The Fleet Street Murders

by Charles Finch

  He was tired both in spirit and in body, aching all over from the exertions of the day before, but he was conscious that he had a duty to return to London and help Dallington. While he was glad that he had fought, how much more use might he have been in the capital, following the Fleet Street murderers? Then the depressing thought occurred to him that he was no closer to exposing George Barnard’s criminality to the world than he had ever been—but he pushed that away. There were other priorities in the short term. It would have to wait.

  He dressed and asked Graham to get tickets for the afternoon train. Given his preference, Lenox would have liked to hide out in his room until the train left, avoiding all of the people who knew his ignominy, but he keenly understood the cowardice of that and forced himself to descend the stairs to the main chamber of the Queen’s Arms.

  There he saw the most welcome sight he could imagine, perhaps even more than the sight of Lady Jane would have been.

  It was his brother, Edmund, sitting with a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper.

  “Edmund?”

  “Hullo, Charles,” said Sir Edmund Lenox, the 11th Baronet of Market house. “How are you going along?”

  The two men shook hands. “Not too badly,” said Charles, “but what in heavens brings you here?”

  Edmund shrugged. “I had your telegram,” he said. “I thought I would come visit you, and perhaps we might take the train back to London together.”

  “That was kind of you indeed.”

  Edmund smiled sadly. “I’m only sorry that I encouraged you to run. It was always going to be a challenge after Stoke died.”

  “Are Hilary and Brick very disappointed?”

  “Yes, of course, but they understand how hard you worked. Still, I don’t come here as a Member of Parliament but as your brother.”

  Indeed, Charles felt like a little brother, grateful for his older brother’s consideration.

  “Well—it was a disappointment, that’s all.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Charles.”

  The two men sat down, and Lenox declined a cup of coffee but said he wouldn’t mind a soft-boiled egg with a square of toast. Edmund said that sounded good, and soon enough they had their food and were talking companionably about Edmund’s sons, about the old lands at Lenox House, where they had both grown up but only Edmund lived now, and about Lenox’s forthcoming marriage to Lady Jane.

  “I was sorry to hear about Toto,” said Edmund.

  Lenox nodded. “What a terrible blow that was. Of course, she and Thomas were treading on thin ice already.”

  “Any news?”

  “Apparently they’ve reconciled. I certainly hope so.”

  “How about”—Edmund tried to sound unconcerned—“the Fleet Street murders? And Exeter?”

  Lenox laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You make a poor actor.”

  For all the responsibilities of his position in Sussex and in Parliament, Edmund had a childlike enthusiasm for his brother’s profession, often begging for details. Once he had been able to help with an investigation, and other than his wedding day it was the closest Charles had seen him to nirvana.

  “Well?” said Edmund, now eagerly. “What do you know?”

  “Nothing very current, I’m afraid. I know that Hiram Smalls killed Simon Pierce, and another man—his accomplice—killed Winston Carruthers.”

  “Do you? How?”

  Lenox explained the note and indeed described his whole day of research into the mystery of Hiram Smalls’s death.

  “Who could have penetrated the prison?” Edmund asked.

  Lenox sighed. “Any number of people, unfortunately. Poole wasn’t there yet, of course. Men making deliveries, other inmates. The gangs run riot in Newgate. Tell me, though, what do you hear of Exeter? Your knowledge is surely more current than mine.”

  “Apparently he will make it through. The bullet perforated one of his organs, I forget which.”

  “He was shot in the back?”

  “Yes,” said Edmund. “They’re keeping him under wraps, however. There’s very little information. The entire city is fascinated by the story, it goes without saying. Some poorer people are saying it’s a good riddance.”

  “Exeter was never tactful or gentle in his methods. Still, he deserved better than this. I shall take the matter in hand when I return to town this afternoon.”

  “Will you?” said Edmund. “Excellent! I really am delighted to hear it. May I help?”

  “We’ll see,” said Lenox. “There’s Dallington now.”

  “You know, I’ve been asking for years if I could be your apprentice, Charles,” said Edmund with a frown.

  “It would scarcely have suited,” said Lenox with a smile. He realized that for the moment he wasn’t thinking of Roodle in Parliament.

  “It will be a diversion, I hope, from your regret.”

  “About the election?” Lenox shrugged. “It stings a little, but I’m a grown man, after all. I can accommodate a little pain. My life hasn’t been so hard.”

  “No,” said Edmund. “That’s true, and you have a great deal to look forward to. Your marriage.”

  “Yes.”

  Edmund’s eyes narrowed. “Has something happened?”

  “Because I’m not as effusive as you?” Lenox took a sip of coffee. The pub was filling up with early customers. One of the lessons of Stirrington for him had been that there was no hour at which a pint of beer was inappropriate. “No, nothing has happened.”

  Edmund stared hard at him. “Really?”

  Lenox sighed. “Well—perhaps. It’s so minor I shouldn’t mention it, but she said—well, that she has doubts.”

  “What sort of doubts?”

  “I can’t say, really. Perhaps that we’ve known each other too short a time,” he added rather lamely, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

  “You’ve known each other for hundreds of years.”

  “So I told her. It is quick, I suppose, but I don’t mind that.”

  “It was a shock to her system,” said Edmund. “Women and men alike are subject to these things. I was nervous—exceedingly nervous—before I married Molly.”

  “I recall,” Lenox answered, smiling at the thought of his brother soused to the gills and alternately saying he wanted to marry Molly that instant or flee to the depths of the Orient.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t talk to me about China, there’s a chap,” said Edmund with a grimace. “Listen, shall we walk around town a bit before we get the train back? Put a good face on things?”

  “Of course,” said Lenox. He hailed and gave her a few coins.

  “Ah, Mr. Lenox—before I forget, it’s another telegram for you. You’ll wear the machine out, you know,” she said.

  “Thanks, Lucy.”

  He tore it open and read it quickly, then went completely white.

  “My God, what is it, Charles?” said Edmund.

  He looked up. “It’s from Jenkins. Exeter is dead.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  C

  hrist,” said Edmund, sitting forward in his chair. “Can it be true? From all I had heard his wounds weren’t that severe.” Lenox shook his head, frowning, as he pored over the note. “Apparently he worsened overnight. An infection reached his blood, and he died quickly.” He looked up. “I hope not painfully.”

  “What was he like, Inspector Exeter?”

  “Did you never meet him? A bluff chap, proud—as a policeman he was determined and hardworking but never imaginative. He was a bully, I’m afraid. No use eulogizing him. Still, say this for Exeter,” said Lenox, thinking of the few times they had worked together, “he was always on the side of the law. He wanted what was best for London. People forget that Scotland Yard is still a young institution, bound to make its own mistakes before it improves.”

  “Yes,” said Edmund.

  Lenox shifted uneasily. “It’s a selfish thing to say, but I hope he wasn’t shot because of the case. I feel a se
nse of foreboding about my return to London.”

  “It hadn’t even occurred to me,” said Edmund, a look of concern on his face. “Good heavens. Well, it’s simple enough—you mustn’t do anything more about the murders.”

  Lenox shook his head. “No. I can’t do that. If Poole is guilty, I have to confirm it; if Poole is innocent, I have to prove it. I’ve deferred Dallington’s requests, but I cannot any longer. He saved my life, remember.”

  “For which we’re all in his debt—but surely he wouldn’t want you to go about risking what he had saved, would he?”

  “I’m afraid I must do what I think is right, Edmund.”

  With a sigh, he answered, “Yes, you must.”

  “Come, let’s go see Stirrington. The election doesn’t seem such a serious thing any longer, somehow.”

  The two brothers spent the midday walking around town. At first they were somber and discussed the implications of Exeter’s death, but life is fluid in its nature, and it’s a rare mind that cannot cope with death, however sudden, however sorrowful. Soon their congenial natures took over, and they conversed as they were wont to do. Something funny happened, too—all day long people walked up to Lenox and congratulated him, as if he had won. Almost nobody offered condolences. He remembered that it was something in itself to run, to push the democracy along, and felt slightly better.

  Soon enough it was time for the train. Graham had packed Lenox’s things, and all that remained left to do was say good-bye to Crook; he had already parted with Sandy Smith, promising to keep in touch and inviting Smith to visit him should he ever happen to be in the capital.

  He ducked his head into the Queen’s Arms while Edmund smoked a pipe in the sun, but Crook was absent from the bar. Lucy, ever helpful, told him that Crook had asked that Lenox be referred to his house next door. So the detective went to the small house and made his way again into Nettie’s parlor. The maid went off to fetch Crook, and for the last time Lenox looked over Nettie’s embroidery and her watercolors, and he felt strangely moved by it all. It was an honor to have been accepted by these people. He was glad he had done it, win or lose. There had been so much generosity toward him, where there might have been suspicion or indifference.

  “Well, how do you do, Mr. Lenox?” said Crook, coming into the room. He settled his great heft into a deep armchair and set about lighting his pipe. “Do you want a cup of tea or a cake?”

  “We have to catch the train, unfortunately, and I can’t linger. Thank you, though.”

  “Do you regret having come to Stirrington?”

  “On the contrary, I was only just thinking how glad I was that I had.”

  Crook furrowed his brow. “I’ll never understand how we lost, Mr. Lenox.”

  “However it was, it was despite your efforts, Mr. Smith’s efforts, your friends’ efforts.”

  “And your own. I mean it, though—we ought to have won. Really. It puzzles me more the more I think about it.”

  “In any event.”

  “I hope you take fond memories away, anyhow, and perhaps even visit again.”

  “I shall,” said Lenox.

  Crook stood up. “Well, I suppose you had better be on your way.”

  Lenox stood up and felt the queer consciousness that he would never lay eyes on Crook again, though for two weeks they had been in constant conference, even friends. He tried to treat the moment with the dignity it demanded.

  “Good-bye,” he said, “and thank you for everything you have done. I shall never forget it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lenox. Next time, eh?”

  On the train several hours later Lenox, Edmund, and Graham shared a medium-sized compartment and soon littered it with their newspapers and books. Edmund had read for an hour or so and then, because of his overnight train ride, had fallen asleep. Graham was taking a thorough inventory of the news (the train carried that morning’s papers), and Lenox spent his time reading and glancing out the window.

  He had said the election didn’t seem as important after Exeter’s death, but despite the nobility of that sentiment the vote kept sliding back onto the edges of Lenox’s vision, a dark specter he hadn’t wholly confronted, a decisive disappointment at the crescendo of his lifelong hopes.

  They were nearing London, finally. It was dark and, he felt through the window, cold out, with the small houses and farms near the tracks bright orange with light, a thousand human lives contained in them, a thousand stories. As they drew up on the edge of the city, outside the old gate, each new geographic signpost recalled a past case, and he thought that whether it was dangerous or not, at least he had his work. He loved being a detective.

  Naturally, his mind turned to what they were calling the Fleet Street murders, and he spent the last part of the trip in grim silence, going over the details of the thing in his head.

  In the end the truly strange thing was the dichotomy that Pierce and Carruthers presented. The former was thin and gray, the latter fat and red; the former was religious and ascetic, the latter corruptible and drunken. Only two things united them: their profession, of course, and also—and then Lenox saw it all.

  He looked up at Graham.

  “Sir?”

  “Gerald Poole is innocent,” said the detective with complete conviction.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m certain—but then, what desperate villain killed the journalists and Smalls, and perhaps Exeter?” he murmured, talking to himself. “What stakes would be worth the risk? Not money, I would guess. Well, maybe money, but I really think it must be reputation—or livelihood—or family.”

  “May I inquire, sir, how you have proved Mr. Poole’s innocence to your satisfaction?”

  “It’s intuition, but I feel pretty confident, all right. The secret of the thing is that Carruthers was the true target. Pierce was only killed as a cover for the true motive, to falsely point Scotland Yard toward Gerald Poole.”

  “I don’t follow your line of thought, sir.”

  “Because Carruthers and Pierce are so strongly linked by Jonathan Poole’s treason, naturally an investigator would assume that their murders had something to do with that. Pierce is the perfect red herring.”

  “Then you mean the murderer wanted to kill Mr. Carruthers and killed Mr. Pierce simply to place suspicion on Gerald Poole?”

  “On Jonathan Poole’s recently returned son, of course! In fact, the motive for the murders wasn’t anything to do with Jonathan Poole’s treason. The murderer merely wanted it to seem that way, and so in addition to killing his real target, Carruthers, he killed Pierce, who I’d wager wasn’t involved in all this muddle.”

  “It makes sense, sir.”

  “Doesn’t it follow, then, that Gerald Poole is innocent? He was set up!”

  “Yes, sir, it seems plausible when you put it so.”

  “Is there another way to put it that I haven’t thought of?”

  “I have one question, sir,” said Graham.

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you believe Carruthers was the real target? Is it not just as likely that Pierce was the real target and Carruthers the cover-up?”

  “I don’t think so. Pierce was incorruptible and untainted, and Carruthers was utterly corruptible, utterly tainted. There’s something more important, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “The piece of paper missing from the desk in front of Carruthers. Do you remember I told you that he had ink all over his hands and a pen, but that there was no paper before him? I reckon Carruthers was blackmailing somebody, writing something incriminating—he was killed for that missing piece of paper.”

  “Whereas Pierce died on his doorstep, and the killer never could have gone inside,” murmured Graham thoughtfully.

  “Precisely. I feel sure we’re right. Please go see Dallington when we get back and tell him that I think Poole is innocent. Fetch him to me then, would you? I haven’t the patience to wait for a note to find him.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  �
�What’s all this?” said Edmund, stirring.

  “Gerald Poole is innocent,” said Lenox, eyes blazing.

  Edmund blinked. “How long was I asleep?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  T

  hey arrived in London in late evening, and the station discharged the three men, a ragged procession laden with bags, into a thick, cold rain. Lenox grabbed the first newspaper he could lay his hands on and read the opening line of its lead article, on the subject of Exeter’s death: “A lion has vanished from the halls of Scotland Yard, and our nation’s capital is inestimably poorer for it.” All of the news stories about Exeter ran in that way, and by the time his carriage had reached Berkeley Square Lenox was persuaded that the man might as well have been Alexander the Great, such was the tenor of the tributes to him. It gave him a queer feeling, to imagine poor Exeter dead; it can never be pleasant to mourn for someone that you’ve had equivocal feelings about.

  When they reached Hampden Lane and Lenox’s house, Graham handed the luggage to a footman and then was instantly off in a cab to find Dallington. The two brothers, meawhile, dragged their tired bodies into the library.

  “Welcome back,” said Mary in the hallway, curtsying. “Coffee?”

  “Wine,” said Edmund.

  “Whisky,” said Lenox.

  The fire was warm and made him drowsy, and Lenox felt a sluggish pleasure at being home after the dual calamities of Exeter and Stirrington.

  “Thanks for coming up to Stirrington,” he said to Edmund. “I was so awfully low. It saved me.”

  “Of course,” murmured Edmund.

  There were a few long minutes of silence, during which Lenox assumed they were both ruminating on the past day or two. It came as something of a surprise, then, when Edmund’s head rolled back a little and he gave a great snore.

  Lenox laughed quietly and pulled the wineglass from his brother’s hand. Then he crept out to the hallway and said to Mary, “Leave the library alone, would you, and have someone make up a fire in the Ugly Room.”

  Now, in Lenox’s house the Ugly Room was rather an institution; it was situated toward the back of the first floor and had a few small windows overlooking the thin strip of garden behind the house. It took its name not from its situation, which was in fact rather pleasant, but from its contents. They were the debris of Lenox’s life. There was a giant, hideous wardrobe that he had somehow convinced himself to buy when he came to London, a large oil painting that he had bought from a friend’s exhibition and couldn’t get rid of, a pair of ornate silver candlesticks that stood about two feet high and looked as if they had come from somebody’s nightmare. Bad books lined the walls. Sooner or later every uncomfortable and creaky chair in the house found its way to the Ugly Room. Lenox went back there to wait for Dallington and surveyed it with some satisfaction. Most people had their terrible things spread throughout their house, but he liked to concentrate them all in one place, where he could make sure they never moved back into his life on the sly. He didn’t come in here more than once a fortnight.