Only reluctantly did the Roodleites and Lenoxites stop their bickering. The silence was not very good, as silences go — there were coughs, for one thing, and outside a woman was yelling at either a husband or a horse, which caused a few titters. The mayor dealt with these by staring severely at a spot in the middle of the crowd. For a moment then there was perfect silence, which was broken when a baby toward the back of the hall began to caterwaul. Sandy Smith had been telling the God’s honest truth when he described the strange acoustics of the room; the lone baby sounded like all the demons of hell. Lenox had to stifle a laugh.
The mayor, persevering through the noise, said, “Now let us begin.”
When he described it to Lady Jane and his friends later on, Lenox said the first twenty minutes of the debate had been a blur, and they truly were. He answered as well as he could, but he couldn’t remember from one moment to the next what he had said. All of his focus was on the question at hand. The three men conversed for some time on the question of the British navy and then moved to the more parochial subject of the beer tax. When Lenox called for it to be lowered, his supporters cheered fervently, and among the neutrals there was a murmur of agreement.
The next question was addressed to Lenox. “Mr. Lenox,” said the mayor, “as someone who has lived in Stirrington all his life” — Lenox tried not to groan — “I must say that I agree with Mr. Roodle that it would be difficult for you to comprehend all of the issues that matter to us here. Do you disagree with that?”
“Yes,” said Lenox, “with all proper respect, I do. The issues of Stirrington are the issues of England, Mayor. Not enough money in your pockets. Lads off to fight throughout the empire. The beer tax. Mr. Roodle could live in Stirrington for a hundred lifetimes, and his positions on these issues would still leave his townsmen and women behind. It simply won’t do. Liberals look out for the common man. Conservatives — like brewers — look out for themselves.”
“See how he panders,” said Roodle in response to this. “Look at Mr. Lenox’s tie, gentleman. He thinks that a few quick words and a local tie will convince you of his legitimacy as a candidate for Stirrington’s seat in Parliament. That’s nonsense! He hides behind a knowledge — a knowledge he may or may not have — of England in general. Well, Mr. Fordyce, there in the fifth row, and Mr. Simpson, there in the third — we live in England, to be sure, but we don’t live in the slums of London, or in Buckingham Palace, or in some snobbish house on Grosvenor Square, like Mr. Lenox here. We live in Stirrington. We have Stirrington manners and Stirrington concerns.
“I don’t blame Mr. Lenox. He thinks he can put on a tie and understand us, and it may appear to him that he can. But
Lenox felt the force of this. He would never acknowledge his inferiority to Roodle in terms of genuine interest for the people of Stirrington, but as rhetoric he knew it was powerful. He drew in a breath, as Mayor Adlington and the entire hall stared at him, awaiting his response.
“I’m reluctant to bring Mr. Roodle’s business into this argument, but I feel I must. I am only now coming to understand Stirrington manners and Stirrington ways, it is true, and it is also true that I feel my qualifications lie in the positions that would benefit all of England.” He saw Sandy Smith wince in the first row. “Stirrington especially,” he added hastily, “but at least I’m trying. My opponent took a lucrative business away from this town he claims to love — and perhaps even
Surprisingly to Lenox, there was a cheer. He realized some of these men, or at any rate men they knew, must have worked at Roodle’s brewery.
Roodle, red faced, prepared to respond. In the pubs that night they debated what he had actually intended to say; all that came out, however, was the phrase, “Damn and blast your impudence!”
In addition, here all of Sandy Smith’s predictions were borne out. Roodle’s high-pitched words rebounded and buffeted every surface in the hall until they came out as a kind of squeal, a high-pitched and angry yelp.
There was a moment of silence, and then every man and woman in the auditorium, with the exception of a few stern Roodleites, burst into laughter.
After some time the mayor managed to calm the crowd and resume the debate; but for all intents and purposes it was finished already.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Well, Graham? What did your new friends think?”
It was the evening, and Lenox and Graham sat at a table in the Queen’s Arms, eating supper together as they had many a time in their younger days, during Lenox’s early years in London. In fact, Lenox remembered the first day he had slept in his new house — now his for some twelve years — when he and Graham had eaten a supper of wine and cold chicken amid the boxes and debris of moving house.
They were seeing each other for the first time in several hours. After the debate Lenox had gone to three separate receptions (including, to his own amusement, one with the famous corn and grain merchants) while Graham had done what were now his usual rounds, among the pubs and shops.
“There is no doubt that Mr. Roodle has made himself a figure of fun, sir. Nearly every man I met either did an impression of the gentleman or asked for an account of his behavior.”
“That’s good, I expect,” said Lenox glumly. “I’d infinitely prefer a fair fight.”
“I would concur, sir, if Mr. Roodle had chosen to fight fairly as well.”
“Yes, that’s true — and politics is a dirty thing, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were saying?”
“His temper has made Mr. Roodle a figure of fun, sir, but I was going to say that he still has strong support. Some men laughed right along with Mr. Roodle’s imitators and then said they’d vote for him anyhow.”
“That’s to be expected, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir. Though your reputation in Stirrington is high, I fear that the voters you haven’t met are still suspicious of your motives and character.”
“Then I shall have to be sure to try to meet them all.”
Indeed, over the next several days Lenox worked as hard as he ever had in his life. He slept no more than five or six hours a night, and aside from a hearty breakfast each morning, when he remembered to eat it was usually a hasty sandwich with a glass of beer. Heretofore he had stuck to the town of Stirrington, but now he and Sandy Smith visited the countryside around it, stopping at small farms, villages with a dozen houses in them, and the pubs and coach stations that served these places. More than once Lenox despaired of finding votes among such sparse populations, but Smith always assured him that these men would remember their five-and ten-minute visits with the candidate. Roodle had deemed it beneath his dignity to visit the thousand voters who might make a crucial difference. Smith and Lenox hoped it was a grave error.
As they rode over the countryside in a coach and four, Lenox read the news from Lonon, devouring each dated article but especially those concerned with Inspector Exeter, who had knocked Hiram Smalls, Simon Pierce, and Winston Carruthers off of the front page. There were few details of his shooting, however, and each day the articles grew more restless and more speculative. The facts that they all confirmed were these:
• Exeter had been in Brick Lane, a poor part of East London where gangs ran riot and police kept their heads down.
• He had been shot in the back, just below the right shoulder.
• Despite the street’s crowds, nobody had witnessed — or anyway admitted to witnessing — the assault.
• Officials from Scotland Yard confirmed that Exeter had been working on the Fleet Street murders.
The strangest part of all this to Lenox was, of course, that his investigations had taken him so far away from Fleet Street and the two houses in the West End where Pierce and Carruthers lived. Smalls had lived in the East
