The Fleet Street Murders

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Two weeks later it was the momentous afternoon when Lenox was to take his seat in Parliament. He was in his library, and occasionally the smack of a hammer sounded above; they were joining his house to Lady Jane’s in anticipation of a marriage three months hence. The muted sound pleased him every time he heard it — the symbol of the thing, the jointure, made him happy.

The library he stood in was transformed by the letters and telegrams that lay on every surface, jammed in books, and stacked unread on the floor, all of which offered advice and some congratulations as well. He was dressed very nattily, he thought. His brother had ventured down to the kitchen to scrounge himself a cup of tea (something not strictly done in the best society, and which would no doubt send the staff into an anxious bout of indignation, but which the Lenox boys had done all their lives), and Lady Jane was standing with Lenox, adjusting his attire, giving him proud, happy little smiles, and generally bustling about in her useful way.

“Now, before you go I have a present for you,” she said.

Lenox smiled. “You needn’t have,” he said.

“Ah, but it was such fun! Here, look.”

It was a flat, square parcel, plainly a book, wrapped in patterned paper and tied with a blue ribbon Lenox recognized as usually belonging to her hair.

“What can it be?” he asked, slowly unwrapping it.

He saw that it was a smallish book, not longer than a hundred pages, bound in very supple brown Morocco leather. There was no title on it, only CHARLES LENOX embossed in gold in the lower right corner of the cover, and he flicked it open with his brow furrowed, slightly puzzled, though the smile remained on his lips.

“It’s your father’s speeches,” said Lady Jane softly. “I had them bound.”

Suddenly he recognized what she had done.

For years Edmund and Charles’s father’s speeches from the House of Commons had been floating around in loose manuscripts. Each brother had a copy, Lenox House had one, and a few of the political clubs did, too. He had been a respected orator, if never among the chief of his party; the certainty of his seat and the lineage of his family ensured him that respect despite what were considered his eccentricities — a startling advocacy for the poor and the foreign, an indifference to British military pride, and a confidence unmatched by his peers in the power of the vote, which now seemed ahead of its time.

Lenox flipped through the thick cream-colored pages very gingerly now, each one a treasure. He turned to the front and saw the beautifully laid out title page, and opposite it a tintype likeness of his father’s wonderful, kind, wise face.

He wanted to describe everything he felt to Lady Jane — he wanted to compliment the type, the effort, the secrecy, the speed with which she had had it made — but he found there was a lump in his throat, and to his shame tears stood in his eyes. He tried not to think of how much he missed his father, how much he missed always having someone to reassure him that the world would be all right — the desolation of his absence —

Jane, who always understood everything, kissed him on the cheek and held him for a moment longer than she usually did, and then made a great show of clearing a pile of telegrams off his desk.

“Are you going to give a speech?” she asked gaily.

He gave a choked laugh. “Of course not,” he said. “Not for ages.”

“My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!”

This was the present Earl of St. Pancras, who was, unlike Lenox’s father, genuinely eccentric. “In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn’t like strawberry jam.”

“Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.” She couldn’t help but laugh. “Still, you could talk about something more important.”

“Than jam? Impossible. We mustn’t set the bar too high, Jane.”

So they bantered until he was quite himself again and was ready to leave. Edmund emerged from downstairs gulping a cup of tea.

“Look what Jane has made, Ed,” Charles said, holding up the book.

“What is it? Oh, Fa’s speeches? Yes, it’s marvelous.”

“I used Edmund’s version of them to have it made,” Jane explained. “I have a dozen copies.”

“We sent one to the British Library,” said Edmund, “and the library at Parliament. Come along, come along, we mustn’t be late.”

Clutching his book in one hand, Lenox rode silently through the streets of London while Jane and Edmund talked. He was watching all of the people and places he saw with new eyes and with a profound sense of the burden of looking after his fellow men, a profound sense of the gravity of his new work.

The Members’ entrance to the House was through a beautiful arched corridor, which led into an open courtyard and then into the chambers of governance. Never had the golden buildings of Parliament and Big Ben looked so momentous to Lenox, so majestic, as they did now against the backdrop of the river.

The Members themselves were a different matter. The courtyard was crowded by a series of glum, combative-looking gentlemen in black cloaks and very proper top hats. Small groups were deep in discussion, and only a few people looked up to say hello to Edmund, Lenox, and Jane as they came through the arch.

“We must leave you here, Jane,” said Lenox, “but shall I come to visit you afterward?”

“I wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t!”

“Oh — ah — I–I see a man,” said Edmund. “Meet me by the door, Charles. Good-bye, Jane!”

Edmund went off commending himself on the extreme cunning of the maneuver (and it was perhaps for the best that he didn’t notice their indulgent smiles trailing behind him) and stood off in a corner, waiting.

It was a beautiful courtyard, Edmund always thought. The light was falling through the high, old windows, the vivid lavender of winter evening, and he thought with contentment of going back to the country the next morning to see Molly and his boys. There was nothing he liked better than being married, and as he stole a glance at his brother and his old friend, Lady Jane, his heart filled with joy for them, and he pondered the vagaries of the world, which for all of its fault lines and difficulties could offer so much happiness sometimes, and often — as for his brother, who had so long lived as a bachelor, had so long struggled with the prejudice against his profession — often when you weren’t even looking for it at all.