Lenox, Ampleforth, and Ampleforth’s clerk spent some time discussing the trunk. Lenox asked them repeatedly if perhaps some privileged traveler aboard the HMS Gallant—a paying passenger—might have brought this trunk. But no, Ampleforth insisted, the navy was highly regulatory of onboard baggage, and had been twice as strict when the Gallant was still seaworthy thirty years prior.
But what was the purpose of the concealment?
G957, he had in his mind; the ruse of the Gallant must be designed to cover, somehow, for that G, explain it away.
He thanked Ampleforth, owed him dinner he said, then took a carriage home in a thoughtful mood. It was just past one o’clock. In his rooms there was a raft of morning mail—a note from Elizabeth asking if he was going to Lady Ledderer’s that evening, a bill from the bookstore, a close friend from Oxford who was in Ceylon and sent very funny intermittent updates about his life there. A telegram from his mother, too.
Thinking of you STOP send word if there is aught I can do STOP
That “aught” came from the previous century, and so, Lenox thought with a pang, did his parents. And while he might, they would not see the next.
As he was contemplating this, tapping the folded telegram against the table, Mrs. Huggins came in. Apparently she had been encouraged by Lenox’s praise of her work on the rugs, unfortunately. She now presented him with a long list—it ran to a second page!—of things she thought should be done around the house because it was spring.
There was nothing Lenox wanted less in the world than to have a long conference with his housekeeper assessing the “state of curtains (2nd bedroom).”
He looked at the list with at least a simulation of thoughtfulness.
“Why don’t you go ahead with the first four, and then we’ll revisit the rest with Graham,” he said after a moment.
She looked on the verge of mentioning that in Lady Hamilton’s household, orders five through nineteen would have been executed as a matter of course. But, perhaps sensing that she had already pressed her luck, she acceded and withdrew.
Lenox composed a telegram to his mother.
Huggins will be death of me STOP otherwise holding steady STOP looking forward Lenox House two days time STOP bringing doctors STOP they will not stop overnight STOP prepare Father STOP Charles
He thought that he ought to go see his brother. But there was so much to do; and in the end, he decided that he would visit Sir Richard Mayne instead.
Mayne received him curtly, but this attitude seemed to be more global in nature than in any way specific to Lenox.
“Well?” he said.
“A few things,” Lenox replied in a tone of corresponding briskness. He felt his youth. Presumably when he was older, he wouldn’t be so terrified in situations like this one. The happy anticipation of that future was of no comfort to him now, though. “The first is Nathaniel Butler.”
“Yes? What about him?”
“Multiple people have confirmed that he was in Birmingham for several days on either side of the first murder.”
Mayne frowned. “Hm. Field won’t like letting him go.”
“That’s your business, of course. The next thing is the trunk.”
“The trunk?”
Lenox explained, and Mayne’s curiosity was piqued. He wanted to know if G957 was a useful clue. “It almost must be,” he said. “At any rate, it’s among our best leads so far.”
“I’m attempting to solve the puzzle,” said Lenox.
Mayne waved an irritable hand. “We don’t talk like that here, it’s not a novel,” he said. “Just get at it. Do you need a man or two?”
Lenox, swallowing, said that that would be useful, certainly. “My plan was to go to a few shops that sell trunks. I could write up a list.”
“Have it to me by the end of the day—keep it sharpish, mind—and I will assign you a constable.”
The end of the day, sharpish. Lenox hated that half pound a week with all his heart. “Very well,” he said.
Sir Richard, perhaps remembering that he was speaking with the son of a Member of Parliament and an aristocrat, shook his head. “Sorry, Lenox. Not myself. The press. Was that all?”
“No. There was one more thing, in fact.”
“Eh?”
“It’s about the two women.”
“I should hope so.”
“Specifically where they might have disappeared from. It’s been bothering me.”
“Go on.”
“Does Inspector Field have a theory?”
“Prostitutes.” Some look of irritation must have passed over Lenox’s face, however briefly, because Sir Richard said, “What, you think it unlikely?”
“We know very specifically that their teeth are those of wellborn women. It was mentioned in the first article ever written about Walnut Island.”
“A prostitute may have decent teeth.”
“It’s not common. What’s more, the second body, what I saw of it—”
Here Lenox ran aground, though.
How could he explain that his instinct told him it was the body of a person who had a decent place to sleep, decent food to eat?
A tortoiseshell comb for her hair.
Mayne nodded. “No. I take your point,” he said. “I am inclined to agree.”
“There is an easy way to find out more. If the medical surveyor makes a venereal examination…”
Mayne turned—he was standing, pacing—and picked up a piece of paper. “I am pressing them like all get-out to examine the body. They are as slow as that hippopotamus.”
Lenox shrugged. “In that case, I think it is our task to discover where these women might have come from. Nobody has reported them gone. Nobody has written in, I assume, saying that one or both match the description of someone missing?”
Mayne shook his head. “No. But what do you propose?”
“I think we must wire the police service in every county and ask if they are missing either one or two women.”
“The replies will be a flood—every girl who eloped to Gretna Green with the local blackguard, or went bad and came to London.”
“My assistant and I shall go through them, even if they are overwhelming in number,” Lenox said stoutly. “And if the descriptions you provide are precise, regarding height, weight, eye color, hair color, age—the comb and the ring from Walnut Island.”
Mayne hesitated, and then nodded. “Very well. It shall be done. The replies to be forwarded to you?”
“I am happy for Field to share the work, or to take it myself.”
“Leave Field to Field,” said Mayne. “You shall have the replies if you want them. Is that all?”
“For now.”
“Good day, then,” said Mayne, sitting down and looking at his papers. He glanced up at Lenox. “You’re doing good work. I thank you.”
The young detective—he could call himself that, he thought!—left Scotland Yard aloft on that compliment.
The last several months had been so frustrating, so endless, so full of self-doubt. There was every chance he might scrap this detective work yet, of course. Politics had always interested him, and he had the means and the inclination to travel. Either might make for a career, though the diplomatic corps seemed a hard road.
He would rather not join the army or the navy—the worst parts of school, extended over a lifetime.
But it gave him a coursing feeling in his veins to be on a scent, to be doing what he had envisioned doing. For the first time it all seemed worth it. Lord Markham be damned.
There was a wire waiting for him at home—briefly and irrationally he hoped it might be the first response from one of the remote constabularies of England, but that would take days, even longer, no doubt—and as he tore it open, he saw it was from his mother.
Recall now Huggins highly susceptible to cats STOP Love STOP Mother
Susceptible to cats! Lenox had only a moment to pause over this odd declaration before Mrs. Huggins herself entered, announcing that he had a guest, Mr. Rupert Clarkson.