The Fleet Street Murders clm-3

by Charles Finch

  A booming voice startled Lenox from his reverie. It was the portly Mayor Adlington. He had stood. “Stirringtonians!” he said and then allowed a moment for the hall to quiet. “Welcome to the parliamentary debate!”

  A ragged cheering.

  “The participants today are Mr. Robert Roodle and Mr. Charles Lenox. Gentlemen, if you would come to the stage.”

  Lenox felt Crook’s hand push him in the back, and he walked onto the stage, meeting Adlington and Roodle in the middle. All three men shook hands, and then Roodle and Lenox went to their podiums, about six feet apart. He heard Lenox supporters calling his name and Roodle supporters calling Roodle’s, and then Adlington held up a hand.

  “We meet under sorrowful circumstances, friends. The Honorable Mr. Stoke, who served our corner of England so admirably and for so long in the great halls of Parliament, is dead. Please observe a moment of silence with me.”

  Only reluctantly did the Roodleites and Lenoxites stop their bickering. The silence was not very good, as silences go — there were coughs, for one thing, and outside a woman was yelling at either a husband or a horse, which caused a few titters. The mayor dealt with these by staring severely at a spot in the middle of the crowd. For a moment then there was perfect silence, which was broken when a baby toward the back of the hall began to caterwaul. Sandy Smith had been telling the God’s honest truth when he described the strange acoustics of the room; the lone baby sounded like all the demons of hell. Lenox had to stifle a laugh.

  The mayor, persevering through the noise, said, “Now let us begin.”

  When he described it to Lady Jane and his friends later on, Lenox said the first twenty minutes of the debate had been a blur, and they truly were. He answered as well as he could, but he couldn’t remember from one moment to the next what he had said. All of his focus was on the question at hand. The three men conversed for some time on the question of the British navy and then moved to the more parochial subject of the beer tax. When Lenox called for it to be lowered, his supporters cheered fervently, and among the neutrals there was a murmur of agreement.

  The next question was addressed to Lenox. “Mr. Lenox,” said the mayor, “as someone who has lived in Stirrington all his life” — Lenox tried not to groan — “I must say that I agree with Mr. Roodle that it would be difficult for you to comprehend all of the issues that matter to us here. Do you disagree with that?”

  “Yes,” said Lenox, “with all proper respect, I do. The issues of Stirrington are the issues of England, Mayor. Not enough money in your pockets. Lads off to fight throughout the empire. The beer tax. Mr. Roodle could live in Stirrington for a hundred lifetimes, and his positions on these issues would still leave his townsmen and women behind. It simply won’t do. Liberals look out for the common man. Conservatives — like brewers — look out for themselves.”

  “See how he panders,” said Roodle in response to this. “Look at Mr. Lenox’s tie, gentleman. He thinks that a few quick words and a local tie will convince you of his legitimacy as a candidate for Stirrington’s seat in Parliament. That’s nonsense! He hides behind a knowledge — a knowledge he may or may not have — of England in general. Well, Mr. Fordyce, there in the fifth row, and Mr. Simpson, there in the third — we live in England, to be sure, but we don’t live in the slums of London, or in Buckingham Palace, or in some snobbish house on Grosvenor Square, like Mr. Lenox here. We live in Stirrington. We have Stirrington manners and Stirrington concerns.

  “I don’t blame Mr. Lenox. He thinks he can put on a tie and understand us, and it may appear to him that he can. But we — we know that only a true son of Durham, a true son of this wonderful town, can understand its people. And I am that son. I am that son.”

  Lenox felt the force of this. He would never acknowledge his inferiority to Roodle in terms of genuine interest for the people of Stirrington, but as rhetoric he knew it was powerful. He drew in a breath, as Mayor Adlington and the entire hall stared at him, awaiting his response.

  “I’m reluctant to bring Mr. Roodle’s business into this argument, but I feel I must. I am only now coming to understand Stirrington manners and Stirrington ways, it is true, and it is also true that I feel my qualifications lie in the positions that would benefit all of England.” He saw Sandy Smith wince in the first row. “Stirrington especially,” he added hastily, “but at least I’m trying. My opponent took a lucrative business away from this town he claims to love — and perhaps even does love. So it is surely hypocritical, is it not, to criticize me of putting Stirrington second? If you care so very much for the town, then bring your brewery back here. You either care for yourself and your own prospects or for the town’s and its people’s. We know how you chose the first time around. Why should it be any different this time?”

  Surprisingly to Lenox, there was a cheer. He realized some of these men, or at any rate men they knew, must have worked at Roodle’s brewery.

  Roodle, red faced, prepared to respond. In the pubs that night they debated what he had actually intended to say; all that came out, however, was the phrase, “Damn and blast your impudence!”

  In addition, here all of Sandy Smith’s predictions were borne out. Roodle’s high-pitched words rebounded and buffeted every surface in the hall until they came out as a kind of squeal, a high-pitched and angry yelp.

  There was a moment of silence, and then every man and woman in the auditorium, with the exception of a few stern Roodleites, burst into laughter.

  After some time the mayor managed to calm the crowd and resume the debate; but for all intents and purposes it was finished already.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Well, Graham? What did your new friends think?”

  It was the evening, and Lenox and Graham sat at a table in the Queen’s Arms, eating supper together as they had many a time in their younger days, during Lenox’s early years in London. In fact, Lenox remembered the first day he had slept in his new house — now his for some twelve years — when he and Graham had eaten a supper of wine and cold chicken amid the boxes and debris of moving house.

  They were seeing each other for the first time in several hours. After the debate Lenox had gone to three separate receptions (including, to his own amusement, one with the famous corn and grain merchants) while Graham had done what were now his usual rounds, among the pubs and shops.

  “There is no doubt that Mr. Roodle has made himself a figure of fun, sir. Nearly every man I met either did an impression of the gentleman or asked for an account of his behavior.”

  “That’s good, I expect,” said Lenox glumly. “I’d infinitely prefer a fair fight.”

  “I would concur, sir, if Mr. Roodle had chosen to fight fairly as well.”

  “Yes, that’s true — and politics is a dirty thing, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were saying?”

  “His temper has made Mr. Roodle a figure of fun, sir, but I was going to say that he still has strong support. Some men laughed right along with Mr. Roodle’s imitators and then said they’d vote for him anyhow.”

  “That’s to be expected, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir. Though your reputation in Stirrington is high, I fear that the voters you haven’t met are still suspicious of your motives and character.”

  “Then I shall have to be sure to try to meet them all.”

  Indeed, over the next several days Lenox worked as hard as he ever had in his life. He slept no more than five or six hours a night, and aside from a hearty breakfast each morning, when he remembered to eat it was usually a hasty sandwich with a glass of beer. Heretofore he had stuck to the town of Stirrington, but now he and Sandy Smith visited the countryside around it, stopping at small farms, villages with a dozen houses in them, and the pubs and coach stations that served these places. More than once Lenox despaired of finding votes among such sparse populations, but Smith always assured him that these men would remember their five-and ten-minute visits with the candidate. Roodle had deemed it be
neath his dignity to visit the thousand voters who might make a crucial difference. Smith and Lenox hoped it was a grave error.

  As they rode over the countryside in a coach and four, Lenox read the news from Lonon, devouring each dated article but especially those concerned with Inspector Exeter, who had knocked Hiram Smalls, Simon Pierce, and Winston Carruthers off of the front page. There were few details of his shooting, however, and each day the articles grew more restless and more speculative. The facts that they all confirmed were these:

  • Exeter had been in Brick Lane, a poor part of East London where gangs ran riot and police kept their heads down.

  • He had been shot in the back, just below the right shoulder.

  • Despite the street’s crowds, nobody had witnessed — or anyway admitted to witnessing — the assault.

  • Officials from Scotland Yard confirmed that Exeter had been working on the Fleet Street murders.

  The strangest part of all this to Lenox was, of course, that his investigations had taken him so far away from Fleet Street and the two houses in the West End where Pierce and Carruthers lived. Smalls had lived in the East End, too, but in Liverpool Street, twenty minutes’ walk from Brick Lane. It was perplexing. He must have perceived something Lenox had not. Either that or he had been off on a wild-goose chase. Lenox hoped it hadn’t been that.

  Immediately after Exeter had gone into the hospital Jenkins had been reinstated, a fact that he relayed with much happiness in a telegram to Lenox. Unfortunately, he didn’t have — or wouldn’t offer, after his recent trouble — any more detail about the shooting of Exeter, other than to say that he felt sure it was tied into the Fleet Street murders. Lenox agreed and wrote back to say so, but he felt frustrated at his lack of access to the case’s finer points.

  Still, it was good to have his mind on Stirrington. Election day was drawing precariously near.

  On the fourth evening after the debate, Lenox had dinner with Mrs. Reeve again, though an entirely new and more agreeable set of guests joined them. Her influence was tangible, he saw as he grew more intimate with the town, and he was grateful for her good opinion.

  Afterward he sat in the empty bar of the Queen’s Arms, drinking a companionable glass of port with Crook. He asked the bartender a question he had refrained from asking his entire time in Stirrington. “Am I going to win?”

  Crook shrugged philosophically. “You have a chance, anyway. It all depends on this town’s feelings about Roodle, really. If they dislike him mildly, resent him mildly, then he’ll be elected. There’s a powerful instinct to stick together in your northern towns. If on the other hand there is deep resentment toward Roodle, you have a damn good chance.”

  “That makes my time here seem rather futile,” said Lenox with a rueful smile. “If it all depends on Roodle.”

  “On the contrary — you’ve done it all perfectly. You have a light touch with people, Mr. Lenox. I’m sure it has helped in your first career, at times. You’ve introduced yourself to the people of Stirrington and within a week become familiar and acceptable to them. Without having done that, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest what the opinion of Roodle was. A sluggish turnout and a victory of a few thousand votes for him, were you a different man.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  Crook, lighting a cigar, said, “Mind, Mr. Graham has helped, and Sandy Smith and I long had a theory that if you visited the outlying farms and villages you would find undiscovered votes. It’s all gone well, I must say. It never mattered when Stoke was in the seat, but Sandy and I are excited to see if the strategy works.”

  “All things being equal — two wonderful candidates, neither of whom had ever traveled a foot outside of Stirrington — is this place Liberal or Conservative?”

  Crook grimaced and puffed at his cigar. “Certainly we’re conservative in our morals, here. There are those who recognize that Liberal policies favor our kind. Myself, for instance. In the end, though, yes — Conservative.”

  “An uphill climb for us, then.”

  “You’ve known that since Mr. Hilary left, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Lenox. “To be honest, I thought it was all lost then.”

  “The party is fearful of looking as if it really tried for a seat it might lose. Better that the onus falls on you, a dilettante, or me and Smith, locals. Harsh, I know, but true.”

  Lenox saw the verity in this. He took a sip of the amber port. “I hope we can give them a surprise, then.”

  “So do I, so do I. It’s wonderful finally to get my hands dirty and play at real politics, I can tell you. Stoke never had any juice in him.” After taking a sip of port he added, “May he rest in peace.”

  Graham came in at that moment.

  “A telegram, sir,” he said to Mr. Lenox.

  “Who from?”

  “Inspector Jenkins of Scotland Yard, sir.”

  “Hand it over.”

  “What an inundation of telegrams has come to my pub since your arrival!” said Crook with a belly laugh. “We ought to send a wire straight to your room. It must cost a pretty penny to stay abreast of the London news.”

  “Worth it to me, though,” said Lenox. He opened the telegram and read it.

  He gasped.

  “Sir?” said Graham.

  “Just a moment, Graham.”

  Lenox read it over. “Gerald Poole has confessed. He killed Winston Carruthers.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The news that followed the next day was scarce and overwrought. According to the papers Lenox could find, all of London was in an uproar about Gerald Poole’s confession. Each front page ran a long recapitulation of Jonathan Poole’s treason, and the names of the few tradesmen and servants who had met Gerald popped up again and again, uniformly to say how surprised they were. The more febrile stories called the shooting of Exeter a second treason.

  There was no confirmation that Poole had indeed employed Hiram Smalls as a mercenary, but given the two men’s meeting at the Saracen’s Head pub the evening before the murders of Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers, there was little doubt in most minds about their complicity. With Lenox, however, the idea sat uneasily.

  “The question is, why on earth would Poole have sent that letter to Smalls?” he asked Graham as he read that evening, another long day of campaigning behind them. “Does it make any sense that he would meet Smalls in a public place, only to write a letter containing the same plan they had agreed to the night before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Still, people get nervous when they mean to commit a crime.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “He may have been agitated and written the note to give himself some activity, I suppose. I hope Jenkins sends word of the contents of Poole’s confession. I fear he’s treading the line, however, after his suspension. Needless to say, I can’t blame the man for it.”

  Indeed, in the forty-eight hours after he received the initial telegram, there was no word from London except another letter from Lady Jane, which predated Poole’s confession, and a stout and strongly worded telegram from Dallington.

  IT SIMPLY CANNOT BE TRUE STOP I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE RETURN STOP DALLINGTON

  Lenox answered:

  THERE ARE ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAINING UNTIL THE ELECTION STOP I SIMPLY CANNOT LEAVE STOP GATHER ALL THE INFORMATION YOU CAN AND THE MOMENT I CAN I WILL FLY TO LONDON STOP BEST LENOX

  He felt guilty writing it but equally felt how impossible it was to write anything different.

  Originally another debate had been set for that day, but Roodle had pulled out of it. With Crook and Sandy Smith satisfied that they had covered all the countryside there was to visit, Lenox turned his attention again to the local tradesmen and Officials who would be influential among their peers. He heard a long soliloquy by Mayor Adlington about wool prices and another from a pig farmer about pork prices, all over one endless lunch at Stirrington’s social club. He toured stockrooms and the fruit and vegetable market and
commiserated with the fishmonger about rising costs.

  For all this, the encounter that moved him most was with a small child, a boy of no more than nine or ten years, who was guiding a herd of cattle down a lane toward the public fields. It was at the very edge of the town of Stirrington, where a few buildings straggled out into empty meadows. Lenox and Sandy Smith were sitting on a wooden fence, eating roasted beef sandwiches, after attending a small gathering at the blacksmith’s house. Lenox nodded politely to the boy, who stopped. The cattle did, too, after he made a thock with his cheek.

  “You’re the Parliament?” said the lad.

  “I’m trying to become a Member of Parliament. A parliament is a whole group of men.”

  “I thought you were the Parliament.”

  “No,” said Lenox. “Are these your cattle?”

  The boy laughed, and Lenox realized that his own question had been just as preposterous as the one he had answered.

  “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.