Lenox stood up, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other holding a cup of tea, and stared at the riot of paper on the breakfast table. “If someone wanted to be out of countenance for twelve days or so, it would be hard to think of a better prescription than this.”
Graham sighed, just barely audibly. “Indeed, sir.”
It was the next morning. They had been up since seven o’clock, reading the letters and wires that had come in from various parts of England, describing the women who had gone missing within the past two months.
There were thirty in all. Their collective history was a grim one. Maude Lyons of Bournemouth, whose husband was known to be a violent man, had last been seen with him near a deep and rocky local ravine, being dragged against her will by the arm; he was mum on her whereabouts. Miss Adeline Bold, fourteen, of Liverpool, ward of an uncle it emerged had been interfering with her; last seen near docks; suspected runaway. It was difficult to imagine a happy outcome for her.
And so on. There were one or two slightly lighter notes. For instance it was hard not to absolve Sara Cather of Manchester. She was “missing” in the technical sense of the word, and had been since her husband died of what looked suspiciously like strychnine poisoning. That was no good. But the last sightings of her contained reports that she had a broken arm and a battered face; her sister, in Trafford, refused the police entrance, and slammed the door in their faces with a declaration that they could “all go and [expletive] pigs” before they would see her sister.
Lenox and Graham spent some time speculating about what expletive might have been omitted here.
In the end, there were four out of the thirty women who, first, matched the rough description of both women (younger than forty, dark curls, decent teeth, fair-skinned), and second, whose disappearances were genuinely enigmatic.
They came from Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, and Cardiff.
“No two from a single city,” Lenox said, contemplating the pile.
“No, sir.”
“That would have been useful. Still, all four cities have direct trains to Waterloo or Charing Cross, if we believe that our murderer brought the bodies to London with the aim of disposing of them instantly, and therefore chose the river.”
“You believe the river itself is irrelevant, then, sir?” said Graham.
Lenox shook his head and thought for a moment. “I do not know, sincerely. The HMS Gallant in the first murder and the bizarre affectation of the flowers, the bier in the second. Both murders seem to be centered obsessively on the Thames, the water.”
“The shilling, sir.”
“Yes, exactly.”
This was the detail the press loved most, certain that it referred to the payment the blind boatman received for ferrying the dead across the River Styx. “But you believe these may be deceptions, sir,” Graham said.
“I believe it’s possible.”
If they were, the London press was certainly deceived, in the shilling and in all other matters. They were in an absolute uproar of worry. There were twenty-five days until the next murder, but it might as well have been twenty-five minutes. The newspapers published hundreds of articles providing amateur analysis of the two letters the Challenger had received. If the first murder attracted too little notice for the murderer’s attention, the second must have more than gratified his least realistic dreams of same—it was a case with just the lurid amount of detail, just the sense of menace, just the tantalizing number of clues, to capture the entire public’s imagination.
Even that morning, as he walked from St. James’s Park to Scotland Yard, Lenox saw evidence of the case everywhere. On a newsstand, there were penny ballads about the murders for sale, special editions of all the cheaper newspapers and magazines, even in one case threepence for a cheap mug depicting the Thames Ophelia.
He called on Scotland Yard at a little after nine o’clock. Mayne, Sinex, and Exeter were closeted together.
“Good morning, Lenox,” Mayne said.
“Good morning, sir.”
The commissioner didn’t seem especially delighted to see him, but he was positively doting compared to Sinex and Exeter, in their stiff tall blue hats indoors. “Walnut Island?” Mayne said.
He had been impressed with Lenox’s discovery that the trunk didn’t come from the Gallant, and the name of the firm in Manchester that had likely made it.
He had been less interested in Lenox’s speculations about the letters and his (now-consuming) interest in the spectacles and the dryness of the second victim’s bier on Bankside. Perhaps because they weren’t new facts.
“As you know, sir, I’ve sorted through the wires from the other constabularies. These four candidates seem more likely.” Lenox passed across a list. “We’ve sent them the sketches by mail.”
Mayne nodded curtly. One intelligent thing Field had done was to have quick likenesses taken of the two dead women before their bodies were transported to the morgue. “Anything else?”
“I do have a theory.”
“A theory,” Sinex said dryly.
This Sinex was a man of middle age, immensely strong, with the tidy square-jawed face of a particularly fearsome stepfather. Lenox knew Exeter better, but he didn’t like either of them. Nor, as far as he could tell, had either of them made a single iota of progress in the case. “Indeed, Mr. Sinex,” said Lenox.
“Pray tell.”
Lenox had in his jacket pocket (he wished to hell and back that he had thrown the sprig of lavender Graham had placed in his buttonhole that morning in the gutter on his way in) his book of London’s maps. He showed it to them now.
“We’ve seen London,” said Exeter, younger and stupider than Sinex but probably more ill inclined to Lenox.
“You know where Waterloo and Charing Cross are, then,” Lenox replied. “I believe that is how the victims came into our city. As I have said from the start, it is most likely to me that they are from elsewhere. I think the location proves it.”
He explained the idea, which had seemed so persuasive to him in Sussex, in a tone that he wished were a little more commanding.
Mayne listened, to his credit, and said, “That would explain the trunk in the Walnut Island case.”
“Yes, sir.”
He added that he still thought Field should expand his range of victims. “Mr. Field’s business is Mr. Field’s business,” Sinex said.
Mayne nodded, though not with the air of someone completely enamored of that fact. “He thanks you for your contribution on Walnut Island, incidentally.”
Lenox flushed. “Thank you, sir.”
“Let us know if you have anything else,” Mayne said. “In the meanwhile, collect your pay.”
Lenox’s stomach fell. “Oh.”
“It’s downstairs. It looks odd on the board that you haven’t collected it two Mondays in a row.”
“I would like to look at the evidence from the second murder, if it’s at the warehouse in Ealing.”
“That should be fine,” said Mayne.
“The door upon which she was laid, in particular,” said Lenox.
To his surprise, Sinex, who was just in his peripheral vision, leaned forward in agitation. “Absolutely not.”
Mayne’s gaze shifted from Lenox to the senior inspector, mildly surprised. “No?”
Sinex answered. “It’s Field’s case—then mine—and Exeter’s.”
“What can another pair of eyes hurt?” said Lenox, humbly he hoped.
Sinex answered. “Every pair of eyes in London is on us already. We must keep the circle small.”
“I think I can help.”
Sinex, red faced, stood up. “Collect your bloody pay, and stay away from Ealing!”
Mayne gave way. “You’d better leave it, Lenox.”
Lenox did not collect his pay—he would say he had forgotten—and returned home in a brown study, lost in the mazes of his own mind, tracing the footsteps he had walked over again and again on each case, the painstaking steps, but unable to add another step to either.
When he got home, he went into the breakfast room. Graham had organized all the telegraphs.
“You’ve sent the sketches to the four cities?” Lenox asked.
“Yes, sir. First-class.”
Lenox threw himself into his chair by the window. The day was reprovingly beautiful, hot and clear. He thought of Edmund, on the train down to Markethouse with Molly and their boy right now.
What a clatter, to travel in a great retinue like that.
Imagine doing it with Elizabeth, though, his mind told him, until he pushed the thought away.
Edmund and his father would take a ride that afternoon, and he couldn’t help it in himself, he felt a pang of jealousy, and wasn’t quite sure of why—and he felt very old, very young, very new in London, implacably ancient too; felt all the ages of his body live inside it simultaneously just for an instant.
He must have been some time, but when he came out of his reverie he stood bolt upright. “I think I’ve got something, Graham.”
“Sir?”
“It’s the door, of course. How dim I’ve been.”
“Sir?” said Graham again.
Another fellow might have bothered Lenox with a lot of chatter, but Graham was silent until Lenox spoke again. “Do me a favor, will you. The place that makes the trunks.”
“Wilton’s, sir.”
“Yes, Wilton’s. Wire them and ask for a list of everywhere they’ve sold to in London, with quantities. Paid return—however many words they need.”
“Very well, sir.”
“There must be trunkmakers in London,” Lenox muttered.
“Sir?”
“Nothing, nothing. Just send the wire as quickly as possible. Ask for a reply before end of business.”
Graham, already standing up, said, “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be back before tea. I’m for Ealing.”