These days Lenox had delegated some of the administrative work that had dominated his winter months, and he had the pleasure at that moment of reading a letter from one of his correspondents with the Liverpool constabulary, a bright young fellow named Thestreet who had read one of Lenox’s essays on crime scenes and was asking for his assistance in the solution of a double murder near Anfield.
At a little after noon, Frost came in, his face flushed with excitement. “What is it?” asked Lenox immediately.
Dallington, having apparently heard Frost’s entrance, limped into the room from next door. “Yes, I’d like to know, too,” he said. “Is it about Rowan?”
Frost nodded. “One of them has turned. One of the Farthings.”
“Which one?”
“Singh.”
They had caught him the night before. He and Anderson had been separated a month or two before, and Singh had been charged, that week, with the murder of a rival gang member. He had been caught in the act—sheer good luck, Frost said—and now, facing the gallows, was willing to give away what information he could. All he wanted was to be shipped back to India.
“I can’t imagine that even if we do, we’ve seen the last of him,” said Frost. “He’s thoroughly British now. But it will be worth it if he brings down the Farthings before he goes.”
“He’ll testify against Anderson?”
Frost smiled. “Everyone except Anderson.”
“Loyalty among—well, ‘thieves’ is even too kind a word, I suppose,” said Dallington.
Nearly everyone at the Yard had been jostling to get at Singh, once he had cut his deal. Frost had had to wait until midnight. But it had paid off.
“It was Rowan who killed Middleton,” he said. “All that preceded it occurred exactly as we suspected. Rowan hired the Farthings, at a decent rate of pay, mind you, which surprised me, and sent them after Leigh. But Middleton was his own business. After he had killed Middleton he apparently came to the Blue Peter in a panic, and had to be talked down.”
“What were the circumstances of his killing Middleton?”
“As Rowan explained it to Anderson and Singh, Rowan went to the solicitor’s office at his invitation. There, Middleton demanded more money of him.”
“Gambling debts, perhaps,” said Lenox. “That would also explain why they met when Beaumont was out of the office.”
“Yes. According to Singh, Rowan grew confrontational, and it was then that Middleton pulled out his pistol, hoping, I suppose, to reassert control of the conversation. Instead Rowan panicked, he told the Farthings, wresting the gun away from Middleton and shooting him. He justified it by saying that Middleton’s blackmail would never have ended. Then, in the same breath, he screamed at the gang’s higher-ups, why wasn’t Leigh gone, what on earth were they doing, that sort of thing. Singh said that most men who spoke like that to his bosses would have had their throats slit. But Rowan had certain protections.”
“His social standing, his ownership of the buildings.”
“Yes, exactly. After that he was a less honored presence among the gang, however. According to Singh they still planned to murder Leigh, even after Rowan’s arrest.” Dallington and Lenox exchanged grim glances. “But the news that Rowan had been sending out threats, in the shape of those farthings in envelopes, pushed them away. They had a pigeon at the jail tell him it was all off.”
“A sight too feudal, I suppose,” said Dallington.
Frost, who had taken a seat and pulled out his pipe, tapped it happily against the arm of the chair. “He’ll hang now. Thank heavens.”
“Singh will testify?”
“Oh, yes. He’ll do nothing but testify for about eighteen months. Fifty different cases. If nobody gets to him at Newgate, after that he’ll receive new papers and a ticket to Calcutta. It’s his lookout what happens from there.”
It was good news. After Frost had gone, Dallington congratulated Lenox. “And yet, I always find it melancholy, a man’s execution,” said Lenox.
“Do you? So did Middleton, I am sure.”
“The point must be that we are better than to replicate what we are punishing.”
Dallington shook his head. “I cannot agree. A man like Rowan—given every advantage, every chance to be a civil member of society, he is the first who should know that killing a fellow human forfeits his own rights as one.”
“That is the general run of thought,” Lenox said. “As time passes I feel less and less sure it is mine.”
“You have a soft heart.”
He smiled. “So have you.”
“I? No, I am a blight on the criminal class.” Dallington smiled, too. “Just at the moment I’m hoping to put a fellow in Camden Town on the stanchion next to Rowan if I can.”
“The fellow who drowned his wife?”
Dallington nodded soberly. They discussed the case for some time—the woman’s family had hired the agency to chase down the finer shades of the truth, hoping that they would make the Crown’s case irrefutable—and Dallington seemed absorbed and contented by the work. More moments like this; fewer like the other kind; that was the road back, perhaps, when someone had experienced what Dallington had. The restoration couldn’t be expected all at once.
Lenox dined with Graham at Parliament, where they discussed in granular detail a new bill that was going to appear that evening. It was an extension of what Lenox considered his own gladdest moment as a politician, which was the Adulteration of Food, Drink, and Drugs Act, passed in 1872. The bill had outlawed a few dozen substances commonly found in food—chalk and alum in bread, for instance, which almost certainly made people sick, copper in pickles, for color, even something as innocuous as arsenic, used in many foods to add tang, but which chemists, including McConnell, had persuaded Lenox might be mildly poisonous.
The Tories had cried bloody murder—government overreach!—but they had squeaked the bill through.
“We are hoping to add about fifteen substances to the list,” Graham told him, as they sat back after eating, sipping a fine port. “Our goal is to allow every child to be able to drink water safely.”
That was a lofty goal—nearly everyone, child and man, drank either beer or strong tea, which were both rightly considered safer, from first thing at breakfast to last thing before bed—but Lenox nodded. “Then I believe it will come to pass.”
“The manufacturers are unhappy.”
“When were they ever happy? And yet I observe that they prosper.” Graham, looking out at the silvery flow of the Thames under the spring sun, smiled. “Last fall, the daughter of a manufacturer was presented at court for the first time. Even Lady Jane, who is a liberal soul, was unhappy about it. But I doubt there could be a clearer sign that the next age will belong to them. Restrict away. They won’t stop turning coins into paper.”
Lenox returned to the office from their lunch in a contemplative mood—still no mention of a betrothal, and he thought that it must be concluded Graham’s gambit had been unsuccessful, which made him sorrowful—and was surprised to find that Frost was there again.
“Frost!” he said, hanging his hat. “Has something else happened?”
Frost, before so pleased, looked devastated. “It’s Rowan. Gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“Just that—gone.”
Lenox’s heart lurched. “Where is Leigh?”
“I have no idea.”
“No, you couldn’t. I’m not thinking. Come—let’s go find him—come with me, and you can tell me on the way.”
Apparently Rowan had heard the news of Singh’s apostasy that morning, and by some bribery had convinced his guards to let him go. There were nine of them on duty. Frost wanted all of them fired, or transferred, though it would only have taken one to slip him out, and Rowan could have offered each of the nine their salary ten times over without noticing the absence.
As they came to Hampden Lane, Lenox felt his heart pounding.
But Leigh was there—standin
g in the front hallway, with the strangest look on his face.
“What is it?” Lenox asked, though he was the one with news to deliver.
Leigh shook his head. “Have a look at this letter,” he said.
“From Rowan?”
“Yes. In his bizarre way, I suppose there is nobody who loves science more. I have decided it will be exceedingly useful too, what he has sent—he is right in that.”
Leigh,
If you are to live as you, and I cannot, I must know what the microbe is. I will be on the Continent by the time you read this, and likely never in England again; but I will look to the journals.
This may help us meet there more often.
Rowan
Enclosed was a check written to Leigh, drawn on the London bank Coutts, for twenty-five thousand pounds.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
On the June morning of Dallington’s wedding to Polly, it rained steadily and torrentially, the light washed out of the sky, the people washed out of the streets.
“Fearful good luck,” said Lenox.
Dallington, who looked sick, nodded. “Is it very full out there?”
“Tolerably full.”
“I say, thank you again for standing up next to me.”
“Well, I need the exercise.”
Dallington managed a smile. They were standing in a tiny attending room at Marchmain House. Anything that was good of London society had found its way into the adjoining chamber, with its enormous windows. Lenox, peering into it a moment before, had seen Lady Jane, sitting with Toto and the duchess, the three of them speaking animatedly, Toto’s hands upon her rounding stomach; McConnell and Edmund nearby, talking; and even Anixter, who for the first time in his adult life didn’t seem to be wearing a peacoat; and who certainly wasn’t speaking to anyone.
It was just passing six minutes before eleven o’clock now. Upstairs, Polly was no doubt busy with her final preparations. She was due to come before them in five and a half minutes, her first step down the stairwell, toward marriage. Lenox had no idea how he would make the time go.
And he felt sorry, sorry for his friend, who winced as they stood, the leg still painful, sorry for Polly, who had so few people here on her behalf—so few friends, Lenox had realized, and none of her first husband’s family. A marriage day ought to be happier than this one was.
Still, a minute did pass, and then another minute. “Four minutes now,” said Lenox.
Dallington, whose face was nine or so inches from the enormous grandfather clock, said, “How very useful a notification.”
“Well!”
Another minute—and then, suddenly, there was a loud murmur in the room. “What is it?” Dallington asked, alarmed.
Lenox cracked the door, and saw, to his astonishment, striding up the aisle, Polly. She looked lovely, her pale face made angular by the hair swept in a corona away from it, her simple rose-colored dress brightened by the bundle of yellow tulips she held.
She was headed for them.
At the very last moment Lenox stepped back from the door, making way for her to come in. The noise in the room outside was a clamor, now.
“Polly,” said Dallington, more surprised than Lenox. “What—”
“Do you want to marry me?” she said.
“What?”
Her voice was steady, but there were tears in her eyes. “Do you want to marry me?”
“Of everything, it is what I want the most.”
“Then why? Why have you treated me so coldly, John? I have made allowances, but I cannot marry you if—if—”
She was weeping. “Shall I leave?” Lenox asked.
He turned to the door and saw that the duchess was standing outside of it. He made a signal not to come in. Meanwhile, behind him, Dallington said, “I do not deserve to marry you.”
“Deserve?”
“The night I fell, I had been taking laudanum, Polly. That is the truth.”
More of Dallington’s relatives had appeared at the door now—little so dangerous as people who wish you well—and Lenox, though desperate to leave, found that he had become the bulwark between his friends and their potential intruders.
“Listen,” said Polly behind him. “Is that all? Is that really all that has been making you unhappy? Do you promise?”
“Yes. You deserve more than—more than a crippled, intoxicated liar.”
And there, in the word “crippled,” Lenox glimpsed the deepest truth of his friend’s sorrows.
So had Polly. There was a sound which, though Lenox’s eyes were turned studiously away, could never be mistaken for anything but a series of kisses upon a face. “You are the best person I know,” Polly said, “and I love you better than anyone in the world, and you could be a million times more crippled and a million times more intoxicated and I would feel that way still.”
“Would you?” said Dallington.
She kissed him again. “Charles,” she said. Her face was shining with happiness when he turned to look. She was squeezing her betrothed’s hand. “Would you mind clearing the way so that you and Dallington can go and stand by the priest? I’ll walk from here—it’s no matter—I would walk from a much less convenient place to marry you, John—go, go, we only have thirty seconds.”
Dallington looked at Lenox, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Ready, then,” he said, and started through the door.
It was many hours later when Lenox and Lady Jane returned home in their carriage. A good lunch was in them; and many happy memories, stored away now, of their friends’ wedding.
Seated between them, curling her fingers through her doll’s hair, was Sophia, who had stood near Polly with a basket of flowers, eaten too much soup, had a tantrum, and fallen asleep in her chair. Not one of her finest performances.
Lady Jane seemed sleepy, too. She had been awake late with the duchess, finalizing the layout of the room, the menu of the wedding luncheon. “I hope they are happy,” she said.
“If he is as happy as I am he will have done well.”
She smiled. “And she.”
“Look,” said Lenox. “Who is that on our front steps? With a hammer?”
It was a workman—but it was also Saturday, and they had hired no workman. Lenox’s mind flew to the dangerous possibilities of this, immediately, but then Leigh came out of the house.
He was still wearing a black suit, having been a guest at the wedding. He gave the workman a note, and waved him down the steps, then waved Lenox and Lady Jane and Sophia up the steps. He looked pleased with himself. “Hello! Hello, hello! How are you?”
“Who was that?” said Lady Jane.
“Aha. Come in, and you shall see. Kirk already knows—I think he might quit, however.”
“You said you had to get back to Cornwall,” Lenox said, as they came to the front door.
“And so I do. But I had a present to deliver to you first.”
He led them very ceremonially down the front hall, and then stopped, with great pomp, just before the door to the study. Lenox looked around, but he saw nothing. “What is it?”
Leigh frowned. “Look, would you.”
He pointed to the wall. There was a small black tab there, not more than half an inch long. It was new. “What is that?” said Lenox.
“I don’t want that on my wall, Gerald!” said Lady Jane. “It looks very—very something.”
“You couldn’t even see it at first!” he said. “Anyhow, just give it a turn, would you? Or perhaps Sophia—perhaps you would like to do it. Yes, I think it ought to be you who turns it.”
She looked up at her father for permission, and when he nodded walked over and pushed the little switch.
All at once, throughout the lower floor of the house, there was the most astonishing light—somehow brilliant and a soft yellow at once, flooding every corner of the hallway, casting itself evenly across every object, as if the sun had been divided into trillionth pieces and divvied out, this amount to their own house.
Sophia ga
sped softly. “What is it?” she said.
Lenox too had his mouth hanging open. Lady Jane half turned, speechless.
Leigh looked gratified. “My friend Swann has finally perfected his invention,” he said. “One day you will be able to tell your grandchildren that yours was one of the first twenty private homes in London to use electric light.”
“Electric light,” Sophia repeated, wonderingly.
“Is it safe?” said Lady Jane, though Lenox could see that she was, already, enchanted.
“Safe? Pish posh, safe. That fellow you saw on the steps is installing it in Victoria Station—the Royal Albert Hall has it already—the Times has put it into their machine rooms. Even Buckingham Palace. But there are very, very few private homes, as yet. We had to run a wire from four streets over. Your brother helped with the permissions for that, Charles.”
Lenox had read about the idea of electric light, but to see it in person was something else. It had already been, for him, a cathartic day; his dear friends married, and better still happy, happy. He felt something like a lump in his throat. “It’s like magic, isn’t it?”
Leigh smiled. “No, it’s not magic, the future—it’s science.”
He was leaving that afternoon for Cornwall, and while Lenox and Lady Jane prevailed upon him to remain for another day, two days, a week, he insisted that he had to leave. (“I am overdue, and more importantly, when will I ever make a more spectacular exit?”) Accustomed now to the idea of Rowan’s money being his own, he had hired a carriage to transport him with his two trunks to Truro, where he had rented a cottage along the very same oceanfront cliffsides that he and his father had once explored. It would travel overnight. After a last cup of tea, he took his leave—promising Sophia, the most heartbroken of those he left behind, that he would be back soon.
And as his carriage pulled away, Leigh looked back up the steps toward the little family there and felt something funny and happy and a little sad. There they stood, father, mother, child, waving at him and smiling. It was how it ought to be—how it ought to have been for him when he was a boy. At least, he thought, as the carriage pulled beyond their good-byes, there was one truly happy family, here in this small corner of London. Already he looked forward to returning to see them again.
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