Three days passed. The only joy Lenox had in this time came from rowing down the river, the exercise emptying his mind.
On the third morning, unable to help himself, he rowed all the way down to Walnut Island. It was just barely light by the time he got there—he had taken to setting out earlier and earlier in the day, well before dawn, since his sleep was restless—and after pulling the scull to, he watched the sun rise slowly over London’s eastern edge. He had brought a sandwich wrapped in a cloth napkin and a bottle of water, and he gulped down both.
When he was finished, he turned the scull and pulled more evenly, though still with effort, the roughly half hour it took to get to Bankside.
Here it was already busy, large men hauling cargo in and out of the various anonymous warehouses, including that of Corcoran and Sons, where evidently business carried on.
Lenox wondered if its title partner had returned from Scotland upon hearing of Jonathan Pond’s death. He must have. Daughters married badly every day.
When he had been standing there for fifteen or twenty minutes, perhaps even longer, a fat little boy passed. There had been maybe fifteen or twenty similar boys, but he was the first who was juggling four eggs as he walked, easy as you please. Lenox smiled.
“I say, are those hard-boiled?” he asked.
The boy turned. He was perhaps thirteen, with an angelic mischievous round face. “Not yet. Why?”
“They’ll break if you drop them.”
“Don’t mean to drop them.”
Lenox laughed, and the boy started to juggle again, standing there, showing off a bit. He had a battered rucksack made from coarse cloth. In large faded black letters, it said HMS MATILDA and in smaller faded black ones, underneath it, MCEWAN.
“I’ll give you a shilling if you can do a fifth,” Lenox said.
“Haven’t got the egg,” the boy replied, eyes on the four that were flying in the air. “Could I have the shilling for this?”
“Can you do it on one foot?” In response, the boy, who was almost uncannily graceful given his bulk, first stood and then began to hop on one foot. Finally Lenox laughed, passed him the coin, and said, “Here you are, then. What do you do on the Matilda?”
“Rope maker’s mate.” The boy looked at him suspiciously, flipping the shilling across his knuckles to check it was real. “Why?”
“Just curious. You’ll be shipping off soon, I expect.” Lenox gestured at the bag. “The Matilda.”
“Us? No, we just arrived in London last night, thank the cross. She’ll be going up into dry dock for six weeks. We’ve been away eighteen months. Plenty of ropes to remake, but it’ll be nice to have a bit o’ London. My mother and father’s here. Going to see them now.”
“But—”
“Shore leave,” the boy added importantly.
Lenox looked at him strangely. “Last night?” he said.
The boy pointed upriver two docks. “You can see her there. Not a lick of paint left on her hull. Hard weather down the cape.”
Lenox’s mind was rushing. “You’re entirely certain of this. That the Matilda arrived in London last night.”
The boy looked at him as if he were mad. “Yes,” he said.
Lenox was already racing back to his scull. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The boy, standing on the pebbly shore, shouted after him. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
The boy watched as Lenox pushed off. “Well, so long, then,” he called. “Thanks for the shilling.”
“I owe you another!” Lenox shouted back.
The boy answered, but Lenox had already pulled hard into the river, and he couldn’t hear the reply—would never see the boy again, in this life or the next, but he thanked the Lord he had called out to him.
He rowed as hard as he could across the river, and then, having handed off the scull, sprinted home, arriving breathless.
“Mr. Lenox,” Mrs. Huggins said sternly, “in Lady Hamilton’s—”
Was this how little time the blasted cats had purchased them? “Not … not right now,” he panted. “Food and tea. To take with me. Five minutes. Graham too. Get Graham.”
“I’ve never—”
He didn’t wait to see what Mrs. Huggins had never, but darted back to his room. There was a standing bowl of water, and he splashed himself as clean as he reasonably could in fifteen seconds, soaped his arms and his face, rinsed himself, and shoved himself not very carefully into a suit.
He ran back out into the front hall. Mrs. Huggins—whatever her faults, she was a marvel of a housekeeper—was waiting with a little metal holdall. “Soft-boiled eggs, toast, beans, coffee, sir,” she said.
“Thank you. Graham?”
“Out, sir. I can—”
“He’ll find me at the Yard or they’ll tell him where I am. For God’s sake, though, urge him to hurry.”
Finally her employer’s seriousness seemed to have penetrated Mrs. Huggins’s disapprobation, and she looked concerned. “Are you quite all right, sir?”
“Yes—only a damned fool, a blind fool. You’ll tell him?”
“I shall, of course, sir.”
Lenox hailed a taxi and ordered it to Scotland Yard. It took an infuriatingly long time to get there; his mind was too busy to formulate ideas; the omnibus ahead of them wouldn’t move; his heart raced.
When he had become a detective, he had often imagined moments like this, the great resolution, the clues at last slotting together.
But then why did he feel ill?
Why did he wish he were anywhere else?
He arrived at the Yard and sprinted past the porter, Sherman, who called an indignant word after him. He ran up to Mayne’s office, and here, too, ignored the protocol of the building and flung the door open without asking.
Mayne was sitting there with Exeter. He looked at his visitor—who was no doubt slightly mad looking—and said curiously, “Lenox?”
“I believe I know who the victims are.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Exeter said.
Lenox looked at him angrily. “Perhaps it’s because I’m a detective.”
“Who are they, then?” Mayne asked him.
“Will you come to Corcoran and Sons with me?” he asked.
Mayne looked dismayed. Lenox saw the calculation in his mind: the case was closed, nobody had come forward to protest the anonymity of the women, and he, the commissioner, was too important to spend his mornings running down false trails.
On the other hand, Lenox was his responsibility.
“Exeter can go with you,” he said.
Lenox looked at the large inspector warily. Suddenly there was the sound of the door behind them. It was Field, the Yard’s most famous inspector; evidently he had come on another matter, but he looked at them curiously.
“What’s this quorum for, then, gents?” he said. “We’re only missing Sinex, it would appear.”
That word—“gents”—was very pointedly a derogation of Mayne and Lenox. Lenox ignored it. “I know who the women in the water were,” he said.
“Who?”
“I’m going to Corcoran and Sons to find out.”
“I’ll come,” Field said mildly.
Lenox looked at Mayne. “Do you remember the arrest the Yard made on the morning of the Ophelia murder?”
“Nathaniel Butler? We let him go, the poor sod. I hope he’s gotten his job back.”
“Not Butler.”
Exeter looked at Lenox curiously. “Johanssen? The Swede?”
Lenox nodded. “Of the Matilda.” Internally he cursed himself for his lazy little act of showmanship in getting them to release the sailor. “Scruffy beard. Tall. A bit worse for his night out?”
“What on earth does this have to do with the victims?” asked Mayne.
“The Matilda arrived in London last night,” Lenox said. “She had been abroad for eighteen months before that.”
There was a silence in the room.
“Pond had a conspirator,” said Field.
Mayne stood up. There was no question of his staying behind now. His face was black with anger. “Wilkinson,” he shouted to the outer office, “order my carriage ready!”