Excerpt from The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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. Graham—sharper than all but a few of the fellow students that Lenox had known at England's greatest university—had 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 hadn't 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 you'd forgot. Thank you, Graham, thank you very much. Are my gloves at hand?"

"In the pocket of your coat, sir."

Lenox patted his pockets and felt them. "So they are." Then he smiled. "At hand? Did you catch that?"

"Very good, sir."

"It was a pun. Gloves, hands."

Graham nodded seriously. "One of these retroactive puns you hear so much about, sir, conceived only during its accidental commission."

"On the contrary, very carefully plotted, and then executed flawlessly, which is what really counts."

He checked his tie in the mirror once more, and then left, bounding downstairs with the energy of a man who had youth, money, and the prospect before him that day of breakfast with an amiable party.

On the sidewalk, however, he hesitated. Something had stuck in his mind. Worth bothering about? Reluctantly, he decided that it was, yes.

He took the stairs back up two at a time. Graham was tidying away their breakfast, and looked up expectantly when Lenox entered. "Sir?"

"The one about the month 'anniversary'?" Lenox said. "You saw that?"

"Of course, sir."

Lenox nodded. "I assumed—but it was in that dishrag, the Challenger." This was one of the least reputable newspapers in England. "Still, if today's May second—pull out the clippings from April eighth to the thirteenth, say, would you? Perhaps even the seventh and the fourteenth, to be careful."

"By all means, sir."

Lenox felt better for having come back upstairs. The letter had bothered him. He touched his hat. "Obliged, Graham. Good luck with Mrs. Huggins. Just steer clear of her, I say."

Graham frowned. Mrs. Huggins was Lenox's housekeeper. Lenox neither wished to have nor enjoyed having a housekeeper, but his mother had insisted immovably upon her employment when he moved to London, and both Lenox and Graham were in the midst of dealing with the consequences of that rigidity. "Well—"

"No, I know. Close quarters. Anyhow I shall be back before long. Keep heart till then."

This time Lenox went downstairs and strode into the streets without turning back.

From St. James's Square he walked up Pall Mall, with its imposing row of private clubs. There was a scent of tobacco on the breeze. The sky was smoothing from white into a pure blue. No clouds.

He had been twenty-three for nine hours.

Rum, he thought. It felt a very advanced age. Yesterday, or thereabouts, he had been fourteen; then in a flash nineteen; tomorrow, no doubt, he would be white haired, his grandchildren (or the younger members of a gentlemen's club) ignoring him as he sat in his comfortable spot by the fire.

Excerpted from The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch. Copyright © 2018 by Charles Finch. Excerpted by permission of Minotaur Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.