The next morning there was a thaw in the air, a blurred vivid sun. Across the city the sound of ice dripping away its existence. Lenox and Frost were both in greatcoats; but the day was sunny enough that these threatened to become warm.
They were walking along Cheshire Street, in the East End of London. This more modest part of town was dominated by an endless row of tiny specialty shops, which sold their wares primarily to larger and more refined places in brighter neighborhoods. There was a lace dealer, a broom and brush maker, a snuff seller, a yeast merchant, a hatter, a gunsmith, a shroud maker, on and on and on. They passed several anonymous black doors with small white ribbons tied around their handles: midwives.
Their destination was a pub. It was the Blue Peter, situated on a bustling corner of Chilton Street, and it was the central clearinghouse of all the business of the Farthings.
In spite of that grim fact, it was a jolly paneled place, with its draft beers chalked on the wall and the maritime flag that gave it its name—a white square at the center of a larger blue square—flying above its door.
Lenox’s stomach fluttered as they went in. Without Frost alongside him, his life would have been forfeit when he entered the Blue Peter. He had put at least three Farthings away. They would never come to the West End for revenge—it would bring too much attention to them—but if he walked into their midst, he might easily make too tempting a target to resist.
The man they sought was as close as the Farthings had to a spokesman. He was a rather well-educated chap named Spencer, who stood behind the bar now, wiping it down with a rag.
“Inspector Frost,” he said, without the slightest discomposure.
“Hello, Spencer.”
“What brings you into these lawless and wicked and god-mostly-forsaken parts?”
“Anderson and Singh.”
“Mr. Anderson and Mr. Singh!” Spencer grinned, revealing a gleaming white smile. Fake, of course. “Have they been paying calls at the Yard? Gentlemanly in them, I say, after how they’ve been treated there past times.”
It wasn’t Spencer that Lenox wanted to speak to. It was Anderson and Singh themselves. Frost knew that, and asked, “Are they here?”
“Here on Chilton Street? Those layabouts? No. Not for ages and ages.”
“If they are, they can avoid hanging by talking to us.”
“Not improved at listening, have you, Inspector Frost! Tut! I told you it’s been ages. Now, then, let me lay you down two pints in the little room, sirs—I don’t know you, but any friend of—yes, along through there—be in shortly.”
They were hustled toward a back room. Lenox knew what that meant. Anderson and Singh would be offered the chance to speak to them; they might accept, might decline.
Frost and Lenox waited there for the greater part of an hour. Because they couldn’t discuss the case—who knew what methods Spencer and his cronies might have of eavesdropping on them—they were forced to fall back upon general conversation. Fortunately Lenox found that he liked Frost, a Londoner bred in the bone, fond of noise and soot, suspicious of the countryside, and utterly at home in a pub like this one, adversarial but respectful toward its inhabitants. His great passion, it emerged, was codes and cyphers of all kinds. He corresponded with other amateur codemakers across England, and had even petitioned the Yard to allow him to form a task force dedicated to them. Approval was pending.
Spencer, meanwhile, kept bringing them fresh pints. Lenox was pouring his in the grating; he knew the barman was being so hospitable because he wanted them sluggish.
And then, suddenly, looming in the doorway, was an enormous barrel-bellied chap in a checked suit, with a bright red beard and a fleshy pink face.
Anderson. Lenox felt the menace of the man immediately. He had small, cold eyes.
“Yes? What do you want of me?” he asked.
There was no pretense in his voice, or any of Spencer’s camouflaging amiability. “Did you kill a solicitor named Ernest Middleton?” Lenox asked, hoping to catch a reaction.
“Who are you?”
“A consultant with Scotland Yard,” Lenox answered. “Did you?”
“I have no idea who the man is, but seeing as I have not killed anyone this side of the equator, I doubt it. On that occasion I did it for Her Majesty.”
“Where is your friend Singh?” Lenox asked.
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“We’re asking you,” said Frost in a hard voice.
“Much good may it do you. Is that all?”
Frost shook his head. “No. We wish you to know that Gerald Leigh has our attention.”
“Don’t know the name.”
“He has powerful friends—and should any harm come to him, the full force of the Yard might finally be borne in upon the Farthings. You may tell your superiors that.”
Anderson studied them for a moment, and then turned without a word and left.
Frost and Lenox exchanged a glance. He had gone, no doubt, thinking that he had given away nothing. What they knew, however, and he didn’t, was that from the moment he stepped outside the Blue Peter a constable would be shadowing him, and would continue to do so until Leigh returned in three days. Most of the Farthings lived in the crowded streets around this Chilton Street epicenter of their activity, but it was impossible to say where on a given night any of them might be. This had been their chance to find Anderson before he found Leigh. They had taken it. Not a bad morning’s work.
Frost and Lenox took the underground west, then, climbing from it in the leafy middle-class precincts of Pimlico, home to much of London’s professional class, an altogether less threatening part of town. They were here to see Middleton’s lodgings.
It had taken a surprisingly long while to discover their whereabouts. Beaumont—his own partner—had never laid eyes on them and only vaguely knew their location. They weren’t identified in any of the papers at the solicitor’s offices.
That morning, however, a woman had written in to the Yard to say that she believed the man in the headlines had been the inhabitant of the second story of her house.
A constable awaited them outside the door there now. It was a wholly respectable street, the houses each clad in the same staid gloss of outward gentility as their inhabitants no doubt were, curtained attic windows exchanged for bowler hats.
“Hello, Chips,” said Frost to the small, alert constable. “What have you found?”
“Name on the letterbox, sir.”
Lenox had immediately noticed the same. “Very good. Well—shall we go in?”
Chips held up the key, which he had obtained from the owner.
The rooms were what Lenox had expected. There were four of them. One was a dark, fuggy sitting room, certainly a bachelor’s—cigar ash was strewn liberally over the arms of the sofa and the floor, a heavy tranche of old newspapers on the settle, hunting prints on the walls—and the remaining three lay behind it, two of them bedrooms and one a small study.
Even a cursory examination showed that these were Middleton’s rooms, but unfortunately a more thorough one didn’t uncover the missing valise, which might have offered confirmation that Townsend was indeed the person who had left Leigh his fortune.
There were other prizes, however. “Here is his daily planner,” Frost called from the study, flicking through a ledger. Lenox came and looked over his shoulder. “He was scrupulous about recording his appointments.”
“A great deal of shorthand—abbreviations,” Lenox murmured. “But it could be useful. I wonder if I could keep it for a night or two?”
“By all means—only let us take first crack at it, and we’ll give it to you Friday or Saturday.”
That was fair. Lenox nodded his thanks.
There were a few more useful finds—Lenox discovered two angry letters from a former client in a pigeonhole in the desk, which in a normal murder case would have vaulted their author, one Calum Aldington, into the top tier of suspects—and Chips followed them assiduously, double-checking everything they looked into. Also in Middleton’s desk was a sheaf of letter cards engraved with his name and the address 24 Aldershot Place. That was curious: a second address, perhaps.
“Or an old address?” said Frost.
“Perhaps. He has been here nine years, however, according to the landlady. Would he keep them in his desk? It’s a very tidy one. Worth sending a man to that address, if you can spare one.”
Frost nodded, looking at the stationery. “Yes. We will.”
It was in the spare bedroom that Lenox found something even more interesting, he thought. “Frost,” he called out, “come have a look at this.”
The inspector popped his head around the doorway. “What is it?”
Lenox held open a fitted pistol case, leather on the outside, blue velvet on the inside. “Empty.”
“That’s something. Do you think it signifies?”
“We didn’t find a pistol in the office, nor have we here.”
“He lost it, then.”
“A pistol! Well, perhaps—or perhaps he felt that he was in danger, and removed it for his own protection.”
“But in that case we would have found it.”
Lenox raised his eyebrows. “Or else it was the weapon that killed him, and it lies at the bottom of the Thames. You’ll note that the size of the pistol that was stored in this case matches that of the bullet found in Middleton’s brain.”
Frost’s expression darkened. “Yes.”
“Did you observe as we entered the dead bolt above the regular lock on the door?”
“No.”
Lenox nodded. “Unlocked, of course, since he wasn’t here—but new, I would guess, from the shine on the brass. The other doors don’t have them.”
Frost looked at him with an air of reappraisal, perhaps of appreciation. “Well spotted.”
There was a call from the sitting room. Frost and Lenox went and found Chips by the door, with the landlady. She was holding a packet of letters. She wanted to see if they needed the mail she had held for Middleton.
Frost took the chance to ask her about the dead bolt. She had already said that she hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her lodger’s behavior—but now she said that yes, he had had a locksmith in at his own expense to fortify the door, about eight or nine days earlier.
As Frost questioned the woman further, Lenox flicked through the mail. Most of it was of the common sort—circulars, bills—but there was one unfranked envelope that merely said Middleton in a fine cursive.
He opened it, and something dropped to the floor. The envelope was otherwise empty. Chips stooped down and picked up the object. “What is it?” Lenox asked.
“A coin,” Chips answered, holding it up for all of them to inspect. “But only a farthing.”