“To Hawkes’s, please,” Lenox called up to the cab driver as he and Graham clambered inside. “As quickly as possible.”
They were bound for a shop of particular distinction. In 1771, a young tailor’s journeyman named Thomas Hawkes started a tiny business as a capmaker in Brewer Street. His specialty was velvet hats. They were good; he quickly earned a reputation for quality among military officers. After he had been in business for around fifteen years, that reputation was so high that King George III, a steadfast friend of the army, had made a special trip to the shop to order a cap.
Hawkes made it and sent it to the King—who, true to his reputation for being slightly mad (later more than slightly), accepted the cap, said no more of it, and then, one day, wandered in off the streets and ordered something on the order of five thousand scarlet military uniforms.
That made Hawkes’s career. By the time the century turned, his small hat business had become the foremost tailor’s in Great Britain. He received a Royal Warrant, and though he had begun to make suits and coats of all variety, he had also gone on making hats. Indeed, it had been he who designed the shako—a hardened leather hat that could withstand saber cuts, to the relief of many a chap who, like Deere, encountered the occasional saber.
Hawkes himself had been Charles and Edmund Lenox’s own first tailor. At the age of five, each had stood solemnly before his mirrors as the diminutive, watery-eyed old man walked carefully around them, a bit of soapstone in hand to mark the cloth, a tape measure over his shoulder. He never spoke a word. Still, in due course, each received his first complete suit of clothes: jackets down to the knee, top hats up to the sky.
Hawkes was gone now (his nephews ran the business), but Lenox had never had a suit from anywhere but his shop. He went twice a year, and Graham was often in and out of their storefront on Piccadilly—Hawkes’s was part of Savile Row only in the notional, not literal, sense—to have something mended or replaced.
“American, sir?” said Graham as they settled into the hansom.
“If I’m right,” said Lenox, “that is why it would have been essential to remove all evidence of the origin of his clothing. He is probably from, oh, Boston, say, or New Haven, or—what are the other ones?”
“I believe Portland, Maine, is rather prominent, sir.”
“Portland, Maine? Are you sure?”
Graham frowned. “There was a riot there because they banned alcohol, sir. The Portland Rum Riot, it was called in the newspapers.”
“Hm.”
“Philadelphia is also very famous, I believe.”
Lenox waved a hand. “Wherever it was, listen. He was wearing a sack coat, do you remember me telling you that?”
“No, sir.”
“Perhaps I didn’t, then. But it’s surprising, is it not? A fellow in third class?”
Men’s fashions in England were achingly slow to change. Among the upper and middle classes, the frock coat—which tapered from broad in the shoulder to narrow at the knee—was universal. In the lower classes, men usually wore only a vest, clothing being very expensive; a vest was what Swain had been wearing.
“I have only seen a few people wearing these sack coats in London, you know, and only in the last few months. But it came from America—from New York, Washington Square, they say. It has been prominent there for a decade or so. Does that not strike you, Graham?”
“I suppose so, sir?”
That meant no. Lenox put up a finger. “That is the second bit. He was wearing socks. I certainly told you that. Not stockings—socks. I would lay you ten shillings—no, ten dollars, that he is American. It is warmer there. Their trousers are looser, and they wear socks rather than stockings.”
They arrived at Hawkes’s. They entered the impressive brick building, and Lenox felt the familiar hush of the front room, with its deep red carpeting, its subdued rows of material hanging from brass hooks, its elegant line of hats. This room would always call his father to mind. There had never been a more conservative dresser than he, loyal to the end to the high standing collars of his youth in the 1790s.
“Mr. Lenox, sir,” said a young man whom Lenox did not know; every tailor at Hawkes’s had an eerie ability to identify all their clients by name, even after an absence of years or in some cases decades. “I’m afraid Mr. White is presently with His Grace, the Duke of Dorset.”
White was Lenox’s current tailor. “Does he have a moment to spare? You may tell Dorset it would be a favor to me.”
It was rare to have a duke in your pocket—but in the course of a previous case, Lenox had earned Dorset’s good opinion, and also his begrudging obligation.
“I shall inquire, sir,” said the young man, bowing gracefully and leaving.
He returned a moment later with White, a small, cherubic fellow, always in motion. “Mr. Lenox!” he cried, as if he had never been more delighted. Indeed, perhaps his secret was that he truly did feel such delight in each of his customers. “We just had you in!”
“I know! I only had a question—a very quick question. It is this: If you saw a man in a sack coat in the third-class compartment of a train from Manchester to London, what would you think?”
White frowned. After a moment, he said, “Either that he was in the wrong carriage, or that he came from America.”
“Ha!” Lenox said, turning to Graham. “And if he were wearing socks?”
“Oh, certainly American. Do you agree, March?”
He had turned to the young man. “Unquestionably, Mr. White,” said March with spotless deference.
Lenox slapped his hat against his hand excitedly. “Perfect. Thank you, Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. March.”
“Careful banging that hat!” called White, as Lenox departed.
“Apologies! Thank Dorset for me!”
He and Graham hailed a cab. A handsome old bay mare was pulling it, and Lenox absentmindedly massaged the animal’s neck with his hand as he directed the driver to Hampden Lane. They got in and were soon on their way.
Why would a young American have been traveling from Manchester to London? The reason might be anything at all, obviously—family, business, pleasure. Still, it was just a bit odd. Most Americans who went anywhere in northern England went to Liverpool, since Liverpool was a port city. Manchester lay about forty-five miles inland of it. Not an inconsiderable journey.
Lenox looked out through the window of the cab, searching his memories of the scene of the crime for anything else he had missed, anything else on the body that told a story. He wished now that he had taken more time.
“A productive morning, sir,” Graham said.
Lenox shook his head. “Yes, but I should have seen it sooner. It was there right in front of me—the coat, the missing labels. Now I’m sure I must have missed other clues. But the scene of the crime is gone. The train is probably in—who knows, Bristol, Plymouth.”
“Could you inquire, sir?”
“No. It will have been in use these three days fully. The body was removed that night and the train thoroughly cleaned.”
He reflected that it was a lesson to take more time at the initial scene of a crime, however thorough he thought he might have been. Ah, well—no mistake was wasted if one learned from it.
His career thus far—could he call it a career?—had been a balance of triumphs and failures. He was proud of the assistance he had lent Scotland Yard in the case of the Thames Ophelia. And the two small cases he had now, one a burglary in Wisden, the other a missing husband in Covent Garden, neither very difficult to parse, were a good sign, steady work.
But he longed for more. What, exactly? He searched his feelings as the cab rolled across the cobblestones of the city, smoke rising in untidy columns from the rooftops upon this cool midday.
For this kind of case, perhaps. He had been too proud to join the Yard even when invited to do so. His courage went so far as to pursue this eccentricity, but not so far as to do it professionally, which would have damned him conclusively in the eyes of his class. Pure cowardice, really.
But he wished as well that he were better at this thing, whatever it was. He had seen the sack coat on the murder victim, it had passed through his mind that this was the fashion he knew of from Manhattan, yet he had allowed the fact to work itself off of his line and swim away, disappearing for the last seventy-two hours …
On the other hand, he now had a few new facts to work with. The victim was American. For most of the train ride, if Swain was correct, he had not been in company with his murderer—if indeed the false conductor was his murderer, which seemed overwhelmingly likely, at least to Lenox. That meant that this had been a plotted crime, full of care and deliberation.
A boy who usually sold papers had not been on the platform. He might have been sick, or out of papers. Still, it was a small wrinkle in the story of the evening. Anything that stood out like that might matter.
By and large, life had come easily to Lenox. He had always been a fair student, excellent in the areas that prompted his interest. He had friends who loved him, family, a comfortable life.
But it was inadequate to congratulate himself on that fact—indeed, dangerous. He had been raised to the idea of serving his fellow human beings. This arena might be an unusual one in which to do it, but nonetheless, he must do it better, become more detailed and more diligent than he had ever been before. Even as they neared Hampden Lane, the man with the longish dark hair might be preparing, for reasons Lenox was no closer to knowing than he had been before he first went to Paddington, to commit murder again.