A Stranger in Mayfair

by Charles Finch

  The Members’ Entrance was crowded with politicians, and a roar of noise was audible even from fifty feet away. The porter, waving away their identification, said, “You oughter have come earlier, for shame, sirs,” and pushed them into the throng of people.

  “This way!” shouted Edmund. “Let’s slide through! I made sure we could both be in the Commons! That way we’ll get to see the Queen!”

  “Why will we get to see the Queen?” asked Lenox when they were through to a quieter corridor. “And why on earth won’t it be jammed?”

  “Most people are in the House of Lords—where they give the speech, you know—or in the Queen’s Gallery”—the hall that connected the Lords and the Commons. “Only a few dozen of us will be straggling around the Commons. Look, here it is.”

  They took their place on a green baize bench. Lenox was, to his surprise, rather fluttery in his stomach. “Edmund, how will we see her speech, if it’s in the House of Lords?”

  “Let’s talk of other things for a moment—I want to hear about Ludo Starling.”

  “But—”

  Edmund smiled fondly. “Let it be a surprise, Charles.”

  So they talked of Ludo Starling, Freddie Clarke, and Jack Collingwood for some while, pausing occasionally to greet a Member they both knew, or more often one that Lenox knew by reputation and with whom Edmund exchanged a few cryptic words about various bills in the offing for the new session. Strangely enough the room was indeed empty but for a dozen or so men.

  Edmund was asking questions about the case when there was a hush. A man in tremendously ornate garb appeared at the door of the chamber, and to Lenox’s shock a gentleman at the far end got up and slammed the door in his face.

  “My G—”

  “Shh!” whispered Edmund urgently.

  Then there was a very loud rap at the closed door of the chamber. Lenox jumped a foot in the air. Edmund laughed into his sleeve.

  “That’s the Lord Great Chamberlain,” he whispered. “It means the Queen has entered the building—through the Sovereign’s Entrance, of course, on the other side from ours—and taken on the Robes of State. We slam the door in his face to show we’re independent—that we don’t have to listen to a monarch.”

  Another loud rap. “What do we do?”

  “Now we’ll go. Wait—the Speaker leads us.”

  So they processed down the silent Queen’s Gallery, and through to the red-benched House of Lords.

  Suddenly there she was, in her person; Lenox, no great admirer of power, was so enchanted he could barely stand when he saw her on her glorious golden throne: the Queen.

  “Bow at the bar!” said Edmund urgently. “We must bow!”

  They bowed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She was a roundish, placid, unbeautiful woman; in her youth she had been not pretty but slim and eye-catching. Now she contained all the majesty of England in her rather waddling gait and intelligent, indifferent face. She had survived half a dozen assassination attempts, given birth to children, and seen empires fall. Whether because of her position or her person, she was captivating to behold.

  The speech addressed a number of issues for the Houses to take up. To Lenox’s annoyance Edmund kept whispering questions about the case. These received at best a nod by way of reply, but still Lenox found himself missing chunks of the speech. It was nearly the end when he could concentrate.

  “My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.”

  With that the speech ended, in the same words it did every year. For the rest of the day there were a thousand things they did, each of which half confused and half delighted Charles. They elected the Speaker (a reelection, and a matter of no drama) and then, per tradition, several Members “dragged him unwillingly” to the Speaker’s bench.

  “Ages ago it was dangerous to be Speaker—you could be killed if you said something to displease the monarch—and that’s why we do it. Daft, of course, but good fun when the Speaker is such a magisterial figure for the rest of the session.”

  They debated the speech and passed a bill—again per tradition—declaring their autonomy from the Queen’s rule. Several people stopped and clapped Lenox on the back forcefully, saying welcome, Members from both sides of the aisle. He found it tremendously collegial of them.

  On it went for hours and hours, all of it fascinating. What it reminded him most of was being new at school, when he was twelve. There was the same overwhelmed, excitable feeling, as if a new adventure had been embarked upon and now there was nothing to do but figure out its multitude of small necessities, rules, traditions. At Harrow—his school—there had been the same sort of insular world, with its own terminology: Teachers were beaks; a bath was called a tosh. It had taken weeks before he felt at home with all the slang.

  Finally, a little after three that afternoon, Edmund led him out through the Members’ Entrance again.

  “Well?” he said when they were a few streets clear of the din of Parliament.

  Lenox simply grinned and told him what he had been thinking about Harrrow, where Edmund had been, too.

  “It makes a strange impression, doesn’t it? Don’t worry. You’ll soon feel at home there. Look—a pub. Let’s duck in for a celebratory drink.”

  They spent an hour then drinking to each other’s health, the Queen’s health, and the House. It was a pub called the Westminster Arms, with honey-colored walls and low raftered ceilings and the gleam of brass and glass everywhere.

  “What’s all this about cholera?” Edmund asked finally, after they had sat down with their drinks.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Hilary spoke a word to me in Bellamy’s. Said he was rather taken aback by your insistence that it be addressed.”

  “Insistence? Of course I was insistent.”

  “Things move slowly in politics, Charles.”

  “They ought to move a sight faster.”

  Edmund smiled indulgently. “No doubt you’ll change it all?”

  “You think me foolish?”

  “No! The farthest thing from it—I’m full of admiration for you—but this is a matter I know about. Perhaps you may be a bit innocent. It will be difficult.”

  “Graham has a plan.”

  “Does he? Then things will be well. I was surprised about that, by the way. Not that you deemed him worthy for the position, but that you considered it wise. There was a rumble among the secretaries. They fell in line after Percy Field, however.”

  “I wondered if it were taking a toll on Graham.”

  “Be careful. You compared the House to Harrow—well, it’s just as rigid and orderly. They don’t like people jumping the queue.”

  “Graham’s thought was to find a group of Members who felt the same way about the issue of cholera. With strength in numbers we could approach a frontbencher—Brick, Hilary, you.”

  “I’m not a frontbencher.”

  “In all but name, Edmund.”

  “At any rate, you needn’t gather a group to speak to me.”

  “What did Hilary tell you?”

  “Pretend he told me nothing.”

  Lenox recounted the same story he had for Hilary, dwelling on the potential risk to the people in East London of a cholera outbreak.

  “It’s unquestionably a valid concern,” Edmund finally answered, sipping at his pint of mild ale. “You must keep me apprised. Wait, though—about Ludo—isn’t—”

  “Just a moment, before you go and change the subject please.”

  “Me?” said the baronet innocently.

  “I know you too well for that, Ed. What’s wrong with it? I hate you being tactful. It irritates me.”

  Edmund sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Charles. It’s only that there’s so much against it. A major public works has just finished, at tremendous expense and after tremendous difficulty. No public body backtracks this quickly. ‘We just finished with all that bother’ will be what people
say. I promise you.”

  “They won’t! Did you hear a word I said? The imminent danger of it all?”

  “I know, I know. It’s only a feeling. I hope I’m wrong.”

  At home Lady Jane was full of a dozen questions, and Graham—whom Lenox studied closely for signs of anxiety—was full of good cheer and shook his hand solemnly, before going straight back to work into the night with Frabbs. There was an ominous pile of blue books on Lenox’s desk.

  “Now, how was it?” asked Lady Jane when at last they had settled on the sofa, her hands clasping his.

  They spent an hour in close conversation, absorbed in each other as they had been that morning but so rarely in the past week. He fell ravenously upon a shoulder of lamb and fresh peas, having been unconscious before it appeared on a silver salver how hungry he had been. He felt cared for again.

  “It’s almost cool enough to have a fire tonight,” Lady Jane said. “I’d like to stay in and be lumps here on the couch, and read. What do you say to that?”

  “I say yes, of course. I wish it could be Cranford, but it must be blue books, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll call the footman to light it.”

  As she left he wandered into the dim dining room, restless. His eyes alighted on a watercolor of the London skyline. It had replaced that Paris painting, which was in a guest room now—it had made him feel uneasy, despite how he had liked it in France. In the skyline was St. Paul’s, and Westminster Abbey, and there, just above a middling of roofs, the Palace of Westminster: Parliament.

  He had been pulled in so many directions during the fortnight since his honeymoon ended. There were Toto and Thomas McConnell, there was Jane’s distance, there was the case, there was first his disenchantment with Parliament and then the galvanizing realization of the public danger cholera presented, and beyond all that the hundred meetings to attend and duties to discharge. It had been impossibly fraught. Now his life clarified before him. Parliament was where he belonged. Everything would be all right with Jane, and he would do his work there. Seeing the Queen, hearing her order them to execute the business of the people, standing among lords, bishops, cabinet ministers, in the mix of power and possibility…here he was. It was time to work.

  This new resolve lasted until the next morning. The pledge lingered with him—he meant it—but when Dallington came to see if he wanted to visit Freddie Clarke’s boxing club, he couldn’t decline the offer.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  In the trip to Kensington, where the boxing club was situated along an old work road, Lenox described his day. To his initial disappointment and subsequent amusement Dallington could barely keep his eyes open.

  The building itself was a large converted store house; as they entered, the instant tang of sweat and blood filled their nostrils, despite the draft of air among the high rafters.

  “Hardly the back room of a tavern, is it?” murmured Lenox. “I had always heard these contests took place there.”

  “Those colored lads in the far ring are giving each other a walloping, aren’t they?”

  “It seems there’s betting on it.”

  There were four rings spread around the room, and perhaps two dozen people in and around them. Fifteen of these were crowded around the match Dallington had mentioned; two were in a different ring, gently sparring with each other as they received technical advice. Close to the door several men were exercising on mats. An old, white-haired man, who was supervising, stopped when he spotted the detectives. He came over to them.

  “Help you?”

  “How do you do? My name is Charles Lenox, and this is John Dallington. We hoped to speak to somebody about Frederick Clarke.”

  “Freddie? Decent fighter. Shame what they did him.”

  “You knew him, then?”

  “I’m the trainer. I know all the young gentlemen. The one you want to talk to is there, the one in the blue suit.” He pointed out a tall, slightly paunched fellow with black hair who was watching the match. “He’s the secretary of the club.”

  “Could you get him?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it until the fight is over. He and Mr. Sharp-Fletcher have a pound on the bout.” He turned to watch. “The bigger lad, Castle, ain’t got much science—but what a brute! The smaller one doesn’t have a chance. Poor Mr. Sharp-Fletcher is going to lose his money, what can scarcely afford to.”

  “I know them both,” muttered Dallington, after the trainer had gone.

  “The bettors?”

  “Yes, they’re wellborn lads. Sharp-Fletcher was sent down from Brasenose. The other one is called…I can’t remember.”

  “Neither of them is a footman, I daresay.”

  “Unless they’ve changed professions, no. And I hardly think Sharp’s mother would like it. Her father was a marquess.”

  “These pugilists move in pretty rarefied circles.”

  They walked idly about the club, waiting for the match to end, glancing over occasionally to see whether there was a winner. To their surprise, after they had heard the trainer’s opinion, it was the smaller fighter who knocked the larger one out. More science, perhaps. Lenox saw Sharp-Fletcher grab his money excitedly from the hand of a third party and count it to make sure it was all true. The two boxers, exhausted, staggered to the corners and had water from their bottle-men. The winning gamblers went to the corner of the smaller boxer to congratulate him, while the losing fighter sat alone.

  Soon they found the secretary of the club. “Sir?” Lenox said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like a word, if I might. The trainer pointed you out to us. We’re looking into Freddie Clarke’s death.”

  The black-haired man clicked his tongue. “Terrible thing, that. Have you found out who killed him? Wait a moment—Dallington?”

  “Yes, it is. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Willard North. We met at Abigail MacNeice’s aunt’s house, several months since.”

  “That’s it—I knew we’d met.”

  “You’re a detective, then?”

  “After a fashion. An amateur—it’s rather a hobby of mine.”

  North snorted. “Well—to each his own.”

  Nodding slightly at the bloodied fighters, Dallington said, “Indeed.”

  North didn’t notice. “I’m afraid I can’t help you—about Clarke, I mean. He was a damned good fighter.”

  “Was he a member of the club, or a fighter for hire like these men?” asked Lenox.

  “A member, of course.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been expensive?”

  North shrugged. “It depends for whom you mean.”

  “For a footman?”

  “For a footman—well, of course. It’s a pound to join and ten shillings a year after that. Why do you ask about a footman?”

  North didn’t know what Freddie Clarke did. The lad had been putting on a show—or at any rate hadn’t volunteered his profession. Obviously the money from under the door financed the lie.

  “How much do you pay these men—the colored fighters?” asked Dallington.

  “A sovereign each.”

  “Is that all?”

  “They’re grateful for it, I can promise you. The winner usually gets tipped a shilling here and there. No doubt that rat Sharp-Fletcher is buying the littler one champagne and truffles with my money.”

  “Can you tell us anything else about Clarke?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. He always stood a round in the bar after we trained—there’s a bar through that door,” he added, pointing to the back of the gym. “I once saw him near Green Park, and he rushed away as if he hadn’t seen me right back, which I found galling.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “What a strange question. A suit of clothes, of course.”

  Footman’s clothes, it would seem from Clarke’s reaction. But people see what they expect to.

  “Did he have much money to splash around?” asked Dallington.

  “Some
, of course. Yes, I would have said more than most. He gave us to understand that he had quite a rich father.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, something like ‘Drink on the pater?’—he would say that when he offered to buy us a round and hold up a pound note.”

  “Was anyone here close with him?”

  “Besides me? Our vice president, Gilbert, was pretty pally with Clarke, but he’s been up in the country for three months.”

  “Not Eustace Gilbert, from Merton?” asked Lenox. “He took a boxing blue at Oxford while I was there.”

  “That’s the one.”

  It was to all appearances a club entirely for gentlemen. Lenox asked, “How does one go about joining the club? Is there a system of reference?”

  “Oh—we know our own crowd, don’t we, John? If anyone fancies a bit of exercise he comes and sees us. We rent this space quite cheaply, and our trainer, Franklin, finds all the equipment cheaply and manages the place. In all it pays for itself with our big matches. The dues go toward our bar and club house.”

  “So how did Clarke get in?”

  “I don’t remember. May have been through Gilbert—they used to have drinks together. Gilbert thought him very dapper.”

  The suit. Show up in a well-cut suit at Claridge’s bar, with the right accent, and you could generally fall in with the proper crowd. Had Clarke been a talented mimic? What had been the aim of all this?

  “You can’t remember anything else?” asked Dallington.

  “No,” said North. Then he turned and called loudly to the rest of the people in the room, “These men are here for whoever killed Freddie!”

  There was a low chuckle at this. “It was me!” called out a joking voice.

  Then, to the perfect astonishment of everyone there, a short man with light hair separated from the group and sprinted for the door as fast as he could. By the time Lenox and Dallington had reached the door he was gone.