The Last Passenger - A Prequel

by Charles Finch

“American, sir?” said Graham as they settled into the hansom.

  “If I’m right,” said Lenox, “that is why it would have been essential to remove all evidence of the origin of his clothing. He is probably from, oh, Boston, say, or New Haven, or—what are the other ones?”

  “I believe Portland, Maine, is rather prominent, sir.”

  “Portland, Maine? Are you sure?”

  Graham frowned. “There was a riot there because they banned alcohol, sir. The Portland Rum Riot, it was called in the newspapers.”

  “Hm.”

  “Philadelphia is also very famous, I believe.”

  Lenox waved a hand. “Wherever it was, listen. He was wearing a sack coat, do you remember me telling you that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t, then. But it’s surprising, is it not? A fellow in third class?”

  Men’s fashions in England were achingly slow to change. Among the upper and middle classes, the frock coat—which tapered from broad in the shoulder to narrow at the knee—was universal. In the lower classes, men usually wore only a vest, clothing being very expensive; a vest was what Swain had been wearing.

  “I have only seen a few people wearing these sack coats in London, you know, and only in the last few months. But it came from America—from New York, Washington Square, they say. It has been prominent there for a decade or so. Does that not strike you, Graham?”

  “I suppose so, sir?”

  That meant no. Lenox put up a finger. “That is the second bit. He was wearing socks. I certainly told you that. Not stockings—socks. I would lay you ten shillings—no, ten dollars, that he is American. It is warmer there. Their trousers are looser, and they wear socks rather than stockings.”

  They arrived at Hawkes’s. They entered the impressive brick building, and Lenox felt the familiar hush of the front room, with its deep red carpeting, its subdued rows of material hanging from brass hooks, its elegant line of hats. This room would always call his father to mind. There had never been a more conservative dresser than he, loyal to the end to the high standing collars of his youth in the 1790s.

  “Mr. Lenox, sir,” said a young man whom Lenox did not know; every tailor at Hawkes’s had an eerie ability to identify all their clients by name, even after an absence of years or in some cases decades. “I’m afraid Mr. White is presently with His Grace, the Duke of Dorset.”

  White was Lenox’s current tailor. “Does he have a moment to spare? You may tell Dorset it would be a favor to me.”

  It was rare to have a duke in your pocket—but in the course of a previous case, Lenox had earned Dorset’s good opinion, and also his begrudging obligation.

  “I shall inquire, sir,” said the young man, bowing gracefully and leaving.

  He returned a moment later with White, a small, cherubic fellow, always in motion. “Mr. Lenox!” he cried, as if he had never been more delighted. Indeed, perhaps his secret was that he truly did feel such delight in each of his customers. “We just had you in!”

  “I know! I only had a question—a very quick question. It is this: If you saw a man in a sack coat in the third-class compartment of a train from Manchester to London, what would you think?”

  White frowned. After a moment, he said, “Either that he was in the wrong carriage, or that he came from America.”

  “Ha!” Lenox said, turning to Graham. “And if he were wearing socks?”

  “Oh, certainly American. Do you agree, March?”

  He had turned to the young man. “Unquestionably, Mr. White,” said March with spotless deference.

  Lenox slapped his hat against his hand excitedly. “Perfect. Thank you, Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. March.”

  “Careful banging that hat!” called White, as Lenox departed.

  “Apologies! Thank Dorset for me!”

  He and Graham hailed a cab. A handsome old bay mare was pulling it, and Lenox absentmindedly massaged the animal’s neck with his hand as he directed the driver to Hampden Lane. They got in and were soon on their way.

  Why would a young American have been traveling from Manchester to London? The reason might be anything at all, obviously—family, business, pleasure. Still, it was just a bit odd. Most Americans who went anywhere in northern England went to Liverpool, since Liverpool was a port city. Manchester lay about forty-five miles inland of it. Not an inconsiderable journey.

  Lenox looked out through the window of the cab, searching his memories of the scene of the crime for anything else he had missed, anything else on the body that told a story. He wished now that he had taken more time.

  “A productive morning, sir,” Graham said.

  Lenox shook his head. “Yes, but I should have seen it sooner. It was there right in front of me—the coat, the missing labels. Now I’m sure I must have missed other clues. But the scene of the crime is gone. The train is probably in—who knows, Bristol, Plymouth.”

  “Could you inquire, sir?”

  “No. It will have been in use these three days fully. The body was removed that night and the train thoroughly cleaned.”

  He reflected that it was a lesson to take more time at the initial scene of a crime, however thorough he thought he might have been. Ah, well—no mistake was wasted if one learned from it.

  His career thus far—could he call it a career?—had been a balance of triumphs and failures. He was proud of the assistance he had lent Scotland Yard in the case of the Thames Ophelia. And the two small cases he had now, one a burglary in Wisden, the other a missing husband in Covent Garden, neither very difficult to parse, were a good sign, steady work.

  But he longed for more. What, exactly? He searched his feelings as the cab rolled across the cobblestones of the city, smoke rising in untidy columns from the rooftops upon this cool midday.

  For this kind of case, perhaps. He had been too proud to join the Yard even when invited to do so. His courage went so far as to pursue this eccentricity, but not so far as to do it professionally, which would have damned him conclusively in the eyes of his class. Pure cowardice, really.

  But he wished as well that he were better at this thing, whatever it was. He had seen the sack coat on the murder victim, it had passed through his mind that this was the fashion he knew of from Manhattan, yet he had allowed the fact to work itself off of his line and swim away, disappearing for the last seventy-two hours …

  On the other hand, he now had a few new facts to work with. The victim was American. For most of the train ride, if Swain was correct, he had not been in company with his murderer—if indeed the false conductor was his murderer, which seemed overwhelmingly likely, at least to Lenox. That meant that this had been a plotted crime, full of care and deliberation.

  A boy who usually sold papers had not been on the platform. He might have been sick, or out of papers. Still, it was a small wrinkle in the story of the evening. Anything that stood out like that might matter.

  By and large, life had come easily to Lenox. He had always been a fair student, excellent in the areas that prompted his interest. He had friends who loved him, family, a comfortable life.

  But it was inadequate to congratulate himself on that fact—indeed, dangerous. He had been raised to the idea of serving his fellow human beings. This arena might be an unusual one in which to do it, but nonetheless, he must do it better, become more detailed and more diligent than he had ever been before. Even as they neared Hampden Lane, the man with the longish dark hair might be preparing, for reasons Lenox was no closer to knowing than he had been before he first went to Paddington, to commit murder again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was early afternoon when they returned home. Armed with their new information, Graham and Lenox composed another advertisement for the papers:

  Information sought

  Any person who knows the identity of a missing American male aged between 18 and 35, fair-haired, dressed in dark sack coat and gray trousers, expected in London, possibly having recently been in Liverpool or Manchester, i
s asked to respond by mail to this newspaper, c/o Mr. C. Edmundson. Information leading to correct identification rewarded with £5 sterling.

  Five pounds was enough to catch the eye. The ad would appear among the requests about “the young lady, with a most comely brow, espied upon the omnibus near Shoreditch yesterday morning at 8:12” and the “business opportunity for an enterprising young man willing to live in Stowe” that filled the pages of every paper, every day, and which all Londoners seemed to read through top to bottom, regardless of whether they had comely brows or were willing to live in Stowe.

  As for the newspapers, they would forward all mail for C. Edmundson to Lenox’s house; in such a broad search for information, it was not practical to sit at the Saltire all day. The pool of people who could have been on the 449 from Manchester had been much smaller.

  Graham went to place the ad. Lenox ate lunch in his study, a roll of bread with cheddar and a cup of hot, sweet tea, which he refilled liberally. When he was finished, he called for his carriage and directed Elliott to drive to Paddington Station.

  It looked radically different in the middle of the day than it had at night. At the Great Western, streams of men were going in and out upon business, attired in the invincible invisibility of the city suit, canes and newspapers and valises under their arms. Each no doubt with a mind full of important plans.

  As for the station: Every stripe of society moved beneath its sturdy brick face. There were fine carriages, vagrants, stockbrokers, businessmen. Young women who looked like parsons’ daughters and young women who looked like parsons’ nightmares.

  Lenox put his head down and ventured into this crowd. He stopped just inside, at the small structure with STATIONMASTER upon the frosted glass of its window. There were train schedules in chalk on a blackboard next to it.

  “Sir?” said a portly chap sitting behind the window, in the same red hard-brimmed hat that Joseph Beauregard Stanley had been wearing on the night of the murder.

  “Good afternoon,” Lenox said. “I am part of the team investigating the 449.”

  “A journalist? Gone with yourself.”

  “No—Scotland Yard.” Lenox produced the note Sir Richard had written out for him on his commissioner’s stationery. “I was here on the evening of the murder. I met Mr. Stanley.”

  The stationmaster took the note, studied it, and then, pushing his lips out in a look of surprise, nodded his assent. “I see. I’m Smythe. How may I help you?”

  At that moment a nervous elderly voice cried, from behind Lenox, “How in heavens is one meant to find the Newcastle train!”

  Lenox turned and saw a man shaking a walking stick at the stationmaster. There were signs in virtually every direction that said NEWCASTLE, PLATFORM 1, but the stationmaster patiently repeated the information for the old man. He showed no appreciation, unless you counted leaving; which Lenox did.

  “There is a lad who sells newspapers to the passengers of the 449,” Lenox said when they were again alone.

  “Willikens,” said the stationmaster.

  Lenox was surprised. “You know him quite well.”

  “Yes, Willikens is here every day. For all I know Brunel installed the boy himself.”

  “Where might I find him?”

  “From twelve noon until ten each evening, here. Otherwise, I have no idea.”

  Lenox glanced at his watch. “It is just two.”

  “Then I would check Platform 1—a busy hour there. Follow the gentleman going to Newcastle.”

  Lenox smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Smythe.”

  “You’ll spot Willikens easily enough. He only has one coat, and it’s a horror.”

  Lenox followed the signs to Platform 1, wondering how bad a coat could be. When he arrived, he saw. A small boy with a handcart went among the customers, offering copies of the Times and the Noon Caller. He also had a small row of pouches of tobacco for sale, though there were plenty of stands near the stationmaster that sold every variety of tobacco, pipe, cigar, and so forth. In case of last-second emergencies, perhaps. Regardless, he was unmissable: He wore a mustard-colored wool coat, out at the elbows, with a broad green windowpane pattern. It was a dozen sizes too large. He had rolled the sleeves up but they ballooned around his arms.

  “Willikens?” said Lenox.

  The boy turned quickly—very quick, London quick—and looked at the detective suspiciously. “What?”

  “I was hoping to have a word with you about train 449. I am with Scotland Yard.”

  “I’m allowed to sell papers here,” said the boy.

  “Oh, yes—no question of that. Here.” Lenox gave him sixpence. “I’ll take one, in fact, to show you.”

  “Which?”

  Lenox had read them all, so he chose the least expensive and said to keep the change. It was the wrong move; the boy pocketed the coin and gave Lenox his paper, but his suspicion seemed to have intensified. Well, hopefully such wariness kept him alive and unharmed. He was terribly skinny.

  “I only want two minutes,” Lenox said. “Is it a good time?”

  “This is the worst time.”

  Willikens gestured up and down the platform, and Lenox saw what he meant. He glanced at the station’s clock. “Will you be free when the Newcastle train leaves?”

  “For a bit.”

  So Lenox waited, rereading the paper, until they could reconnoiter about fifteen minutes later, just outside the cloakroom.

  “How did you fare?” Lenox asked the boy, whom he had watched selling papers. He was quite good, ubiquitous but not pressing or impertinent.

  “Average,” said the boy, who then, to Lenox’s surprise, took out a packet of shag tobacco, tore off a bit of an interior page of the Daily Telegraph, and rolled himself a cigarette. He couldn’t have been more than ten. “Do you have a match?”

  Lenox had a box of them and handed it over. “I understand from speaking to a Mr. Baxendale you were not on the platform when the 449 came in from Manchester Tuesday night. But you usually are.”

  The boy nodded. “That’s right. I know Baxendale.”

  “Why weren’t you there?”

  “Out of papers.”

  Lenox felt a quick disappointment. “I see. So you went home.” The boy just looked at him, and Lenox realized that he might not have a home—at least, not as the word was commonly understood. “Are your parents in the business, too?”

  The boy picked a piece of tobacco off of his sleeve with expert care. “Never knew ’em, never cared to.”

  “Who looked after you when you were younger?” Lenox asked—he couldn’t help himself.

  “Not a gent you’d care to know,” said Willikens. “But that was in Winchester.”

  Everywhere he went were stories, Lenox thought, each of them individual, complex, and every last one of them worthy of a careful and caring listener. Because of this a certain hopelessness sometimes overcame him; he wondered now, as he occasionally did, if he had been misguided, if he ought to be in politics, for instance. It was a path he’d considered.

  “You simply ran out of papers?” was all he said, however.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lenox.

  The boy eyed him levelly. “What’s it to you?”

  “As I said, I’m with Scotland Yard.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, no, you’re not. I see a fair few types of gentleman on the platform. You ain’t from Scotland Yard.”

  “Well, no, I work with them,” Lenox replied, impressed. “Listen, I mean you no harm.”

  “Would you care for another paper?”

  Lenox dug into his pocket and found all the coins there—a few shillings, a farthing, two halfpennies, a few pennies, and a shining crown, a very great deal of money. He deposited all of it on top of Willikens’s handcart as the boy looked on, only briefly wide-eyed before the coins vanished into the pocket of the green jacket.

  “What happened as to the 449 was, a
fellow came and bought all the papers,” he said.

  “A fellow?”

  “Tall chap, older, gray hair and gray mustache, bowler hat, dressed middling.”

  This was interesting. “A bowler hat. So a working type?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And he just bought all the papers without explanation? How soon before the train arrived?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “How many papers?”

  “Twenty-five. All my tobacco, too.”

  This was very definitely interesting. It hinted at an accomplice: someone clearing the way of witnesses for the murderer. “Is there any other description you could offer of him?”

  Willikens frowned and took a pull from his hand-rolled cigar. “It was dark. I didn’t see much of him.” Lenox waited. “Nice teeth. Didn’t smell.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh,” the boy said, “and he talked odd. Not like us. He tried to talk normal, but he was shamming it.”

  “Shamming it?”

  “Yes. You could tell he was American, this gent.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The men handling the Murder at Paddington Station—as the papers had decided, in a rare piece of unanimity, to call the case—regrouped at Scotland Yard at five o’clock.

  Lenox was looking forward to sharing his information, but as it happened the canvass of local witnesses that Dunn had supervised had actually produced a scrap of evidence. A porter at the Great Western hotel had seen a man with longish dark hair depart the station at around midnight on a bright white mare. He had worn a frock coat, just as the faux conductor of the 449 had—though, to be fair, hundreds of thousands of men in London also did.

  The porter had noticed the rider for two reasons, according to Dunn’s interview: first, because it had still been pelting rain; second, because it was rarer and rarer these days to see a man on horseback within London town, and he had ridden well and fast. The porter was from Shropshire and had particularly noted the man’s comfort in the saddle.

  “What does it tell us?” asked Sir Richard.

  He looked exhausted. There had been a string of knifepoint robberies in Pall Mall over the past few days, and most of his attention—and the journalists’—was set upon that.