A few days later, Lenox turned his thoughts to his Christmas visit with his brother, due to begin soon. He still wanted to take Edmund to task after Newton Duff’s revelatory comments, perhaps that evening over supper and a bottle of their father’s wine. And of course Lady Jane would be there, just a few miles off with her brother, in the house where she had grown up.
For now, though, Lenox was in a place that offered even greater measures of bliss than Lenox House, the home of his childhood. He was in Linehan’s, Bootmakers, Crown Street, in a respectable middle-class neighborhood by Leicester Square. Not the type of place he would have found on his own, he thought. Thank God for Skaggs.
“Yes, three pairs, cork-soled, two black, one brown, all lined with flannel,” he said, repeating his order. He had come in two days earlier, and now his boots were ready.
“Packed up?” asked Mr. Linehan, a jolly, rotund, white-haired man.
“No, I shall wear the brown pair, please.” “Would you like us to wrap your old boots?” Lenox shuddered. “I hope never to see them again.”
Mr. Linehan laughed. “Well, I guarantee these, Mr. Lenox. You’re at the right place. I admit I don’t think much of the boots you’re wearing.”
“Nor do I, Mr. Linehan. I can’t abide them for another moment.”
Mr. Linehan laughed again, took the offending boots, which Lenox had slipped off, and offered the brown pair, designed specifically for his feet from the measurements that Lenox had found much pleasure in seeing Mr. Linehan take.
Lenox put on a fresh pair of socks, which he had brought especially, and then the boots, and wasn’t disappointed. Instantly warm, but soft-yes, this was all he truly needed. He gave his profuse thanks to the cobbler, received a bag with the other two pairs, blessed Skaggs for his practicality, and walked onto the street, where, despite the new snow, his feet remained warm and dry. It was a heavenly feeling.
He had two more errands before the evening trip to Lenox House. The less pleasant first. He directed his coachman to Bow Street and Scotland Yard. Today was the day of Exeter’s promotion. In combination with the diminishing crime rates in the West End, his bailiwick, there were the Marlborough forgery and the Jack Soames case to his credit.
Though it was cold, Lenox saw that Exeter and William Melville, the head of Scotland Yard, were standing on the sidewalk by the gates before headquarters, addressing a crowd of maybe fifteen journalists and a few citizens. There were a few moments of remarks from each of them, a large grin on Exeter’s face the whole time. Lenox didn’t mind especially, though he felt slightly duped.
After the remarks were over, the journalists milled about, taking pictures of the principals and of Exeter’s young family. Lenox shook Exeter’s hand without receiving much attention. But after the majority of the pictures were taken, Exeter brought a young boy of perhaps eight to see Lenox. They moved off a bit to the side.
“This is my son, Mr. Lenox. John.”
“How do you do, John?”
“What do you say?” Exeter said, addressing the boy.
“Thank you, sir,” the boy said.
Lenox’s and Exeter’s eyes met. Lenox offered his hand, Exeter shook it, and the detective and his son walked away. Climbing back into his carriage, Lenox thought, Ridiculous, in a way. But as they drove, he couldn’t help feeling a little moved.
Their second stop was at the Clark Lane storefront of Mr. Kerr, travel agent.
“Mr. Kerr!” Lenox said, walking in. It was a dusty room but well lit and cluttered with papers, itineraries, and maps.
“Ah. Mr. Lenox.”
“Yes indeed, Mr. Kerr.”
“Come to plan a trip?”
“Just so, Mr. Kerr.”
The elderly man laughed sourly. “Don’t see the use. You never go anywhere; I never make any money!”
“Why, Mr. Kerr, I did in fact go to Moscow, only a few years ago.”
“Nine.”
“Well, work will come up, Mr. Kerr.”
“Not for me, with such clients!”
“Ah! Now there you’re incorrect, if you’ll excuse me saying so. One word, Mr. Kerr: Persia. What have you got?”
“What’ve I got? Empty promises! What about France?”
“Well, well, I had to cancel. But Graham came by with fifty pounds, did he not?”
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Kerr, begrudgingly but slightly mollified.
“Excellent. Now, what have you got in the way of Persia? I was thinking of a four-city tour, if you can manage it, with a native guide. I may go off the beaten path a bit…”
The conversation began to grow concrete, and very slowly Mr. Kerr pulled out the proper maps and said that yes, perhaps he knew a man who was familiar with the Persian countryside. Gradually, as he always did, Lenox drew the grumpy old man out, until by the end they were equally excited. Often people told him he should go to a different agent, but Lenox liked their ritual and stubborn Mr. Kerr’s gradual acceptance of Lenox’s good cheer. And then he had one quality that Lenox judged him for beyond all others: Mr. Kerr, too, loved to plan trips. He had found his metier by being the sort of dreamer Lenox was when it came to travel.
Lenox left an hour later with several papers in hand and promises to return after the New Year to plan things more specifically. Who knew if he would get to Persia-but as he planned, he always believed that this time he really would.
On the way home, he asked to be dropped at the end of Hampden Lane and walked happily up the street with a little arrangement of flowers in his hand. They were forget-me-nots, and he left them with Kirk, along with a note that said, Thank you for everything, and see you soon!
He then walked back to his house, next door, still gratefully warm of foot, and walked up his own stoop contentedly. He received a telegram when he came in.
Claude Barnard had just pled guilty to charges of murder at the Assizes, saving himself a trial, and received twenty-five years in prison, commuted from hanging on the strength of Lenox’s private advocacy of compassion to the judge.
It may as well do to explain his fate now, as his cousin’s has already been determined. Claude did in fact receive 200,000 pounds, his shares and Eustace’s, when the board of the Pacific Trust voted again-despite the public’s futile insistence that Jack Soames’s memory be honored by his last vote. The cousins had arranged that ownership of their joint stock would transfer to the remaining cousin upon the death of one, or, upon the death of both, would be split equally between their families.
The money tantalized Claude for the first year in prison, when he could only spread a pound here and there for better meals and a private room. But gradually, after the passage of some years, he grew content with his lot and even wrote a treatise, “On the English Prison,” which was well received, for there was only a dim memory of his crime and ample evidence of his contrition.
Then, in his tenth year in prison, Claude began to distribute his money among charities he chose quite carefully. When he was released after nineteen years for good behavior, he had given away all but forty thousand pounds. There was conjecture that he was trying to pay his way out of his memories, and this may well have been true, but the orphans and troubled women who received the money looked for very little motive, and even if he was guilty of assuaging his guilt with his gild, it didn’t change the fact that he did an immense amount of good.
He was forty when he again became a free man. He took small but comfortable rooms in an obscure part of the city and traveled to warm climates in the winter. At forty-five he wrote another treatise, called “On the Alteration of Man’s Will”; it is not too much to say that it became a minor classic in its time and was still occasionally being dusted off, even after his premature death, of drink, at fifty-three.
Lenox saw him only one more time, on the streets of London. It was on a warm sunny day in June, near the entrance to Hyde Park. Claude seemed unable to speak, and when Lenox said, “I’m glad to see you’ve turned your fortune to the benefit of the city,” Claude merely nodded and then ran off very quickly, stooped over, carrying a number of books under his arm.