She was most fond of the novel, she disclosed. Her favorite writers at the present moment were Mr. Fenimore Cooper and Monsieur Balzac, she said, but neither of them could touch Thackeray. She adored Sir Walter Scott. She had lately been in Cornwall, and thought it the most beautiful countryside she had ever seen—but wished, in her innermost heart, to see the distant islands of northern Scotland.
Lenox knew more about travel than fiction, and replied with some knowledge of both Cornwall and the Orkneys. He said that he, too, had longed to go there—one more delicate filament of connection between them.
Before Miss Ashbrook’s arrival, Lenox had drunk two glasses of chilled champagne, and as he danced he knew he had a light head. The young lady smelled of lavender, and her hair as it swung near his face had the rich indescribable scent of—well, a woman who has been dancing. He might not marry her, he thought, but he was very happy to be dancing with her.
It might have gone on, but for an interruption. One of Sir Crispin’s footmen came to say that a Mr. Graham was waiting on Lenox in the front hallway if it was convenient for him to step away.
Not particularly—but of course Lenox went, leaving Miss Ashbrook among friends, curious to see what news Graham had.
“Hello, Graham,” he said when they met.
“I apologize for the intrusion, sir.”
“Not at all. What is it? Nothing bad, I hope?”
“No, sir—no. But there is a gentleman who may have some information in response to our advertisement.”
Lenox raised his eyebrows. “About the American? More than a guess?”
Graham nodded. “I believe it is, sir.”
That was as good as a guarantee. “Give me a moment to get my coat.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Toward the back of the first story of Lenox’s house, at the end of the front hall but before the dining room, was a small chamber that everyone called the smoking room. It was rarely used. It held an armchair, a card table, a chaise longue, and a smattering of books Lenox didn’t need. To his knowledge nobody had once smoked in this room since his tenancy had begun. Still, a household thrives on regularity, so its name was its name, and it was dusted each day, and Mrs. Huggins, supervising Alice and Joanna, made sure there was coal in the grate, though it might go unlit for a year, and that the rug was beaten in spring and fall.
Now the coals were lit after all. Sitting by their warmth was a small, neat, handsome man of middle age, drinking tea and eating toast with salmon. It had been a wise decision on Graham’s part to store him here; Lenox’s study was too private a place for a stranger to wander freely in.
The man wore a knit sweater with a high collar. A farmer, Lenox would have said.
Wrongly. “This is Mr. Joseph Hazlitt, sir,” Graham said. “He is a typesetter at the Telegraph. Mr. Hazlitt, this is my employer, Mr. Edmundson.”
Lenox extended a hand. “How do you do, Mr. Hazlitt?”
“Oh, fine, thank you, sir,” said the typesetter in a squeaky voice.
“You came about the ad?”
“Yes, sir.” Hazlitt removed and carefully unfolded a small square of newsprint, like a mouse taking out its handkerchief. “I did have one question: Are employees of the newspaper where you placed this ad, sir, ineligible for the reward mentioned—mentioned therein, sir?”
“Not at all.”
“Ah! Good. Excellent.”
“Please, sit,” Lenox said, doing so himself. “What information do you have, pray tell?”
Hazlitt hesitated, but then put his hand in the outer pocket of his sweater. “The job of a typesetter at a newspaper, as you know, sir, is to compose each page of the paper in metal sorts, by line, paragraph, and word, and place them in rows, which go into a large wooden case matching the size of a page of a newspaper.”
“Is it! Actually I have never quite known how they managed that.”
“Oh, yes, it’s quite an art, sir. Some of the typesetters at the down-market papers—well, one line barely matches up to the next, you know. You’ve seen.” He smiled shyly. “And if you see a d where a p should be, you can be sure a typesetter has been shouted down for putting the letter in wrong—for they look almost the same, you see, to us. That’s why we tell each other—mind your p’s and q’s, sir. For a q could quite easily be a b.”
“Did the Telegraph have an error?” said Lenox, trying to gently redirect his visitor. It was late. “Perhaps in the section you’re holding?”
Hazlitt looked down, as if surprised to find the scrap. “Oh! This! No, no sir, Mr. Edmundson. It’s only that it will appear in the paper tomorrow morning. I made a one-off, sir—for of course, it was I who set the ad looking for an American, and offering a reward, and—well, see for yourself.”
Lenox took the treasured little scrap of paper from Hazlitt at last and read it to himself.
Information eagerly sought
As to the whereabouts of Mr. Eli Gilman, of Massachusetts, USA, but lately traveling in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds. Mr. Gilman was due in London Tuesday evening but did not appear. He is 27, with light hair, casually attired. Anyone having seen or heard of him will receive a warm welcome at the Salted Herring, Three Colt St., between the hours of 5 and 7:30 tonight.
A chill ran through Lenox. Unless there was a sad fluke of fate at play, he now had possession of the name of the man who had been murdered aboard the 449 from Manchester. Eli Gilman. It was a significant step forward.
“This is extremely useful, Mr. Hazlitt. Do you know who submitted it?”
“I do not, sir.”
“Would someone else at the paper?”
“No, it is all anonymous, sir—so that people feel free to put whatever sort they like, you see. No defamation, of course, or foul language, or oaths. Otherwise you may pay by the line and say whatever you wish, so long as your money is good.”
“Of course,” Lenox murmured. Then he asked, “May I keep this?”
Hazlitt looked anxiously at Graham, who said, “I’m sure Mr. Hazlitt would feel happy to leave it with you if he were to receive his reward.”
“Oh! Of course. Graham, you know where my billfold is.” Lenox stood up and flourished the small piece of paper. “This is going to be extremely useful in righting an injustice, Mr. Hazlitt. I will bid you good evening, since there is work I must do. Thank you.”
Hazlitt stood up. “Pleasure, sir.”
Lenox, on his way out of the room, stopped at the door. “May I ask something to satisfy my own curiosity, Mr. Hazlitt—was your father also a typesetter?”
“A farmer, sir.”
“Ah! A very different occupation.”
“I always had a way with machines, sir, so he sent me down to live with my cousin in Fleet Street.”
Lenox smiled. “My father was from the country as well. Yet here we both are in London. Good evening, Mr. Hazlitt.”
He went to his study and sat in his chair, listening to the dim creaks and cracks the house made as Graham paid Hazlitt his reward and saw him back into the late evening.
The piece of paper was on the table. He memorized it, then reclined, legs crossed, staring into the dusky gaslit emptiness of Hampden Lane. Chaffanbrass, the still relatively new bookseller across the lane, had forgotten to close his shutters again; he often did. He would pay for it with a broken glass storefront and a theft one of these days. But it hadn’t happened tonight.
Eli Gilman of Massachusetts.
There was a malevolence in the world that Lenox brushed against in his job. From time to time he worried that it might brush him back. His thoughts went to the swing of Kitty Ashbrook’s dark hair, her secretive smile. He could have been having a last dance with her at this moment; instead he sat alone, pondering murder.
In truth it had crushed him to hear that his mother hoped he would leave off being a detective. He’d thought she understood.
But enough, enough. He jumped up and took down several volumes he had of notable people. He didn’t put much hope in them, sinc
e they included few Americans, and while it had been worth checking, after half an hour of perusal his initial pessimism was justified: The volumes contained nobody by the name of Eli Gilman, though he did discover in a biography of a Yorkshire bishop of the same name that there had been numerous settlers of that surname in the colony of New Hampshire during the 1600s and 1700s.
Graham knocked and, upon Lenox’s call beckoning him inward, entered the study. “Good evening, sir.”
“Hallo, Graham. Thank you for coming to fetch me at the party. Very well done. The only question is whether we can contrive to see the man who placed the ad sooner than five o’clock tomorrow evening. Do you know the Salted Herring?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s not far from Ropemaker’s Lane. Tricky area. And the days are growing shorter. Not much sunlight left to protect us at five o’clock. It could be dangerous. They mostly serve a seafaring clientele there, as I recall. They do quite a decent fish pie.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Lenox smiled. “I can never seem to interest you in the menus of our destinations. Do you eat, Graham?”
“We must have eaten together above a hundred times, sir, I should have said.”
“Yet I always get the sense that you are doing so out of politeness. Tell me, what is your favorite meal?”
Graham had one hand on the chair across the desk from Lenox—it was late, an informal conversation—and he considered the question, taking his time. At last, he said, “My mother was half-Scottish, sir. She occasionally made what we called stovies. I remember them with great fondness.”
“What are those?”
“Stovies? Sliced potatoes, sir, softened up, roasted with cracklings. That was a dish I looked forward to all week.”
“We shall have to put Ellie on the job.”
“I once asked her if she made them, sir—she said that every Scot was a miser and a drunk.”
“Good Lord! I’ve known many who were only one or the other.”
Graham laughed. “Have you, sir,” he said mildly.
“Only joking, of course. I shall order it for my own supper from her tomorrow, and she may go looking for another job if she refuses me.”
“You needn’t go to the trouble on my behalf, sir, though I thank you. And bear in mind that you—perhaps we—shall be in East London.”
“Ah!” said Lenox melancholically. “True. Eli Gilman. The following evening, then, it will be stovies or a new cook. Don’t let me forget. Someone must take this household in hand.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lenox spent the next morning gathering, assembling, and updating his notes. Meanwhile Graham was out in the city, searching for information on Eli Gilman. They had agreed to meet at the Salted Herring at four o’clock.
About an hour beforehand, Lenox set across town in an omnibus toward the wharves of the East End. He liked to ride the bus from time to time; enjoyed observing the people, on this afternoon including several women out for their shopping, a young clerk on some errand, and a pair of young Germans venturing out to see St. Paul’s Church and, if Lenox’s German was right, sketch it.
After about thirty minutes he got out at a stop along the river. He paused for a moment, lighting his pipe, then leaned on a stone rail above the Thames. How very full the world seemed, if you ever stayed still for a moment. The dull gray wash of the river lapped up onto the hulls of ships. The dockyards were busy with loading and unloading, resupplying, painting, everyone absorbed in his own work, bar the occasional whistle or chat.
There were innumerable disadvantages to such labor as theirs, but Lenox did think that it might be nice, once in a while, simply to fall without conscious thought into a routine of work. Mostly on days like this, when his thoughts spun round and round without anywhere to land.
For who had placed the advertisement? It hung on who Gilman had been—criminal, victim, or both. Was the ad designed to draw out Eli Gilman’s accomplices? His friends? Or was it the sincere request of an acquaintance that had been expecting Gilman and taken recourse to the papers to find him when he hadn’t arrived?
The more Lenox mulled it over, the less sure he felt. Eventually he turned and walked into the dim, low-slung alleyways of the city’s poorest precincts, hoping that they would hold a satisfactory answer.
Three Colt Street was among the largest streets in the East End, a loud, crowded, dirty, jolly, winding boulevard. It didn’t look or feel markedly different than it must have in Ben Jonson’s time, when tavernkeepers kept the peace and knights brought their retinues here to carouse.
Lenox walked with his eyes up, constantly scanning the crowds. Most strangers here were similarly careful, he noticed. An air of imminent violence permeated the otherwise pleasant atmosphere, despite the good humor of the boys selling jellied eels and the woman sitting placidly beside a jar of cinnamon balls, for, as she cried, a-sweet’nin’ the breath.
The Salted Herring stood upon a crowded street corner, occupying two floors of a large, attractive gray-and-white-striped building, with sheaves of grain on either side of its door to mark the season. Its sign showed a great whale leaping from the sea, a ship in the distance visible beneath the curl of its immense body.
Lenox went in. The bar faced the door, and in between were a dozen or so tables. There was a space cleared to the left-hand side of the bar to play darts, a popular pub game on this side of town, and Lenox’s mind flashed to one of the indelible images of his boyhood nursery education: Henry the Eighth playing the same game with the delicately decorated set of darts that the whole court knew Anne Boleyn had made him—one of the first tangible signs that Queen Catherine’s time as Henry’s wife was drawing short.
A few people were dotted around the pub. Almost all of them appeared to be in some state of medical distress. Two sailors played cards, tired-eyed, as if they had been out late the night before, one with a badly bruised cheek and the other with an arm in a sling. An African, dressed nattily except for the blood-darkened bandage encircling his head, was at least well enough to sit in the corner sipping ale and reading a newspaper. (For acceptance of the races, the nautical world was unexcelled—their work would have been impossible without the mingling of nationalities.) At the end of the room, a man in a cloth hat looked merely hungover.
He had eyed the door nervously when it opened, and Lenox—dressed as inconspicuously as could be, in a tweed overcoat—gave him a single hard look to make sure he wasn’t the conductor.
No, unfortunately.
Lenox went to the bar and ordered a whisky with ginger ale. The barkeeper, a retired sailor, pushed it across and gave Lenox a ha’penny back out of a penny.
Lenox sat down. He watched the gray-bearded but strong old man behind the bar wash glasses in a sudsy bucket. He had tattoos all over his skin. The previous summer Lenox had made a study of scars, burns, tattoos, and other markings, with the idea that they might be useful in a case someday. They hadn’t been yet, but he was patient. This fellow had crossed cannons on one wiry forearm, which meant that he had served in the Queen’s navy. A single anchor beneath it indicated that he had crossed the Pacific Ocean. And on the other forearm, six swallows, Lenox knew, each representing five thousand nautical miles of travel over the seas.
Across his knuckles, eight letters, an exhortation to anyone bearing a rope in a storm: H-O-L-D F-A-S-T.
Lenox glanced at his pocket watch: 4:45. He stood up and went to the end of the bar. “Are you American?” he asked the dark-haired man with the hangover.
“Who in the hell are you?” said the man.
He was much drunker than Lenox had realized—and, judging by his accent, from somewhere in Berkshire. “Eli Gilman?”
The man slurred back a version of the name, uncomprehending, in a loud, angry voice, and the old sailor behind the bar looked over with a scowl. “Oy,” he said. “Finish your drink and be on your way if you mean to cause trouble.”
Lenox put up his hands. “Mistaken about seeing an acquaintance,�
�� he said shortly. “Apologies.”
He sat with his whisky-ginger. He would have to wait. After a few moments he risked asking the bartender if they had any fish pies, but he had apparently been placed on some sort of probation, because he was told no, maybe at five. Despite the fact that the two card-playing men had just been served food.
Then there was a tap on his shoulder.
Lenox—nerves already on edge—whirled in his seat. It was the African who had been sitting in the corner of the room. His newspaper was under one arm.
“May I help you?” asked Lenox.
“I thought I heard you mention Eli Gilman,” the man said in a broad American accent. He was quite tall, with close-cropped hair, very dark. “You are here about an advertisement I placed, I believe.”
“You?” said Lenox.
“I will be around the southwest corner at Mr. Thompson’s,” the man said. “I hope to hear news of my friend. I’m armed, just so you know.”
And with that, he left the Salted Herring so abruptly that Lenox barely had time to stand up.
Graham was still not here. He had to choose whether to risk walking into danger; he had no idea at all who had just approached him. After a moment of indecision, he dashed off a quick note to Graham, which he left in the care of the bartender, along with tuppence and a description of the butler, who would be arriving at the Salted Herring soon. With a quick pang of guilt as he remembered his mother’s anxiety for him, Lenox buttoned his coat and left.
Outside, he went to the corner and peered down the narrow reaches of Newell Street. It wasn’t a tenth as active as Three Colt Street. A long, dense line of houses towered ominously over either side of a road wide enough for just a single carriage to pass along it. It was close and smoky, dark.
He took a few tentative steps forward, looking carefully at each number and nameplate as he went.
After about fifty yards, he reached a door that said THOMPSON. He stopped in front of it, looking up and down the street. Graham mightn’t arrive at the pub for some little while if he were held up. This was a risk. With his heart beating hard, Lenox stepped forward and knocked on the door.
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