Charles Finch - A Stranger in Mayfair

“Very good. And what ith her name?”

“Grace Georgianna McConnell,” said McConnell loudly, then handed the bishop a slip of paper with the name clearly spelled out, as had been customary since a powerful couple had long ago found themselves at home after a baptism with a wrongly named child.

Then (also as was customary) Toto placed George in Lady Jane’s arms, where she stayed while the ceremony finished with a short speech from the bishop.

Lenox’s eyes flitted over to Jane quite often, and once as he looked he saw that she was in a state of high emotion. Tears swelled in her eyes and began to fall, singly and doubly down her cheeks and onto her brown dress. Lenox handed her a handkerchief, and she pressed it to her mouth without taking her gaze away from the child tucked safely in the crook of her right arm. Toto saw it and started to cry, too. McConnell caught Lenox’s glance and smiled.

The moment the bishop said the final words of his blessing, soft conversations started all over the church, soon rising to quite normal speaking-voice levels and finally into something of a racket. Lady Jane returned the baby to her mother, and the three members of the new family vanished into their private room.

“That was lovely,” said Lenox to Lady Jane after she had hugged Toto good-bye and he had shaken McConnell’s hand.

She slid her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder, her face still wet. “It was beautiful,” she said in a barely audible voice. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

“I thought Toto would start giving the blessing herself, she looked so excited.”

Jane hiccupped with laughter. “It’s true. She was quite calm at first, but I saw her get caught up. How lucky she is, Charles!” As she said these last words the laughter left her face and she looked up at him, bereft.

He looked back at her, his eyes slightly narrowed, trying to read her expression. Instead of saying anything he squeezed her hand and hoped it would be reassuring enough.

Just then someone with so little tact that he couldn’t see he was interrupting a private moment, a gentleman named Timothy Macgrath, approached Lenox and said, “Jolly good show, wasn’t it!” and they were all thrown into the general conversation that rattled on as people began to file into the street.

Meeting on the steps of the church, Lenox and Dallington consulted quickly.

“Will you go visit Fowler before the party?” asked Lenox.

“Of course. I never saw him, did I?”

“Ask him about Clarke’s father, who he was and why he’s gone. Maybe that will tell us something.”

“Shall I ask him about Frederick being Ludo’s son?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet. Use your judgment-if you feel he’s willing to commiserate with you, then share all the information you like.”

They were only a couple of short blocks away from the butcher’s, Schott and Son. Lenox couldn’t resist checking in to see if he was there; he told Lady Jane, who was deep in conversation with the Duchess of Marchmain and didn’t have much present need of him, that he felt like a stroll.

It was still warm, and as he walked he loosened his tie. Some thought about children, elusive and dim, went through his mind more than once, but it was unclear even to himself what he wanted-for himself, for Lady Jane, for their life together.

He was so lost in thought that he overshot the butcher’s by a block and had to turn back.

Someone was in. The white tile of the shop’s interior gleamed brightly, and behind a row of beef sides that hung from the beams someone moved. Lenox couldn’t see a face, but then realized what he could see was perhaps even more interesting.

It was a green butcher’s apron.

Lenox wavered. He didn’t want to miss his chance to speak with Schott, but he didn’t want to stand in a tight space with a man who had thirty knives nearby, and knew how to use them.

Impulsively he crossed the street and opened the door.

As soon as the smell hit him he knew it had been a mistake. From twenty feet he could admire a butcher’s shop, its sanitary white, its reddish pink slabs of beef cut so tidily. Close up, though, it nauseated him. If it was browned in a red wine sauce there was nothing he preferred to a steak, but seeing it before it had reached that stage was less pleasant.

The man in the green butcher’s apron had been in the back, but at the sound of the bell attached to the door he popped up to the front. To Lenox’s disappointment, it wasn’t the gentleman from the boxing club.

“Mr. Schott?” he said.

“Yes? What can I get you?” The butcher was a short, tough lump of a man, bald and round-headed, with a belt of fat and arms that looked powerful from the heavy work of lifting and chopping. He looked at Lenox without suspicion. The detective put his age at about forty.

“I was wondering why you’d been closed the past few days.”

“I suppose a man can keep his own hours in his own shop, can’t he?”

“Certainly, yes.”

“Will that be all?”

“In fact I was hoping to speak to your cousin.”

Schott looked aggrieved. “Why on earth would you wish to do that? If it’s a cut of lamb you want, I’ve sold a fair few more than he has-only four or five thousand, I admit, but experience must count for something, mustn’t it?”

Lenox almost laughed. “It’s a fair point. But it wasn’t a question of butchery that I hoped to discuss with him. It’s about Ludo Starling. Or Frederick Clarke, really.”

Even as he said the second name Lenox heard something ominous: a lock turning behind him. He whirled around and saw the man from the boxing club, a cleaver in his hand, a key going into his pocket.

He looked back to Schott, who had his arms crossed and a dead-eyed look on his face.

True, visceral terror gripped at Lenox’s heart. There was no way out if these men wished to harm him. How stupid not to have waited until someone could come with him. Or at least to have told someone where he was going!

“Hello,” he managed to say in what he hoped was a mild voice.

“Well?” said the man from the boxing club. “I’m the cousin. What do you wish to say?”

“May I hear your name, sir? Mine is Charles Lenox; I’m an amateur detective and a Member of Parliament.” There. Let them know that if they killed him they were killing someone of note, someone who would be avenged.

“A Member of Parliament?” said Schott.

“Yes, for Stirrington.”

“Where’s that?”

“Durham.”

“What are you doing in London, then?” asked Schott’s cousin. Lenox noticed that he was young, perhaps only twenty.

“Parliament is here, of course,” said Schott in an exasperated tone.

“Your name?” asked Lenox again.

“Mine? Runcible-William Runcible.”

“May I ask you why you ran out of the Kensington Boxing Club that way?”

Schott spoke up. “He was scared. He did something stupid, and he was scared of being found out. Now he has been, the fool.”

“What did you do?” asked Lenox.

Runcible seemed to grip his cleaver tighter. “I’m not going to jail,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Did you kill Freddie Clarke?”

To Lenox’s surprise, Runcible smiled at the suggestion. “Never. Of course not. Freddie was my mate. Came every Tuesday and Friday for the meat. It was him that told me about the boxing club.”

“You were friends there? I thought he associated with some pretty high gentlemen.”

Runcible frowned. “Well-not friends, leastways not there. He was taking their money, and they wouldn’t have bet him if they knew he was a servant, he always said. He invited me to watch, but we never talked while we was there.”