you, thank you. Now I have one last favor to ask you. At eight o’clock the polls close, and I see many faces that were here at eight this morning. You all deserve to go home, but on your way please stop just one person and ask him if he’s voted. Then, if he says no, tell him why you believe that Charles Lenox is the best man to serve Stirrington—and why Robert Roodle isn’t, for that matter.”

  Another cheer. “Thank you!” he said. “I feel honored by your support.”

  He came down from the stage but this time to the front, rather than escaping to the back and the pub, and allowed the people to engulf him. He shook hands until his forearm was sore and commiserated with the many people he had met. By eight only a dozen or so supporters remained, the rest spread out across the city, on their way home.

  He went back into the Queen’s Arms, where Crook gave him a broad smile and put a paternal arm around his shoulder. “You did awfully well, Mr. Lenox,” he said. “Really better than I expected.”

  “Call me Charles,” said the candidate, who suddenly realized that he was not only falling-down tired but famished. “I say, is there any food to be had?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Ten minutes later, sitting at a table in a private room at the back of the building with Crook, Lenox fell upon a plate of battered cod and red potatoes. A new, more jovial side of Crook appeared as the two men sat and talked. He fetched a bottle of Bordeaux and regaled Lenox with stories of Stirrington’s more eccentric history: Mr. Weathers, who went out to the middle of his fields every day and cast a fishing pole in the middle of his crops, then sat and dirt-fished all day; the mayor before Adlington, who had been fond of a rainbow-colored waistcoat that very nearly caused a revolt among his subordinates. It was as if he had finally shepherded Lenox through the campaign and could relax.

  Then at ten o’clock, very suddenly—for Lenox was lulled into a gentle stupor by the wine, Crook’s voice, the food, and the fire—it was time to see who had won the election. Sandy Smith stood in front of the pub and nodded gravely when they came out, and the three men walked over. At City Hall there was an agonizing half hour while the last few votes were counted and Mayor Adlington was roused from a nap to read the results. Just before they were ready, Roodle came storming in. Then, in a surreal tableau that Lenox felt more observer of than participant in, they went into a small room and heard the results.

  It was over. He had lost.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I

  t was a bitter, bitter thing to swallow. In the end only two hundred votes had separated the men. Pushing his pride to the side, Lenox reached out his hand to Roodle, but the brewer pushed past him with a sneer and went outside to announce the news to his waiting supporters. Lenox knew he had to do the same, though he scarcely felt equal to the task.

  He was glad there were books in the world, at that moment; glad that there were maps and encyclopedias, and warm fires and comfortable armchairs. He wanted to retreat into his library for a year without leaving it and eat good lunches and take long naps. But he told himself that a Lenox of Lenox Hall ought to have more mettle than to wish for something like that, and he went outside and delivered a brief, grateful encomium to his supporters before
going back to the Queen’s Arms.

  “It should never have been so close,” was all Crook said. “Roodle thought he’d win by a landslide. We did our side proud.”

  “I can’t help but think of that single day I wasn’t here. Mightn’t I have met another two hundred people that day and perhaps impressed upon half of them my suit? Mightn’t I have won a hundred of them and drawn even with Roodle?”

  Rather surprisingly, Crook said with a severe glance, “That’s no way to think at all—Charles. You did your level best. No other candidate short of Peel reincarnated could have done more or worked harder.”

  They arrived back at the Queen’s Arms, and in his weariness Lenox wrote two brief telegrams with the same message (“I lost. It’s all right.”) to Edmund and to Lady Jane. Then he took himself upstairs, had a few solitary moments of self-recrimination and sorrow, and fell into bed, exhausted.

  When he woke in the morning it was to see Graham seated at the table by the window, a tray with coffee and sweet rolls before him.

  “Is there something wrong, Graham?”

  “Good morning, sir. I merely wished to see if you required anything.”

  Lenox chuckled. “Are you worried about me? I’m all right, I suppose. A bit of a setback, but these things happen.”

  Graham stood. “It was a pleasure to help you,” he said and then left.

  Lenox went to the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. The rolls were good, chewy, soft, and sweet, and the dark warmth of the coffee complemented them well. Meditatively he chewed and looked out the window, trying to suppress even to himself the disappointment of the night before. He sighed deeply and swirled the last sip of coffee in the bottom of his cup before swallowing it. There was a telegram on the tray, which at last he opened with a sense of dread. It was from Jane (Nothing from Edmund? He worried he had let his brother down) and proved a very kind and thoughtful note, but at that particular moment Lenox detested the idea of pity, of consolation.