Charles Finch - A Stranger in Mayfair

“Which was perhaps one of the reasons an ambush was the murderer’s soundest course. You’ve done quite well.”

“Only that from two days! You could have solved the thing and been to Bath and back in that time.”

Lenox laughed. “Not true. Still, it’s important to speak to Ludo’s family. What do you say to going now? I’m meant to be reading a blue book”-these were the dense parliamentary briefs all Members received for scrutiny-“but it’s deathly boring.”

“Just what I’d hoped for,” said Dallington. “I have a cab outside. Is Lady Jane in?”

“She’s with your mother, in fact.” Jane and the Duchess of Marchmain were close friends. “Give me a moment to gather my things.”

They pulled up to Ludo’s large, rambling house not twenty minutes later and knocked on the door. The butler-Lenox remembered that his name was Jack Collingwood-opened the door and ushered them in. At odds with the majority of his profession’s practitioners he was very young, perhaps thirty or a bit younger. While he went to fetch Ludo, Dallington whispered that he was the son of the Starlings’ old butler. That accounted for his age.

Ludo looked much more composed now than the last time Lenox had seen him. “Hello, hello,” he said. “How do you do, Charles?”

“Quite well, thank you. You’ve already met John Dallington?”

“Of course, yes. Good to see you again. Although as I said to him, the Yard can handle things from now on.”

“Would you mind if we spoke to a few people in the house?” asked Lenox. “I have a spare evening.”

“I really think-the Yard has been excellent. Mr. Fowler was here just this morning.”

Then why did you ever come to me? Lenox thought. All he said was, “He’s excellent, yes, but perhaps another set of eyes could see something new.”

“Two more sets,” said Dallington and grinned.

Ludo grimaced but relented. “Of course,” he said. “With whom would you like to speak first?”

“Have you been through his room at all?”

“Oh, no. The maid stripped off the sheets but left everything else as it is. For his mother, you see. We thought she might want to look over his things before they’re packed up.”

“When does she arrive?”

“Today. She’s traveling by post.”

“What’s the delay? It’s been four days.”

“I don’t know,” said Ludo. “Perhaps she had to find someone to look after her public house.”

Lenox shrugged. “At any rate, it might be valuable to speak to her. But that’s for tomorrow. Shall we have a look at the room? We need to know more about Frederick Clarke.”

“By all means,” said Ludo.

From the rather glum front parlor where they had been sitting, Ludo took them into the entry hall. There he led them through an unobtrusive door, painted the same color as the walls, and downstairs to the servants’ quarters. The largest room downstairs, the kitchen, was bright and busy with cleaning up after supper. Down a slim hallway to the right was a row of doors.

“Which one was it again?” said Ludo to a pretty young girl. “Frederick’s room?”

“It’s the last on the right, sir.”

The chamber when they reached it proved exceedingly modest, with only a bed and a small side table in it. There was one closet, too. On the side table were a stack of books and a candle that had burned down to a snub.

“Bring a lamp!” called Ludo down the hallway, and a moment later the same girl scurried down with it.

“Are you Jenny Rogers?” asked Dallington.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“How the devil did you know that?” asked Ludo.

“She doesn’t look like Betsy Mints, aged forty, cook, to me,” said Dallington.

“You’ve been looking into my household?”

“Yes.”

“Quite routine,” said Lenox.

“Still, I say, it’s a bit awkward,” said Ludo.

“We’ll need to speak to you soon, Miss Rogers.”

“You’re not a suspect,” added Dallington, still smiling. Lenox sighed. His apprentice couldn’t resist a pretty woman.

After Jenny Rogers had blushed, offered a confused curtsy, and retreated down the hallway, Lenox and Dallington turned into the room to begin a proper examination. Ludo stayed in the hall, trying to peer over their shoulders and shifting nervously from foot to foot.

“He was reading rather heavy stuff,” said Dallington, crouching down to look at the names on the spines of the books upon the side table.

“What?” said Lenox.

“There’s something called The Philosophy of Right by a chap named Hegel, a pamphlet on universal suffrage, and a little quarto of George Crabbe’s. He must have been the best-educated footman in London.”

“Those are all from my library,” said Ludo. “We encourage the staff to pluck what they will from it, but I’m afraid most of them read books from Mudie’s-adventure stories and romances. Three-volume novels. You know the sort of trash.”

“I rather like the triple-deckers myself,” said Dallington. “They make the time go.”

“To each his own,” answered Ludo frostily. His vices were not intellectual ones, at any rate.

“What sort of education did he have?” asked Lenox curiously. He stood up from his examination under the bed. “It must have been rather atypical. One of my friend Thomas McConnell’s footmen is quite illiterate.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. As I told you before, I didn’t pay the lad much attention.”

“I don’t blame you if he was always on about Hegel,” murmured Dallington, then laughed at his own joke.

There was really very little to see in the room. Lenox examined the entire bed and its frame for anything hidden-a note, a diary-but found nothing. The side table was similarly unrevealing. A small shelf in the corner had an assortment of meaningless trifles: a jar of ink, a picture postcard of Stratford with nothing on its reverse, a ball of black India rubber. The only thing that intrigued Lenox was a scrap of paper that read, When’s your birthday? C. said you would turn 20 soon. Did you have the day off last year?

“Does this note mean anything to you?” asked Lenox.

“I was curious about it myself,” said Ludo. “I asked Collingwood, and he said Elizabeth sent it, through him-we let the staff have their birthdays off, but she realized she didn’t know Clarke’s. She knew all the others.”

“Wouldn’t Collingwood have found that out? I imagine days off are within his purview.”

Ludo shrugged. “You know how solicitous my wife can be. She felt badly to think that we hadn’t given him his birthday off.”

“I see.”

The closet was the last place in the room that hadn’t been searched; in fact both Dallington and Lenox had run their eyes over everything else, shaken out the books, felt for lumps in the pillows. Lenox opened the closet, vaguely hoping to see something revelatory-something covered in blood, say-but he was disappointed. There were two tidy suits of livery, both black, such as a footman might wear, and four shirts.

“We provide them, of course,” said Ludo.

There was also a very fine gray suit, his one personal suit, that looked expensively tailored. On a shelf behind these was a stack of shirts. Lenox shook out and refolded each, then did the same with two pairs of trousers, checking the pockets, three pairs of socks, and a nightshirt.

“Defeated,” said Dallington.

“Probably,” replied Lenox.

He knelt down and looked at the shiny black shoes on the floor of the closet. He groped inside the left and found nothing, and then he groped inside the right and found-something.

He pulled it out and saw that he was holding a gentleman’s signet ring, made of heavy greenish-yellow gold. On its oval face was an intricately worked griffin with a small ruby as its eye.