A Stranger in Mayfair

by Charles Finch

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Who was that?” shouted Dallington at the crowd of people who all stood together now, mute and stunned. Lenox, who had run down the street to see which way the man had turned—a futile attempt—returned.

  There was a long silence.

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” said Willard North at last. “Have any of you lads?”

  There were murmurs in the negative and much headshaking. Lenox couldn’t tell if they were protecting one of their own or if their mystification was genuine.

  But then another voice chimed in.

  “I know him. Fella who sometimes comes to see me fight.” It was the losing boxer, the large one without much science. He spoke in the accent of the West Indies, but with a disconcerting cockney tinge mixed into it. “Butcher. I know because he bring me a steak if my eye is swelled up.”

  Dallington and Lenox looked at each other: a butcher. The piece of evidence incriminating Collingwood had been a butcher’s apron.

  “Where is his shop? Where does he live?”

  The big man shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Did you catch his name?”

  “He told me, but I can’t remember it.” He looked exhausted and took a gulp of water. “S’all I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  Out on the pavement Lenox and Dallington both started to speak at once. “You first,” said the older man.

  “I was only going to say—this man, this butcher, may have come with Clarke.”

  “It could be,” said Lenox thoughtfully, “but what about his disguise? Would Frederick Clarke the ‘gentleman’s son’ want to introduce a butcher as his particular friend?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Did you get a good look at the man?”

  “I didn’t, unfortunately.”

  “Nor did I,” said Lenox. “Still, I think I could choose him from a group of three if I had to. The next step is to go to all the butchers’ shops around the alley. I’ll do that.”

  “What if he’s hiding?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “And what shall I do?”

  “It’s time we split up, I think. I have two tasks in mind for you: First, you can see whether you do any better with Fowler than I have. He may have imagined some slight against him from me, or some condescension. Otherwise I can’t explain his behavior.”

  “Second?”

  “We haven’t spoken to Mrs. Clarke since Collingwood was arrested.”

  Dallington whistled sharply between two fingers. A cab started to pull up to them, its horse an old plodder. “Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Fowler—Mrs. Clarke—excellent.” He swung up a leg into the taxi and soon was on his way.

  Lenox soon was on his way, too, back to Curzon Street. In truth he had always disliked butcher shops; it might perhaps have been because his family had never on either side been great hunters, or because Lenox House, while it had a working farm on its land, was set at a distance from its own barns. He went into the first butcher’s that he saw near Ludo’s house, and there were the familiar sights—two deer, their eyes glassed, skinned and slung up on the wall. A jar of pigs’ hooves, being slowly cured on the countertop. The tidiness of the red-checked curtains and the large roll of wax paper in counterpoint to the bloody hunks of cow and pig everywhere. He could eat what came from these carcasses readily enough, but he didn’t care to look at them.

  “Does another gentleman work here?” Lenox asked the man behind the counter, who looked about 150 years old and could no more have attacked Ludo Starling than he could have swum the Channel.

  “My son,” answered the man.

  “Is he here?”

  “He’s in York for the week, which he’s visiting his wife’s parents there.”

  “I see—thank you.”

  Then it occurred to Lenox that he might easily ask Ludo who the family butcher was—perhaps that would be the man.

  He knocked at the front door, and as Elizabeth Starling opened it he remembered that of course their butler was gone.

  “Hello, Charles,” she said. “I would have had the housemaid open the door for you, but she’s busy in the kitchen, I’m afraid. At any rate Ludo is out.”

  “Perhaps you can answer my question, in that case.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you know what butcher Collingwood employed?”

  With a deep, sorrowful sigh, she said, “Does your meddling reach no end? Would you not leave us to our lives? Our footman is dead—our butler in prison—my husband attacked—and still you annoy us with your impertinences! Have you heard nothing of the honor which may shortly be bestowed upon my husband, and the very real danger of losing it by indiscretion?” Again she sighed. “I’m not a hard-worded woman, you know. It pains me to be so vehement. Please forgive me.”

  Lenox felt unchivalrous. “I’m exceedingly sorry,” he said. “Your son Paul—whom I met accidentally—was insistent that Mr. Collingwood must be innocent.”

  “Paul’s no longer here.”

  “Excuse me? Where has he gone? To Cambridge, so early?”

  “He has gone to Africa for a year, it pains me to say. Downing College insisted upon a year’s deferral because he was so inebriated at the visitors’ weekend.”

  “My goodness.”

  “He left this morning.”

  “So quickly!”

  “I have a cousin very well placed within a large shipping concern. Paul will make his fortune and be at a perfectly normal age to enter Cambridge as a fresher; since of course the Starling money will go to Alfred, it will do Paul good to have a foundation when eventually he begins in the world.”

  This was frankly specious; to have gone into business before Cambridge was unheard of. Her anger had seemed to subside, however, so Lenox ventured another question. “Are you sure you cannot tell me who does your butchery, which shop?”

  “I don’t know that information, no. Good day, Mr. Lenox.”

  As he walked away, what surprised him most was how instantly Paul was gone. Lenox had seen him two days ago. Elizabeth Starling had by Ludo’s own account been a doting, even smothering parent, sorrowful to see her children leave for university, much less the other side of the world. What on earth was happening in that family?

  “Psst! Chappie!”

  Lenox whirled around. He was some four houses down the block now. He saw that it was Tiberius Starling, the old uncle. The cat was in his arms.

  “Hello,” said Lenox.

  “It’s Schott and Son. That’s our butcher. He’s up a couple of streets, green building. Always leaves too much fat on, if you ask me, the blighter. Try that on your stomach when you’re as old as I am.”

  “Thank you—thanks extremely.”

  Tiberius swatted an invisible fly and said grumpily, “I don’t know what in damnation is happening. That Collingwood was as decent a chap as I ever met.”

  “So people seem to believe.”

  “Eh? Say it again, I’m a bit deaf.”

  “I’d heard the same, I said!”

  “Ah, yes.” He grew conspiratorial. “One more thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Look up as you pass by our house again.”

  “Up?”

  “Just look up! There’s something worth seeing.”

  He hustled away, slipping through a side door of the house (which was set ten feet apart from its neighbor). Lenox waited a few beats to let Tiberius get indoors.

  As he passed the house he did look up, and there was something worth seeing. Pressed against the glass of a fourth-floor window was Paul’s unhappy face.

  Chapter Thirty

  His mind swarming with doubts and possibilities, Lenox decided to seek relief. He knew that perhaps he should worry about the butcher flying from London; on the other hand, the butcher would probably have known that nobody in the boxing club could identify him by name. There was perhaps little to gain from haste. In
any event it was nearly time for lunch, and he hadn’t seen for several days any of the (now expanded) McConnell clan.

  Arriving at the vast Bond Street house, he fancied he could see a change in it already; there were flowerboxes along the windows, fresh coats of bright white paint on the shutters, and on the knocker of the front door a small pink muffler, knitted from wool. The sign of a successful birth. It all looked dazzlingly merry.

  Shreve, the funereal but excellent butler who had been Toto’s father’s wedding present, opened the door. He was a dour, unsmiling fellow, and so it surprised Lenox greatly that now he not only was fighting down a grin but holding a stuffed bear.

  “Ah!” he said, discomposed. “Excuse me, sir, I expected Mr. McConnell. Please, follow me through to the drawing room, Mr. Lenox.”

  In the drawing room was Toto, from the look of her as fizzy and full of spirit as she had been in former times. Lying on a blanket on the ground was George, still plump, still red, dressed in a fetching pale blue gown. From the infant’s face Lenox could see that she had been crying.

  “Why on earth would you take her bear, Shreve, you beast?” said Toto happily. “Charles, tell him.”

  “It wasn’t sporting of you, was it?” asked Lenox, smiling.

  “It was a grave oversight, madam. I apologize.”

  Then, apparently not thinking it dignified to get on the floor and wave the bear in George’s face before company, he handed the toy to Toto and withdrew with a bow.

  “What a stuffed shirt he is! Before you came he was saying all the silly things we say to George now without a modicum of shame.”

  “How is she?”

  Toto stood up and gave Lenox a squeeze on his forearm. “You wouldn’t believe how clever she is—really, you can’t imagine. Just think, she knows her name!” She followed this remarkable news by attempting to prove it, calling, “George, George!” over and over again until the baby seemed to tilt her head in their direction. “See!” said Toto triumphantly.

  “Remarkable! I know many a grown woman who hasn’t learned that trick.”

  “I know you’re teasing me, but I’ll let it pass because I’m so happy. Do you know, I never realized that all babies have blue eyes! Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. Does Thomas have some scientific reason to explain it?”

  “Speaking of people who don’t recognize their names—his eyes don’t leave her face when he’s in the room. He won’t get on the floor as I will, or give her a thousand kisses as I do, but lor! How he loves the little speck.”

  “I say, I know it’s rude of me, but could I bother you for a bite of food? It would help me admire her better—I’m famished.”

  “Oh, yes! In fact, you know, Nurse should take her away; we mustn’t agitate the poor thing with too much attention, she says. So I can join you in lunch.”

  “Is Thomas here?”

  “I forced him to leave the house. He’s at his club, looking through a newspaper. I doubt he’s actually reading, though—just worrying that I’ve burned the house down in his absence, I imagine, and boasting to anyone he meets as if there weren’t thousands of children born every day, some of them in the middle of fields. Here, find me that bell—there it is—that will get Shreve in.”

  Her happiness was infectious. “You look awfully well,” he said.

  “Thank you, Charles. All credit for that must go to Jane. She saw me through all the difficult bits.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Shreve came in, and Toto asked for food. “Will a beefsteak do for you, Charles?”

  “Splendidly.”

  “Let’s have that, and some potatoes and carrots—and for my part all I have a taste for is bubble and squeak.” This was a cabbage and potato dish. “We need something to drink, too, don’t we. Whatever’s at hand in the cellar for Mr. Lenox, please.”

  “Very good, madam,” said Shreve and retreated.

  There was a footstep in the hall and a muffled exchange of words between Shreve and another gentleman—and of course it was McConnell.

  “There’s the child!” he said. George wriggled happily on the ground. “Lenox, have you seen anything so fine?”

  “Indeed not,” he said. A faint pain passed through him; he wondered again whether he would ever experience McConnell’s happiness.

  “I asked Shreve to give me a bit of lunch, too.”

  Now Lenox looked at the doctor in earnest, and it startled him. If there had been a change in the house—in Toto, even in Shreve—it was nothing to the complete change in Thomas McConnell. Where before he had been sallow, jaundiced, and aged beyond his years by anxiety and idleness, now he seemed a man with vigor and purpose: pink, upright, with brightened eyes and a twitching mouth that constantly threatened to burst open into a smile.

  “Did you tell Lenox that she knows her name?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s seen the entire rotation of tricks. Now where is that nurse? I won’t be a minute—excuse me.”

  At lunch there was only one topic of conversation—George—until Lenox felt at last that just perhaps he had heard enough about his godchild’s hundred charms.

  “Won’t you stay to see her after her nap?” asked McConnell when Lenox said he had to go. Toto was checking in on her.

  “If only I could, but there’s a stack of blue books I have to read through. We sit in Parliament this afternoon, of course.”

  “How could I forget—the opening! We’re quite wrapped up here in the baby. How was it? Did you see the Queen?”

  “I did indeed; it was a splendid show. You would have loved it.”

  “I wouldn’t have been anywhere but here—now come, say good-bye to Toto, and be sure to tell her how highly you esteem your goddaughter.”

  He did indeed have to be at Parliament soon, and as was customary he wanted to spend the few hours before the session milling in the lobby, meeting people and speaking with them. It was a familiar way to plan among the backbenchers.

  Still, he couldn’t resist stopping by the butcher’s shop, Schott and Son. Curiously—and perhaps tellingly—it was shuttered and closed.

  Back at home on Hampden Lane, Lenox sat in his study reading those blue books (the ones particularly relevant to the Queen’s Speech, which was still being debated in the Commons). Lady Jane was out, and had been since breakfast according to Kirk. Lenox had spoken that morning with Graham, who was at the House speaking to the appropriate people’s political secretaries about water and cholera.

  Just as Lenox was preparing to leave there was a knock on the door. Kirk brought in Dallington.

  “There you are—I worried I might not catch you,” said the younger man. He smiled. “It’s dashed inconvenient for you to be in Parliament. You ought to have a bit of consideration.”

  “I’m leaving now—my carriage should be ready. Kirk?”

  “It is standing in front of the house, sir.”

  “Would you come along, Dallington?”

  “With pleasure.”

  Once they were seated, Lenox took out a blue book. “Tell me what you found today; then, rude though it is, I must read.”

  “The mother wasn’t in, and neither was Fowler. I spent a few hours skulking around that boxing club.”

  Lenox smacked his head. “How can I not have told you? I found the butcher’s shop. Tiberius Starling, of all people, was the one who told me.” Lenox went on and talked through the whole day, catching his apprentice up.

  “Remarkable—but there’s something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s—it’s unexpected news.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Collingwood has confessed to killing Freddie Clarke.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The news would have to wait. That was Lenox’s first thought. He had to be down at the House. In the meanwhile Dallington could go speak to Collingwood.

  “Where did you hear it?”

  “Jenny Rogers heard first and left a note at my club.”

 
; “Did she give you any other details?”

  “No.”

  “You say he confessed to killing Clarke—what about stabbing Ludo?”

  “I assumed that went along with it.”

  Lenox was silent, thinking, for a moment. “Who knows. Incidentally, they’re sending your admirer—Paul—out of the country for a year. Just like that.”

  “How did you hear of this?”

  Lenox recounted the story of his afternoon: Elizabeth Starling’s fearfulness, Tiberius’s surreptitious aid, Paul’s forlorn face in the window. “Why lie to me? What could she possibly gain by that?” He looked up at the clock on the wall. “I should be at the House already,” he said. “Will you give me a lift in a taxi down there? That way we can speak a little longer. Just give me a moment to gather my things.”

  As they rode down toward Parliament, Dallington suggested an idea. “What if Paul Starling killed Freddie Clarke?”

  “What evidence is there of that?”

  “No evidence, to speak of, but it would explain why he’s leaving the country.”

  “So he also attacked his own father and framed Collingwood, whom he passionately defended to me? I don’t think so. On top of that his spirits were awfully high at our dinner there, weren’t they? He hardly seemed to have something so great on his conscience as murder.”

  “Not all men have consciences,” retorted Dallington.

  “I don’t believe it. Still, you’re quite right to interrogate the decision by Ludo and Elizabeth. Here’s a thought—what if Paul knows something about the murder?”

  “To protect Collingwood?”

  “Or indeed to protect Ludo. Has anyone’s behavior through this entire mess been stranger?”

  “He would hardly give his own father to the police.”

  “You may be right there.”

  “Besides, as always,” said Dallington, “there’s the question of the attack on Ludo. What are we to believe: that Ludo killed Freddie Clarke and then was attacked by random chance in the same alleyway?”

  Lenox, with a defeated sigh, looked out through the window. “What do we know?” he said at length. “We know that Paul Collingwood, a butler, killed a footman working under him—possibly to protect his own job. We know that subsequently someone, perhaps Collingwood, attacked Ludo Starling—but for reasons that are dark to us. The problem is there’s no internal logic to any of these actions. Clarke saw Collingwood nick a few coins, and that’s why he’s dead? And then why attack Ludo?”