Lenox knew the constables who manned the front desk and simply nodded at them on his way to the back offices. He passed what had once been Inspector William Exeter’s office, which now stood empty and bore on its door a plaque in the murdered man’s memory. Without saying hello he also passed the office of Inspector Jenkins, the sole man at the Yard with much sympathy for Lenox’s methods or interference.
Fowler’s office was empty, but just momentarily-a cup of tea steamed on the desk, and a lit cigarette smoldered in an ebony ashtray. As Lenox stood uncertainly in the doorway a voice spoke to him from down the hallway.
“What are you doing in my office?”
“Hallo, Fowler. I thought I might have a word with you.”
“Did you?”
He was distinctly unfriendly. This wouldn’t have surprised the vast majority of people who knew Grayson Fowler. He was an essentially disagreeable man, not particularly handsome, slightly snarling, always half-shaven, and poorly dressed. Nevertheless, with Lenox he had, in the past at any rate, been affable enough, because Fowler was sharp and valued the quality in others.
“It’s about Frederick Clarke.”
“I imagined it might be.”
“Can I come in?”
They were standing rather awkwardly in the doorway, with too little space between them. “I’d just as soon you didn’t,” said Fowler.
“I don’t want to tread on your turf. Ludo Starling is an old friend of mine, and asked me some time ago whether I might-”
“I believe since then he’s advised you to let Scotland Yard handle the case?”
“Well-halfheartedly. If we could just speak-”
“I’m afraid not.”
“But if-”
“No!” said Fowler loudly and turned into his office, shutting the door hard behind him.
Lenox felt himself turning red with embarrassment. He stood there for a moment, utterly nonplussed.
Eventually he turned and walked down the empty hall out into daylight again, hailed a hansom cab, and directed it to McConnell’s house.
Jane was fetched for him by a happily tipsy young servant girl.
“How is Toto?” he asked his wife.
“She’s doing wonderfully well, tired but resilient.”
“And happy?”
“Oh, marvelously happy.”
He smiled. “Do you know, it was wonderful to witness McConnell’s joy. I thought I had never seen a man so happy.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I wonder, Jane, would you think of having a child one day?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know,” she said at last.
“It might be nice.”
“Aren’t we rather too old?”
He smiled softly. “Not you.”
She returned his affectionate look and grazed his hand with her fingertips. “It’s a conversation for another day, perhaps.”
Hastily-feeling slightly vulnerable, in fact slightly hurt-he said, “Oh, of course, of course. I’m only caught up in the happiness of the moment.”
“I understand.”
“Now-let’s take a look at this child, George. I assume she’s with a nurse somewhere hereabouts?”
“I’m afraid you can’t see her. Toto still has her. She won’t let the nurse take her away-‘just a few minutes longer,’ she keeps saying. You can’t imagine how she beams at the poor little child.”
“Too bad,” said Lenox. “I’ve wasted a trip.”
Chapter Sixteen
Strangely, the Palace of Westminster, that remarkable and ancient-looking panorama of soft yellow stone situated on the banks of the Thames (and better known as Parliament), was now just, in its fully finished form, about four years old.
This was so strange because it already seemed somehow eternal, and of course some parts of it were older. There was the Jewel Tower, a three-story building that stood over a moat, which Edward the Third had built to house his treasures in 1365. And to be fair, construction of the Houses had begun some thirty years before, so parts of the new buildings were at least that old. Still, for most of Lenox’s life it had been a work in progress. Only now did it stand on its own, unencumbered by builders or provisional outbuildings, so glorious it might have been there a thousand years.
The reason for the construction of the new Parliament was simple enough. A fire.
Until the middle of the 1820s, sheriffs collecting taxes for the crown had used an archaic method of recordkeeping, the tally stick. Beginning in medieval England, when of course vellum was far scarcer than paper now, the most efficient way to record the payment of taxes had been to make a series of different-sized notches in long sticks. For payment of a thousand pounds, the sheriff cut a notch as wide as his palm in the tally stick, while the payment of a single shilling would be marked with a single nick. The thumb was a hundred pounds, while the payment of one pound was marked, obscurely, with the width of a “swollen piece of barleycorn.”
It was a system that in the eighteenth century was already antiquated, and by William the Fourth’s reign embarrassingly so. Thus it was in 1826 that the Exchequer-that branch of government that manages the empire’s funds-decided to change it. This left one problem, however: two massive cartloads of old tally sticks of which to dispose. The Clerk of Works (unfortunate soul) took it upon himself to burn them in two stoves in the basement that reached below the House of Lords. The next afternoon (October 16, 1834) visitors to the Lords complained of how hot the floor felt. Soon there was smoke.
Then came the fatal mistake. A caretaker of the place, Mrs. Wright, believed she had solved the problem when she turned off the furnaces. She left work. An hour later, the entire group of buildings was almost wholly in flames. The conflagration, even though citizens of London fought it valiantly, consumed almost all of the old Palace of Westminster.
The new Parliament was spectacular. It contained three miles of corridors, more than a thousand rooms, and more than a hundred staircases. As he walked into the Members’ Entrance to go to work, all of this rich history crossed Lenox’s mind. He was a part of it now, too. Slowly but surely a serious burden, an intimidating sort of expectation, had settled on his shoulders.
It made him wonder: What if this position for which he had so long yearned and which he had won at so high a cost was in fact wrong for him? A bad fit? It nearly broke his heart to think so. His brother and his father, both his grandfathers, had served long, distinguished years in the Houses of Parliament. It would be almost unbearable if he were the one to let them down.
Still, still-he couldn’t stop thinking about Ludo Starling’s strange behavior, about the notes slipped under the door for Frederick Clarke, and about whether he had already discovered a truer vocation than politics could ever be.
Graham was sitting at an upwardly sloped clerk’s desk in their cramped office, but stood when Lenox entered.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Hello, Graham.”
“If I may be so bold as to ask, sir-”
“You know what, I don’t think clerks here are quite so deferential as butlers,” said Lenox, smiling. “You can speak less formally if you like.”
“As you please, sir.”
Lenox laughed. “That’s a poor start. But what were you going to ask?”
“Has Dr. McConnell’s child been born?”
“Oh, that! Yes, it’s a girl, and you’ll be pleased to hear she’s quite healthy. They’re calling her George.”