A Stranger in Mayfair clm-4

by Charles Finch

  “Is Toto holding up well?” asked Lenox after a silent moment.

  “Oh, she’s making jokes again. And between us all is well.” This was an unusually intimate thing for the doctor to say, and perhaps he realized it, but, caught up in his own exhilaration, he went on. “When one is unhappy and trying to hide it-when one has a secret trouble-there’s an antic cast to everything in life. Now things are serene again.”

  “It’s very finely put,” murmured Lenox.

  Then a thought occurred to him. It was that turn of phrase: “an antic cast.” It put him in mind of someone.

  Ludo Starling.

  If one has a secret trouble…and now it occurred to Lenox in a fell stroke what should have occurred to him all along. That Ludo himself was certainly a suspect in the murder of Frederick Clarke.

  Everything about his behavior had been odd, but more than that, there was some indefinable disturbance in his mind that was obvious if you spent three minutes in his presence.

  Of course it was a problematic idea. For one thing, Ludo had an alibi (but hadn’t he been quick to deliver it?). Dallington would have to check whether he had in fact been playing cards at the hour when Clarke was killed. For another thing, he had approached Lenox. Why would he have done that, had he been the murderer?

  And yet the detective’s intuition was pulsing with the certainty that Ludo was concealing something.

  “What is it?” asked McConnell. “You look peculiar.”

  “Nothing-nothing. I must be going.”

  “Is it about your case? Shall I lend you a hand?”

  Lenox smiled at him. “Your place is here. Tell Jane I’ll see her this evening at home.”

  “As you wish, of course.”

  On the way to Ludo’s house Lenox pondered their encounters over the past few days. There were Ludo’s constant pleas that Lenox drop the case. There was the invitation to dinner, ostensibly in the spirit of friendship but in fact as an excuse for Elizabeth Starling to make the same request.

  It was all exceedingly strange.

  Ludo’s house was brightly lit; it was nearly night by now, with only thin purple bands of light visible below the black of the horizon. Lenox knocked on the door, and Collingwood-whose complicity suddenly seemed like a possibility-answered.

  “Is he in?” asked Lenox, barging past.

  “Yes, sir. Please-” Collingwood had been going to invite him to sit and wait, but Lenox had already taken a place on the sofa in the drawing room. “Just a moment, please.”

  Ludo appeared. “Oh, Charles,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “To thank us for supper? It was our pleasure, I promise you.”

  “I do thank you, but no. I have some questions about-about Frederick Clarke. And you.”

  “And me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. I was just on my way to supper and a hand of cards. Will you walk with me?”

  “As you please.”

  “Just wait here a moment, if you don’t mind. You’ll find something to read in the bookshelf if you like.”

  Ludo left. Lenox felt suddenly nonplussed: What was he going to say? Perhaps coming here had been a mistake. It was the fervor of his meeting with Hilary that had made his blood race. He was behaving impulsively. Now he resolved that he would ask Ludo only the most innocuous question, and leave it till the next day to collect more facts.

  Then something rather strange happened. Having expected Ludo to be gone a moment, Lenox waited nearly twenty minutes before the man appeared again. At first he was annoyed, then puzzled, and finally truly perplexed.

  “Sorry for the delay. I had to get my papers in order before I went out for the evening. It took longer than I expected, but my secretary is coming by to pick them up in a little while, so it was quite necessary. Parliament sits within the week, as of course you know.”

  “It’s quite all right.”

  “Are you nervous? I was, my first time. Here, this way. If you don’t mind terribly, we’ll go down the alley. A bit ghostly, but it’s the fastest way out.”

  “Not at all.”

  They went through a back garden into the brick alleyway. Ludo was chatting amiably on, much more self-assured now, when Lenox heard rapid footsteps behind them.

  He turned to see and with one shocking glance realized it was a masked man, bearing down on them.

  “Ludo!” cried Lenox.

  “Wha-oh!”

  The man in the mask had barreled into them, and in the confusion of the next moment Lenox saw a glint of silver. A knife. He lunged at the man in the mask-a black cloth wrap, he noticed, though it was now very dark-but was too late.

  The knife plunged into Ludo-Lenox couldn’t see where-and the masked man, silent all the time, withdrew it and sprinted down the alley, toward the busy thoroughfare at the end of it. Lenox caught sight of something green, trousers or a shirt perhaps, in the quick glare of streetlight that bathed the man before he turned right.

  “There’s blood!” said Ludo, raising his hands.

  “Where is it, Ludo?”

  “Get my wife!”

  “I’m going to get help. Where-”

  “She’s in Cambridge with Paul-get her! Get the police!”

  “Let me look at the wound first.”

  This he did. There was blood everywhere and a deep cut, he could see. Soon he ran down the alley, his mind fluttering with the implications of a second attack in the exact spot where Frederick Clarke had been murdered.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It could be-and I don’t say it is, mind-it could be a madman. Someone who lives or works quite near here.”

  This was Inspector Fowler speaking. It was an hour later. Ludo, pale but well, sat in his own drawing room, a roll of bandage around the thick part of the thigh where he had been stabbed. He had insisted Lenox stay when Grayson Fowler arrived. There was also a young constable in the room, the one Lenox had fetched. Ludo had rejected his initial instinct and said he felt well enough to let his wife and son stay in Cambridge overnight. He told Lenox this privately, perhaps ashamed of his neediness in the alley. Lenox could hardly blame him, however; his own thoughts had flown to Jane when the masked man was barreling toward them.

  “I very much doubt it,” he said in reply to Fowler’s proposition.

  The inspector gave him a poisonous look. It was already a matter of some discomfort to Lenox that Fowler had been so rude at Scotland Yard, and apparently his anger hadn’t abated. “Oh?”

  “Ten houses’ worth of people use that alley, but the two men who have been attacked both live here. It could be a coincidence, I suppose.”

  Fowler sighed and took his note pad out again. “Tell me one more time what you saw, both of you.”

  Ludo said, “Almost nothing. A black mask made of wool or perhaps some other kind of cloth. It was a man, I feel sure of that.”

  “Do you recall any particular odor?” asked Lenox, earning another dirty look from Fowler, though it was the right question. “I don’t, but you were closer to him.”

  “None. He was about my height, a few inches under six foot. Strong.”

  “Mr. Lenox?”

  He furrowed his brow. “All I can remember in addition to that is the color green, either his trousers or his shirt. I’m trying to remember-I think he must have worn boots, because his footfall was very heavy, and they didn’t make that click of dress shoes. More of a thud.”

  “I’m skeptical of that sort of analysis, taken in the heat of the moment, but I thank you. Mr. Starling, I’ll stop by again in the morning, and we’ll post our man in the alleyway again. We took him from his place too early. Constable, you may resume your beat.”

  “Nobody could have known this would happen,” said Ludo bravely.

  “I must be going, too,” said Lenox.

  “Oh-but really?”

  “Unless you’re unwell?”

  “Oh no, quite well, thank you.”

/>   “Is Alfred in this evening?”

  “He should be, yes.” Ludo tried a weak smile. Even apart from the exonerating circumstances of the attack an hour before, Lenox when he saw this smile had trouble believing that the man on the sofa, a ginger hand on his leg, was any kind of murderer. “We never did speak.”

  “I only had some elementary questions, nothing you need to be worried with just now. Do you feel safe?”

  “Of course-Collingwood is here, and two or three others. I shall be quite safe if I stick to the house and the larger streets. It will be a relief to have a constable stationed in the alley again.”

  “Indeed. Good-bye, then. I’ll be by to check on your health tomorrow, if I may.”

  “Thank you,” said Ludo, and looked genuinely grateful.

  On the walk home, Lenox wondered if he himself felt as secure. It had been a jarring, horrifying moment, and the sight of that silver blade had raised every animal instinct in him to flee.

  The house on Hampden Lane was empty, and seemed twice as empty because it was twice as large now. Lenox sat in his study, reading Cranford again, struggling to focus after the evening’s intensity. Gradually the story absorbed him, however, and he relaxed.

  When Household Words had published Cranford he would have been…what, twenty-three or twenty-four? He hadn’t read it as it was serialized, and in a way he was glad. He often envied people who hadn’t read his favorite books. They had such happiness before them.

  The front door opened, and he went out into the hallway prepared to see Jane. In fact it was Graham, home late from Parliament.

  He looked sheepish. “I scarcely like to take the liberty of using the front door, sir, but I hoped to visit you in your study.”

  Lenox waved a dismissive hand. “You should use it as if it were your own.”

  “No, sir, I continue to live in the same quarters, and I will continue to use the servants’ door.”

  The detective frowned. “That hadn’t occurred to me. These secretaries have their own rooms, don’t they? What do you have-two rooms to yourself?” It was a fact that no matter how close Graham and Lenox had been as butler and master, there was some final estrangement; it would have been deeply embarrassing for Lenox to see Graham’s rooms.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should have your own rooms, I fear, in some building down Whitehall.”

  “Oh, no, sir-”

  “For that matter, we still need to settle your wages. What do these bold young secretaries make?”

  Rather miserably, Graham said, “Rather less than an experienced butler, sir. Many of these gentleman are highborn, with private fortunes.”

  The briefest look of fleeting pain crossed Graham’s face, and Lenox knew in an instant that he had failed to recognize his friend’s position; Graham was a former servant, forced to deal on equal terms with those he might have served in other circumstances. Had someone mentioned something?

  Lenox couldn’t say any of this, or even inquire after Graham’s happiness in his new position, so he said, “Damn ’em all, you’re twice as useful. We’ll put you on an extra ten pounds a year. And,” he went on awkwardly, “you must come to our next party.”

  “I couldn’t, sir-”

  “You must. It will be wonderful. Did I tell you how delighted McConnell was about your rise in the world?” Lenox laughed. “He said you’d be Prime Minister one day, which really I wouldn’t put past you. Has anything gone on today?”

  Grateful to fall back on work, Graham said, “Oh, a great-”

  Lenox interrupted him. “But I’ve forgotten!”

  “Sir?”

  “Cholera!”

  “I-”

  “You look puzzled. I don’t have cholera, you needn’t worry about that. But the blue book on the subject, my God!”

  Lenox spent the next five minutes telling Graham about the failings of the current sewage system, then recounted the conversation with Hilary.

  “That was profoundly inadvisable, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve studied the other clerks and secretaries, and in general it seems the safest policy is to gather several backbenchers before approaching a frontbencher.”

  “James Hilary and I are friends. I sponsored him for the SPQR club, as you know.”

  “That’s precisely the problem, sir. He would have been confused as to whether you were approaching him as a friend or colleague. To cloud the issue in that way risks making you seem unserious.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Percy Field is the person I’ve been watching most closely, sir, the Prime Minister’s secretary. If there’s an issue he supports, he links several Members who might be interested in it and schedules them an appointment. It gives him tremendous power, and it helps the Prime Minister to no end by giving him a sense of the feeling within the party.”

  “You want to speak to other MPs, then?”

  “No, sir! I mean that you must behave as he does, using Mr. Hilary or Mr. Brick as your Prime Minister. You must convoke a group who agree with you on the subject and approach someone with greater power as a forceful unit.”

  Smiling, Lenox said, “You’re far wiser than I am. Let’s do it your way.”

  The front door opened, and Lenox stood. Since he had returned from Ludo’s he had felt an indefinable tug of uncertainty, even unhappiness, and now he remembered why: Lady Jane. They had seen so little of each other over the past few days, and what conversation they’d had had been disconcerting.

  Graham stood up, nodded to Lenox, and left. Lady Jane spoke a word to the butler-former butler-in the hallway and then breezed into the room, pink from the chill, smiling, and lovely.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They said hello to each other. Lady Jane was still smiling but seemed slightly detached. He knew that when she was out of countenance she covered it up by talking, and that was what she did now, very gaily.

  “The baby is wonderful, not a sound out of the poor dear. Toto makes much more noise, grumbling and disagreeable but I think secretly she’s happier than she can quite grasp. It is hard to have a boy’s name, though, isn’t it? I hope they’ll call her Gracie by the time she has little playfellows, or I fear she’ll be teased for it. The Longwalls have just had a child, a boy, and Toto thinks he might make a suitable husband. Can you imagine? And you’ll never guess what he’s called.”

  “George?

  She laughed and took off her long gloves, finger by finger. He recalled fleetingly how intimate he had once found that gesture. There wasn’t precisely fear in his heart, but a kind of melancholy ambiguity, an insecurity.

  “Not George, no. Charles! Charles Longwall. I thought it quite funny to imagine you having an infant namesake out there in London somewhere.”

  This brought them awkwardly close to the subject of their conversation earlier that day, and Lenox said hastily, “Longwall-a very English name.”

  It didn’t mean much of anything, but she took the cue from him. “I always thought the same thing about Reggie Blackfield.”

  “And do you remember Henry Bathurst, who was foreign secretary?”

  Finally shorn of her gloves, hat, and earrings, which she dropped into a silver tumbler on Lenox’s desk, she came and whispered his cheek with a kiss. “I’m going to ring for some food.” She picked up a glass bell and gave it a brisk shake. “Have you had a long day?”

  “Now that you mention it-”

  Kirk came in. “You rang?”

  “I’d like some supper, if Ellie is still awake,” said Lady Jane. “Whatever there is.”

  “Bring up a bottle of wine as well,” added Lenox.

  “Yes, sir.”

  When he had gone, she said, “What were you saying?”

  “I did have rather a long day. I was attacked.” He laughed to defray the concern that immediately showed on her face. “I’m quite well, I promise. Starling didn’t have such a happy run of it, however.”

  “What happened?
”

  “He was stabbed in the leg.”

  Lenox told the story. She made all the right noises, but he couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t sitting beside him on the sofa, as she usually did, but across from him on a chair; couldn’t help but notice that after she had made sure he was unharmed her eyes flew more than once to the door, as if she were more interested in her food than in his story. Was he imagining her indifference?

  For so long she had been his best listener, and in turn he had tried to be hers. During their honeymoon, marriage had seemed to twine together the best elements of their friendship and their love. Now, however, he felt robbed of both.

  At last her food came, and his wine. She ate happily-there was a cottage pie and some turnips.

  “Made of real cottages,” he said, repeating an old joke she loved.

  She rewarded him with a laugh and then, perhaps observing something in his face, put down her fork and came over to the sofa. “Are you all right, Charles?” she said, taking his hand in hers.

  “Oh, quite all right. A bit tired perhaps.”

  “It’s been difficult, I know-I’ve spent so much time at Toto’s, and you’ve got both Parliament and this poor boy’s death.”

  She had missed the point. “It’s nice to sit here with you,” he answered her.

  Or perhaps she hadn’t. “I don’t know if I’d like to have children,” she said softly.

  “Oh-that, put it out of your mind.”

  She gazed at him unhappily. “I will, then,” she said at last.

  Soon they went to bed, neither of them quite tranquil in their heart.

  The next day was exceptionally busy for Lenox. After her long hours at Toto’s side, Lady Jane slept late, but he was awake and reading a blue book over eggs by six in the morning. There was a succession of meetings to attend; Graham had laid out what he needed to read before each of them, and as Lenox finished the last of his tea they spoke about each in turn.

  It was difficult to be patient about cholera, but Graham would begin to canvass for support among the secretaries of other backbenchers. Listening to Graham’s strategies was an education for Lenox, who had believed-naively, and against all the evidence-that a good idea would always win out in politics. The murky world of favors, exchanges, and alliances was new to him, but Graham was already emerging as a master of it.