Toward the back of the first story of Lenox’s house, at the end of the front hall but before the dining room, was a small chamber that everyone called the smoking room. It was rarely used. It held an armchair, a card table, a chaise longue, and a smattering of books Lenox didn’t need. To his knowledge nobody had once smoked in this room since his tenancy had begun. Still, a household thrives on regularity, so its name was its name, and it was dusted each day, and Mrs. Huggins, supervising Alice and Joanna, made sure there was coal in the grate, though it might go unlit for a year, and that the rug was beaten in spring and fall.
Now the coals were lit after all. Sitting by their warmth was a small, neat, handsome man of middle age, drinking tea and eating toast with salmon. It had been a wise decision on Graham’s part to store him here; Lenox’s study was too private a place for a stranger to wander freely in.
The man wore a knit sweater with a high collar. A farmer, Lenox would have said.
Wrongly. “This is Mr. Joseph Hazlitt, sir,” Graham said. “He is a typesetter at the Telegraph. Mr. Hazlitt, this is my employer, Mr. Edmundson.”
Lenox extended a hand. “How do you do, Mr. Hazlitt?”
“Oh, fine, thank you, sir,” said the typesetter in a squeaky voice.
“You came about the ad?”
“Yes, sir.” Hazlitt removed and carefully unfolded a small square of newsprint, like a mouse taking out its handkerchief. “I did have one question: Are employees of the newspaper where you placed this ad, sir, ineligible for the reward mentioned—mentioned therein, sir?”
“Not at all.”
“Ah! Good. Excellent.”
“Please, sit,” Lenox said, doing so himself. “What information do you have, pray tell?”
Hazlitt hesitated, but then put his hand in the outer pocket of his sweater. “The job of a typesetter at a newspaper, as you know, sir, is to compose each page of the paper in metal sorts, by line, paragraph, and word, and place them in rows, which go into a large wooden case matching the size of a page of a newspaper.”
“Is it! Actually I have never quite known how they managed that.”
“Oh, yes, it’s quite an art, sir. Some of the typesetters at the down-market papers—well, one line barely matches up to the next, you know. You’ve seen.” He smiled shyly. “And if you see a d where a p should be, you can be sure a typesetter has been shouted down for putting the letter in wrong—for they look almost the same, you see, to us. That’s why we tell each other—mind your p’s and q’s, sir. For a q could quite easily be a b.”
“Did the Telegraph have an error?” said Lenox, trying to gently redirect his visitor. It was late. “Perhaps in the section you’re holding?”
Hazlitt looked down, as if surprised to find the scrap. “Oh! This! No, no sir, Mr. Edmundson. It’s only that it will appear in the paper tomorrow morning. I made a one-off, sir—for of course, it was I who set the ad looking for an American, and offering a reward, and—well, see for yourself.”
Lenox took the treasured little scrap of paper from Hazlitt at last and read it to himself.
Information eagerly sought
As to the whereabouts of Mr. Eli Gilman, of Massachusetts, USA, but lately traveling in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds. Mr. Gilman was due in London Tuesday evening but did not appear. He is 27, with light hair, casually attired. Anyone having seen or heard of him will receive a warm welcome at the Salted Herring, Three Colt St., between the hours of 5 and 7:30 tonight.
A chill ran through Lenox. Unless there was a sad fluke of fate at play, he now had possession of the name of the man who had been murdered aboard the 449 from Manchester. Eli Gilman. It was a significant step forward.
“This is extremely useful, Mr. Hazlitt. Do you know who submitted it?”
“I do not, sir.”
“Would someone else at the paper?”
“No, it is all anonymous, sir—so that people feel free to put whatever sort they like, you see. No defamation, of course, or foul language, or oaths. Otherwise you may pay by the line and say whatever you wish, so long as your money is good.”
“Of course,” Lenox murmured. Then he asked, “May I keep this?”
Hazlitt looked anxiously at Graham, who said, “I’m sure Mr. Hazlitt would feel happy to leave it with you if he were to receive his reward.”
“Oh! Of course. Graham, you know where my billfold is.” Lenox stood up and flourished the small piece of paper. “This is going to be extremely useful in righting an injustice, Mr. Hazlitt. I will bid you good evening, since there is work I must do. Thank you.”
Hazlitt stood up. “Pleasure, sir.”
Lenox, on his way out of the room, stopped at the door. “May I ask something to satisfy my own curiosity, Mr. Hazlitt—was your father also a typesetter?”
“A farmer, sir.”
“Ah! A very different occupation.”
“I always had a way with machines, sir, so he sent me down to live with my cousin in Fleet Street.”
Lenox smiled. “My father was from the country as well. Yet here we both are in London. Good evening, Mr. Hazlitt.”
He went to his study and sat in his chair, listening to the dim creaks and cracks the house made as Graham paid Hazlitt his reward and saw him back into the late evening.
The piece of paper was on the table. He memorized it, then reclined, legs crossed, staring into the dusky gaslit emptiness of Hampden Lane. Chaffanbrass, the still relatively new bookseller across the lane, had forgotten to close his shutters again; he often did. He would pay for it with a broken glass storefront and a theft one of these days. But it hadn’t happened tonight.
Eli Gilman of Massachusetts.
There was a malevolence in the world that Lenox brushed against in his job. From time to time he worried that it might brush him back. His thoughts went to the swing of Kitty Ashbrook’s dark hair, her secretive smile. He could have been having a last dance with her at this moment; instead he sat alone, pondering murder.
In truth it had crushed him to hear that his mother hoped he would leave off being a detective. He’d thought she understood.
But enough, enough. He jumped up and took down several volumes he had of notable people. He didn’t put much hope in them, since they included few Americans, and while it had been worth checking, after half an hour of perusal his initial pessimism was justified: The volumes contained nobody by the name of Eli Gilman, though he did discover in a biography of a Yorkshire bishop of the same name that there had been numerous settlers of that surname in the colony of New Hampshire during the 1600s and 1700s.
Graham knocked and, upon Lenox’s call beckoning him inward, entered the study. “Good evening, sir.”
“Hallo, Graham. Thank you for coming to fetch me at the party. Very well done. The only question is whether we can contrive to see the man who placed the ad sooner than five o’clock tomorrow evening. Do you know the Salted Herring?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s not far from Ropemaker’s Lane. Tricky area. And the days are growing shorter. Not much sunlight left to protect us at five o’clock. It could be dangerous. They mostly serve a seafaring clientele there, as I recall. They do quite a decent fish pie.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Lenox smiled. “I can never seem to interest you in the menus of our destinations. Do you eat, Graham?”
“We must have eaten together above a hundred times, sir, I should have said.”
“Yet I always get the sense that you are doing so out of politeness. Tell me, what is your favorite meal?”
Graham had one hand on the chair across the desk from Lenox—it was late, an informal conversation—and he considered the question, taking his time. At last, he said, “My mother was half-Scottish, sir. She occasionally made what we called stovies. I remember them with great fondness.”
“What are those?”
“Stovies? Sliced potatoes, sir, softened up, roasted with cracklings. That was a dish I looked forward to all week.”
“We shall have to put Ellie on the job.”
“I once asked her if she made them, sir—she said that every Scot was a miser and a drunk.”
“Good Lord! I’ve known many who were only one or the other.”
Graham laughed. “Have you, sir,” he said mildly.
“Only joking, of course. I shall order it for my own supper from her tomorrow, and she may go looking for another job if she refuses me.”
“You needn’t go to the trouble on my behalf, sir, though I thank you. And bear in mind that you—perhaps we—shall be in East London.”
“Ah!” said Lenox melancholically. “True. Eli Gilman. The following evening, then, it will be stovies or a new cook. Don’t let me forget. Someone must take this household in hand.”