The Last Passenger - A Prequel

by Charles Finch

  He had known more peculiar cases, he reflected, but none quite so unorthodox in structure. Usually in a murder investigation, one began with a victim and traced him or her to a murderer; in this one, they had begun with an anonymous victim, and it had taken all the ingenuity they had to find out the man’s name.

  It meant that despite having done so much work, most of the case nevertheless lay before them. That was the murderer’s cleverness, he supposed.

  Dunn and Hemstock were bartering barely disguised incivilities, but went quiet at the sound of an approaching footstep on the stair. Sir Richard. The three men stood, and he gave them a nod before leading them into his office.

  “Where are we?” he said without preamble, moving around to his side of the desk, pushing papers to this side and that, brow furrowed, looking for something.

  Dunn delivered a brief and disappointing narration of his trip to the north. Hemstock followed this with a fairly accurate description of the documents. Lenox nodded along, and when Hemstock was finished made a point of complimenting him for his insights. He might as well try to be sure that someone liked him.

  And what did the documents show, Mayne wanted to know.

  “His correspondence was wide and impressive,” said Lenox, “as Mr. Hemstock discovered before I began.

  “Here, for instance, is a copy I made of a letter from the Prime Minister to him from two months ago: I have received the letters of introduction most kindly supplied by Mr. Ralph W. Emerson, Mr. George Dallas, Mr. Horace Mann, and some half a dozen other august members of your political—you take the point. Nearly all of the letters start that way. Gilman laid his groundwork well. The Prime Minister adds that he shall be happy to see Gilman on such and such a date—yesterday, in fact, it would have been, as it happens—for the space of thirty minutes.”

  “High connections.”

  “The highest. Here is a list of the people with whom he was to meet. You will no doubt recognize most of the names.”

  “So Viscount Palmerston is your primary suspect,” Dunn said.

  “No,” Lenox said. “I am merely describing the situation to Sir Richard so that he may judge it for himself.”

  “Go on, then, please,” Mayne said.

  “There is also a second type of letter.” Lenox handed it over. “Take a look for yourself. Mr. Hemstock will have seen it already.”

  gilman you *****r-loving filth stay out of England there’s plenty here won’t take it silent if you march, the white was placed by GOD himself to rule over the rest. signed, a proud AMERICAN of the Patriots Abroad

  “Why is ‘American’ capitalized?” asked Dunn.

  Mayne shook his head slowly, looking at the letter. “How many of these are there?”

  “Three,” Lenox replied. “He would have received all of them before his departure. Here is a more formal one.”

  To the attention of the Honorable Mr. Gilman,

  We have our disagreements, but as fellow Americans we would hate to see you come to grief in Great Britain. Physical violence is abhorrent to our cause. Reliable intelligence informs us that you may be in danger of harm if you insist upon travel to London. Moreover it is unacceptable and traitorous that a representative of the United States would protest her actions on foreign soil.

  Yours most sincerely,

  The Knights of America in England

  “I am not sure they would hate it as much as they declare,” said Mayne. “The idea of violence against Gilman.”

  “I am of two minds,” Lenox said. “I agree with you, but on the other hand I hardly think they would have announced their intentions so blatantly if they really meant him harm. There is even the chance that it might be a well-meaning caution, I suppose.”

  “Or they might not have counted on Gilman bringing the letter across the ocean with him.”

  This was Dunn. It was a fair point. Lenox nodded. “Yes.”

  Mayne rang for his secretary, Wilkinson. “Fetch Stevenage if he’s still about.”

  Lenox waited for an explanation of who Stevenage was, but when none came he gamely pulled out the two journals with which Gilman had traveled, blue and black.

  He held out the black one. “It was this which gave me the greatest pause, however.”

  “His journal?”

  Lenox nodded. “His diary consists primarily of scheduling information, but the journal is different. It is full of scribblings. There is a much-blotted draft of a bill formally requesting the United States to free its slaves, and declaring Great Britain’s withdrawal from all financial transactions touched by the … what are his words … barbaric institution.”

  “Well, he’s quite correct there,” said Mayne, taking the journal.

  “There are also his observations of shipboard life. A few sentimental reflections on a young woman named Margaret Murphy of Lawrence, Massachusetts, into which I hardly think we need to pry. But you will see the pages I have flagged. Look at the last one, to start. Crabbe was Gilman’s correspondent at the American consulate. Son of a hero of their revolution.”

  Mayne opened the book, turning it halfway so the three investigators could read with him. The writing was quick, dashed off on one of the last pages—perhaps the very last shipboard morning, or not long before. It was so clearly of the penmanship with which one writes to one’s self that Lenox, seeing it, felt a heartache. How very alive people were before they died!

  To consult—Scotland Yard/Crabbe

  - Anonymous letter postmarked Essex (police at march?)

  - gray-haired man shipboard—Lyman? Liman? Strange behavior

  - KAE

  - Hollis safety/Patriots Abroad/Carel Seaman

  “Do you know what they mean?” Mayne asked, handing the journal back.

  “The anonymous letter I take to be the one you have read, which encouraged him to seek out protection at the march. The KAE—that must be the Knights in the second letter.”

  “Ah,” Mayne agreed, putting them together. “The Knights of America in England.”

  “I have no idea about Lyman, or Liman. But you will remember that the man who bought all the newspapers and tobacco from the young newsboy had gray hair.”

  “Yes.”

  “I stopped by the consulate on the way here. The name is unfamiliar to them. We will need to seek out the manifest for the ship upon which they sailed, I think. Or else Hollis may be able to give us some information.”

  “And Carel Seaman, as he is called?”

  Dunn spoke. “I know the man. He was brought up before a judge on a charge of assault last year. He and two friends set about an Indian traveler in Covent Garden. They might easily have killed him, though he survived.”

  “What was their motivation?”

  “Racial. He did not make way for them on the sidewalk.”

  “Anything else? Lenox?”

  “Seaman hails from Maryland. That is all I can add to what Mr. Dunn says. But I may have the articles about the attack on file at home.”

  In fact, he knew perfectly well he did: Each morning, he and Graham competed over matching sets of newspapers, clipping every article on crime in London that they could find, for an archive they were slowly but certainly building together. Lenox would guess that it was already the most complete of its kind.

  He had recommended a similar one to Mayne the year before—but the commissioner had called it a waste of the Yard’s time. That sat sore from the man who had banned snowballs.

  He was across from Lenox now, holding his fingers to his mouth, eyes narrowed. “Finally we have proper suspects to investigate,” he said. “Well done, Hemstock. Lenox.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Hemstock.

  There was a knock at the door. A huge block of man, with a thick brown mustache and an expression that looked as if its owner would brook very little impertinence before resorting to violence, followed the knock inside without awaiting an invitation.

  “You requested my presence, sir,” he said.

  “Hello, St
evenage, yes. Who are the Patriots Abroad?”

  Stevenage—as this man, dressed in a blue suit, every inch the police officer, was evidently named—seemed to scoff. “Nasty but unimportant. A loose affiliation of alcoholics who get their joy out of threatening people.”

  “They come from America?”

  “About three-quarters do. The rest are British. They meet down in Canary Wharf. Conspiring, I suppose, though I wouldn’t trust them to plan my niece’s birthday party. They do manage about a dozen prostitutes and a tavern or two.”

  “What about the Knights of America in England?”

  Stevenage didn’t look surprised at the name. “A slightly more respectable group, but with the same essential purpose. They meet in the Strand and wear tailored jackets. Actually I believe all of them are Americans. Merchant class. Not violent that I know of. Though most of them came to England because of a murky past in America, or so I’ve been told, so anything is possible. The leader hails from New Orleans. Quite happy at the moment with President Pierce, though they take a still harder line than he does.”

  Lenox, surprised at the easy expertise this man had, said, “Are you an authority in American matters, Mr. Stevenage?”

  “No,” the officer replied, without any indication that he wished to elaborate.

  “Stevenage knows every gang in London inside and out,” explained Mayne. “He is our encyclopedia.”

  “We keep a proper encyclopedia as well,” Stevenage added. “The cemeteries being full of indispensable men, and all that.”

  “Is either group capable of political violence?” Lenox asked.

  “What, this Eleazer Gilman I assume? I’d not have thought so. They’re very good with letters—threaten every abolitionist who comes to London, every Negro in particular. Not particularly enthused about the Irish, for that matter. But never actively violent so far. They are chatterers, you see. It’s a hobby with them. An ugly hobby—no more. Five years they’ve been at it and never plucked a hair from an abolitionist’s head that I heard of.”

  His tone implied that he would certainly have heard if it had been. “I see.”

  As if acceding to the fact that the groups of whom he was speaking weren’t wholly harmless, he added, “I will say that Seamen is a man I hate to have on the loose. Unpredictable.”

  “Do you have a list of the places where they meet, these two groups? The membership?” said Lenox.

  “I can have someone run it up. It will take fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll wait,” Lenox said.

  Mayne nodded. “Very good, Stevenage,” he said. “Thank you. The three of you had better start with Lyman, or Liman, then, I suppose—and after that, Seaman and his people, too. Dunn, you take them. Lenox, you take the two patriotic groups.”

  They all assented.

  Mayne sighed. “I always feel snow is a bad sign in these matters. Covers up too much. Everyone ducks inside. Still, push on.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The women charged with managing London’s social life were evidently made of heartier stuff than the timid souls who monitored the city’s stabbings and shootings.

  “Canceled! Don’t be silly—it’s two streets over.”

  These were the words of Lady Jane, who seemed galvanized rather than deterred by the snow, full of gaiety.

  Lenox had waited alone for Stevenage’s men to return with the names of the gang members, while Dunn and Hemstock hurried home to beat the snow. He had planned to pore over the names, cross-matching them with his archive, if he stayed in, but found that apparently he was still committed to an evening out after all.

  And indeed, the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bronson and Susanna Geddes, which lay parallel to Hampden Lane—four streets over, in fact, but who would count—sparkled brightly in the snow, every window full of candlelight and motion, a small brilliant jewel set into the row of otherwise subdued and shadowy houses. Black carriages gathered outside, glossy horses leading them, steam rising from their nostrils.

  Deere was with his regiment; Lenox, almost before he could take off his coat, was taken on his usual bachelor parade, like a giraffe being led its turns through the zoo.

  He greeted Deborah Tilton first. She had seemed one of Edmund’s more promising candidates, until it had emerged that she was already married, which showed (Charles argued) that Edmund was the greatest dunce in London. With her was Lady Constance McKnight, who was just “out” and enjoying the attention of the boys her own age so much that Lenox, at twenty-seven, felt ninety, and Fiona Panday, who as usual talked exclusively and inconsolably about her aunt, who controlled the money that would be Fiona’s when she married.

  This was only the first wave of attack. Across the room he saw a whole legion of further potential wives, and saw them see him, some of them, he couldn’t help but feel, with less than absolutely maximal excitement. At a party like this everyone was hoping to see someone or other; and so often it wasn’t you.

  Just as he was facing up to go and meet them, though, having been in the house for only fifteen minutes or so, he heard a mischievous voice behind him call his name.

  “Mr. Lenox!”

  He turned and saw a tanned, pretty face. It took him only a quick blank moment before he recognized her: Kitty Ashbrook.

  His heart, strange independent creature, took a leap.

  He bowed. “Miss Ashbrook! How do you do? I had taken you at your word that we were not to marry,” he said, “and yet here you are, pursuing me.”

  “Is this what you call pursuit!” she asked.

  “No. But you look so lovely this evening that one must almost propose out of good manners, Miss Ashbrook.”

  She flushed, seemingly to her own surprise, because she then laughed. “In that case every gentleman here is a brute, since not one of them has proposed.”

  A friend, involved in another conversation, was pulling at her, but as she was being tugged away she glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled prettily, a smile of whose effect she must be conscious, he supposed, but which was so easy, so natural, that it seemed just possible she had no idea how fetching it looked.

  He had stood and watched her go for some length of time he couldn’t name—a minute? a year?—when he heard his brother’s voice, as familiar as his own, call him out of his reverie.

  They joined together and soon were in the mix of Edmund’s party. Everyone was rosy-cheeked and full of excitement about the snow, exchanging happy nerves about how on earth they would get home, and soon rising higher still in spirits due to Mrs. Geddes’s cowslip wine.

  To his surprise—though he shouldn’t have been surprised, he supposed—he happened to see two of the men with whom Eleazer Gilman had scheduled meetings. It was a strange sensation when his personal world and professional one crossed. It must be for everyone, of course, but particularly for him. Already a fellow he’d known at Oxford had cut him that evening. He had learned to ignore that sort of thing, but it sent Edmund into a loyal rage.

  The first of the two men who under happier circumstances would have met with Gilman that week was Wilton Sheridan. He was a handsome, athletic chap in a high collar. Lenox always spotted him by his thin mustache, which was waxed out to two perfect, glossy auburn tips, rising toward his ears.

  Sheridan’s father had been a rich man; like Charles, Sheridan was a second son, though unlike Charles, he concerned himself primarily with sport—specifically, horse racing. He held a seat in Parliament, which served him nicely as a hobby when there were no races on, as Lenox had once heard him say. By such slender threads of concern the lives of millions hung in an aristocracy.

  Lenox asked him for a quick word. “Yes? Oh, Gilman!” said Sheridan, when they had gone off to the side. “What a pity. I saw that.”

  “We are trying to figure out what might have happened. Do you know why he wanted to meet?”

  “Something about slavery. So my secretary said. I am always willing to meet with these Americans. Good to have connections ove
r there—big place, America.”

  “Had you expressed an interest in slavery?” Lenox asked.

  “Me? No. But my father—well—we sold out of Jamaica just in time, the year ’30 or so. Shame. There was a lot of money in sugar down there.”

  There had been a law until recently that England could only buy its sugar from Jamaica. “I see,” said Lenox.

  “I visited once as a lad,” Sheridan volunteered, and took a draught of his cowslip wine. “I think they seemed jolly happy, to be honest with you. The slaves. They had good food, housing. Clothes. A church, if they wanted it, but they’ve their own songs and all that sort. I don’t know why we wanted to rock the boat. Still, there you are. Wilberforce.”

  “He was a force of nature,” Lenox said.

  “They’re very simple. They only wish to be happy and easy, you know. Ever so lazy. Father never tolerated them being beaten or anything of that sort—not for a moment. Beastly. Anyhow, I will admit I only went there once. It could have been worse at other places. No doubt it was. It’s always some newcomer who ruins it for everyone. By the way, was that Kitty Ashbrook you were speaking to? A fine girl, that. Very fine.”

  Sheridan’s blitheness stood in stark contrast to the more useful information provided by the second person there that Gilman had been planning to meet. This was a dour Member from Kent, in tiny round glasses, called Fry. He was widely considered a rising political star. Lord knew why.

  “He was desperate to meet the Queen,” Fry said.

  “The Queen? Why?”

  “To plead his case, I imagine. I cannot see what I could have done to help him, but I would have tried. Disgusting, the whole thing. Buying and selling people, in 1855. It’s a disgrace.”

  Lenox was slightly taken aback by his ardor. Fry was a conservative, and his side had made the economic argument for slavery for years, while Sheridan, like Edmund, was a liberal, of the party of Wilberforce. He supposed that opinion had moved near unanimity, except in the case of personally interested businessmen. The abolition of slavery probably meant one less pony in Sheridan’s string each autumn.