The Fleet Street Murders clm-3

by Charles Finch

  Below this piece of sensationalism were two lengthier profiles of the men. Turning to the other papers, Lenox found much the same stories, with minor variances of biography. A shooting and a stabbing, five minutes apart. He wondered what the “definite link” between Carruthers and Pierce might be. Straightaway he thought it must be some story they had both covered. Perhaps he would try through covert means to discover what it was. A fascinating case, certainly — but did he have time to try to help solve it?

  It was a busy period in Lenox’s life. Recently he had solved one of his most difficult cases, a murder in Oxford, and been shot for his efforts. Only grazed, but still. After a long life of solitude, too, he was engaged to be married. Most pressing of all, soon he was to participate in a by-election for Parliament in Stirrington, near the city of Durham. His brother and several other Members of the Liberal Party had approached him to ask him to run. Though he loved his work as a detective and bravely embraced the low esteem in which the members of his class held his profession, to be in Parliament was the dream of his lifetime.

  Still — these murders would be the great story of the day, and Lenox felt a longing to be involved in their solution. One of his few friends at Scotland Yard was a bright young inspector named Jenkins, and to him Lenox wrote a short query, entrusting it to Mary’s care when the maid came to fetch the remains of his breakfast. He felt better for having eaten. A third cup of coffee sat on his bedside table, and he reached for it.

  Just then Edmund knocked on the door and came in. He looked green around the gills.

  “Hullo, brother,” said Charles. “Feeling badly?”

  “Awful.”

  “Did eating help?”

  “Don’t even mention food, I beg of you,” said Edmund. “I would rather face Attila the Hun than a plate of toast.”

  Charles laughed. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Molly had the heart to take the boys out earlier. Not even a word of reproach. What a treasure she is.” A sentimental look came into Edmund’s eyes.

  “Do you have meetings today?”

  “Not until five o’clock or so. The Prime Minister has remained in town.”

  “You said last night.”

  “I need to sharpen up before then, to be sure. Perhaps I’ll go back to sleep.”

  “The wisest course,” Charles assured him.

  “Then I’ll have a bath and try to put myself into some decent shape. At the moment I feel like the offspring of a human being and a puddle on the floor.”

  “Have you seen the papers, by the way?”

  “What happened?”

  “Two journalists were murdered last night — opposite sides of town within just a few minutes of each other.”

  “Oh yes? Well, you’ve other things to concentrate on at the moment.”

  “I do, I know,” said Charles rather glumly. “I wrote Jenkins, though.”

  Edmund stopped pacing, and his face took on a stern aspect. “Many people are counting on you, Charles,” he said. “Not to mention your country.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should spend this month before you go up to Stirrington meeting with politicians, granting interviews, strategizing with James Hilary.” Hilary was a bright young star in the firmament of Liberal politics and a friend of Charles’s, one of those who had entreated him to stand for Parliament. “This time can be quite as productive as any you spend in Durham.”

  “I thought you were sick.”

  “This is crucial, Charles.”

  “You never did any of that,” the younger brother answered.

  “Father had my seat. And his father. And his father. World without end.”

  “I know, I know. I simply feel irresponsible if I stay out of things, I suppose. My meddling ways.”

  “Just think of all the good we’ll do when you’re in the House,” said Edmund.

  “Especially if we don’t stay up late drinking.”

  Edmund sighed. “Yes. Especially then, I grant you.”

  “See you downstairs.”

  “Don’t let them wake me up before I’m ready.”

  “I won’t. Unless it’s nearing five.”

  “Cheers,” said Edmund and left the room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That afternoon Inspector Jenkins answered Lenox’s note by visiting in person. Lenox was sitting in the long, book-filled room he used as library and study. Just down the front hall of the house, it had comfortable sofas and armchairs and a long desk, as well as a broad, high row of windows that looked out over Hampden Lane. The rain of the evening before had gone but left in its place a low, rolling fog that thickened over the streets of London. Lamplighters were out early, trying to provide the city with visibility.

  Jenkins was young and clever. He wore glasses on his earnest face and had an unruly crop of light brown hair.

  “How do you do, Lenox?” he asked and accepted a cup of tea. “Exeter’s not letting me near the case, so I thought I’d come by.”

  “I know how he can be.”

  “Oh, of course, of course.”

  Inspector Exeter, a powerful man in the police force whose blunt tactics and lack of perception had both alienated him from the amateur detective and pushed him up through the ranks, was famously territorial about his cases and particularly disliked Lenox’s occasional interference. Despite that, Exeter had had occasion to call on Lenox’s skills and might not entirely reject his help if the case of the two journalists reached an impasse.

  “What details did you keep out of the papers?”

  “The Belgian housekeeper?”

  “Yes?”

  “Martha Claes, she’s called. Apparently she had bragged to one or two of her friends that she was coming into a bit of money. We think the murderer paid her enough that she could leave.”

  “That tells us something about the criminal, then.”

  “What?”

  “Well — that he would rather use money than violence. Not many criminals are that way, in my experience. Not many criminals have enough money to send three marginally genteel people out of London, leaving all their possessions behind. No robbery from Carruthers’s rooms, I presume?”

  “That’s correct, actually, yes.”

  “Probably he knew the household well enough to approach Mrs. Claes as an acquaintance.”

  “You think the criminal had visited Carruthers?”

  “Wouldn’t he have had to? Simply approaching the man’s housekeeper on the street would have been extremely foolhardy.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It seems more likely that he was visiting upstairs than downstairs, given that he offered Mrs. Claes money.”

  “Of course assuming she didn’t actually inherit it.”

  “A lone foreigner in this country, without a husband? Then, too, if she had come by the money honestly, why run?”

  “Fear?”

  Lenox shook his head. “I doubt it. The murderer is either very rich or willing to spend his last farthing to murder these two men. More likely the first than the second, I would wager.”

  Jenkins took a note of this. “Yes,” he said. “We hadn’t thought that through.”

  “How is Exeter handling the matter?” asked Lenox.

  “As he usually does,” said Jenkins without inflection, his loyalty in this instance to the Yard rather than his superior.

  “With all the tact of an angry bull, then?”

  Jenkins laughed. “If you choose to say so, Mr. Lenox. He’s roused every able-bodied stable boy and driver on the street to accuse them of the crime.”

  Lenox snorted. “A clever stable boy, to use a rope ladder rather than risk getting caught by servants who walk between houses every day.”

  “Indeed,” said Jenkins. “Though it backfired in the end, that cleverness — we found the ladder, after all.”

  “What else?”

  “One other thing about Carruthers.”

  “Yes?”

  “There were a pen
and blotter on his supper table, both freshly used, and ink on his hands.”

  “But no paper in evidence, I suppose you’ll tell me. So the murderer was partly there to steal a damaging document.”

  “He might have filed it away, Inspector Exeter argued.”

  “Yes, yes, or brought it from his newspaper’s office, or given it to a dove to fly to Noah’s Ark with. I’m familiar with the inane pattern of thought Exeter might employ.”

  “Well.”

  Lenox sighed. “I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to talk like that.”

  “No, perhaps not.”

  “What about Pierce?”

  “That’s altogether more mysterious, actually. Nobody saw or heard a thing, other than the shot.”

  “Nothing missing from his house?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Do you read the News of the Day?” asked Lenox.

  “Since you recommended I do so, Lenox, yes.”

  “What was the ‘definite link’ between Carruthers and Pierce?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ah — you must have gotten up early to get the first edition.”

  “Yes, I’ve been up all night, trying to help.”

  “According to the second edition of the News Exeter had discovered a solid link between the two men, aside from their careers.”

  Jenkins looked uneasy. “Oh, yes — that.”

  “What was it?”

  “It’s sensitive information, in fact. I fear I must exact the traditional promise from you.”

  “Nothing you say will leave this room,” promised Lenox gravely.

  “According to Exeter, Pierce and Carruthers were two of the three journalists who gave testimony against Jonathan Poole at his trial.”

  Lenox inhaled sharply.

  The British government had executed Poole six years before for high treason. During the Crimean War, Poole, born an aristocrat but with a grandmother from the Baltic region, had spied on England for Russia. Poole’s subordinate, an anonymous navy officer called Rolk, had written to three newspapers in England when he started to suspect his superior of treason. Before the letters made it home Rolk was dead — accidentally drowned, or so it appeared. By then Poole was already making plans to defect to Russia, but the British navy had apprehended him at the last moment. The trial had been a celebrated one, titillating both because of the high-ranking personages who spoke on behalf of Poole’s character and the perceived heroism of poor Rolk. Three journalists had testified behind closed doors to receiving Rolk’s letters. Apparently two of them were Carruthers and Pierce.

  “Yes,” said Jenkins, as if to confirm Lenox’s surprise.

  “Have you looked out for the third journalist?”

  “He died four years ago.”

  “How?”

  “Naturally, from all we could gather this morning. His widow didn’t appreciate our questions. According to the coroner it was an entirely average death. In his sleep.”

  “Still — Poole has been dead for years! I doubt most people have thought of him since it all ended.”

  “Well — yes,” said Jenkins in a measured tone.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure I should say before we’ve gathered all of the information we need.”

  Lenox understood. “Yes, of course.”

  Jenkins stood up. “At any rate, you’ll know before anybody else.”

  “Thanks so much for coming by. Let me know if you need help.”

  “Any initial thoughts?” said Jenkins, walking to the door.

  “Wait,” said Lenox. There was a pause.

  “What is it?” asked Jenkins.

  Lenox thought for a moment. “I’ve got it.”

  “Yes?”

  “He had a son, didn’t he? Poole?”

  Jenkins stopped in his tracks. “Oh?”

  “I just remembered. Poole’s son, he’s back. He’d be nineteen, twenty, thereabouts, wouldn’t he? His grandparents took him to the Continent, but there was a small item in several of the papers about his return. Living by St. James’s Park.”

  Jenkins sighed. “What a prodigious memory you have.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We have no evidence whatsoever to link him to Pierce or Carruthers, though.”

  “Christ. I wonder if he could have done it.”

  “Inspector Exeter has sent out a canvass to find him.”

  Lenox shook his head. “Asinine. If you’re to find him you must do it subtly.”

  “I agree,” said Jenkins, shrugging.

  “Well — good luck at any rate. Keep me informed, won’t you?”

  “I shall.”

  “Good-bye.”

  The inspector left, and Lenox sat in an armchair thinking. What puzzled him was the second murderer — for there must have been one, if the murders were so close together in time. How could Poole’s son, who had been out of the country, know anybody in London well enough to enlist them in such a plot?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two days later a mild late December sun set over Hampden Lane. Lenox sat with Lady Jane Grey on the sofa in her rose-colored sitting room — a chamber famous for the exclusivity of the evening gatherings it hosted and for its inaccessibility to all but Jane’s favorite people — fixing his cuff links. She was telling him about the dinner party they were to attend that night.

  Lady Jane was a lovely woman, with fine skin that in the sunless winter had gone quite pale, though her lips were ruby red. Her eyes were lively and gray, often amused but never cynical, with the generous cast of someone more accustomed to listening than speaking. Her intelligence shone out of them. A dark corona of hair was piled atop her head, precariously designed for the dinner party. Lenox liked it best when it shook down in curls across her shoulders, however. She dressed plainly and well; the widow of James Grey, Lord Deere, she had lived these fifteen years next door to Lenox, his closest friend in the world. Only recently, however, had he found the courage to declare his love — and found to his ongoing elation that she returned it.

  Far more so than Lenox, she was a member of London’s very highest society. In that caste there were two types of ruling women: those who campaigned, gossiped, and mocked, and those who through natural grace and intelligence gradually became arbiters of taste. Lady Jane belonged definitely to the second group. Her closest friends were Toto McConnell and the Duchess of Marchmain, and the three of them formed a triumvirate of power and taste. Their houses often hosted the defining parties of a season or the most select evening salons. Yet it was typical of Lady Jane that she was going to marry a man who would much rather be searching for clues in the alleyway of a slum than having supper in one of the palaces of Grosvenor Square. She never let her place in society determine her actions or thoughts. Perhaps that was the secret of having her place there to begin with.

  This was the woman Lenox was to marry, whose counsel he valued above any other, and who was to his spirit both sun and moon, midnight and noon.

  “Shall we take anything to supper?”

  “Oh — yes — they asked me to bring wine, didn’t they? Bother, I forgot.”

  Lenox perked up. “Let’s go by Berry’s,” he said.

  “Charles, they deliver,” said Lady Jane, an exasperated look on her face. “We’ll send someone around, and they’ll send the wine to Lady Nevin’s.”

  “But I like to go,” was his stubborn reply.

  “Then go, and come pick me up on your way back.”

  Lenox was not, as many of his friends were, much addicted to the charms of wine, but nobody could enter Berry Brothers and Rudd Wine Merchants for more than a few minutes without wanting immediately to lay down a few cases of Médoc or to rush off and lecture the barman at his club about the importance of grape variety.

  The shop, its front painted a dark, rich green, and its vaulted Gothic windows bearing its name in yellow stencil, was dusty, old, and wonderful, located a few paces off of Pall Mall on St. James’s Street. The darkened floorb
oards creaked over a cellar as valuable as any in private hands; at one end of the room was a scale as tall as a man, and beside it an old table crowded with a dozen quarter-full glasses of red wine, which customers had been tasting. Berry’s had existed since 1698 and looked as if it would go on forever.

  The place was largely deserted. One stooped old man — an oenophile, judging from the excited quiver of his nose over every bottle he smelled — was rooting through a case in the back, but the proprietor didn’t pay him any mind, standing instead at the desk in front of his ledger.

  Now, this ledger was famous. It was magnificently large, bound in the same hunter green that the shop was painted, and recorded the preferences and history of every client who visited the shop more than once. As soon as Lenox’s face had appeared in the doorway, the man behind the ledger was riffling through it to find the L section.

  “Hullo, Mr. Berry,” said Lenox.

  “Mr. Lenox, sir,” said Mr. Berry, with a slight nod of his head. “How may I be of service to you?”

  Lenox put his hands in his pockets and frowned, looking around the glass cases that held the sample bottles. “What do I like?” he said.

  In general conversation this would be a peculiar question, but Mr. Berry heard it a dozen times a day. “What are you eating?”

  “Probably beef.”

  “You have two cases of the Cheval Blanc ’62 laid down, sir,” he said.

  Lenox frowned again. “Does Graham know?”

  Graham knew everything about wine.

  “Yes, sir. I believe you purchased it under his advisement.”

  “And I like it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Berry. “You took two bottles of it to a dinner party in March. You said it was” — he consulted the ledger — “tasty, sir.” This word repeated with faint disapproval.

  “Well, better give me three bottles.”

  “Straightaway, sir.”

  This business soon transacted, Lenox and Mr. Berry spent a quarter of an hour discussing Scotch whisky, and before he left Lenox had tasted several samples and was feeling distinctly warm in his belly. He left with a bottle of the darkest sample he had tried, Talisker.