In 1560, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain, sent a present back to his king. It was a healthy young plant, and along with it he sent some seeds for further cultivation. The plant’s use was medicinal—promoting a clear mind and preventing the plague, it was said—and the young ambassador, who had previously been known mostly for negotiating a marriage between a five-year-old French princess and a six-year-old Portuguese prince, became famous throughout Paris for his discovery. The great Linnaeus himself named the plant after Nicot de Villemain: nicotine.
The last Lenox had checked, the plague was not abroad in London—in general one knew very quickly when it was around, as he understood—but he did feel deeply in need, after he had stopped by his house, ordered his carriage, and departed, of clarity of thought.
With the window of the carriage just ajar, he lit the scarred but (thanks to Mrs. Huggins!) shining old pipe, with its circlet of gold binding bowl and stem, that had belonged to his father.
With this done, he threw his undivided concentration upon the murders of Abram Tiptree and Eli Gilman, and the assault upon Josiah Hollis. By the time he had reached his destination, the questions he had cumbersomely formulated with Graham, then articulated more clearly with Cobb, had grown clear in his mind. He knew—he thought—exactly what he wanted to know.
He entered a small stone police waystation in Coke Street, which served as a local headquarters.
“Mr. Lenox!”
This was the voice of Constable George Batch. “Hello, Batch,” said Lenox, with real friendliness. “How have you been?”
“Quite cold. You?”
“Cold on the trail of Winfield Bell. That’s why I’m here.”
Batch frowned. “Bell? Isn’t that all finished by now?”
In the course of their three nights of surveillance of the White Horse Tavern, leading up to the climactic sightings of Winfield Bell and Bert Smith, Lenox, Graham, and Hemstock had come to know Batch quite well—and Lenox to admire him as a smart, straightforward, physically intrepid young agent of the Metropolitan Police.
Stevenage had noticed the same qualities. They were in the East End now, not far from the infamous Whitechapel, where the poorest of the poor scraped by. It was here that Batch hailed from—a true local—and here that he primarily worked. Stevenage had relieved him of the burden of a regular beat and given him the more serious job of helping to track the gangs, patrol the streets as he wished, and assist in special cases, like the one involving the White Horse.
“Not quite finished,” Lenox responded. “In fact I was hoping I might ask you, or an associate, to make a quick trip back to the tavern. I don’t feel quite easy going on my own.”
Batch laughed. “No, I doubt they would give you a very warm welcome.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I can spare an hour if you like.”
“I would be grateful.”
“Let me fetch my coat.”
They had spent so long staring at the White Horse, which lay on the busy corner of Whitechapel Street and Back Church Lane, that Lenox felt he knew it by heart: dark green paint, gold lettering, swinging sign painted with the white horse. In summer no doubt a few shrubs outside, but certainly not on this January morning.
He was counting on it being quiet, and when they entered, they found that it was. An old woman was mopping the floors and wiping the tables; a few patrons, each alone, sat nursing gin.
The bartender was younger than anyone else there—only seventy-five or so. “Help you,” he said to Batch, politely but firmly.
“Yes,” said Batch. “We need to see the stairwell leading up to the roof.”
Lenox expected some resistance, but Batch must have been well known; the man just nodded and led them to the back of the bar, past the dartboard and the tabletop skittles (“devil among the tailors” they called the game in these parts), past a last table with a pair of dice sitting in a diagonal of sunshine, waiting for the evening, and into a private room.
PATRIOTS ABROAD, a silk banner proudly announced, in the colors and style of the American flag. It was hand sewn.
“This is their private room?” Lenox asked the bartender.
The courtesy extended to Batch was not his to call on, apparently—the bartender didn’t reply, and Lenox didn’t ask again.
The old man did show them to a narrow door, about half the width of a normal door. “There you are,” he said, and turned and left the room without another word.
“Well?” said Batch.
“Up we go.”
It was a bit strange to be in the White Horse for the first time. Lenox had not been part of the initial search for the gray-haired accomplice, his focus in those frenetic first moments resting with the two people he felt were under his protection, Swain and Willikens. Nor had he returned, however—and there he could blame himself for slackness.
The rooftop of the White Horse was laid with an ancient worn-down brick, smooth enough that you might easily slip even were there no ice there at all. A thrill of horror ran through Lenox.
Batch must have felt it, too. “Bit unsettling,” he said.
There was a rail that came up to about Lenox’s chest. Higher than he expected. He leaned on it, looking out at the buildings that stretched for miles toward the West End. It was a clear view—new tenements, old brick façades, white stone balustrades. Each of the buildings housed some story, sad or cruel, upward or downward, a story involving cupidity or generosity, love or meanness. All of them had an element of poverty.
How long could a society last when so many of its members clung to life in it so tenuously? It had been different when Lenox’s parents were young, he thought—but London had grown so huge and unwieldy and dense in the last fifty years. The world even now was very different than the one into which he had been born.
Lenox and Batch tracked Bert Smith’s possible routes over the rooftop until Lenox had satisfied himself on that point. There were a dozen points of egress into the busy lanes behind Whitechapel, each the matter of scaling a few windows.
“It would be easy even in the ice,” said Lenox.
Batch nodded. “Yes.”
“Yet I see where we made a mistake,” the young detective murmured, hands in his pockets.
“Where?”
“Eh? Oh.” It wasn’t what he had been thinking, actually, but he said, because he liked Batch, and because it had just occurred to him, “Very strange that they would go to such lengths to conceal who Gilman was on the train, yet then Bell would come out on a white horse, as memorable as you like.”
Batch, with his fleshy, shrewd face, shrugged. “You must bear in mind that you are dealing with extremely stupid people.”
Lenox emitted an involuntary bark of a laugh. “I’ve no doubt. Still, I would be curious to see these white horses. I never did.”
“I’ll ask old Rutherford if you like.”
“The bartender?”
“The very one.”
“Good, let’s go inside.”
Batch didn’t need a second invitation. “Oy,” he said to the man behind the bar when they had reentered it. “Where are the white horses?”
“What white horses?”
“From the stables.”
Rutherford shook his head. “Ain’t none.”
“How’s that?” said Batch.
“Quoit died about nineteen month back—Whitey before that. Been looking for a replacement but none’s come up, you know.”
“You mean they haven’t found one to steal,” said Batch, though in such a genial tone that it could have been mistaken for a joke.
“Don’t know about all that.”
A voice piped up from the end of the bar. “They call them girls as is available white ’orses,” it said, and then a drunken cackle came from the gap-toothed, grizzled pile of dark clothing on one of the stools.
“Shut your trap,” Rutherford ordered.
“The prostitutes?” Batch said.
“No longer—not any longer, guv,” said Rutherford. “Saw an end to all that, didn’t he—Bell, I mean.”
“And Smith,” said Lenox.
Rutherford merely turned away, toward a small stove that had a copper kettle on it. He poured himself some black, bitter-smelling liquid from it into a tin cup with a big round handle.
“Rutherford,” said Batch, “what about Smith?”
“What about him?”
“Did you know him well?”
“I only work here. That’s the God’s honest, Constable.”
“You must have at least seen him, then.”
Rutherford opened his eyes wide, as if to say you’d be surprised. “You didn’t?” asked Lenox.
“Not till that day,” said the bartender, and took a draught of the scalding coffee. “Excuse me, please. I’ve food to start preparing.”
“We’ll excuse you when we’re ready,” said Batch.
Lenox didn’t want to suborn Batch’s clear authority here—goodness knew how one won it—so he asked a few more questions in aid of making the constable’s point. The answers revealed nothing of use. But he had learned two things already during this short trip, he thought, which had changed his understanding of the case for good.