The Fleet Street Murders

by Charles Finch

  “That they weren’t broken.”

  “Well, of course they weren’t—they—” Then Lenox saw it. “They couldn’t have borne Smalls’s weight.”

  “Precisely. I nosed around at the coroner’s a bit. I couldn’t manage to see the body, for which I’m sorry—”

  “Not at all.”

  “I did find out that Smalls weighed roughly eleven stone. I measured the bootlaces, looked at the report Exeter drew up to see how they had been arranged around his neck, went out and bought a dozen pair of identical laces, and then did some experiments at the butcher’s.”

  “And?”

  “I tried hanging every hog and cow in the place—even a few that were much lighter than eleven stone—and every time the laces snapped. They were thin ones.”

  “The butcher let you?”

  “I gave him a bottle of whisky.”

  “Brilliantly managed,” said Lenox.

  McConnell’s eyes steadied for a moment and shone with the happiness of a job well done. “Thank you, Lenox,” he said.

  “Yet how did Smalls stay up on the wall?”

  “I believe I figured that out, too. According to the Yard’s report, his belt was unusually worn—with the buckle in back.”

  “His back was to the wall, correct?” Suddenly Lenox thought of the colored square on the wall where a second hook had once been. “They turned his belt around, so it would hitch to the metal bit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if Exeter saw that.”

  “Perhaps,” said McConnell. “Perhaps.”

  “Then what killed the man?”

  “I’ve no doubt it was strangulation. I know the coroner who wrote the report. He’s very good.”

  “Strangulation that was then made to look as if it were suicide? There’s one problem remaining, of course.”

  “Do you mean—what his belt was hooked to?”

  “Exactly. Can Natt have been lying?”

  “Who?”

  “The warden.”

  “I don’t know,” said McConnell.

  “Well—it was awfully well done, anyway,” said Lenox. “We know what we’re facing now.”

  Just then there was a ring at the door. It would be Dallington. Glancing up at his clock, Lenox saw it was just past eight.

  But no.

  “Lady Jane Grey,” announced Mary and held the door for Lenox’s betrothed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I

  t was very awkward, because Lenox had strode toward the door of the library when he heard the ring, and as Jane came in she saw only him at first.

  “Charles!” she said with high emotion after Mary had closed the door behind her. “I saw you come home.”

  “I was just on my way to see you,” he said, “after keeping two short appointments.”

  “Hello, Jane,” said McConnell just then, apparently without perceiving her fragile state.

  She started. “Why—hello, Thomas.”

  “How do you do?”

  “Fairly well, thank you. I come from your house.”

  Of course she wouldn’t have been in her pale blue study, Lenox thought. She would have been at Toto’s side.

  “Yes?” said McConnell stiffly.

  With uncharacteristic directness—she was a tactful soul—she said, “You ought to return there this instant.”

  “Oh, yes?” he said, looking even more unhappy. “I believe that the household might be more comfortable if—if—”

  “Don’t be proud, for the love of heaven. Toto pines for you, and these are the hardest days of her life. Go back to her.”

  “Well—I—”

  “Oh!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Men waste half their lives being proud.”

  Even in this fraught situation, Lenox felt a burst of pride that she was his—if she was, anyway.

  “Well—” said McConnell in a halting voice. “Good day, Lenox. Good day, Jane.”

  With that he left the room.

  Lady Jane went to the sofa in the middle of the room and sat, a heavy sigh escaping her lips as she did. “What lives we all lead,” she said. “Poor Toto.”

  Lenox went to sit beside her but did not embrace her. They were a foot or so apart. “How are you, Jane? Well, I dearly hope? Did you receive my letter?”

  “Yes, Charles, it reassured me. Still, these two days I’ve sat at Toto’s bedside—”

  Just then there was another ring at the door, and, as Lenox had instructed her to, Mary brought Dallington into the library.

  He was a cheerful-looking young man, a carnation in his buttonhole, and genially said hello to Lenox and Lady Jane. There were dark circles under his eyes, the legacy no doubt of a long and debauched night in some music hall or gambling room. He bore fatigue better than McConnell, however, being younger and, because of his long years of carousing, perhaps better used to it.

  “I hope I don’t interrupt your conversation?” he said.

  “No,” answered Lenox.

  Dallington went on, “I’m late, as I daresay you’ll have observed.”

  “John, will you say hello to your mother for me?” asked Lady Jane. “I’ve missed her twice in the past two days.”

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “Charles, I’ll see you in a little while?”

  Lenox half-bowed.

  “Then I must be off.”

  She hurried out of the room, and as she did Lenox thought of her usual movements, how graceful and languid they were compared to the agitation of her carriage now. It was the stress of seeing Toto, he thought, in combination with her doubts about their marriage. Jane Grey had striven for her entire life to act well and honestly, and she felt miserable when she didn’t see the right course ahead. Suddenly a solemn sense of fear overtook Lenox. He had to master himself before addressing the young lord.

  “Thank you for your telegrams, Dallington,” he said. “They were most welcome when the newspapers’ information lagged.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “What can you tell me about this young suspect?”

  “About Gerald Poole? Well, Exeter arrested him yesterday. You’ve seen the papers?”

  “Not yet. I’ve had a steady stream of appointments since getting back this morning.”

  “How is the campaign, incidentally?”

  The relationship between the two men was a funny one. Not quite friends, they had nonetheless been through more than most friends already—for Dallington had saved Lenox’s life, while Lenox had witnessed many of Dallington’s flaws firsthand; and though student and pupil, they knew too much of each other and moved too closely in the same circles to retain the formality of that connection. It was never clear whether their conversations should stay professional, but Dallington settled the matter by seeing that they didn’t. Still, Lenox never felt entirely comfortable confiding in the young man, whose tastes and habits were so different than his own.

  “Well, thank you. It will be difficult to win, but I have high hopes.”

  “I once gambled with old Stoke’s boy.”

  “Did you?”

  “Dissipated sort.”

  “What about Poole?”

  Dallington offered Lenox a grim smile. “To business already?”

  “I’m only here briefly.”

  “Well—can that blushing creature of yours fetch a paper?”

  Lenox rang for Mary and asked for the morning’s and the prior evening’s newspapers.

  Dallington said, “Asking for one is the same as asking for a hundred—they all have the same information. Inspector Exeter placed Gerry Poole under arrest for the murders of Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers.”

  “Have they cottoned on to his father’s history yet?”

  “Oh, yes. They all mention the treason.”

  “Has Exeter given up on Smalls, then?”

  “On the contrary—he’s convinced that they did it together.” Gravely, Dallington said, “In fact, that’s the strongest pi
ece of evidence linking Gerry to the murders. The rest of it is circumstantial.”

  “What’s the strongest piece of evidence?”

  “About fifty witnesses have Gerald Poole and Hiram Smalls meeting in the Saracen’s Head pub the night before the murders. Even if none of them had seen it, however, he’s admitted it’s true.”

  “Hiram Smalls must have been a busy pubgoer, from the sound of things. He met Martha Claes and Gerald Poole both at pubs.”

  The papers came in just then, and Lenox perused them without much close attention. They were in concord with Dallington’s account of the matter.

  “What’s his explanation for being in the pub?”

  “I haven’t been in to see him, and he hasn’t told the papers, but he admitted it readily enough.”

  “As an intelligent person would if denial were useless. He went into prison after Smalls had already died there, I take it? No overlap?”

  “No, no.” Distressed, Dallington said, “Listen, won’t you, he simply cannot have killed anyone.”

  “No?”

  “I met him years ago on the continent and have kept in touch with him since. He’s the friendliest, least sinister chap I ever saw. Not to mention that he couldn’t tell you the time without losing his watch. The idea of him planning a murder is laughable.”

  “Yet his father was guilty of high crimes, almost certainly.”

  “Gerry always lived in a sort of permanent, jovial daze. Never said a cross word to anybody, happily won and lost money alike at the track, drank himself into a friendly stupor—I can’t describe accurately how incapable of malice I believe him to be.”

  “A more cynical man than myself might say you saw him through a friend’s eyes.”

  “Am I such a poor judge of character as all that?”

  “No,” said Lenox quietly. “I don’t think you are.”

  “Well, then.”

  Trying to sound detached, Lenox said, “You know, you look a bit tired, Dallington.”

  The younger man laughed. “You always smoke me out, don’t you, Lenox?”

  “Well?”

  “A friend of mine was in London. I’ve been sleeping for the last fifteen hours, but we did chase the devil for a day and a night.”

  Lenox sighed. It wasn’t his place to say anything, but the lad had talent, definite talent, in the art of detection. “I hope it was worth it.”

  “Excuse me?” said Dallington, who was used to his own way.

  “By God, man, do you realize I have a day here, not more than a day and a half? Much of this case must come down to you—to you! Or the Yard,” Lenox said as an afterthought.

  A look of determination came onto Dallington’s face. “I had hoped as much.”

  “Well,” said Lenox, standing. “Let us go and see Mr. Poole. Newgate twice in one morning! What a depressing thought.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  B

  ecause of the hook on the wall of the prison cell that must have been propping up Hiram Smalls from the waist—and Natt’s comment that it had been gone for “two or three years”—Lenox felt distinctly suspicious of the warden as he entered Newgate again. In the end, however, he wasn’t forced to confront the man and merely signed in with Dallington to see Gerald Poole in a small room where prisoners could receive visitors.

  They went in and found the prisoner sitting at a small table with three rickety stools around it. The room was otherwise empty, though a guard remained outside the door.

  “That can’t be John Dallington, can it?” Poole said with transparent shock on his face.

  “How do you do, old friend?” said Dallington.

  “Only middling,” said Poole, then laughed and turned to Lenox. “Gerald Poole. Won’t you sit down?”

  “Charles Lenox,” said the detective, seeing right away the way Dallington had been trying to describe Poole. He seemed as unconcerned at finding himself in prison as he would have been at finding himself in Buckingham Palace. An unflappable lad. Of course, criminals often were unflappable.

  “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “I wish it were under happier circumstances,” said Dallington.

  “Whatever can bring you here?”

  “It’s funny, actually—I’m an amateur detective now. Or training to be one. Lenox here made the daft decision to take me on as his student. Perhaps you’ve seen his name in the paper?”

  “The Oxford case, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes!” said the young lord and beamed.

  “But—a detective, Dallington?”

  Now here was a conversation Lenox had had a hundred times in his life. Peers and elders who had once considered him promising greeted the news with barely concealed consternation, while those less familiar with him idly wondered if he had lost his money on horses or women. How much easier to be like Edmund, a stolid MP, part of the great mass of respectable aristocrats who clustered around Grosvenor Square! Lenox loved his work dearly and felt it was noble indeed; nevertheless, ignoble though it was, part of him yearned for the comfortable respect of being a Member of Parliament. It wasn’t the main reason he was running, but if he admitted it to himself it was one of the reasons. No more uncomfortable moments like this one.

  Dallington, predictably, was more open than Lenox. He laughed. “Just a fancy,” he said. “I haven’t been disowned or anything like that. I felt I could do some good. Neither of us was cut out for the old military and clergy line of things, were we, Gerry?”

  Poole laughed merrily, accepting Dallington’s explanation at face value. “No, indeed not,” he said. His accent was very definitely English, though he had passed so much of his life abroad. Lenox thought of the traitor Jonathan Poole and suddenly found himself curious.

  “I told Lenox you couldn’t possibly have killed either of those journalists, and he agreed to come over and see you. He’s the best, I promise.”

  “I’m awfully grateful. I seem to have few friends in this city—if visitors are friends. My cousin visited but could never rid himself for a moment of his feeling of superiority, and a childhood friend came but found me changed beyond his liking. I’ve ordered in a few books, but these have been worrisome hours, I confess.”

  “I have faults,” said Dallington, “but at any rate I’m a good friend.”

  Here Poole broke into a magnificent smile, a truly radiant smile, and in that moment Lenox felt with great power that he must be innocent. All the incarcerated lad said was, “Yes, you are, John. A good friend.”

  “Will you tell us about your meeting with Smalls?” asked Lenox.

  “Business—yes. Well, it was the damnedest thing I ever knew.”

  “Oh?”

  “I only returned to London three and a half months ago, when I finally turned eighteen, Mr. Lenox, and came into my inheritance. Before then my education had been on the Continent, and my tastes had run toward that part of the world anyway.” Very openly, he added, “You’ve heard of my father?”

  “Yes,” said Lenox in a measured voice.

  “London was a bitter place to my mind because of him, you see, but my lawyers contacted me and said that I had to return to see to business—and anyway I was finally growing restless in Porto, where Dallington and I first met.

  “I’ve found it pleasant enough here, although I had no friends and little enough acquaintance. I spent my time corresponding with friends abroad, seeing shows, walking in Hyde Park, dining at my club—in short, adjusting to London—when the man named Hiram Smalls contacted me.

  “He called himself Frank Johnson, however, not by his real name. He said in a letter that he had worked for my father at our house in Russell Square when I was very young and that he had always been fond of me and longed for a reunion, having heard that I was back in London. I’m not sure how he heard that, and it strikes me as strange, frankly.”

  Poole lit a cigar and seemed to ponder this for a moment.

  “What happened at your meeting?”

  “It was the strang
est thing. At first he began reminiscing in such broad terms that I was instantly sure we had never met in this life. After ten minutes I felt I had listened enough and asked him his true business. He denied lying, and I did all I could do—stood up and left. As I went I heard a barmaid who quite clearly knew him address him as Hiram. It left a strange impression upon me, but I didn’t think a thing of it after a day or two had passed. Then yesterday Inspector Exeter knocked on my door and arrested me for the murder of two men I’ve never heard of in my life. It’s the strangest damned thing under the sun.”

  “Singular,” Lenox agreed.

  “Clearly Smalls wanted to meet him in public for some nefarious reason!” said Dallington with passion.

  “Yes,” said Lenox, “and he took you to a pub where they knew him and could testify to the meeting. It’s strange indeed. I remember something slightly like it, that I heard of once—though that was in France. I doubt the solution there meets the facts here, however. In that instance they needed the man out of his house in order to steal from it. Nobody has stolen anything from you, I hope?”

  “Not that I know of, no.”

  “Well—I certainly trust Dallington when he avers your innocence, Mr. Poole. He and I shall do our level best to figure out what happened to Pierce and Carruthers, not to mention Smalls. I take it the man you met at the pub was like the description you subsequently heard of Smalls?”

  “Oh, yes—short and stocky. The very man, I would say.”

  “Very well, Mr. Poole. Is there anything you wish to add?”

  “I scarcely need to say that I’m innocent, I think.”

  “Of course not,” said Dallington indignantly.

  “In that case we shall bid you good day.”

  Outside of the prison again, Dallington said, “What did you think, then?”

  “There’s a chance he’s guilty.”

  “There certainly isn’t!”

  “A small chance, of course. Still, one must say it, a chance.”

  “What on earth would his motive be?”

  Lenox stopped. Around the two men London’s business milled. “You can keep a secret?”

  “Yes,” said Dallington expectantly.

  “Carruthers and Pierce testified against Poole’s father. Whether Gerald knew that or not I couldn’t say.”