Because of the hook on the wall of the prison cell that must have been propping up Hiram Smalls from the waist-and Natt’s comment that it had been gone for “two or three years”-Lenox felt distinctly suspicious of the warden as he entered Newgate again. In the end, however, he wasn’t forced to confront the man and merely signed in with Dallington to see Gerald Poole in a small room where prisoners could receive visitors.
They went in and found the prisoner sitting at a small table with three rickety stools around it. The room was otherwise empty, though a guard remained outside the door.
“That can’t be John Dallington, can it?” Poole said with transparent shock on his face.
“How do you do, old friend?” said Dallington.
“Only middling,” said Poole, then laughed and turned to Lenox. “Gerald Poole. Won’t you sit down?”
“Charles Lenox,” said the detective, seeing right away the way Dallington had been trying to describe Poole. He seemed as unconcerned at finding himself in prison as he would have been at finding himself in Buckingham Palace. An unflappable lad. Of course, criminals often were unflappable.
“I’m pleased to meet you.”
“I wish it were under happier circumstances,” said Dallington.
“Whatever can bring you here?”
“It’s funny, actually-I’m an amateur detective now. Or training to be one. Lenox here made the daft decision to take me on as his student. Perhaps you’ve seen his name in the paper?”
“The Oxford case, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!” said the young lord and beamed.
“But-a detective, Dallington?”
Now here was a conversation Lenox had had a hundred times in his life. Peers and elders who had once considered him promising greeted the news with barely concealed consternation, while those less familiar with him idly wondered if he had lost his money on horses or women. How much easier to be like Edmund, a stolid MP, part of the great mass of respectable aristocrats who clustered around Grosvenor Square! Lenox loved his work dearly and felt it was noble indeed; nevertheless, ignoble though it was, part of him yearned for the comfortable respect of being a Member of Parliament. It wasn’t the main reason he was running, but if he admitted it to himself it was one of the reasons. No more uncomfortable moments like this one.
Dallington, predictably, was more open than Lenox. He laughed. “Just a fancy,” he said. “I haven’t been disowned or anything like that. I felt I could do some good. Neither of us was cut out for the old military and clergy line of things, were we, Gerry?”
Poole laughed merrily, accepting Dallington’s explanation at face value. “No, indeed not,” he said. His accent was very definitely English, though he had passed so much of his life abroad. Lenox thought of the traitor Jonathan Poole and suddenly found himself curious.
“I told Lenox you couldn’t possibly have killed either of those journalists, and he agreed to come over and see you. He’s the best, I promise.”
“I’m awfully grateful. I seem to have few friends in this city-if visitors are friends. My cousin visited but could never rid himself for a moment of his feeling of superiority, and a childhood friend came but found me changed beyond his liking. I’ve ordered in a few books, but these have been worrisome hours, I confess.”
“I have faults,” said Dallington, “but at any rate I’m a good friend.”
Here Poole broke into a magnificent smile, a truly radiant smile, and in that moment Lenox felt with great power that he must be innocent. All the incarcerated lad said was, “Yes, you are, John. A good friend.”
“Will you tell us about your meeting with Smalls?” asked Lenox.
“Business-yes. Well, it was the damnedest thing I ever knew.”
“Oh?”
“I only returned to London three and a half months ago, when I finally turned eighteen, Mr. Lenox, and came into my inheritance. Before then my education had been on the Continent, and my tastes had run toward that part of the world anyway.” Very openly, he added, “You’ve heard of my father?”
“Yes,” said Lenox in a measured voice.
“London was a bitter place to my mind because of him, you see, but my lawyers contacted me and said that I had to return to see to business-and anyway I was finally growing restless in Porto, where Dallington and I first met.
“I’ve found it pleasant enough here, although I had no friends and little enough acquaintance. I spent my time corresponding with friends abroad, seeing shows, walking in Hyde Park, dining at my club-in short, adjusting to London-when the man named Hiram Smalls contacted me.
“He called himself Frank Johnson, however, not by his real name. He said in a letter that he had worked for my father at our house in Russell Square when I was very young and that he had always been fond of me and longed for a reunion, having heard that I was back in London. I’m not sure how he heard that, and it strikes me as strange, frankly.”
Poole lit a cigar and seemed to ponder this for a moment.
“What happened at your meeting?”
“It was the strangest thing. At first he began reminiscing in such broad terms that I was instantly sure we had never met in this life. After ten minutes I felt I had listened enough and asked him his true business. He denied lying, and I did all I could do-stood up and left. As I went I heard a barmaid who quite clearly knew him address him as Hiram. It left a strange impression upon me, but I didn’t think a thing of it after a day or two had passed. Then yesterday Inspector Exeter knocked on my door and arrested me for the murder of two men I’ve never heard of in my life. It’s the strangest damned thing under the sun.”
“Singular,” Lenox agreed.
“Clearly Smalls wanted to meet him in public for some nefarious reason!” said Dallington with passion.
“Yes,” said Lenox, “and he took you to a pub where they knew him and could testify to the meeting. It’s strange indeed. I remember something slightly like it, that I heard of once-though that was in France. I doubt the solution there meets the facts here, however. In that instance they needed the man out of his house in order to steal from it. Nobody has stolen anything from you, I hope?”
“Not that I know of, no.”
“Well-I certainly trust Dallington when he avers your innocence, Mr. Poole. He and I shall do our level best to figure out what happened to Pierce and Carruthers, not to mention Smalls. I take it the man you met at the pub was like the description you subsequently heard of Smalls?”
“Oh, yes-short and stocky. The very man, I would say.”
“Very well, Mr. Poole. Is there anything you wish to add?”
“I scarcely need to say that I’m innocent, I think.”
“Of course not,” said Dallington indignantly.
“In that case we shall bid you good day.”
Outside of the prison again, Dallington said, “What did you think, then?”
“There’s a chance he’s guilty.”
“There certainly isn’t!”
“A small chance, of course. Still, one must say it, a chance.”
“What on earth would his motive be?”
Lenox stopped. Around the two men London’s business milled. “You can keep a secret?”
“Yes,” said Dallington expectantly.
“Carruthers and Pierce testified against Poole’s father. Whether Gerald knew that or not I couldn’t say.”
Dallington whistled softly. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes.”
“Gracious.”
“Can you blame Exeter for his certainty?”
This question snapped Dallington out of his reverie. “By God, I can! Gerald Poole is simply-is simply not a killer. I know it with every fiber of my being!”
“We shall have to work to prove it, then,” said Lenox, a doubtful grimace on his face. “Consider, though, the clear motive he had and his open admission that he met with Hiram Smalls, and Exeter’s case seems a difficult one to disprove.”
“Yet equally impossible to prove-because Gerry didn’t kill anyone.”
“I hope so.”
“Where are you going next, Lenox?”
To Jane’s, the detective wished he could say, but he had other appointments to keep. “I expect I shall go see Inspector Jenkins. Then I think I’ll go and see Smalls’s mother. That will require tact.”
“What can I do?”
They stood on the corner, and Lenox examined his protege. “If you want a job-”
“With all my heart.”
“Then you might go to Fleet Street and speak to Pierce’s and Carruthers’s friends and colleagues. You might find out whatever you can about Jonathan Poole. You might speak to Pierce’s family and find out about the landlady of Carruthers, the Belgian woman who vanished.”
“Then I shall,” said Dallington stoutly. “Will you be at home this evening?”
“God willing,” said Lenox.