The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch

find Stirrington, if I may ask?”
    “Altogether charming, Miss Crook. I would have preferred to view it at a more leisurely pace, but it has been pleasant nonetheless.”
    “My uncle will arrive downstairs in only a moment or two.”
    Lenox nodded graciously. Here was an odd situation, he thought; although he gazed on the strictures of class with a more critical eye than many he knew, it was plain that two people of very different rank were about to dine together. He liked Crook, liked Nettie, too, for that matter, but he hoped it wouldn’t be awkward.
    In fact, it was not. To Lenox’s shock, the glum, agile proprietor of the pub, the shrewd political leader, was at home as soft as warm butter. The reason was Nettie.
    “Have you observed my niece’s watercolors?” was the first thing he asked Lenox after they exchanged civilities.
    It was extraordinary. The man’s face, which in the bar was screwed into an impassive and calculating glare, was now softened by emotion. He looked his age.
    “I have,” said Lenox, “and cannot recall a more interesting view of that famous clock tower that I’ve seen in all my brief time here.”
    “Tell him about the clock tower, dear heart,” said Crook with great complacency.
    “Uncle,” Nettie chidingly answered.
    “Pray, do tell me,” said Lenox.
    They had moved by now to a small breakfast nook, which just managed to fit three (though it would have been perfect for two), and she put eggs on his plate.
    “I was once very late in running my errands,” she said, “so late I feared I would miss supper.”
    “Miss supper,” Crook echoed softly, gazing with pure love up at his niece.
    “I’m generally inside at that hour, of course, but I happened to be in such a rush that I stumbled—and as I stood up saw the clock hanging just between two houses. It was so beautiful, Mr. Lenox, you could scarcely credit! Well, the next evening I went out and drew a few sketches of it—art is a hobby of mine—and then completed the work you see.”
    Now, as stories go, Lenox acknowledged to himself, this wasn’t much of one. Yet through it all Crook looked as enthralled as Thucydides listening to Herodotus in the town square.
    “My brother, Nettie’s father, was a fine chap,” said Crook, “but died fighting the Russians.”
    “In the Crimea?”
    “Yes, I’m afraid so. That would have been 1855, eleven years since. I took her in as a teenager, and she has been my sunshine ever since.”
    “Uncle,” said Nettie again in an undertone. “My mother died in childbirth, Mr. Lenox.”
    “I’m terribly sorry to hear it.”
    “It was a shame,” Crook said. The bell chimed behind him. “Blimey—already? All right, dear, give us a kiss.”
    This received, he took a great ring of keys from his wallet and left with a scant word of good-bye, already, perhaps, the grim and reliable publican that Stirrington knew.
    Lenox was finishing his food when the young girl came in. “Pardon,” she said, “but there’s a visitor at the inn, sir.”
    “Who is it, Lucy?” asked Nettie.
    “I’ve never seen him, ma’am. A gentleman. I’m afraid he’s—” Here she stopped.
    “Yes?”
    “Well—been drinking, mum.”
    Lenox had a sinking feeling in his heart. “What’s his name?”
    “He said to tell you, ‘It’s McConnell, the poor sod,’ sir. He said you’d know what that means.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

    L
    enox spent the next hour tucking his friend safely away in a spare room above the Queen’s Arms. McConnell, half in stupor from drink and incoherent about his reasons for coming to Stirrington, was nonetheless as clear as crystal about his reasons for being unhappy. Toto had asked him to leave. He had not only obeyed that request but had decided to absent himself from London forever. He talked wildly of returning to his native Scotland and becoming a groundskeeper at his family’s small estate or practicing medicine in the rural parts of the country. Mumbling, he fell into a