Charles Finch - A Stranger in Mayfair

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.

“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.”