The next day dawned chilly, innocent, and clear, with a soft white sky. Lenox, after studying his notes from the scene, stirred the banked coals in the hearth. He had already put on a morning coat with a heavy wool collar since coming down twenty minutes before. A first October taste of winter.
There was a quiet knock at the door. “Yes?” Lenox called.
Graham entered. He had brought a pot of tea. “Good morning, sir.”
Lenox checked his watch. “It’s not even six o’clock,” he said. “How did you know I was awake?”
“I must have heard you, sir.”
Lenox doubted it. But Graham had an infallible sympathetic understanding of this house—who was moving within it, who was awake, asleep, eating, coming, going, skiving off work. The latter category occasionally included Lenox himself.
But not now.
“Thank you,” he said, as he accepted a cup of tea “A hot drink’s very welcome. Sit, please, if you wish.”
“Of course, sir.”
Lenox laid down his pen and reclined in his desk chair, holding the delicate cup in both hands. His careful notes were complete. He looked out through the windows at pretty, peaceful Hampden Lane, with its booksellers and bakers, its slumbering houses, its maids coming to the doors to fetch the milk. Weak sunlight filtered through the wet trees, which shook drops onto the pavement at each gust of wind.
“The papers are in, sir. Only one has the story. The Morning Illustrated.”
Lenox turned. “Them! Do you have it?”
“Right here, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He read the article.
MYSTERIOUS DEATH ON THE 449 TO PADDINGTON
Stabbing wounds thought to be gang-related
Information sought by Hemstock, Dunn
A body was discovered late last night on the 449 from Store Street, Manchester—that of a man slain in most gruesome fashion. The police have not yet identified him but believe he was a victim of the deadly gang conflict currently taking place in that city.
“His guts were spilling out,” Inspector Dunn informed the Morning Illustrated exclusively and vividly. “It had the mark of their vicious kind. It’s not the England I know and love, but Manchester has troubles it can’t get in hand. Now they’re coming to the capital.”
Sharp-eyed readers of this journal may recall that the 449 was also the site of the unsolved death of Gabriel Taylor, 17, of Salford, in May. Taylor was thrown from the train near Wilmslow and suffered a broken neck.
Inspector Dunn would neither confirm nor deny that the deaths are related.
Check later editions for further information.
Lenox looked at Graham. “Dunn would have had to go straight to the offices of the Morning Illustrated to squeeze this into the early edition. I wonder that he bothered. Though perhaps it is in his interest to be on friendly terms with the paper.” He looked at the article again, then murmured, mostly to himself, “The England I know and love.”
He recalled the death of Gabriel Taylor clearly. It had been by no means decided whether Taylor—a promising boxer, well known in Manchester’s sporting circles—had been thrown from the train, jumped, or fallen by accident, inebriated. Lenox remembered having been inclined to the third explanation. It was the lad’s first trip to London.
“Did you read the article?” Lenox asked Graham.
“I did, sir.”
Lenox took a sip of his tea, which had cooled, and picked up a custard cream from the silver dish next to it. “And what did you make of it?”
“I was curious how it matched up to your visit to the scene, sir.”
Lenox nodded, thinking. He soaked the biscuit in his tea until it was just on the very edge of breaking, a skill that he had spent arduous years at school mastering, ruining many a cup of tea in the process.
He took a bite and found it mostly softened to mush yet still just firm. Perfect. Ah—he had been hungry, thirsty. He was tired. This was better.
Taking another, he told Graham about his visit to Paddington. Graham was a careful listener and asked several questions.
“And what did he look like, sir?”
Lenox frowned. “Fairly handsome, I think. It’s always difficult to tell, after death. But he was young and had good bones. Light brown hair, a bit longer than mine.”
“Was there any damage to his face or hands, sir?”
“No, there wasn’t—no evidence of defense.”
“I see, sir,” said Graham, nodding. Then added, in his customarily courteous way, “I had wondered whether he was a boxer. But self-defense is the more pertinent question, sir.”
Lenox hit his forehead. “No—like Gabriel Taylor. I should have thought of it. Anyhow our man was young, like Taylor, but not a boxer. No nicks, no scars I could see, hands as soft as or softer than the average man in a third-class carriage’s would be. Neither a boxer nor a gang member, at least that I would have guessed.”
“Did you look through the other carriages, sir?”
Lenox shook his head. “Dunn had arrived to see me off by the time I could have. As I was leaving, though, Hemstock and the constables were setting about the job. Presumably even they would have found a hidden murderer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something was bothering Lenox. Was it from the article? After a moment he wandered over to the mantel. It was here that he left the debris of his comings and goings, with strict instructions to Graham, Mrs. Huggins, and the rest of the staff not to touch it. (Mrs. Huggins was Lenox’s housekeeper—something he would not have said he needed, though in fact her management of the household had taken a great deal off of Graham’s shoulders, and the minor details of her care all made the house gleam, freshly polished by her attention in a way it never had been before.)
Among the coins and calling cards, he found a worn ticket from the same line as the 449. It was from a trip he had recently taken to Birmingham for a case.
The ticket’s letters had been smudged and faded by the friction of his pocket; he rubbed the smooth cardstock with his thumb, thoughtful.
No genie emerged. Worse luck.
Then he had a thought. “Graham,” he said. “Is Ellie awake?”
This was the house’s cook, who made a wonderful, delicate potato soup and swore as if she had been raised in the navy. Graham glanced at the carriage clock on the desk. “I’m quite sure she is, sir.”
“Would you fetch her, please?”
“Did you want breakfast, sir?” asked Graham.
“No, no,” said Lenox. “In fact, better yet, I will go down to the kitchen.”
Graham looked alarmed. “If you wish, sir.”
Lenox was already crossing the hall, and after an instant took the thin stairwell down to the kitchen two steps at a time. “Ellie!” he called.
“What?” a voice replied irritably. He came into her view and saw that she was rolling out crescents. She looked in no way abashed to discover that her curtness had been directed at the master of the house. She merely stared at him. “Well?”
“Your brother is a train conductor, isn’t he? Do I have that correct?”
“Yes,” she said. Her face softened. “Our Sam. The youngest of us. He works for the London and North Western.”
This was the largest of the rail lines. It ran the 449, as well as the train Lenox had taken to Birmingham and whose ticket he was still holding. “What’s his route?”
“His route, sir? He doesn’t have one as such. It varies, see. Sometimes he’ll come out of Glasgow a week—then Lancaster—then Rutland. They always get him home to Chester in the end. Might be a night in an inn somewhere between, but the line pays for his board in that case.”
Ellie was herself from Chester, in Cheshire, a lovely city on the River Dee. “But he doesn’t have a regular route?” asked Lenox.
“No, he’s only thirty-one. Them as get the regular clockwork routes are quite senior. He might be directed any old place. He doesn’t mind it that way, Sam. Chance to see the whole of the—”
“Thank you!” Lenox cried, turning and flying.
“All sorts barging about,” he heard Ellie mutter as he left, but he paid her no heed.
Graham, who kept up with him pretty well, was asking what it was, but Lenox was already in the front hall putting on his topcoat.
He realized he still had his morning coat on—“Your tie, sir!” cried Graham, as Lenox began to open the door—but didn’t care. He had to get to the Yard as soon as he could.