The Hidden City by Charles Finch

Author:Charles Finch [Finch, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery.Historical Mystery
ISBN: 9781250767172
Google: f1eBEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0B9KW8YQZ
Barnesnoble: B0B9KW8YQZ
Goodreads: 61940671
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2025-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

CHAP­TER TWENTY-SIX

It was the next night that Lenox had the plea­sure of pre­sent­ing the an­swer to that ques­tion to the men of the Coach and Horses.

“Ezekiel Phipps?” said the Pas­sen­ger with a rare and full-faced ex­pres­sion of real as­ton­ish­ment, the likes of which might not be elicited from such a prac­ticed gos­sip more than once a year.

Lenox, who had never be­fore man­aged to per­turb the man even slightly, felt a dis­tinct grat­i­fi­ca­tion. “I take it you know the name?”

“Ezekiel is Ja­cob Phipps’s younger brother. He was sent to Aus­tralia at eigh­teen, more than a decade ago—and died there a year later, we heard.”

“Ap­par­ently not. Why was he trans­ported?” asked Lenox.

But it was too late for ques­tions—the men of the Coach and Horses were as­sem­bling around the Pas­sen­ger in their dusty coats and get­ting the news from him (“Ezekiel?” they all said, and one of them im­me­di­ately added, “He al­ways did look a fair bit like his brother”) and it was a long ten min­utes be­fore Lenox could com­mand their at­ten­tion. A crowd of more than a dozen reg­u­lars was at the hearth. Mov­ing ex­pertly among them was Ernest Hug­gins. If he had ever had his doubts about Lenox, they were gone now: the home of his aunt was safe, the vil­lain cap­tured, and the news had pro­duced a most fan­tas­tic surge of busi­ness.

“Do you need a top­ping up?” he asked the de­tec­tive.

Lenox ac­cepted the ale, feel­ing as if he could do with a top­ping up, too—he had scarcely slept in two days, be­tween the party and the ap­pre­hen­sion of Ezekiel Phipps, a young man who an­swered, as Sk­aggs had been the first to ob­serve, ex­actly to Lenox’s cir­cu­lar. The fee had been paid to an en­ter­pris­ing young mud­lark from Lime­house way.

Even­tu­ally the Pas­sen­ger worked his way back round to Lenox. “So Miles was right, in the end,” he said.

“Is that what you have con­cluded?”

There were many con­ver­sa­tions still go­ing on—but none with­out an ear trained on the tone of this one. “It was Ja­cob Phipps’s own brother, and the dead spit of him!” the Pas­sen­ger said in­dig­nantly. “Of course Miles was right, any­one with rea­son could see that!”

“He was not tech­ni­cally right, no.”

Now sev­eral peo­ple were star­ing, and the Pas­sen­ger gave him a look as if to say that was pretty boor­ish. “To spot him in the dark, in the rain and wet, Mr. Lenox, the whip­ping winds—the fa­mous whip­ping winds of Lon­don—”

He was get­ting up a head of steam, and Lenox, to head him off, said, “But I—”

The Pas­sen­ger had not as­cended to his po­si­tion of au­thor­ity at the Coach and Horses by si­lence, how­ever, and with great stub­born cer­tainty in his bear­ing, his stom­ach and chin jut­ting com­fort­ably out, went on, “Down the West End they don’t get it so windy nor so cold as here in Con­duit Street—to spot him from fifty paces dead—”

“Hear him!” said some­one squeak­ily—Lenox sus­pected Miles him­self.

“And more or less be on the way to solv­ing the case for you, the great de­tec­tive—”

“Hello now!” said Ernest Hug­gins roughly.

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