Charles Finch - The Woman in the Water

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This book is dedicated to

Kate Lee,

Ben Sevier,

Charles Spicer,

and

Elisabeth Weed

with enormous gratitude

This book exists because of the support, insight, and careful guidance of Charles Spicer and Andrew Martin, who inspired me to write a prequel to the Lenox books and then helped me make the idea a reality.

Theyre the tip of the spear, but so many of the amazing people in the Flatiron were instrumental in the existence of the book, from Sally Richardson to April Osborn to Martin Quinn to Sarah Melnyk to Hector DeJean to Paul Hochman to Kelley Ragland to Dori Weintraub to David Rotstein. All of them have my eternal affection.

Elisabeth Weed, Hallie Schaeffer, Dana Murphy, the Book Group: I know how lucky I am. Thats all there is to say.

I had invaluable editorial insight from my mother for this bookbesides which she is my mom, and just the best. Tim and Jenny Popp, along with their wonderful encouragement, gave me a place to work. So did the Ragdale Foundation, to which I am immensely indebted.

John Phillips named The Woman in the Water , and since I know hell be reading it in roughly 2021: Hi! What is the future like? Say whats up to the gang for me. Thank you!

This has been a strange year. I have never been more thankful for the friends Ive found on my Facebook page (who thought I would ever write that sentence!), facebook.com/charlesfinchauthor. Come and join us there if you want the best book recommendations, plus pictures of dogs and cats. Lots of dogs and cats.

Emily, Annabel, Lucy: really, nothing is for anybody but you.

For a little more than an hour on that May morning in 1850, the only sound in the flat in St. Jamess Square was the rustling of newspapers, punctuated occasionally by the crisp shear of a pair of sharpened scissors through newsprint.

There were two men at the highly polished breakfast table by the window, three stories above street level. One was in an impeccable gray suit, the other in a ratty brown smoking jacket. Both were too intent upon their work to glance out from this high vantage at their panoramic view of the soft spring day: the shy sunlight; the irregular outlines of the two nearby parks, lying serene within the smoke and stone of the city; the new leaves upon the trees, making their innocent green way into life, on branches still so skinny that they quivered like the legs of a foal.

Finally Charles Lenoxthe one in the smoking jacketthrew down the last of his newspapers.

Ha! Done, he said. Youre as slow as a milk train, Graham.

There was a teapot on the table, and Lenox poured himself another cup from it, adding a spoonful of sugar from a small silver bowl. He took a satisfied bite from a piece of cinnamon toast whose existence he had previously forgotten, and which had been prepared by the discreetly well dressed man sitting opposite him, his valet.

Its not speed but quality of attention that matters, sir, Graham said. He didnt look up from his own newspaper, the second-to-last of a towering pile.

What a lot of nonsense, replied Lenox, rising and stretching his arms out. Anyway, Ill get dressed while you finish. How many have you got so far?

Nine, sir.

Ten for me.

Grahams pile of clipped articles was much tidier than Lenoxs. But he did look up nowas if tempted to say something less than entirely respectfuland then gave his familiar slight smile, shook his head, and resumed his study. He was a compact, sandy-haired person, with a face that was gentle and temperate but looked as if it could keep a secret.

There were few people Lenox cared for or trusted more.

When the young master of the house emerged again, he was changed out of his shabby jacket and into a handsome suit of his own, a heather gray two shades lighter than Grahams and perhaps thirty times as expensive. Such was life in England: Lenox had been born to a family of aristocrats, Graham to a family of tenant farmers. Yet they were true friends. Graham had been Lenoxs scout throughout his three years at Balliol College, Oxford, and following Lenoxs graduation seven months before had moved to London with him as his manservantseven months, for Lenox, of exhilaration, missteps, uncertainty, and novelty.

Why? Because as his peers from Oxford were settling into the usual pursuits, Lenox was trying, against the better advice of nearly every soul he encountered, and so far with absolutely no success at all, to become something that did not exist: a private detective.

He was also, most unhappily, in love.

Graham was done now. How many did you finish with?

Lenox asked this question as he peered into an oval mirror and straightened his tie. He had a bright face, with a very short-clipped beard and light brown hair and eyes. He still did not quite believe himself to be an adult. But evidently he was, for he was the possessor of these airy and spacious rooms in the heart of Mayfair.

This one, large and central, had the atmosphere of a gentlemens club. There were books scattered about it, comfortable armchairs, and handsome oil paintings on the wall, though the brightness of the sunlight in the windows made it feel less confined than most gentlemens clubs. It also contained (to his knowledge) no slumbering gentlemen, whereas gentlemens clubs generally did, in Lenoxs experience. There were tokens here and there of his two great interests, besides detection, that was. These were travel and the world of Ancient Rome. There was a smallbut authenticbust of Marcus Aurelius tilted window-ward on one bookshelf, and everywhere were numerous stacks of maps, many of them much-marked and overcrossed with penciled itineraries, fantasies of adventure. Russia was his current preoccupation.

It was this room in which he spent all but his sleeping hours.

Ten articles, sir, said Graham, who also spent a great deal of time here.

Evens, then. Shall we go over them this afternoon?

By all means, sir.

Normally they would have compared their findings immediately. Grahamsharper than all but a few of the fellow students that Lenox had known at Englands greatest universityhad become his most valuable sounding board as he embarked on his new career. Every morning they each read the same set of papers and cut out the articles they thought were of any relevance, however oblique, to the matter of crime in London.

They rarely matched more than seven or eight of their selections. (Ten was about an average total.) Half the fun was in seeing where they hadnt overlapped. The other half was in the immense chronology of crime-related articles that Lenox, who was by nature a perfectionist, a completist, had managed so far to accumulate.

This morning he had an engagement, however, so they would have to wait to add to their archive.

Lenox donned a light overcoat. Graham saw him to the door. A very happy birthday, Mr. Lenox, sir.

Ah! Lenox grinned. I reckoned youd forgot. Thank you, Graham, thank you very much. Are my gloves at hand?

In the pocket of your coat, sir.