Charles Finch - A Stranger in Mayfair

“I checked the docks!”

Lenox quietly said, “He’s in Wiltshire, isn’t he. Starling Hall. I imagine Elizabeth couldn’t bear to see him go overseas.”

Ludo nodded just perceptibly. “Yes.”

“Ludo inherited it last year,” said Lenox to Dallington. “It’s empty, other than staff, of course. I imagine Paul could stay well concealed there for some time.”

It was all clear enough. Paul Starling had killed Frederick Clarke. Since that awful moment Ludo had scrambled to protect his younger son, shifting the blame to anyone he could, paying out money to whomever he could.

There were two things Lenox didn’t understand, still. The first was motive. It had seemed so clear: Ludo killed Clarke because the sudden appearance of a bastard son would have destroyed his plans for a title to pass on to Alfred-perhaps for a title at all. Paul, though-what did Paul care? Whether Frederick Clarke or Alfred Starling was next in line surely was irrelevant to the youngest son, wasn’t it?

The second point was even more puzzling: Who had attacked him, Charles Lenox? The plan to steal Paul away to Starling Hall had already been set in motion. Had Ludo wanted to clear his own name, too?

“Who attacked me?” Lenox asked. “Were you trying to give yourself an alibi? But no,” he said to himself, “that doesn’t make sense. You already had an alibi from the butcher attack.”

“I didn’t know anybody was going to attack you,” said Ludo mournfully. He sank back into his chair and put his face in his hands. “There’s so much I would take back if I could-I should never have protected-”

There was a sound outside the door, a “shush!” in a woman’s voice.

And suddenly Lenox put it all together, what had been invisible for so long. It wasn’t Paul Starling who had killed Freddie Clarke. He was innocent.

I only paid Fowler because I was trying to protect someone I love.

The wound on Tiberius’s face, and a dozen other details.

It was Elizabeth Starling who had attacked Lenox.

It was she who had killed Frederick Clarke.

A dozen things crowded Lenox’s mind: Elizabeth’s occasional temper, which he had seen over the past weeks, Ludo’s seemingly inexplicable tangle of actions, her ironclad alibi for the butcher stabbing, when she had been in Cambridge. Her intense devotion to her sons, and her sometimes scorn for Ludo; it would have killed her to know that his title went to a footman, of all people, another woman’s son, rather than her Alfred. Her soft, gentle exterior, her quiet manner-he saw now that they concealed a character that was dreadful and dark, capable of evil things.

He thought back to the day of the murder. She had come into the alley. Why? At the time she had said she wanted to see if the constable was hungry or thirsty, but now this seemed unlikely. It was much likelier she would have sent a servant out. Did she want to move the brick? Conceal some other clue?

And the attack on Lenox: She had been standing at the door to see Ludo away, no doubt, and heard him come. When she learned the secret was out, eavesdropping on the conversation in the street, she must have flown into a rage.

There was the note! In Frederick Clarke’s room, the note asking him when his birthday was. She must have found out that he was Ludo’s legitimate son, and wanted to know exactly how old the lad was.

These ideas flooded his brain, one tripping on the heels of another, but he didn’t have time to articulate any of them.

Ludo had stood up. “What!” he called. “They know about Fowler. They know about poor Freddie.”

Elizabeth Starling flung the door open, her face transfigured by rage, and screamed, “Shut up, you fool!”

Dallington, who was still in the dark, looked taken aback, but for Lenox it was the final nail in the coffin.

“You killed Clarke, didn’t you?” he asked very softly.

The three other people in the room froze, but he walked to Ludo’s desk and rapped it with his knuckles, eyes cast down, brow furrowed, thinking it through.

“It makes sense to me now. Poor Ludo isn’t a violent type. He’s happy with a game of cards and a glass of brandy. But you-you’re a plotter.”

She was bright red. “You’ve always been a small man, Lenox. Get out of my house.”

“I don’t think I shall. What happened? When did Ludo tell you? Or was it Freddie who told you? Yes-I suspect that’s right.” He started pacing up and down the room. “Freddie wanted to be acknowledged as Ludo’s son and heir, the heir to any Starling title, the heir to Starling Hall. In the heat of the moment-or did you do it coolly?-I can’t decide-at any rate, you pried a brick from the ground and waited at the bend in the alley, where you knew he passed often enough.”

“No!”

“Then you did it. Smiled to his face and struck a blow on the back of his head as he walked away. I shouldn’t have been fooled by your gentle manners, I see now.”

“Lenox, what are you saying?” asked Dallington, appalled. “A woman-a gentlewoman-to have killed-”

Ludo interrupted. “It’s true,” he muttered, almost involuntarily.

“Ludovic!” screamed Elizabeth Starling, her fists tightly clenched and trembling.

“I hate this,” he said. “Because of you-to have been stabbed-our son cast out of our home-our faithful butler-my son! Freddie was my son!” He descended into incoherence now, muttering single words that formed a loose narrative in his own mind.

Lenox saw that the spell of her personality, her willpower, had been broken when the secret came out.

“Why did you cover for her? Why agree to be stabbed?”

“She’s my wife,” was all he managed to stammer out. “But this folly has to end, Eliza.”

As Lenox turned to see Elizabeth Starling’s reaction, two things happened: He heard a sound behind him, and Dallington shouted “Lenox!”

She was attacking him again. She had picked up a good-sized gold clock and had it above her head.

Dallington, who had jumped to his feet, was too late. Fortunately Lenox had managed to spring around her strike and grasp her from behind. She struggled mightily against his grip, but soon she let the clock go and fell in a heap into an armchair, sobbing without restraint.

Lenox, his heart pounding, felt the bandage on his head. Ludo and Dallington were standing beside him, looking shocked.

“I think we must call the police constable,” said Lenox, “but perhaps a doctor would be better first.” He picked up the bell and rang for the maid, whom he directed to fetch both.

It was strange to be in that quintessentially English room, with its hunting prints, its lines of leather-bound books, its fireplace, its old portraits along the wall, and to imagine all the violence that it had borne. Both Ludo’s careless life-marrying a maid, having a child with her, and later accepting him in as a footman (the madness!)-and more importantly Elizabeth Starling’s raging anger, her dark heart.

As she sobbed, dispossessed now beyond a doubt of whatever life she had made for herself, he almost felt pity for her. Then he remembered the other mother, the one in a hotel in Hammersmith, slowly coming apart at the seams.

“Come, Ludo,” he said. “You shall have a drink. This will all be over soon. I’m sorry you had to endure it.”

Ludo looked at Lenox, tears in his puffy, dissipated eyes. “My own son” was all he said. “The insanity of it.”

“What happened?” asked Dallington. “You wanted the blame to fall on Paul?”

“No!” It wasn’t Ludo but Elizabeth who spoke, between sobs, from the chair. Despite her anguish she couldn’t stand to see her son’s name fouled. “He saw it. He saw me. Then when the trial was close he refused to let Collingwood stay in jail any longer.”