The case was suddenly gathering momentum. After another hour and a half of examining Middleton’s rooms, he and Frost separated, agreeing to be in touch later that day, earlier if necessary. Frost knew that Lenox was pursuing Townsend’s son, Leigh’s competition for the father’s inheritance. For his part, the man from the Yard was going to speak with his bosses about the Farthings—since unmistakably now, by that coin, the unsuccessful attempt on Leigh’s life and the successful one on Middleton’s were linked, two known members of the gang pursuing the former, their very symbol appearing at the home of the latter.
A stubborn problem remained for Lenox, though: Why would the gang indicate their intentions with this letter and coin? Neither of them had been able to offer a satisfactory solution to that question.
He headed back toward the agency’s offices. For some reason the streets around Chancery Lane were crammed, nearly impassable. At the little wooden soup stand run by his friend Ames, Lenox stopped, touching his hat.
“What is all this commotion?” he asked.
“Do you read the papers, sir?”
“From time to time. Why?”
“It’s the Post Office, sir. Which, they’ve announced themselves so pressed in the need for telegraphs in the instrument gallery that they’ve said they’ll accept women now.”
Lenox glanced around. It was nearly all young women in the neighborhood, he realized. “There are hundreds.”
Ames brandished a fresh copy of the Star. “A thousand, it says here. They accepted seven hundred of them. Salary a hundred pound a year, sir.”
“Not bad.”
“Well, the women are kicking up, because the gentlemen make a hundred sixty—but they were let go, the ones that fussed. And it only makes sense, as they’re gentlemen.”
“It’s overdue,” Lenox said. “They take ages now, the wires. And women can tap their toes just as well as men can. I have been at enough concerts to know that.”
As he walked on, he watched the people milling around him. Nothing had changed life quite as the telegraph had. All of them were utterly dependent on it now. In America the change was even more dramatic—before the telegraph, it had taken ten days to send a message from the east coast of the country to the west, by the Pony Express; with the completion of the transcontinental line, fifteen years before, it now took about ten seconds. They were still to see how this closeness to distant parts of the world changed them all.
When Lenox returned to the offices, he found that Polly and Dallington were back. They had been at Parliament three nights successively, taking the days to sleep, and as far as Lenox could ascertain had accomplished quite literally nothing in that time, unless you believed they had acted as a deterrent. (He did not.) Whenever they were in the office they were laughing together, heads close, full of plans.
“I think it might be time to pass Parliament down the ladder,” he said, when they were closeted together. They had come in to hear about Leigh and Middleton.
“Why?” Dallington asked.
“It’s taking up all of your time, and unless I’m mistaken you still have no idea what happened. At this point I think we ought to call it a one-time event and devote less time to it. In fact, it’s overwhelmingly likely that whatever was in the back room is gone now.”
“We do have one lead,” Dallington said.
“What’s that?”
“There’s a naval negotiation to begin in Belgium Tuesday next,” he said. “To see the British government’s plans for it in advance would be a serious strategic advantage.”
“To France, Russia, any number of countries,” Polly added. “And according to one junior minister, several conversations had taken place in the room.”
This was serious indeed, a plausible motive. Lenox nodded philosophically. “I suppose you had better carry on after all.”
Relief flashed imperceptibly across Dallington’s face. “And what of Middleton, and Leigh?” he inquired.
Lenox told them about the morning’s findings. Both expressed alarm about the farthing in the envelope; and like Lenox and Frost could offer no account for the brazenness of the symbol.
“If it was a warning,” said Dallington, “they ought to have given him the chance to be warned before they killed him.”
“Just so.”
Soon enough they left Lenox’s office—looking more like conspirators than colleagues—and the older detective was free to begin looking over the brief dossier Pointilleux had given him on Townsend’s son.
His name was a peculiar one: Salt. Salt Andrew Townsend. He was just over thirty and had lived in London since leaving grammar school at the age of seventeen, acting first as a factor for his father’s various business concerns, and then, after their falling-out, apparently living on a portion that his father had settled on him in happier times.
“Salt,” Lenox muttered to himself, as he read this.
He sent out for lunch and continued to puzzle through the timeline of Leigh’s case, jotting notes down as he went. Pointilleux dashed in at a little past two o’clock, only long enough to tell Lenox that he thought he would have run Salt Townsend to ground by six o’clock.
“Come to my house when you have, would you?” Lenox asked.
“Your house? Why, of course.”
He thanked Pointilleux and waved him off. It was an unusual directive, but Lenox wanted to check on his brother. He left, directing his carriage to his town house.
Sir Edmund Lenox was a great man in Parliament now; he was in conference despite having only just returned to London, and though he greeted Charles with an expression of delighted surprise, he immediately warned him that he could spare but a few minutes.
“I had hoped I could give you tea somewhere,” said Charles.
“If only. Two hours off the train, and I am somehow four hours behind schedule. Would that you could explain that to me.”
“At any rate I thank you for taking care of Jane and Sophia longer than you had planned.”
“Not at all.”
He had been widowed the fall before, and since that terrible event had only been half himself, Charles thought, as if he and Molly had traded parts of their souls into each other over the long course of their loving marriage. But now, for the first time, there were glimpses of a thaw inside. “Was it taxing?”
“I wish we all could have stayed down there for the whole of January. We need to enlist some philosopher king to run this country once and for all, so that we can have a respite.”
“I nominate Graham,” Lenox said.
“You could do worse. Bear in mind that we have Her Majesty.”
“True, very true. Tell me, did they seem mopey, snowed in like that, my wife and daughter?”
Lenox’s voice was light—but his brother caught its tone. “Oh! Yes, I think so. Sophia mostly sprinted across the ballroom for five or six hours at a stretch and then would take a very civil little nap of six minutes before resuming her exercises. Jane was a perfect guest, obviously. The housemaids will be sadly lost without her.”
Lenox smiled, and asked, “Incidentally, do you know who I’m working for?”
“Who?”
“Gerald Leigh.”
“Gerald Leigh! I haven’t thought of his name in years. Is he in trouble?”
“Did you know that he has become one of England’s most famous scientists?”
“Leigh, who got ripped over and over? I always reckoned him a dunce.”
Lenox frowned. “Yes, I remember that you refused to take my word to the contrary.”
“Old Tennant must be vexed. He’s still up there, you know, though none of us are younger than we were then. Gerald Leigh, bless my heart. Tell me, why have you begun working for him?”
They had only another two or three minutes, but Lenox explained. Edmund promised to drop in at Hampden Lane later, and they said their good-byes with a mutual clasp of the shoulder, each, perhaps, more worried about the other than himself.