Over the next few days, the history of Inspector Jenkins’s pursuit of George Barnard became public, and Barnard exchanged the name of the man who had murdered Inspector Exeter for the promise that he wouldn’t die for his crimes. The instant and total hatred of the Hammer Gang was his other prize, and rumors of a fabulously large bounty on Barnard’s head grew. He lived in deep solitude in Newgate Prison, allowing his food to come only in the hands of a certain waitress at a fashionable restaurant, refusing all visitors, and by all accounts rejecting any other kind of cooperation with the Yard.
The case became remarkably famous in a very short time; Lenox was just able to manage his absence from the reports, and in not very much time at all, perhaps seventy-two hours, Jenkins had been promoted to chief inspector, at least partly as a memorial to Inspector Exeter.
If there was a fallout in Fleet Street, it was nothing to the swift and ceaseless chatter of the upper classes, who moved between dinner parties in Belgravia and Berkeley Square, propelled out in the terrible cold only by a desire to commiserate with their friends over the late, despised George Barnard — for he could not have been more dead to them if he were dead.
“I never had him in
George Barnard had, in fact, eventually become part of London’s highest society. His ball, an annual event of great significance, had hosted royalty, and his country house in Surrey had given shooting to any number of dukes, who had fairly lined up in past years to slaughter his game. Yet he went entirely unmourned, for he had never precisely been one of them. As Lady Jane put it so succinctly, it was hard to see whether he reflected worse on them or they on themselves. The few people who couldn’t help but own up to acquaintance with Barnard, because in better days they had drunk gallons of his champagne and sworn lifelong friendship with him, insisted strenuously that it had all been financial — that they had simply been friends “in the City” — which was some marginal exoneration.
None of this concerned Lenox very much. He was constantly closeted with Jenkins, and sometimes Dallington and McConnell as well, and soon the assizes met. They convicted George Barnard and Gerald Poole within forty- eight hours of each other. The former would never leave prison; the latter was told he had to go to the colonies for a period of not less than fifteen years. The only people who saw him off at the dock were Dallington and one very old woman, who kept calling him by his father’s name, Jonathan.
Martha Claes disappeared. She had promised to testify against Poole but had fled in the dark of the night, past — well, past a sleeping constable, who was situated outside of Carruthers’s rooms and didn’t hear her drag her family and their things out of the door. There was a watch for her on the train lines and at the ferry ports of the south coast, but eventually everyone concluded that one of the country’s vast cities, Leeds or Liverpool or Birmingham or Bristol, had swallowed her and her family up and wouldn’t regurgitate them any time soon.
Finally, it emerged that the poor, splintered skiff had been the property of a chap named Frank Pottle, who lived on the river, a junk and trash collector who found stuff along the Thames and fixed it to sell. Far from being angry, he was ecstatic that his property had been part of such excitement, and according to Graham, Pottle was the hero of every bankside pub in London; he hadn’t bought himself a drink in several days. He received the money to replace his skiff with good grace (and in frankness it was more than the skiff was worth, which improved his outlook on the matter) but vowed that it would be put toward a different use — he wanted to open a gin bar and mingle the satisfactions of his personal life with those of a public career.
And so, Frank Pottle was happy.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Now it was a month later.
Early February, and while the days were short and gray, and while those who tramped through London’s streets longed for home, there was a happy glow to Lenox’s life. His hours were taken up with warm fires, long books, slow suppers, his brother, and Lady Jane. He went out very little, and even when he did never commented to a soul about the downfall of George Barnard, choosing instead to focus on clearing up all of Barnard’s myriad crimes by tracing them diligently through the cunning and subtle ways in which the man had pushed Winston Carruthers’s work. The newspaper report of a fracas in some neighborhood, for instance, might dovetail nicely with a robbery several days later in the same area. It was the kind of deep research Lenox had loved since Oxford.
This morning, however, he was more pleasantly disposed, sitting in his library with Toto.
She had insisted on coming to him, although he had had his misgivings. “I need to get out of that poky house,” she said, conveniently forgetting about its ten bedrooms, and so she sat now in his library, bent daintily over a small notebook she had been keeping about Jane and Lenox’s honeymoon, her effervescent laugh ringing more and more often through the room.
It emerged from their tete-a-tete that Toto was a furious negotiator on Jane’s behalf and loved every moment of research and discussion about the honeymoon. She and Lenox complemented each other well. Every time he started to talk about local cash crops or cave art she would roll her eyes and return as soon as she could to the waterfall they had to visit, the dressmaker who was meant to be so clever.
“What do you think of Ireland?” Lenox asked.
Toto made a face. “All those potatoes,” she said. “Ugh.”
“It’s meant to be beautiful, Toto. All that green! And the beautiful Irish babies!” Lenox halted.
“It’s all right, Charles,” she said.
“No — it’s — that was awfully tactless of me.”
“Charles, it’s all right!” He saw that she was smiling shyly.
“Toto?”
“What?” she said innocently. Under his gaze, however, she soon broke down. Quietly she admitted, “We’re having a baby.”
A great weight lifted from Lenox’s spirit. “I’m so happy,” he said.
“We’re being awfully silent about it,” she said, but then, breaking into a grin, went on, “I am, too, though! How happy I am!”
“Is Thomas?”
“Yes, very, very happy, and the doctors say” — here she ran into the strictures of her age and couldn’t say quite what she wanted — “they say how healthy I am, and indeed I feel it! But Charles, you mustn’t tell anybody. I’ve barely said a word about it, except to Jane and Duch.” Duch was the Duchess of Marchmain, Toto and Jane’s great friend. “Thomas will tell you in due time.”
Rather sadly, Lenox remembered what her mien had been when she was first with child and bursting with baby names and nursery ideas.
They sat closeted for another half hour, talking about the honeymoon — Toto liked the idea of Greece — until McConnell came to fetch her, smiling broadly at Lenox, his face less troubled than usual, and walking his wife very carefully out of the house and down to their carriage.
After they had gone Lenox stood just inside the door, thinking about life, about its passing strangeness. He went back to his library to read a tract about the Catiline conspiracy.
Not half an hour later there was a knock at the front door, and he laid the pamphlet down.
Graham appeared. “You have two guests, sir,” he said.
“Bring them in.”
A moment later the butler reappeared, with James Hilary and — to Lenox’s astonishment — Edward Crook in tow.
“Crook!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet. “I’m honored to have you here. Graham, fetch something to eat, would you, and drink? How do you do, Hilary? But Crook! I scarcely expected to see you accept my invitation to London so soon — which is not to say I’m not pleased that you have!”
“It isn’t a visit of pleasure, in fact, Mr. Lenox,” said Crook. Lenox noticed the small gleam of a smile in the corner of his mouth.
