Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Two weeks later it was truly winter at last, and Lenox, more fool he, was sitting outside on a public bench near Wallace Street very early in the morning, as slow, heavy snowflakes drifted down in the windless air, whitening the awnings, dotting the streets. He was warmly bundled, though, and the company was fair: Graham sat next to him, just as deeply buried in warm cloaks and wrappers and gloves, only their eyes and mouths exposed to the cold. Between them on the bench was a large stone bottle of hot tea that Lenox had brought, from which they frequently replenished their small tin cups.

“There he goes, meeting that gentleman in the carriage,” said Graham.

“Damn him,” said Lenox.

“The third time.”

They watched as Obadiah Smith stood at the door of the carriage for a few moments, then, after receiving a piece of paper, ducked back into the begrimed public house that served as his headquarters — the sort of backstreet establishment, not uncongenial, that would put your cut of beef on the gridiron if you bought a drink, and bring it to you with mustard and walnut ketchup.

“What is he doing, I wonder?” Lenox asked for the tenth time.

“All three carriages have been well appointed.”

“I noticed.”

Smith was a long-term quarry of Lenox’s, a score he intended to settle on his own time, and this sort of casual ongoing observation of him wasn’t unpleasant, a piece of the puzzle, not a moment of urgent action. The afternoon before, Graham had asked him to breakfast, and Lenox had invited him instead on this escapade — a dirty trick, to be sure, except that Graham had always enjoyed this extracurricular aspect of his work, when he’d been Lenox’s butler, and they’d had the better part of an hour to talk.

“Back to the subject we were discussing — spring, you are fairly sure?” asked Lenox.

“I think so,” said Graham.

“In that case we will have the supper outdoors.”

“Supper?” Graham said, raising his eyebrows.

“Myself, Jane, you, Miss Winston of course, McConnell, Dallington, Lord Cabot—” Cabot was an old political ally of Lenox’s, in failing health but still stubbornly sociable, who had become extremely intimate with Graham in the past year—“and anyone else you care to invite.”

“Neither Miss Winston nor I wants any bother. I say that quite sincerely.”

“I’ll see you to hell myself before I let you get married without a supper, Graham.”

Graham shook his head. “My calendar is full this spring.”

“Every night!”

“Every night.”

Lenox laughed, and was about to reply when Smith came out again. The detective scowled and leaned forward slightly, peering through the narrow slit between his scarf and his hat. “What could he be doing?”

Graham studied Smith, who was a hardened criminal, a diabolical and clever person. “I wonder if he’s working in his old line again.”

“Prostitution?”

Graham nodded. “He’s only receiving papers. Addresses, perhaps?”

Lenox narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps. But why would the carriages come to him? And why would they leave behind a trail of paper? I wonder if it’s something more complex. Stockjobbing, for instance.”

“You could find out by following him at night. If it’s prostitution, that’s when he’ll be busiest. If it’s stockjobbing, he’ll be off the clock then.”

Graham had always been an invaluable second set of eyes. “You’re right. If only it were warmer out.”

“Mr. Pointilleux is enthusiastic, is he not?”

“I wouldn’t want to put him in the way of danger. It’s my case.”

“Then you and I might do it one night this week.”

“I can’t risk the neck of a Member of Parliament, Graham. Not to mention what Miss Winston would think of it.”

“I think my neck will be all right,” said Graham drily.

Lenox continued to peer at the public house, wishing Smith, who’d disappeared inside once more, would come out again. They had a cab waiting and intended to follow the next carriage that came for him. “Well,” he said, still staring, “if you’re busy all spring it will be a luncheon. And if you’re not careful, I’m going to ask Jane to speak to Miss Winston directly.”

“Heaven help us,” Graham said.

Lenox laughed.

Several hours later, still pink-cheeked but dried and warmed, and having dropped Graham near Parliament, Lenox was sitting with Polly and Dallington at the weekly meeting of the agency’s three partners.

“Our finances are not spectacular,” Polly was saying, tapping the end of her pencil against the balance sheet she was studying. “Not disastrous, but not spectacular.”

“Not disastrous has always been my ambition in life,” said Dallington, and smiled at the look of exasperated affection that Polly shot him. “Anyhow, why be so gloomy? We’ve wiped LeMaire’s eye, we’re the heroes of Fleet Street, and we have half a dozen meetings with new clients today alone.”

“All six of them put together won’t add up to what we lost by Chadwick. I’m not joking. If it weren’t for the reserve fund, we would be in debt right now. I still think we might be wise to let one of the new detectives go. Mayhew probably.”

Lenox grimaced. It was true — Chadwick had cost them a few of their steadiest clients. “This is why it’s quite right that Polly is in charge,” he pointed out to Dallington. “Best to have a pessimist making the decisions.”

“I’m not a pessimist!” cried Polly. “A realist, perhaps.”

“Are you not pleased that the Daily Mirror called you ‘fetching,’ then?” asked Dallington.

“I’ll quit if you mention that again.”

Muller was in dock; the newspapers agreed that he wasn’t likely to serve a long sentence, since murder would be near impossible to prove, and a half-emptied sachet of arsenic had been found among Miss Schiller’s effects at the Hotel York. More than that, the palace had a strong interest in a pleasant relationship with Germany, as several of the John Bull — ish rags took pleasure in pointing out.

Lenox and Dallington had been to speak to him twice more, and also been to the Yard to receive Broadbridge’s brusque praise. (Most of that credit they pushed toward Nicholson, who looked likely, all fingers crossed, to be promoted on the strength of running Muller to ground. It would be valuable to have a chief inspector among the agency’s friends.) It was true that the three detectives had become briefly famous recently — to such an extent that even the Monomark papers had given them a few terse mentions, because it would have looked odd had they not.

But would it translate into income? That was the devilish thing about business, Lenox had discovered — never knowing quite whether the blend of publicity and word of mouth and good work would come together to create something that might be sustainable. If they sacked Mayhew he would probably be outraged, given how the business had hummed since Muller’s capture. What he couldn’t know was the difficulty of living by the books.

Let nobody say that Lenox, as he approached fifty, couldn’t learn new ways.

“Not spectacular,” said Polly again, glaring at the paper. “I really would like spectacular.”

She was their best chance of spectacular. He glanced over at Dallington, who was staring at her with unconcealed fondness, and thought that perhaps the notion wasn’t unique to him. “Let’s give it two weeks,” said Lenox. “We have quarterly payments coming in from Deere and Steele. Then we can decide about the staff.”

Polly nodded. “Fine. Next order of business, then. Dallington, have you spoken to your friend at Bonhams about looking at my client’s porcelain collection? She is adamant she has been defrauded.”

Lenox only half listened to Dallington’s reply to the question, sitting back in his chair, turning his head to look through the window at the snow that was still falling outside. He’d accept Graham’s offer to come out with him that night and follow Smith, he thought. Not far from Parliament there was a prison called Tothill. In another country, where criminals were held far away from the footpaths of respectable daily life, that would have seemed odd — but in London, the prisons were as integrated into the streets as surely as the banks and the baths. With any luck, Smith would be behind the bars of a cell there before the calendar turned over to 1877.