The Woman in the Water--A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Series

by Charles Finch

  It had to do with her deep well of kindheartedness. She drew the best person everyone was, somehow, without ever flattering them in the least.

  The two brothers sat and discussed the country (the cricket, the horses, the shooting, the season), and their talk gave way here and there to memory. At last, near two o’clock, Edmund stood up and said he supposed he had better go. He asked if there was anything he could do for his brother before he left town.

  “You don’t have any Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, do you? I could use some.”

  Edmund gave him a strange look but smiled. “You’re an odd duck, Charles. Ha—look at that, Duck! My mind must have been working behind my back.”

  “The only way it ever does.”

  “Very funny.” Edmund paused. “If Father—goes, as it were, Mother will remain exactly where she is. None of this dowager—well, you know.”

  Charles laughed. “Yes. We have talked about it a hundred times or so.”

  Nevertheless, he was glad to hear it once more. They shook hands, and Charles walked Edmund down to a hansom cab in the streets, which were lost in a swirling, relentless fog; he returned upstairs drained, very grateful that he had a brother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lenox stood up, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other holding a cup of tea, and stared at the riot of paper on the breakfast table. “If someone wanted to be out of countenance for twelve days or so, it would be hard to think of a better prescription than this.”

  Graham sighed, just barely audibly. “Indeed, sir.”

  It was the next morning. They had been up since seven o’clock, reading the letters and wires that had come in from various parts of England, describing the women who had gone missing within the past two months.

  There were thirty in all. Their collective history was a grim one. Maude Lyons of Bournemouth, whose husband was known to be a violent man, had last been seen with him near a deep and rocky local ravine, being dragged against her will by the arm; he was mum on her whereabouts. Miss Adeline Bold, fourteen, of Liverpool, ward of an uncle it emerged had been interfering with her; last seen near docks; suspected runaway. It was difficult to imagine a happy outcome for her.

  And so on. There were one or two slightly lighter notes. For instance it was hard not to absolve Sara Cather of Manchester. She was “missing” in the technical sense of the word, and had been since her husband died of what looked suspiciously like strychnine poisoning. That was no good. But the last sightings of her contained reports that she had a broken arm and a battered face; her sister, in Trafford, refused the police entrance, and slammed the door in their faces with a declaration that they could “all go and [expletive] pigs” before they would see her sister.

  Lenox and Graham spent some time speculating about what expletive might have been omitted here.

  In the end, there were four out of the thirty women who, first, matched the rough description of both women (younger than forty, dark curls, decent teeth, fair-skinned), and second, whose disappearances were genuinely enigmatic.

  They came from Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, and Cardiff.

  “No two from a single city,” Lenox said, contemplating the pile.

  “No, sir.”

  “That would have been useful. Still, all four cities have direct trains to Waterloo or Charing Cross, if we believe that our murderer brought the bodies to London with the aim of disposing of them instantly, and therefore chose the river.”

  “You believe the river itself is irrelevant, then, sir?” said Graham.

  Lenox shook his head and thought for a moment. “I do not know, sincerely. The HMS Gallant in the first murder and the bizarre affectation of the flowers, the bier in the second. Both murders seem to be centered obsessively on the Thames, the water.”

  “The shilling, sir.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  This was the detail the press loved most, certain that it referred to the payment the blind boatman received for ferrying the dead across the River Styx. “But you believe these may be deceptions, sir,” Graham said.

  “I believe it’s possible.”

  If they were, the London press was certainly deceived, in the shilling and in all other matters. They were in an absolute uproar of worry. There were twenty-five days until the next murder, but it might as well have been twenty-five minutes. The newspapers published hundreds of articles providing amateur analysis of the two letters the Challenger had received. If the first murder attracted too little notice for the murderer’s attention, the second must have more than gratified his least realistic dreams of same—it was a case with just the lurid amount of detail, just the sense of menace, just the tantalizing number of clues, to capture the entire public’s imagination.

  Even that morning, as he walked from St. James’s Park to Scotland Yard, Lenox saw evidence of the case everywhere. On a newsstand, there were penny ballads about the murders for sale, special editions of all the cheaper newspapers and magazines, even in one case threepence for a cheap mug depicting the Thames Ophelia.

  He called on Scotland Yard at a little after nine o’clock. Mayne, Sinex, and Exeter were closeted together.

  “Good morning, Lenox,” Mayne said.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  The commissioner didn’t seem especially delighted to see him, but he was positively doting compared to Sinex and Exeter, in their stiff tall blue hats indoors. “Walnut Island?” Mayne said.

  He had been impressed with Lenox’s discovery that the trunk didn’t come from the Gallant, and the name of the firm in Manchester that had likely made it.

  He had been less interested in Lenox’s speculations about the letters and his (now-consuming) interest in the spectacles and the dryness of the second victim’s bier on Bankside. Perhaps because they weren’t new facts.

  “As you know, sir, I’ve sorted through the wires from the other constabularies. These four candidates seem more likely.” Lenox passed across a list. “We’ve sent them the sketches by mail.”

  Mayne nodded curtly. One intelligent thing Field had done was to have quick likenesses taken of the two dead women before their bodies were transported to the morgue. “Anything else?”

  “I do have a theory.”

  “A theory,” Sinex said dryly.

  This Sinex was a man of middle age, immensely strong, with the tidy square-jawed face of a particularly fearsome stepfather. Lenox knew Exeter better, but he didn’t like either of them. Nor, as far as he could tell, had either of them made a single iota of progress in the case. “Indeed, Mr. Sinex,” said Lenox.

  “Pray tell.”

  Lenox had in his jacket pocket (he wished to hell and back that he had thrown the sprig of lavender Graham had placed in his buttonhole that morning in the gutter on his way in) his book of London’s maps. He showed it to them now.

  “We’ve seen London,” said Exeter, younger and stupider than Sinex but probably more ill inclined to Lenox.

  “You know where Waterloo and Charing Cross are, then,” Lenox replied. “I believe that is how the victims came into our city. As I have said from the start, it is most likely to me that they are from elsewhere. I think the location proves it.”

  He explained the idea, which had seemed so persuasive to him in Sussex, in a tone that he wished were a little more commanding.

  Mayne listened, to his credit, and said, “That would explain the trunk in the Walnut Island case.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He added that he still thought Field should expand his range of victims. “Mr. Field’s business is Mr. Field’s business,” Sinex said.

  Mayne nodded, though not with the air of someone completely enamored of that fact. “He thanks you for your contribution on Walnut Island, incidentally.”

  Lenox flushed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Let us know if you have anything else,” Mayne said. “In the meanwhile, collect your pay.”

  Lenox’s stomach fell. “Oh.”

  “It’s downstairs
. It looks odd on the board that you haven’t collected it two Mondays in a row.”

  “I would like to look at the evidence from the second murder, if it’s at the warehouse in Ealing.”

  “That should be fine,” said Mayne.

  “The door upon which she was laid, in particular,” said Lenox.

  To his surprise, Sinex, who was just in his peripheral vision, leaned forward in agitation. “Absolutely not.”

  Mayne’s gaze shifted from Lenox to the senior inspector, mildly surprised. “No?”

  Sinex answered. “It’s Field’s case—then mine—and Exeter’s.”

  “What can another pair of eyes hurt?” said Lenox, humbly he hoped.

  Sinex answered. “Every pair of eyes in London is on us already. We must keep the circle small.”

  “I think I can help.”

  Sinex, red faced, stood up. “Collect your bloody pay, and stay away from Ealing!”

  Mayne gave way. “You’d better leave it, Lenox.”

  Lenox did not collect his pay—he would say he had forgotten—and returned home in a brown study, lost in the mazes of his own mind, tracing the footsteps he had walked over again and again on each case, the painstaking steps, but unable to add another step to either.

  When he got home, he went into the breakfast room. Graham had organized all the telegraphs.

  “You’ve sent the sketches to the four cities?” Lenox asked.

  “Yes, sir. First-class.”

  Lenox threw himself into his chair by the window. The day was reprovingly beautiful, hot and clear. He thought of Edmund, on the train down to Markethouse with Molly and their boy right now.

  What a clatter, to travel in a great retinue like that.

  Imagine doing it with Elizabeth, though, his mind told him, until he pushed the thought away.

  Edmund and his father would take a ride that afternoon, and he couldn’t help it in himself, he felt a pang of jealousy, and wasn’t quite sure of why—and he felt very old, very young, very new in London, implacably ancient too; felt all the ages of his body live inside it simultaneously just for an instant.

  He must have been some time, but when he came out of his reverie he stood bolt upright. “I think I’ve got something, Graham.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s the door, of course. How dim I’ve been.”

  “Sir?” said Graham again.

  Another fellow might have bothered Lenox with a lot of chatter, but Graham was silent until Lenox spoke again. “Do me a favor, will you. The place that makes the trunks.”

  “Wilton’s, sir.”

  “Yes, Wilton’s. Wire them and ask for a list of everywhere they’ve sold to in London, with quantities. Paid return—however many words they need.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “There must be trunkmakers in London,” Lenox muttered.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Just send the wire as quickly as possible. Ask for a reply before end of business.”

  Graham, already standing up, said, “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll be back before tea. I’m for Ealing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  There was a ball the next evening, a Tuesday.

  Lenox arrived at five thirty, an hour and a half late, and the line of carriages up Clarges Street was impassable. He hopped down at the intersection some ways off, looking natty, he rather thought, in his black jacket and black trousers, low-heeled boots, with white gloves in one hand. It was not completely unpleasant to be in futile love. For one thing, it saved quite a lot of trouble (he had given no thought whatsoever to his dance card for the evening) and for another—well, he would see Elizabeth tonight, and because she was a married woman, it would be perfectly respectable to spend his time speaking with her.

  The ball was to be given by Mrs. Huggins’s own Lady Hamilton (of all people!) and had a Russian theme, to which Lenox had acceded by bringing a bag of potatoes. She greeted him at the door with a laugh at this house present and an affectionate kiss on the cheek, in a tarlatan gown, rather frowsty looking in the warm late afternoon—but she had a lemon ice to sip.

  After they had chatted he walked to the back garden—the orchestra milling amongst themselves in the ballroom wouldn’t begin to play for another hour—and almost immediately ran into a punch bowl the size of a small bathtub, sitting on a heavy oak table, with a single momentous piece of ice floating in it.

  There were small double-handled punch cups, and Lenox accepted one from a servant. The drink was delightfully refreshing; a taste of citrus and spice on its edge, just thin enough to simulate the effect of hydration, and no doubt deadly alcoholic.

  It was the kind of ball at which one had to say hello to everyone, or no one—at least, he recognized everyone. He nodded more or less at random. He stood until he had finished his drink, when he heard a voice behind him and turned.

  “Mr. Lenox!”

  It was Thomas McConnell, the young Scottish doctor. “How do you do?” asked Lenox, shaking his hand.

  “It’s like being on board an omnibus.”

  Lenox laughed. “Do doctors take omnibuses? All carriages, I should imagine. Or litters, borne by eunuchs.”

  “No, I was a very poor student once. Or rather a passable student, who was very poor.”

  The small garden behind the house was, indeed, as full of people as the street outside was of carriages; the harassed waiters, moving through with trays, could barely remain civil as they shoved the highest members of the aristocracy in order to pass. This was the zenith—as far as the ball went—of the slightly older crowd, the married ones, the parents and grandparents, since the dancing, it was conceded, the later part of the night, belonged to the youth.

  “I realize that I don’t know whether you are married or—attached,” Lenox said to McConnell.

  Now the doctor smiled. “Attachment is more common in the unmarried than the married, I sometimes think.”

  “Not always.”

  “Not always,” McConnell replied with a graceful incline of his head. “But to answer your question—no, I am neither married nor attached. Too much at work. The Hamiltons invited me, I fear, only because they were imposed upon to do so by one or two friends.”

  It would have been rude to point out that five hundred people would be at the ball, all told—the driver of the omnibus himself was no doubt here—but Lenox was saved from answering when he saw a friend approaching him.

  Her name was Lady Lucia Chatham. “There you are, Charles,” she said. “Give me some more of that punch, wouldn’t you? I’ve never been so bored in my life.”

  There were some who reckoned Lucia the most beautiful single woman in London. She was very thin, and wore a pink muslin dress of barely any contour, in the minimal style in fashion at that moment. (The enormous crinoline bustles, whose skirts would have made the party feel twice as crowded, had fallen blessedly out of favor that spring.) Her long blond hair was intricately knotted with lilies, half-falling, half-up. She was rather breathtaking—indeed, McConnell’s breath looked rather taken.

  “Lucia, may I introduce you to—”

  “You can introduce me to Satan himself after you have refilled my glass of punch, my dear—hand it—yes. Ahh. Infinitely better.”

  This was the fashion, too; a certain looseness of manner, particularly among friends. She smiled winsomely at McConnell to cut her rudeness, and he, enchanted, bowed when they were at last introduced.

  Lenox thought that perhaps he would let the two of them talk. He was extremely fond of Lucia, who was part of his small circle, but also found her tiring. (Her beauty would have meant more to him on an earth that didn’t hold Elizabeth.) But then someone saw McConnell and grabbed him urgently, and Lenox and Lucia were left alone.

  “I think I see a sort of bower there, under the elm tree, Charles,” she said, threading her arm through his. “Shall we go and sit? Can’t we?”

  Her arm was a provocation to every Georgian grandmother in the
garden, and Lenox resented being used as an accessory to her daringness. On the other hand, it wasn’t completely awful to be the center of attention; and she smelled of divinity, loveliness, youth.

  “We’d better refill our punch glasses before we sit.”

  She sighed. “I always suspected you of being a genius.”

  “So did I.” On a small wrought iron bench together they whispered about their friends. Lucia was entertaining—truly entertaining—and Lenox let himself float on the soft puff of her wit and charm. What a lovely wife she would make for someone, someday. An eventful wife, but a lovely one. She had told him before that she could never move to the country, as Elizabeth proposed to do. Funny: neither could Lenox, yet it was Elizabeth whose spell he was under.

  The shadows in the garden started to grow a little longer. They were positioned to rebuff almost everyone (including Lucia’s nominal chaperone). Just when it had seemed as if it couldn’t possibly get more crowded, it did.

  “If there is a God, I won’t have to dance with Laurence.”

  This was the man the city expected Lucia Chatham to marry. He had no title, but there were probably not ten richer men under thirty in Her Majesty’s isles. It was said you could ride Devon on his land, one end to the other. Probably an exaggeration.

  “I doubt there is a God, in that case.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re too clever, you know that, Charles.”

  “Am I?”

  “I want to be told that I shan’t have to dance with him—that you’ll dance with me instead.”

  “I’ll dance with you instead.”

  “Do you mean it?” She took out her card. One of her thin wrists she laid across his knee, examining it, and he felt a shocking thrill, something very real. “My first and fifth and eighth dances are yours, if you’ll take them from me.”