A Stranger in Mayfair clm-4

by Charles Finch

  “Oh, please, Lenox-if only for my wife. She has no peace of mind at all just now.”

  “But-”

  “We must look out for each other, Members of the Commons. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t distressed.”

  Lenox relented. “Just a look. Then perhaps I’ll pass it on to my student, John Dallington, and he can delve into the matter if he chooses. Come along, I must hurry. That meeting about the colonies is in two hours.”

  Chapter Four

  As he had one foot hiked up into Starling’s carriage (a massive black conveyance with the family crest worked into its doors-a slightly low thing to have if you weren’t a duke, perhaps) Lenox had the novel realization that for the first time since he was a boy he had a duty to keep someone apprised of his whereabouts. Stepping back down, he grinned to himself. He was a married man now. How wonderful to contemplate.

  Jane was on one of the thousand social visits that occupied weekday mornings, making the rounds in her own old, slightly battered, and extremely homey carriage. She would be back soon, however.

  “Just one moment, Ludo,” said Lenox and dashed inside. He found Graham and asked him to tell Lady Jane where he was going; between this and the meeting it would be nearly supper before he returned.

  “Yes, sir,” said Graham. “Here, sir, your-”

  “Ah, my watch. Don’t think I’ve forgotten our conversation, by the by. Will you think about it?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Since you’re still a butler for the moment, however, don’t forget to tell Jane where I am.” Lenox laughed and stepped quickly back out to join Ludo. He realized as he laughed that his spirits had lightened with the prospect of a new case.

  They went through Mayfair at a rapid trot. It was Lenox’s home neighborhood, the one in which he felt most comfortable, and much of his adult life had been spent inside this stretch of London from Piccadilly to Hyde Park. As it had been for the past century or so, it was a fashionable place, the most expensive part of the city, with faddish restaurants, white glove hotels, and a gentle, calm aspect: The boulevards were wide and uncrowded, the houses well kept, and the shops tidy and pleasant. In some parts of London one felt quite hemmed in on the narrow streets, with carriages brushing by each other and mongers shouting to sell their fruit or fish, but Mayfair seemed somehow more civilized. It certainly wasn’t a quarter of London that Lenox associated with murder. Though the practice was all but dead, you’d still be more likely to see a duel between gentlemen in Green Park than any bloody-minded killing.

  The carriage stopped a few hundred feet short of Curzon Street, where the Starling townhouse stood just off a corner. Ludo, who hadn’t spoken during the trip, rapped the side of the carriage with his walking stick.

  “Here it is,” he said to Lenox as they stepped out. “The alley. Many of the servants on Curzon Street use it every day to do their errands. These constables have heard a fair bit of backchat from upset housemaids wanting to get by.”

  It was a narrow lane, the width of only two or three people, and slightly suffocating because the two brick walls that closed it off reached up five and six stories. South Audley Street, a busy thoroughfare, was bright and summery, full of people, but as Lenox peered down the lane it looked dim and sooty.

  “What time of day did it happen?”

  “In the evening, apparently. It’s far busier during the day than at night. A young girl came across the body at half past eight and immediately fetched the officer at the end of the road.”

  Lenox nodded. It was an affluent neighborhood, of course, and as such would have been swarming with bobbies. The alley might have been the only place for blocks where an assailant could risk an assault without being immediately seized.

  “Let’s walk down and have a look.”

  The alley was fifty or sixty feet long, and halfway down that length a single constable stood. He was a tall, burly, and reassuring sort. It had been some time since Lenox had visited the site of a murder, and he had somehow forgotten, as one always did, the eerie feeling of it.

  “Hello, Mr. Johnson,” said Ludo. “Where did your Mr. Campbell go?”

  “Back to his beat, sir. We had the inspector out, and he said only one person needed to stay here.”

  “To see if anyone returned to the scene?” Lenox asked.

  “Yes, sir. Can’t quite see the point myself, when there are thirty people clamoring to get in every minute or so.”

  “At any rate I’m glad you’ve kept the scene intact this long. Which inspector was it?”

  “With all politeness and that, sir, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “I’m Charles Lenox, Constable Johnson.”

  The man’s ruddy face lit up. “Lenox the detective!” he said brightly.

  “That’s right.”

  “You ought to have said so. We’re all right grateful down the Yard that you caught that bastard Barnard. Excusing my language, sir,” he added, nodding to Ludo.

  “Not at all.”

  Barnard had killed-had ordered killed-a famous police inspector, a man by the name of Exeter. Lenox had uncovered the deed.

  “Thank you,” said Lenox, “although I must say that my role was extremely minor-the Yard did the vast majority of the work.”

  Johnson grinned and tapped his nose. “Our secret, sir,” he said, “but I heard Inspector Jenkins tell about it all, sir. All of it,” he added significantly.

  Ludo looked at the pair slightly irritably, as if he suddenly suspected that Lenox might get a title now and there was only one to be had. “Would you mind if Mr. Lenox looked at the spot?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Down this way, sir.”

  The genial tone of their conversation abruptly changed as they came upon the scene of the murder. There was a large smear of dried blood along the brick walkway. Only nineteen, thought Lenox with a lurch in his heart. Just an hour before London had seemed like the most marvelous place in the world, but all at once it seemed like a midden of sorrows.

  “As well as we can work it out, Mr. Clarke never saw the man who attacked him,” said Johnson, now somber, business-like.

  “Must it have been a man?” asked Lenox.

  “Sir?”

  “If this is a servants’ lane, it’s much more frequented by women then men, I would imagine. Was Clarke a large boy, Ludo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still, we mustn’t exclude half of the population from our suspicion. Or slightly more than half, isn’t it? Go on, Constable.”

  “The wound was on the back of the young man’s head.”

  “Was he hit from above or below?”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. I’ll ask-just a moment, I don’t think you ever told me which inspector is looking at the case?”

  “Old Fowler, sir.”

  “Grayson Fowler? Perhaps I’ll ask him. Or it might be just as well to send for McConnell,” muttered Lenox to himself.

  He dropped to one knee and began to look very carefully at the vicinity of the attack on Frederick Clarke. Aside from the blood there was an unpleasantly evocative clump of hair on the ground.

  “Did you remove anything from the area?” asked Lenox. “Or did Fowler?”

  “Only the body, sir. All else is as it was.”

  “Which way was the body facing?”

  “Toward the street you came from-South Audley Street, sir.”

  “And he was attacked from behind. Where does this alley lead?”

  “To a small back lane with houses backed onto it, sir, including Mr. Starling’s.”

  “I take it the servants use this lane to get between their houses and the street? If that’s so it seems likely our attacker was either lying in wait or came from that direction. It makes me suspect one of your servants, Ludo.”

  “Oh?” said the man, who had been standing quietly off to the side.

  “The men and women with whom Frederick Clarke spent nearly every hour of his life in quite close proximity-yes, our fi
rst thoughts must go to them. Still, it would be silly to draw any conclusions yet.”

  Rising from his crouched position, Lenox walked around the blood spill toward the side of the alley that led to the backs of the houses, away from the alley’s busy end at South Audley Street. He ran his hands gingerly along the walls.

  “Did Inspector Fowler say what kind of weapon it might have been?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Ludo? To you?”

  “He didn’t say anything about it.”

  For the next ten minutes Lenox went up and down the alley, very carefully dragging his fingertips along each wall and walking gingerly, in short steps.

  “What are you doing?” Starling eventually asked.

  “Oh, just a suspicion,” said Lenox quietly, still focusing intently on his fingertips and feet. “If the murderer was someone who came down this alley often…I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes the murder weapon is whatever’s at hand.”

  Suddenly Lenox felt his foot rock slightly. Without moving he bent down, then drew his foot back. The brick that had shifted when he trod on it now looked plainly disconnected from the ones that surrounded it. He gently pried it out and held it up for all three of them to look at.

  “What is it?” asked Johnson.

  “It’s sticky,” Lenox said.

  “Cor!” said Johnson wonderingly.

  On the bottom of the brick was a smudge of what was plainly fresh blood.

  Chapter Five

  For a moment the three men stood, staring mutely at the murder weapon.

  “Does that mean it was a crime of passion?” asked Ludo.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “A brick right at hand-an argument-it must have been the heat of the moment!”

  “Impossible to say,” Lenox said, shaking his head. “What it must confirm, I believe, is what I said earlier-that the murderer has come up and down this alley many times, and knew which loose brick would make for a decent weapon. Much simpler to replace the brick than bother hiding some blunt object, or throwing it away and risk it being found. Johnson, have you your whistle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Blow it for the nearest constable, and we’ll have him fetch Fowler out for this fresh piece of evidence. Ludo, I need to leave, but as I said I’ll pass the case on to my assistant, John Dallington.”

  “Dallington?” said Ludo dubiously. “That boy of the Duke of Marchmain?”

  Lenox laughed. “The very same. I assure you that he’s quite a competent student of mine.”

  John Dallington had a firm reputation as the greatest rake, gambler, seducer, and libertine in all of London. Born to wealth and status, he had abjured the usual course (clergy or military) of most third sons of rank. It was to Lenox’s very great surprise that this Dallington, who was perfectly charming, a small, dapper, handsome fellow, unmarked by his excesses, but without a reliable bone in his body, had asked to learn the art of detection. Against all odds he had since then picked up a great deal of Lenox’s knowledge and even, in the business of the September Society, saved Lenox’s life. He still drank and caroused now and then-it was troubling-but in the midst of their cases together his conduct had been largely faultless. More than that, it had been a balm to Lenox to have a colleague. For so long he had struggled alone to keep his head held high when people disdained his profession or pitied him-or, as that morning, offered him money. There had been Graham, of course, and even occasional help from his brother, but Dallington was different. He found Lenox’s passion for detection not embarrassing, as many people seemed to, but fascinating. It was a comfort.

  Still, Ludo’s reaction to the name of John Dallington was scarcely surprising. If a century passed he wouldn’t live down the character he had earned in three or four years during his early twenties.

  “If you can vouch for his dependability,” said Ludo with a doubtful grimace, “then I suppose that would be all right.”

  “I’ll send Thomas McConnell to have a look at the body, too. I wouldn’t mind seeing Frederick Clarke’s clothes and possessions myself, either, but it will have to wait for another day.”

  There was then a footfall at the end of the alley, and all three men turned their heads to see who it was.

  “Eliza!” said Ludo, glancing quickly at Lenox. “How are you, dear?”

  “Hello, Ludovic. And who can this be-Charles Lenox?”

  Lenox nodded. “How do you do, Mrs. Starling?”

  Elizabeth Starling was a pretty, fragile, smallish woman, with a little bit of plumpness and big, soft brown eyes. She looked rather like Marie Antoinette playing a milkmaid at the Petit Trianon.

  “Quite well, thank you. But I thought you were still on your-”

  “Why have you come into the alley?” said Ludo.

  “Don’t interrupt, dear,” she said good-naturedly. “Anyway, I might ask you the same thing. Mr. Lenox, I thought you were still on your honeymoon?”

  Lenox looked at Ludo, who was beet red. “No, I told you Charles came back, dear. He was kind enough to come have a look at the scene of poor Frederick’s death.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything of the sort.”

  “And why have you come into the alley?”

  “To see if Constable Johnson needs anything to drink or eat. Constable?”

  “No, ma’am,” said the bobby, touching a knuckle to his forehead.

  “Well, come round if you do. Mr. Lenox, would you like a cup of tea?”

  “I fear I already find myself late for an important meeting, thank you. Ludo, shall I be in touch?”

  “Oh-yes, of course.”

  “Constable, your whistle?”

  Reminded, Johnson whistled for help, and Lenox, doffing his hat, bade everyone good-bye.

  As he walked down Curzon Street onto Half Moon Street (his meeting was in Whitehall, and he intended to cut through Green Park to get there) Lenox pondered Ludo Starling’s bizarre behavior. For starters there was his strange, agitated manner throughout their encounter. More significantly, why on earth had he claimed that his wife wanted Lenox on the case so badly when it was plain she had no idea he was in town?

  But he put this out of his mind, ready for a different kind of challenge. He was going toward the Cabinet Office, a glorious old building erected on the site of the old Palace of Whitehall, where the Kings and Queens of England had lived until 1698, when they moved to St. James’s Palace on Pall Mall. It now housed hundreds of government workers, but inside, strangely enough, you could still see what remained of Henry the Eighth’s old tennis courts.

  The meeting lasted several hours and was of intense interest to Lenox. He took copious notes (in fact he felt embarrassed to be without his personal secretary-all the rest of the dozen men in the room had bright young lads straight from Charterhouse and Cambridge seated just behind them) but never once spoke. At the break for tea he dispatched short notes to Dallington and McConnell, asking them to come by his house later, but otherwise his mind was wholly focused on his work for Parliament. They talked first about Hong Kong, which had been seized some thirty years before, then a sleepy town, now an expanding city; then they discussed the potential purchase from the ruler of Egypt of part of a great canal; and at last they talked at great length about the recent consolidation of several disparate provinces into what was now called (Lenox still had trouble taking the name seriously) the Dominion of Canada. Victorialand had been perhaps too jingoistic a suggestion, but how infinitely preferable it would have been, Lenox thought, had they named it Anglia, as he had heard was proposed at the time.

  Exhausted and pleased, he left the room six hours after he had first entered it, feeling firstly that he had a new understanding of the British colonial position (to think that in the last fifty years the empire had added two hundred million souls and five million square miles to its purview! What astonishing numbers, which none of the dustmen and bankers in the street thoug
ht about for more than a passing moment!) and secondly that he had a new collegiality with the men who ran the Colonial Office. Lenox had no intention of becoming a backbencher. He would wait his turn, to be sure, and could be patient-but what effort could win him in power and influence, it would.

  It was understandable, therefore, that Frederick Clarke and Ludo Starling were far from his mind as he arrived in Hampden Lane. But no sooner had he turned the door handle than he remembered that McConnell and Dallington would likely be there. Supper with Jane would have to wait half an hour.

  In fact it was only the younger of the two men who was there; Jane, according to Graham, was still out, but Lenox found John Dallington sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs in the study, feet propped up on the rail of the fireplace, a thin cigar in hand, and a huge smile on his face. This last because he was reading Punch.

  “Mr. Punch’s Book of Birthdays,” Dallington said in response to Lenox’s querying look. “But please!” He stood up. “Let me welcome you back from your honeymoon! It was the handsomest wedding I ever attended, I swear. I had to jostle with about a dozen cabinet ministers and fifteen dukes just to get a look at you. They were turning away mere viscounts at the door, the poor devils. Pretty hard on them.”

  Lenox grinned. “Was it as pompous as all that?”

  “Pompous-never. Justly well attended, I would say. I swallowed two buckets of champagne at the breakfast and asked Lady Jane to elope with me. She said no, which was probably wise of her.”

  “She told me. You said something about letting the better detective win?” Lenox chuckled. “Have you surpassed me already?”

  “Never. Still, I was intrigued by your note.”

  “Yes, thanks for coming. Drink?”

  “Rum and soda if you’ve got it.”

  Lenox went to the drinks table and poured them each a tumbler. “It happened down by Curzon Street. Did you ever hear of someone called Ludovic Starling?”