The Fleet Street Murders

must be guilty, don’t we?”

“Because of the note? Everybody may write anything they please on a piece of paper.”

Lenox sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

“Stay, Lenox. You must.”

“I can’t, but you shall have all of my attention when you write, and as goes without saying I shall follow every detail of the case in the newspapers.”

Dallington threw his hands in the air. “I can only ask you to stay,” he said.

“I can’t. You can handle this.”

“I don’t think I can, Lenox. I’m afraid I simply can’t.”

“I must go, Dallington. Keep in close contact.”

“If you must, then,” said Dallington, his face suddenly forlorn. “I’ll write to you this evening.”

Lenox turned, ran for his platform, and just in time caught the train headed north.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It was a busy afternoon. Guilt gnawed at Lenox, but he knew Dallington’s request had in its own way been unreasonable, too. It was important to do the work of the nation, and if he could make it to Parliament, what untold good might he not accomplish? It was an uncertain business, being an adult, trying to be responsible. Nonetheless, he wrote Exeter a letter full of the precise details of Lenox’s day in London, congratulating him on apprehending one murderer — Hiram Smalls — while on the other hand cautioning the inspector that Gerald Poole’s role in the business was far from certain. Alas, his cajoling would likely be futile, unless Exeter’s theories were somehow thwarted, when he might turn to it. He was a bullheaded man.

Lenox sent that letter and then wrote a telegram to Dallington, half-apologizing for the scene in the train station and asking him to keep in close touch. He also advised the young lord to continue investigating Carruthers’s and Pierce’s history on Fleet Street. Something besides Jonathan Poole’s treason years before had to link them.

Lenox wondered about the knife, though. He felt uneasy about Gerald Poole. The young man was hiding some secret.

After he had written this letter and this telegram, there was nothing left to do but turn his attention to the work at hand. Fortunately, Graham had been on the job.

“How do you do, sir?” Graham had asked when Lenox stepped off the train in Stirrington.

“Tired,” the detective had answered, “and sorely tried.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, sir.”

“And here?”

“My task went tolerably well, sir.”

“You bought everyone beer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about Crook? Is he upset?”

“He reconciled himself to your absence, sir.”

“Wonderful.”

Graham nodded and said, “Of course, sir.”

They bumped through the small town, and Lenox found that he recognized certain shops, even certain faces, and it increased his affection for the place. He would be honored to represent it should they let him.

The Queen’s Arms remained as he had found it on first arriving in Stirrington; the fire burned hot and high toward one end of the bar, and a chalkboard menu offered venison with applesauce for the midday meal. Crook, his massive bulk and great red nose intact, nodded in a cursory but friendly manner to Lenox. One thing was different, however: At Lenox and Graham’s entrance, a cry went up and people crowded around them.

Am I so beloved so quickly? thought Lenox.

A moment later he was laughing quietly at his vanity — for they were all talking at once to Graham.

He ought to have known; Graham had the most extraordinary way of listening, such that his interlocutors felt grateful to him when they parted, and he had evidently been true to his word, had stood any number of rounds, and become intimate with all the usual inmates of the pub. No fewer than seven men came up to them. All had looked slightly suspicious, slightly aloof, when Lenox first entered the Queen’s Arms, and all now cheerfully clasped his hand and vowed that a friend of Mr. Graham’s was a friend of theirs. It was an unlooked-for success and encouraged Lenox greatly.

“Mr. Crook,” he said, approaching the bar.

“Pleased to see you, Mr. Lenox. London?”

This lone word was evidently a question, so Lenox said, “Yes, it was good I went back.” He thought of Jane. “Very good I went back. Do you think my absence dooms us?”

Crook chuckled at that. “I reckon not,” he said. “It didn’t hurt to leave Mr. Graham behind. You shook every hand you could within Stirrington city limits?”

Lenox laughed and remembered his promise to do so. “I did, yes,” he said.

“Then we shall be all right. Sandy Smith has spread it around that you were in Durham, speaking with the right people.”

Lenox shook his head doubtfully. “I can’t say I like that.”

“It’s politics, you know,” said Crook. “You will speak to them within this next week or two, but folk around here would take it poorly if they knew you had scarcely been here any time at all before you felt the call back to London.”

“I understand.”

The candidate and the political agent (though he was still a bartender when Mr. Smith, at stool seven, asked for another pint of bitter) then spoke about the day’s schedule, and about their strategy for Roodle, and about the further handbills and flyers they would print up, and Crook confessed to writing Hilary with the promising news of Lenox’s popularity — in sum spent fifteen minutes or so in the pleasant and easy conversation that men who love politics are able to expend an infinite amount of time on. The last thing Crook said was to remember the importance of that evening’s dinner. Now, Lenox didn’t remember with whom he was dining, or why it was important, but, eager to stay in Crook’s good graces, he nodded solemnly and resolved within himself to ask Graham what dinner it was.

“Then I’ll see you at the meeting of corn and grain merchants, Mr. Lenox?” Crook said.

“Certainly.”

Lenox nodded to Graham then, and the valet extracted himself from a large group of friends to accompany the detective upstairs.

“You know what I’m to do today?” asked Lenox when they had reached his room.

“The corn and grain —”

“Yes, yes, but for supper?”

“Oh — yes, sir. You have supper with Mrs. Reeve, sir. Many local merchants and officials will be in attendance. Men who determine public opinion, sir — for instance, Ted Rudge, the wine merchant, who dislikes Mr. Roodle intensely. Mr. Crook impressed upon me that these men are the sort who determine elections, sir, and that you might not meet them without Mrs. Reeve’s patronage.”

“I’m not a pet, Graham.”

“No, sir,” said the butler, nodding to indicate the verity of Lenox’s statement. “Nonetheless, these men are far more important than the corn and grain merchants, for example, sir. Although the corn and grain merchants do —”

“Blast the corn and grain merchants,” said Lenox grumpily.

“Very good, sir.”

“Save your corn and grain stories for the long winter nights, Graham.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I lose the respect of the corn and grain merchants, life will go on, you know.”