The Fleet Street Murders clm-3

by Charles Finch

  Soon Dallington and Graham had returned, and the former came in to sit with Lenox, who had been reading.

  “How do you do?” said the detective when Graham was gone again.

  “Why have we been evicted from the library?” He squirmed. “I feel as though this chair bears a personal grudge against me.”

  Lenox laughed. “My brother fell asleep in there. Sorry.”

  “What’s all the cloak and dagger, then? Graham pulled me out of a decent game of whist.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” said Lenox. He couldn’t help himself from lecturing his apprentice now and then.

  “Yes, yes, and I should only drink barley water and meditate on the Sabbath. Still, it’s damn hard to find a game of cards in this town!”

  “I think Poole is innocent.”

  Dallington furrowed his brow. “Well, of course.”

  “You say that despite his confession?”

  With that the younger man looked uneasy. “Well —”

  “I have a theory that Poole is the victim of a plan to frame him for the murders of Pierce and Carruthers.”

  “So do I — Hiram Smalls asked him for a meeting.”

  “That relies on Poole’s word, you know. Let me tell you what I think.”

  Lenox repeated what he had said to Graham — that Carruthers was the murderer’s real target and Pierce an unfortunate casualty, the murderer having known that the two men were connected by Poole and that Gerald Poole was in London again.

  Dallington whistled, impressed. “Could well be,” he said. “So they may not be the Fleet Street murders after all, then.”

  “Precisely — we can’t quite say what sort of murders they may be, except that with Exeter and Smalls dead, too, they’re for very high stakes.”

  “Speaking of which — shall you be safe?”

  “I hope so,” said Lenox. “I don’t speak to the papers, so I hope it’s not widely known that I’ve interested myself in this business. Still, I mean to speak to Scotland Yard about it tomorrow. They may give me assistance.”

  “There’s such a public outcry over Exeter, I’m sure they’ll be desperate to do anything to find his killer.”

  “Yes,” said Lenox grimly. “God, but it’s an ugly thing.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Find out why Gerald Poole confessed.”

  Dallington stared at Lenox for a moment and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see him first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes — I’ll come here when I’m done.”

  “I may be out during the day, but wait, if you would.”

  “Of course.”

  Dallington left then, perhaps off for a few more rounds of whist to brace him for his morning task, and Lenox checked on his brother — still sound asleep. Molly and their sons were in the country, and he decided to let Edmund rest.

  “Put him upstairs, would you, if he should stir?” he said to Graham. “Tell him I won’t hear of him going home.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Then at last, blessedly, he could go see Jane.

  He fairly bounded next door, hoping it wasn’t too late to catch her. Her telegram had been brief but consoling, and he felt a powerful desire to see her, to remind himself that he had a wonderful life, well worth living, even without Parliament.

  Her house, imperiously tall from across the street, seemed from their own sidewalk to be no more than a homely, silent thing, with one room dimly lit and all the others entirely dark. Before he could knock she opened the door and, without speaking, wrapped him in her arms. For a moment he remembered how it had been when his mother was alive, even into his thirties — that childlike comfort she was able to give him long past the age of scraped knees.

  “Are you terribly disappointed?” she asked. Now she led him down the hall and into her rose-colored drawing room, from whence that solitary lamp had been visible from the street.

  “It was more of a sharp, quick pain,” he said, “than a long, dull one. I thought it would have been the other way around.”

  “How unfair, though! Will you tell me about it?”

  In such a way that he had barely noticed, she had maneuvered him into his favorite chair and then sat beside him. In a torrent, then, he told the entire thing to her — about Mayor Adlington and his long watch chain, about Roodle’s squeal during the debate, about their impromptu exchange in Sawyer Park, about Sandy and Mrs. Reeve and Nettie and Crook and Lucy the waitress, about the awful dinner parties, the endless days out in the countryside, the hustings in front of the Queen’s Arms and the speeches. The two old friends laughed at the funny bits and felt solemn together at the serious bits, and when he was through telling the story it felt as if he were finally through the experience. He had had his chance and lost. So it goes, he thought. Perhaps there will be another, but even if there isn’t — if there isn’t that’s all right as well.

  And here, he asked? What was the news?

  “Thomas and Toto are doing the best they can,” said Lady Jane.

  “I’m glad to hear it, of course, but you know what I mean — London, the chatter, I’ve missed it all.”

  “It’s my turn to entertain you?” she said. “Well, the Duchess is having her house redecorated, and the whole family is moving to the country for six months while it’s done… let me think… Deborah Trice is going to marry Fordyce Pratt.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea who either of them is.”

  “He’s a judge.”

  “That ancient lump of flesh I see at the Devonshire? Surely he doesn’t have it in him.”

  She laughed. “Yes, in fact,” she said, “and you ought to know that Deborah is a very respectable widow, just returned from some part of India where her husband was posted.”

  “A tiger ate him, I assume?”

  “Fever,” she said, though still laughing. “What else? George Barnard was to have a party, but he’s gone to Geneva instead, some sort of conference, and people are terribly disappointed. You know he has that ballroom.”

  “Humph,” said Lenox, or some grumpy noise approximating that.

  “Yes, yes, I know you don’t like him. Oh! Frederick Fleer was in a duel, you know, but neither man was hurt.”

  Slowly, then, Lenox and Lady Jane resumed their lifelong conversation. An hour later, thoroughly exhausted, she led him to the door.

  He gave her a chaste kiss on her red lips. “Thank you for staying up,” he said.

  A serious note returned to her voice after much laughter, and she said, “Oh, but of course.”

  They agreed to see each other the next day, and as he walked back up the steps to his house Lenox thought happily of all the long hours he would sleep on his own soft bed. Tomorrow there was work to be done, but tonight he could truly rest. Maybe for a while in the morning, too.

  The house was quiet. He hung up his coat and began to make his way upstairs, only to check himself and return to the door of the library, through which he peered to find Edmund sleeping still, and before Lenox traipsed up to his bedroom he stood and felt a deep swell of affection, of true kinship, for his brother.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  His first action the next morning, following his bath and his breakfast, was to go and see Thomas and Toto.

  They were sitting in a drawing room when the butler led him in, Toto knitting something pink and McConnell reading the newspaper with a cup of tea close at hand, the strong green tea he preferred. They looked up at him, and both smiled. McConnell’s great florid face looked battered, even wounded, but instantly Lenox saw that a resolute companionship had sprung up between him and his wife. It was easy to admire — and made it easy to forget the doctor coming up to Stirrington when he was barmy drunk and half mad with sorrow.

  “I hear you lost, Charles,” said Toto. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lenox waved a hand. “It’s no great matter. I’m only happy to be back in London.” />
  “Have you seen Jane yet?”

  “I saw her last night. Some man was in a duel, apparently —”

  “Freddie Fleer,” said Toto, nodding.

  “No doubt that’s him. Two other people are going to be married. All that sort of thing.”

  “Was it close, the by-election?” asked McConnell.

  “Quite close, yes. I think it came down to the other man’s local support. It’s hard to win over a town full of northerners in two weeks.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever tried,” said Toto with a laugh.

  Lenox laughed, too. “You’ll have to take my word for it, anyway. Still, it was a close-run thing, and I’m happy I did it.” He wondered if he should ask after her health but decided against it. “What about our little project?” he said instead, referring to his honeymoon with Jane. “Have you been studying?”

  “I have!” she said with some animation. “When can we speak about it?”

  “Very soon,” he promised. “I have to look into these crimes at the moment, but then you’ll have my full attention.”

  “What in blazes are you two so mysterious about?” asked McConnell indignantly, having watched their exchange.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Toto, acting perhaps a bit more cryptic than was necessary.

  Lenox laughed. “Toto’s helping me with something,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it after I leave. Look, though, Thomas, I thought I might put you in the way of a bit of work. Not medical, however.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was hoping you’d come to Carruthers’s apartment and act as a second pair of eyes for me.”

  “To be sure. When?”

  “This afternoon, I hope, though I have Exeter’s funeral to attend. We’ll see when they let me in. I’ll pick you up, at any rate?”

  “As you like.”

  “See you then.”

  Lenox left soon thereafter and, after stopping at home to make sure that Dallington wasn’t waiting for him, directed his driver to Fleet Street.

  Printers and pamphlet makers had inhabited Fleet Street since 1500, but it was only in the spring of 1702 that it had gained its modern character — that was when the first daily newspaper in the world, the Daily Courant, opened its office and began publishing from the street.

  In the subsequent century and a half it had become a collegial place, its pubs full of dueling journalists who put aside their differences at the bar to drink, to laugh, and to trade barbs, often with the equally drunken and witty solicitors who inhabited the close-by Inns of Court. It all savored even now of Dickens and Dr. Johnson and the grand tradition of literature — of a certain kind of literature. As Matthew Arnold said, “Journalism is literature in a hurry.”

  Lenox planned to visit the office of the Daily Telegraph, where Carruthers had worked, and then if he could the man’s apartment. If Pierce had been the distraction from the real crime, as he suspected, then this was where he would have to begin his investigation over again.

  The Telegraph’s building was a busy place, with young men running in and out of the door and the tremendous whine, drum-beat, and squeal of the printing press audible from the street. On the fourth floor, however, where he knew from the newspapers that Carruthers had worked, it was quieter.

  Lenox greeted a young woman, a typist, who was hurrying toward a closed door across the floor’s large foyer. “Excuse me,” he said, “but who’s in charge here?”

  “Mr. Moon, of course,” she said.

  “And where is —”

  “Third door on your second right,” she said and was off again.

  Mr. Jeremy Moon, when Lenox knocked on the door of his office and pushed it open, was a gray-haired man with big round glasses and the beginnings of a paunch. He had discarded his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and his hands were covered with ink. He was hard at work reading proofs.

  “Who are you?” he asked rather rudely.

  “Charles Lenox.”

  Moon scowled. “I know that name. The detective, the Oxford murder. You appeared in our news section three consecutive days in September… let me recall… was it the ninth, tenth, and eleventh?”

  Lenox shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Of course, you may not read the Telegraph as attentively as I do,” said Moon with a short laugh. “How can I help you, then? I should mention that I’m rather short on time today. Are you any relation to the chap by your name who lost the election up north two days ago?”

  “I’m him.”

  “Are you! Blimey, you put yourself about. At any rate, as I say, I’m quite busy. How may I help you?”

  “Are you doing the duties for which Winston Carruthers was generally responsible?”

  “It’s about that, is it? I am, some of them. Others have fallen to our writers. He had a wide-ranging brief here, did Win.”

  “I had taken a passive interest in the case before Inspector Exeter died, but now I find myself in a more active role and hoped to discover from you what I might about your colleague.”

  “Well — what sort of thing?”

  “Was he a genial man?”

  Moon laid the proofs he had been reading down on his desk and pushed the big, round glasses from the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “After his fashion. He lived for his postwork drink, and here in Fleet Street he had a wide circle of friends. Carruthers was the sort of chap who could tell you at a moment’s notice all the particularities of some obscure government matter to do with — well, say one of the colonies, and break it down so it made perfect sense. He could write an article on a subject he knew nothing about in half an hour. Save for those rather remarkable qualities, he would have been fired long before his death.”

  “Why?”

  “He was indolent and, as I say, overfond of drink. Had a bad temper.”

  “Did he have enemies, then?”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t really think so — that sounds very sinister and all, but we lead pretty mild lives here, the pub aside, I promise you.”

  “What was he working on before he died?”

  “I’m not entirely sure, though I know in a general way. Because of his talent he was the only writer or editor we had who didn’t quite answer to me. He was a pet of our publisher, Lord Chance. I reserved space for his articles and ran an eye over them but never asked much beyond that.”

  “What was he working on in a general way, then?”

  “He had a story he had been working on for months about Gladstone — a profile of the rising man in the other party, you know.” Moon smiled. “We’re Conservative here, as you may know. Pleased to see Roodle get in, though you seem a decent chap.”

  “What else?”

  “Let me see — he had a story about the Royal Mint — one about Ascot — one about the new railroads — and probably half a dozen others whose premises he scribbled down somewhere.”

  “Was he writing about crime, in any way? The gangs?”

  “He may have been. I didn’t know about it.”

  “Did he ever mention” — Lenox tried to think of a delicate way to say it — “any testimony he had given?”

  Moon laughed. “The Poole thing? Only every day of his life. Which is how I happen to know that Gerald Poole killed him, Mr. Lenox. It’s our first lead tomorrow morning. I can promise you we’re taking Win’s death pretty seriously around here, and Poole’s involvement, too. He should swing for what he did.”

  “Then who killed Inspector Exeter?”

  “That’s why you’re here, I presume. To discover who Gerald Poole’s allies were, no?”

  “Well,” Lenox murmured, unsure of what to say.

  Moon nodded. “Take it as read, yes, that’s fine.”

  “Did Carruthers ever mention Poole’s son to you?”

  The answer to this question Lenox was destined never to get, for just then a bright-looking young man came in without knocking.

  “Who’s he?” he asked Moon, pointing at Lenox.<
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  “Nobody you can’t speak in front of. Why?”

  “It’s the Carruthers thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Winston Carruthers’s maid is back, Martha Claes. She says she assisted Poole every step of the way.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The funeral of Police Inspector William Exeter took place in a small church near his home named St. Mary Abbots, a peaceful ground of ancient provenance that was perhaps to be rebuilt, according to someone Lenox overheard. Exeter had lived with his family in the Portobello Road, off of Notting Hill, and although it was in Kensington Lenox scarcely knew the area, which was spotted by hayfields and untouched meadows.

  As soon as his carriage stopped, Lenox had a lump in his throat. He felt for his colleague some unlooked-for affinity that they had never shared in life. Perhaps it was because, whatever their two views of it had been, they did the same work, and it was work for which Exeter had died.

  The inspector’s death was the great story of the day in the newspapers and the neighborhoods of London, and the trappings of his funeral combined what might have been normal for a man of his station and what might have been normal for a man of a much higher one. A long procession of empty carriages, sent by their illustrious owners, was passing the church, and from a respectfully gentle clatter nearby Lenox saw that the funeral line was to be quite grand. He himself was standing on a small patch of green earth near the front of the church, watching people amble in, generally of two types — Exeter’s relatives and his fellow officers of Scotland Yard — and occasionally of a third, more exalted type, whom Lenox could recognize by the black velvet breeches they wore, or the silver-headed cane they carried. These would be Members of Parliament and London officials. He saw the Lord Mayor arrive and make his way breathlessly up the steps of the church.

  It was intensely sad to Lenox.

  The service was short. There were two hymns and a eulogy from Exeter’s direct superior at the Yard before a speech by the church’s vicar. Lenox found himself sitting with Jenkins, somewhere in the back third of the pews, listening with half his mind and speculating about Exeter’s death with the other half.