sentiment the vote kept sliding back onto the edges of Lenox’s vision, a dark specter he hadn’t wholly confronted, a decisive disappointment at the crescendo of his lifelong hopes.
They were nearing London, finally. It was dark and, he felt through the window, cold out, with the small houses and farms near the tracks bright orange with light, a thousand human lives contained in them, a thousand stories. As they drew up on the edge of the city, outside the old gate, each new geographic signpost recalled a past case, and he thought that whether it was dangerous or not, at least he had his work. He loved being a detective.
Naturally, his mind turned to what they were calling the Fleet Street murders, and he spent the last part of the trip in grim silence, going over the details of the thing in his head.
In the end the truly strange thing was the dichotomy that Pierce and Carruthers presented. The former was thin and gray, the latter fat and red; the former was religious and ascetic, the latter corruptible and drunken. Only two things united them: their profession, of course, and also — and then Lenox saw it all.
He looked up at Graham.
“Sir?”
“Gerald Poole is innocent,” said the detective with complete conviction.
“Sir?”
“I’m certain — but then, what desperate villain killed the journalists and Smalls, and perhaps Exeter?” he murmured, talking to himself. “What stakes would be worth the risk? Not money, I would guess. Well, maybe money, but I really think it must be reputation — or livelihood — or family.”
“May I inquire, sir, how you have proved Mr. Poole’s innocence to your satisfaction?”
“It’s intuition, but I feel pretty confident, all right. The secret of the thing is that Carruthers was the true target. Pierce was only killed as a cover for the true motive, to falsely point Scotland Yard toward Gerald Poole.”
“I don’t follow your line of thought, sir.”
“Because Carruthers and Pierce are so strongly linked by Jonathan Poole’s treason, naturally an investigator would assume that their murders had something to do with that. Pierce is the perfect red herring.”
“Then you mean the murderer wanted to kill Mr. Carruthers and killed Mr. Pierce simply to place suspicion on Gerald Poole?”
“On Jonathan Poole’s recently returned son, of course! In fact, the motive for the murders wasn’t anything to do with Jonathan Poole’s treason. The murderer merely wanted it to seem that way, and so in addition to killing his real target, Carruthers, he killed Pierce, who I’d wager wasn’t involved in all this muddle.”
“It makes sense, sir.”
“Doesn’t it follow, then, that Gerald Poole is innocent? He was set up!”
“Yes, sir, it seems plausible when you put it so.”
“Is there another way to put it that I haven’t thought of?”
“I have one question, sir,” said Graham.
“Yes?”
“Why do you believe Carruthers was the real target? Is it not just as likely that Pierce was the real target and Carruthers the cover-up?”
“I don’t think so. Pierce was incorruptible and untainted, and Carruthers was utterly corruptible, utterly tainted. There’s something more important, though.”
“Yes?”
“The piece of paper missing from the desk in front of Carruthers. Do you remember I told you that he had ink all over his hands and a pen, but that there was no paper before him? I reckon Carruthers was blackmailing somebody, writing something incriminating — he was killed for that missing piece of paper.”
“Whereas Pierce died on his doorstep, and the killer never could have gone inside,” murmured Graham thoughtfully.
“Precisely. I feel sure we’re right. Please go see Dallington when we get back and tell him that I think Poole is innocent. Fetch him to me then, would you? I haven’t the patience to wait for a note to find him.”
“Very good, sir.”
“What’s all this?” said Edmund, stirring.
“Gerald Poole is innocent,” said Lenox, eyes blazing.
Edmund blinked. “How long was I asleep?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They arrived in London in late evening, and the station discharged the three men, a ragged procession laden with bags, into a thick, cold rain. Lenox grabbed the first newspaper he could lay his hands on and read the opening line of its lead article, on the subject of Exeter’s death: “A lion has vanished from the halls of Scotland Yard, and our nation’s capital is inestimably poorer for it.” All of the news stories about Exeter ran in that way, and by the time his carriage had reached Berkeley Square Lenox was persuaded that the man might as well have been Alexander the Great, such was the tenor of the tributes to him. It gave him a queer feeling, to imagine poor Exeter dead; it can never be pleasant to mourn for someone that you’ve had equivocal feelings about.
When they reached Hampden Lane and Lenox’s house, Graham handed the luggage to a footman and then was instantly off in a cab to find Dallington. The two brothers, meawhile, dragged their tired bodies into the library.
“Welcome back,” said Mary in the hallway, curtsying. “Coffee?”
“Wine,” said Edmund.
“Whisky,” said Lenox.
The fire was warm and made him drowsy, and Lenox felt a sluggish pleasure at being home after the dual calamities of Exeter and Stirrington.
“Thanks for coming up to Stirrington,” he said to Edmund. “I was so awfully low. It saved me.”
“Of course,” murmured Edmund.
There were a few long minutes of silence, during which Lenox assumed they were both ruminating on the past day or two. It came as something of a surprise, then, when Edmund’s head rolled back a little and he gave a great snore.
Lenox laughed quietly and pulled the wineglass from his brother’s hand. Then he crept out to the hallway and said to Mary, “Leave the library alone, would you, and have someone make up a fire in the Ugly Room.”
Now, in Lenox’s house the Ugly Room was rather an institution; it was situated toward the back of the first floor and had a few small windows overlooking the thin strip of garden behind the house. It took its name not from its situation, which was in fact rather pleasant, but from its contents. They were the debris of Lenox’s life. There was a giant, hideous wardrobe that he had somehow convinced himself to buy when he came to London, a large oil painting that he had bought from a friend’s exhibition and couldn’t get rid of, a pair of ornate silver candlesticks that stood about two feet high and looked as if they had come from somebody’s nightmare. Bad books lined the walls. Sooner or later every uncomfortable and creaky chair in the house found its way to the Ugly Room. Lenox went back there to wait for Dallington and surveyed it with some satisfaction. Most people had their terrible things spread throughout their house, but he liked to concentrate them all in one place, where he could make sure they never moved back into his life on the sly. He didn’t come in here more than once a fortnight.
Soon Dallington and Graham had returned, and the former came in to sit with Lenox, who had been reading.
“How do you do?” said the detective when Graham was gone again.
“Why have we been evicted from the library?” He squirmed. “I feel as though this chair bears a personal grudge against me.”
Lenox laughed. “My brother fell asleep in there. Sorry.”
“What’s all the cloak and dagger, then? Graham pulled me out of a decent game of whist.”
“That’s probably for the best,” said Lenox. He couldn’t help himself from lecturing his apprentice now and then.
