The Fleet Street Murders

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Now it was a month later.

Early February, and while the days were short and gray, and while those who tramped through London’s streets longed for home, there was a happy glow to Lenox’s life. His hours were taken up with warm fires, long books, slow suppers, his brother, and Lady Jane. He went out very little, and even when he did never commented to a soul about the downfall of George Barnard, choosing instead to focus on clearing up all of Barnard’s myriad crimes by tracing them diligently through the cunning and subtle ways in which the man had pushed Winston Carruthers’s work. The newspaper report of a fracas in some neighborhood, for instance, might dovetail nicely with a robbery several days later in the same area. It was the kind of deep research Lenox had loved since Oxford.

This morning, however, he was more pleasantly disposed, sitting in his library with Toto.

She had insisted on coming to him, although he had had his misgivings. “I need to get out of that poky house,” she said, conveniently forgetting about its ten bedrooms, and so she sat now in his library, bent daintily over a small notebook she had been keeping about Jane and Lenox’s honeymoon, her effervescent laugh ringing more and more often through the room.

It emerged from their tête-à-tête that Toto was a furious negotiator on Jane’s behalf and loved every moment of research and discussion about the honeymoon. She and Lenox complemented each other well. Every time he started to talk about local cash crops or cave art she would roll her eyes and return as soon as she could to the waterfall they had to visit, the dressmaker who was meant to be so clever.

“What do you think of Ireland?” Lenox asked.

Toto made a face. “All those potatoes,” she said. “Ugh.”

“It’s meant to be beautiful, Toto. All that green! And the beautiful Irish babies!” Lenox halted.

“It’s all right, Charles,” she said.

“No — it’s — that was awfully tactless of me.”

“Charles, it’s all right!” He saw that she was smiling shyly.

“Toto?”

“What?” she said innocently. Under his gaze, however, she soon broke down. Quietly she admitted, “We’re having a baby.”

A great weight lifted from Lenox’s spirit. “I’m so happy,” he said.

“We’re being awfully silent about it,” she said, but then, breaking into a grin, went on, “I am, too, though! How happy I am!”

“Is Thomas?”

“Yes, very, very happy, and the doctors say” — here she ran into the strictures of her age and couldn’t say quite what she wanted — “they say how healthy I am, and indeed I feel it! But Charles, you mustn’t tell anybody. I’ve barely said a word about it, except to Jane and Duch.” Duch was the Duchess of Marchmain, Toto and Jane’s great friend. “Thomas will tell you in due time.”

Rather sadly, Lenox remembered what her mien had been when she was first with child and bursting with baby names and nursery ideas.

They sat closeted for another half hour, talking about the honeymoon — Toto liked the idea of Greece — until McConnell came to fetch her, smiling broadly at Lenox, his face less troubled than usual, and walking his wife very carefully out of the house and down to their carriage.

After they had gone Lenox stood just inside the door, thinking about life, about its passing strangeness. He went back to his library to read a tract about the Catiline conspiracy.

Not half an hour later there was a knock at the front door, and he laid the pamphlet down.

Graham appeared. “You have two guests, sir,” he said.

“Bring them in.”

A moment later the butler reappeared, with James Hilary and — to Lenox’s astonishment — Edward Crook in tow.

“Crook!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet. “I’m honored to have you here. Graham, fetch something to eat, would you, and drink? How do you do, Hilary? But Crook! I scarcely expected to see you accept my invitation to London so soon — which is not to say I’m not pleased that you have!”

“It isn’t a visit of pleasure, in fact, Mr. Lenox,” said Crook. Lenox noticed the small gleam of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

“How do you mean?” asked Lenox.

Hilary and Crook glanced at each other, and it was the London man who spoke. “Late yesterday evening Mr. Crook called on me. I must confess I was as astonished as you appear to be to see him, but he told me some interesting information.”

“I couldn’t let go of that election,” said Crook. “It seemed so unjust, after you and I had both worked so hard.”

“Mr. Crook went back over the rolls of the vote —”

“As any person in Stirrington could, by law,” Crook interjected rather pompously.

“He noticed that about a thousand more people had voted in the by-election than had ever voted before. Not that surprising, given that Stoke regularly ran unopposed — but certainly surprising, given that the number comprised about 95 percent of Stirrington’s population.”

“The number of people in town has been decreasing, and it seemed altogether suspicious that 95 percent of them would vote,” said Crook.

Lenox scarcely dared to hope but said, “What does all this mean?”

Again his two visitors glanced at each other, and again it was Hilary who spoke. “As it happened, Mr. Crook recognized some six hundred names —”

“More than that.”

“Excuse me — more than six hundred names that should not have been on the voter rolls.”

“You see, Mr. Lenox, all six hundred of these voters were — are — dead!”

Hilary smiled. “Can you guess for whom they voted, by any chance?”

Lenox flushed. “Not —”

“That’s right. Roodle.”

“The devil,” said the detective softly.

“Mr. Crook instantly lodged a complaint —”

“Instantly. Didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I had to.”

Hilary paused. “In any event, the complaint is pending, but we had a private talk with Roodle, who means to step down and —”

“We did it!” cried Crook. “You’re to be the Member for Stirrington!”

Hilary gave the large barman a wry look, then turned back to Lenox and said, “Welcome to the House, Charles. I can’t think of a fitter man to enter it.”