marriage. In fact, I stated them to you before that (indeed happy!) moment when you accepted my offer.
Nonetheless, I have more confidence in my love for you than in all the rest of this doubtful world put together. My dearest hope, to which all my dreams and aspirations have been bent, is our joint happiness, which will begin in earnest when we marry. I hope that is in June, but I will wait as patiently as you like, unto the end of my days.
I cannot help but wish I were in London to speak with you in person and to gaze at your wise and serene face; all would be well then, I somehow believe. Until that blessed moment, believe me to be your most faithful and loving,
Charles
It was a sentimental letter, perhaps, but an honest one. After he had finally started writing it the words had come easily. He blotted the letter and didn’t read it over but simply sealed it in an envelope and left it on the small table in the hallway where residents of the inn could leave their letters to be sent.
Going back to his room, feeling somewhat restless, he happened to notice a slip of paper he must have missed coming in. Stooping to fetch it, he saw it was a note from Crook’s niece, Nettie, inviting him to have breakfast with them the next morning. Whether this missive came from Crook or the girl herself, he was grateful for it, alone as he was in this strange town.
The next morning he presented himself at the door of the small house adjoining the Queen’s Arms, a charming and tidily kept place. A very young maid, not past fourteen, answered the door and took Lenox into a sitting room that was perhaps over-furnished with examples of needlework, with small and amateurish watercolors — in other words, the sitting room of a young woman who spent much time alone and whose diversions were all, or nearly all, of her own making.
Nettie Crook came in at the same moment Lenox sat down. She was a plain girl but with a healthy look about her, and he was surprised she remained unmarried. She could not be below twenty-five years of age. It was entirely proper for them to be alone together — she was evidently the woman of the house — but Lenox rather wished her uncle had been there to introduce them.
“How do you do, Mr. Lenox? I’m so pleased you could come.”
“Thank you, thank you, Miss Crook. I was pleased to receive your invitation.”
“How do you find Stirrington, if I may ask?”
“Altogether charming, Miss Crook. I would have preferred to view it at a more leisurely pace, but it has been pleasant nonetheless.”
“My uncle will arrive downstairs in only a moment or two.”
Lenox nodded graciously. Here was an odd situation, he thought; although he gazed on the strictures of class with a more critical eye than many he knew, it was plain that two people of very different rank were about to dine together. He liked Crook, liked Nettie, too, for that matter, but he hoped it wouldn’t be awkward.
In fact, it was not. To Lenox’s shock, the glum, agile proprietor of the pub, the shrewd political leader, was at home as soft as warm butter. The reason was Nettie.
“Have you observed my niece’s watercolors?” was the first thing he asked Lenox after they exchanged civilities.
It was extraordinary. The man’s face, which in the bar was screwed into an impassive and calculating glare, was now softened by emotion. He looked his age.
“I have,” said Lenox, “and cannot recall a more interesting view of that famous clock tower that I’ve seen in all my brief time here.”
“Tell him about the clock tower, dear heart,” said Crook with great complacency.
“Uncle,” Nettie chidingly answered.
“Pray, do tell me,” said Lenox.
They had moved by now to a small breakfast nook, which just managed to fit three (though it would have been perfect for two), and she put eggs on his plate.
“I was once very late in running my errands,” she said, “so late I feared I would miss supper.”
“Miss supper,” Crook echoed softly, gazing with pure love up at his niece.
“I’m generally inside at that hour, of course, but I happened to be in such a rush that I stumbled — and as I stood up saw the clock hanging just between two houses. It was so beautiful, Mr. Lenox, you could scarcely credit! Well, the next evening I went out and drew a few sketches of it — art is a hobby of mine — and then completed the work you see.”
Now, as stories go, Lenox acknowledged to himself, this wasn’t
“My brother, Nettie’s father, was a fine chap,” said Crook, “but died fighting the Russians.”
“In the Crimea?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. That would have been 1855, eleven years since. I took her in as a teenager, and she has been my sunshine ever since.”
“Uncle,” said Nettie again in an undertone. “My mother died in childbirth, Mr. Lenox.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear it.”
“It was a shame,” Crook said. The bell chimed behind him. “Blimey — already? All right, dear, give us a kiss.”
This received, he took a great ring of keys from his wallet and left with a scant word of good-bye, already, perhaps, the grim and reliable publican that Stirrington knew.
Lenox was finishing his food when the young girl came in. “Pardon,” she said, “but there’s a visitor at the inn, sir.”
“Who is it, Lucy?” asked Nettie.
“I’ve never seen him, ma’am. A gentleman. I’m afraid he’s —” Here she stopped.
“Yes?”
“Well — been drinking, mum.”
Lenox had a sinking feeling in his heart. “What’s his name?”
“He said to tell you, ‘It’s McConnell, the poor sod,’ sir. He said you’d know what that means.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lenox spent the next hour tucking his friend safely away in a spare room above the Queen’s Arms. McConnell, half in stupor from drink and incoherent about his reasons for coming to Stirrington, was nonetheless as clear as crystal about his reasons for being unhappy. Toto had asked him to leave. He had not only obeyed that request but had decided to absent himself from London forever. He talked wildly of returning to his native Scotland and becoming a groundskeeper at his family’s small estate or practicing medicine in the rural parts of the country. Mumbling, he fell into a troubled sleep.
Lenox spent the morning giving speeches. In his spare moments he read the previous day’s London papers. They were still full of the two “Fleet Street murders,” and amid long encomiums to Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers (journalists, after all, love to eulogize their own; a way of pushing off their own obscurity a little further) were all the details and speculations that papers, high and low alike, could muster about Hiram Smalls, the mysterious man who had been arrested in connection with the murders.
The details were certain, if few. He lived in Bethnal Green with his mother. This picturesque detail the papers dwelt on at great length, and they inquired endlessly about Mrs. Smalls’s feelings. In person Hiram was a short, solid, muscular figure, with (purportedly) cunning eyes and without discernible scars, birth-marks, etc. He had never been in legal trouble, and while he liked the life of rough pubs and gin mills, he had never (at least that anybody would willingly say) associated with any of London’s numerous gangs or thief-taking operations.
For supper one day he had ordered out from prison to a local pub, asking for a pork chop, two large glasses of ale, and a bag of oranges. Ordering food into prison was a common enough activity —
