“Missed what, sir?”
Lenox and Graham sat across from each other at the breakfast table, their old battle stations. There was a pot of tea between them. Each had a cup, and their newspapers lay to the side, neglected, as Lenox tried to formulate what he meant. He was dressed for the breakfast next door, though wishing he could skip it.
“It’s the bones of the thing,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Why kill Gilman? The answer seemed so clear that I never questioned it: Bell and Smith were driven by racial prejudice. They’re pro-slavery, anti-abolition. But scratch deeper and you realize that if that were their motive, their actions make little sense.”
“How so, sir?”
“For instance, why write a letter to Gilman, then go to such lengths to conceal whom they had killed?”
Graham raised his eyebrows slightly. A hit. “Perhaps they didn’t expect Gilman to bring the letter.”
“Very well. Yet you must admit a strange tension between their writing him directly and then the ruthlessness with which Winfield Bell murdered the conductor, Haase, and then impersonated him, in order to eliminate any sign of who Gilman was. The very labels on his clothes.” Lenox warmed to his subject. “Were they trying to make a public statement of politics or avoid notice? It must be one or the other—it cannot be both. And for that matter, why Gilman? There must have been a dozen emissaries of the abolitionist movement in America this year alone. Stevenage said the Patriots Abroad threaten them all.”
“Did you not say that Gilman was the most illustrious, sir? They may have wished to instill fear in future visitors.”
“True.” Lenox continued to stir his tea, for the distraction of it rather than to any practical end. “It just … doesn’t seem right. That’s all I know.”
“Perhaps it’s the arrival of Mr. Cobb that makes you think so, sir.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“And yet…” Graham was frowning.
“What?” said Lenox.
“Your doubts make me wonder, sir: Why make attempts on the life of all three?”
Lenox snapped his fingers. “Yes! Graham, you wonderful fellow—yes, why on earth would these patriot fools, or whatever they’re called, elect to kill all three of the party? It triples their danger. More than triples. And at separate times, in separate locations. Abram Tiptree, the secretary, as soon as they arrive, in Liverpool. Gilman on the train from Manchester to London nearly a week later. And then, shortly thereafter, Hollis. Deeply irrational if they wished to send a message. Only Gilman could have mattered to them.”
Graham nodded. “It’s strange.”
Lenox stood up. “And if Gilman’s death was to make a point, why cut out the labels of his clothes? Why attempt to leave him to be discovered the next day on the train, so that he might have been mistaken for a vagrant, or a nameless gang member from Manchester?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Graham.
“It must be because something was at stake larger than anger at Gilman’s politics.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.” Lenox took a last sip of tea and began to gather his things to go out. “A wish to silence him, perhaps? What I know is that I have been criminally idle in not going to Liverpool. Abram Tiptree was murdered first. I have neglected that fact for too long.”
“Then you don’t think it was Bell, sir?” said Graham.
They had moved into the hallway, and Lenox was wrapping a scarf around his shoulders. “Oh, it was Winfield Bell. I saw him—conversed with him—in his guise as conductor. And Willikens confirmed that it was Bert Smith who bought all of his stock.”
“That is also strange, sir,” Graham observed, helping him into his coat.
“What?”
“That Smith, the accomplice, should clear the newsboy away from the platform.”
Lenox nodded. “Yes. And do you remember what Willikens said? He tried to talk normal, but he was shamming it.”
“His accent, sir?”
“Yes.” Lenox shook his head. They were standing at the door. “I can’t make head nor tail of anything they did, now that I actually, properly think it through. These are deep waters.”
“How can I help, sir?”
“Could you find out what you can about Bell? Without risking your own neck, please. Don’t go speaking to his friends at the White Horse.”
Graham nodded. “Very good, sir.”
Lenox sat through a breakfast at Jane’s house that in other circumstances he might have enjoyed, but now yearned to have over. As soon as he could excuse himself he did, and ventured out to see Cobb.
It was slightly warmer than the day before, but still very cold. Ragged clouds unraveled across the pure blue sky. Lenox was confounded but energized; once he had hailed a cab, he took his seat and went back to the very start of his notes from this case.
He must not assume he understood a single fact about it clearly, he reflected—must return to the very first questions he’d had that night on the platform at Paddington.
The hansom jounced out of Mayfair on the uneven cobblestones and made its way into the heavy traffic of Regent Street, which eventually made a great swooping curve at Piccadilly Circus. From here it was a short trip to Cobb’s lodgings in Leicester Square.
It was a section of London that Lenox visited infrequently—he was not an avid theatergoer, which was the main reason to stop there, and paid no visits at all to the well-known brothels off the square, being still, at bottom, no matter how urbane he became, shocked in his country boy’s Sunday heart that they existed so openly.
There was a porter at Cobb’s lodgings, which, though not quite a hotel, had many of a hotel’s amenities. He took him to the American, who met him with gladness but surprise. He was dining on eggs and kippers, dressed in a sober blue suit, the slight halt in his step perhaps more pronounced when he rose to shake Lenox’s hand. A day of activity, out in the cold.
“Was there something you forgot last night?” he asked curiously.
“No—it is that our conversation has made me rethink things. Entirely, truth be told, or almost entirely.”
“My heavens! You’ll have to sit down.”
Lenox did. “I still think Winfield Bell our murderer,” he said, “and Bert Smith his accomplice. But I’m confident of very little else.”
“Please, go on.”
And so Lenox detailed, in slightly more orderly fashion than he and Graham had flung their thoughts together, all that struck him as out of kilter about the murder of Eli Gilman as they currently understood it—and as the papers, with declining frequency, reiterated its particulars.
As the young Englishman spoke, Cobb, breakfast finished, lit a pipe and listened, with an open, intelligent concentration.
At last, when Lenox had finished, he nodded slightly. “My mind has been following the same track as yours.”
“Has it!”
“Yes. Though you must remember that I have the advantage of coming in after the fact, and thus being able to see the whole field of play without prejudice or confusion—at least, I hope.”
Lenox had reached an age—or perhaps more importantly, had confronted enough obstruction from recalcitrant inspectors and sergeants at Scotland Yard—at which, while he was still confident in his ideas, he was more generous when they were wrong than perhaps he once had been.
“You have seen more already than I did the whole time,” he told Cobb. “I’m heartily sorry—and very glad you came.”
Cobb shook his head. “It was you who pieced together Mr. Gilman’s identity, and you who led Inspector Hemstock to the White Horse, Mr. Lenox. At every turn I seem to discover some tidy piece of detective work that turns out to have been yours.”
“Then perhaps we can join our efforts.”
“With pleasure,” Cobb said seriously, and to Lenox’s surprise reached out a hand.
Lenox shook it, with a sense of reinvigorated energy and obligation. It was New Year’s Day, after all.