“I had it commissioned-from one of those sketches you drew us, you know.”

“But far surpassing it in size and skill, sir.”

“Well-size anyway.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Graham.

“Well, go on, find out about breakfast, won’t you? If I waste away and die you’ll be out of a job,” said Lenox. “The papers, too.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lenox.”

Soon breakfast came, and with it a stack of several newspapers. These Lenox ignored until he had eaten a few bites of egg and bacon and finished a second cup of coffee. Feeling more human, he glanced at the Times and then, seeing its subdued but intriguing headline, flipped through the rest of the stack. The more populist papers positively screamed the news. Two of the giants of Fleet Street were dead, their last breaths exhaled within minutes of each other, according to household members and confirmed by doctors. Both the victims of murder.

Lenox picked up one of the papers at random. It happened to be the cheapest of the weekly Sunday papers, the threepenny News of the Day, a purveyor of shocking crime news and scurrilous society rumor, which had come into existence a few decades before and instantly vaulted to popularity among the London multitudes. Most men of Lenox’s class would have considered it a degradation to even touch the cheap newsprint the News came on, but it was the detective’s bread and butter. He had often found stories in the News of the Day that no other paper printed, about domestic skirmishes in Cheapside, anonymous dark-skinned corpses down among the docks, strange maladies that spread through the slums. The paper had recently played a crucial role in reporting the case of James Barry. A famous surgeon who had performed the first successful cesarean section in all of Africa, he had died-and after his death was discovered to have in fact been, of all things, a woman. Margaret Ann, by birth. It had been for a time the story on every pair of lips in London and was still often spoken of.