“Freddie,” murmured Lenox to Dallington.
“Maybe I’ll buy a round as well. Come along?”
“Graham will murder me if I don’t get back. Come see me tonight though, will you?”
“Yes, of course.”
A ragged procession had already begun down the street, and Dallington ran up to join it. Lenox sidled up to Ludo Starling.
“Where is the boy’s mother staying?” he asked. “With you, I assume?”
“No. We offered.”
“You don’t know where?”
“A hotel in Hammersmith.”
“But that’s miles and miles away.”
Ludo shrugged. “We offered, as I say.”
“Which hotel?”
“It’s called the Tilton. That’s all I know. Listen, Charles-I feel uneasy about you looking into this murder. It’s nearly been a week already. Fowler says we can’t expect to discover who did this horrible thing to Frederick, and I don’t want to detain you for the purposes of a-a fruitless search.”
“Yes,” said Lenox placidly.
“After all, what’s the point? The House sits again soon, and we both have work to do before then.”
“True.”
“Will you drop it?”
“My priorities are certainly at the House, but if you don’t mind I’ll have Dallington look around a little more.”
“Oh?” said Ludo. His face was difficult to read. “If he has the time, by all means. I just want to be sure you don’t waste any time that would be otherwise spent productively.”
“Thank you,” said Lenox.
As he walked away down Brook Street toward New Bond, Lenox pondered this exchange with Ludo. There was no possibility whatsoever that Grayson Fowler had said the Yard couldn’t expect to solve the case. For one thing it was against policy, and for another Fowler was an irascible, tenacious man, not given to accepting failure gracefully. What could be happening between Ludo’s ears? Why ask Lenox onto the case and then try to kick him off? The title?
He was walking in the direction of Grosvenor Square. He was already late to see Graham, but it had occurred to him during the service that he hadn’t seen Thomas and Toto McConnell in nearly a week, and he decided to go visit them.
It was Toto herself, big as a house, who answered the door. Her funereal butler, Shreve, stood behind her with a dismayed downturn at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, Charles, how wonderful! Look at the size of me, will you? I’m not supposed to be on my feet, but I saw it was you through the window.”
“Shreve could have gotten it.”
The butler coughed a muted agreement.
“Oh, bother that, I wanted to stand up anyway. Thomas was reading one of his scientific papers to me, something or other about dolphins, I can’t keep up and it’s dreadfully boring. I do like his voice, though, don’t you? It’s very soothing.”
McConnell was standing before the sofa, beaming-still tall, still exceedingly handsome with his shaggy hair.
“How are you?” he said.
“Excellent, thank you. Any day now?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s a girl.”
“I do want a girl,” said Toto, heaving herself onto the couch with an unladylike grunt, “but of course a boy would be lovely, too.”
“Anything happening about the murder?” asked McConnell.
“Don’t talk about that nonsense,” said Toto crossly, her pretty face flushed. “I want to hear happy chatter, not about murders and blood. Just this once. After the baby comes the five of us can have a symposium on the subject, but right now I want to talk about nice subjects. How is Jane’s garden, Charles?”
Chapter Thirteen
That evening Lenox was sitting at his broad mahogany desk, reading a blue book on the subject of England’s commitments to Ireland. It was early September all of the sudden, after the endless warm summer of his honeymoon, and chill on the streets. Lady Jane had been out all evening, and he had stayed home, hoping to speak with her when she returned. He owed her a better apology and in his mind he worked over the words he would say when she came in.
As it happened the sound of the front door opening brought not her but a breathless Dallington.
“Lord John Dallington, sir,” said Kirk, coming in after the young man yet again. “The young gentleman didn’t knock, sir,” he added with opprobrium. Between him and Shreve, it was a bad day to be a fastidious butler in London.
“I was in a rush, wasn’t I? Lenox, it’s about the case.”
“What?”
“I spent the last five hours at the Bricklayers’ Arms. I think we have a suspect.”
Lenox stood up. “Who?”
“Jack Collingwood.”
Lenox whistled. Append another unhappy butler’s name to the growing list. During their interview Collingwood had sounded so very neutral about Clarke, appropriately sad but not, seemingly, very affected.
“What makes you suspect him?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. Graham, could you scare up a glass of brandy for me? Oh, but of course you’re not Graham-Kirk, is it? Thank you.” He turned to Lenox. “I sipped one glass of porter all afternoon, trying to keep my head clear, even though I bought five rounds. I have a terrible thirst.”
“Make it two, Kirk, and I’ll take mine warm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve found out why he had scabbed knuckles. Freddie Clarke. Everyone calls him Freddie, by the way-his friends.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t help us. He was an amateur boxer, bare knuckles. Apparently they make these footmen of pretty durable material-he fought every other Thursday and trained whenever he could, including early mornings, at a ring in South London.”
Boxing had grown up over the course of Lenox’s lifetime, replacing fencing and the quarterstaff as the city’s most prevalent combat sport. There were both aristocratic sparring rings and back-of-the-pub arenas devoted to it.
“Who did he fight? Was it rough or clean?”
“Clean-a nice place, expensive enough to be a drain on his income. He was great friends with his sparring partners.”
“It’s too bad. I thought the hands might be a clue.”
“I did, too.”
“What about Collingwood?”
“May I tell it chronologically, while it’s fresh in my mind?”
“Of course.”
Kirk arrived with the drinks, and Dallington downed half of his in one gulp. He looked at Lenox. “Oh, don’t put on that irritable face,” he said. “I hardly drink at all anymore.”
Lenox laughed. “I didn’t know I had any particular look on my face.”
Dallington still caroused three or four days a month, out with the lively young things of the West End, with loose women and plentiful champagne in the dim dens lying under unmarked doors, the ones that only true revelers could discover. As a result he saw opprobrium in Lenox’s eyes perhaps more often than it was there.
“Let me think,” said Dallington. “I should begin by saying that the footmen you saw at the funeral were Dallington’s closest friends. They came from various houses along Curzon Street and went to the pub once or twice a week together, in addition to meeting in the alley where he was killed, to smoke and chat.”
“It makes sense-he didn’t have any close friends in the house.”
“On the contrary, he absolutely loathed Jack Collingwood, his superior and apparently a very strict taskmaster. They nearly came to blows three weeks ago when Collingwood called Clarke an idiot. Collingwood withdrew the insult when Clarke challenged him to fight. According to Jenny Rogers, by way of Ginger-that’s the red-haired chap who spoke on the church steps-Freddie said he didn’t care a whit about the job and would quit just so that he could fight Collingwood.”
“That’s why you think Collingwood is a suspect?”
“Partly. There’s a great deal of anecdotal evidence about how little the two men liked each other. Ginger told me several stories-so did his friends-about that. Once Clarke dropped a silver tray as he was coming down the stairs, and even though it was undamaged Collingwood reported the incident to Ludo Starling. Apparently Collingwood was outraged when Starling refused to reprimand him, much less sack him. Suffice to say there was a good deal of animosity between the two men.”