“He was lying!”
“He might have been. Or he might simply have walked in with a crowd and not bothered to wait around for his turn to sign the book. Still, it is suspicious, I’ll grant you that.”
“This is it!” said Dallington excitedly. “Ludo is involved, even if we don’t know how!”
“Patience. Let’s go see Frank Derbyshire.”
Dallington flipped to the front of the club book and studied the names on the most recent page. “We may not need to leave the building,” he said after a moment. “Derbyshire signed in an hour ago.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
There were servants stationed at the door of every card room that was in use, in case the players needed a fresh cigar, or a cutlet to eat during play. Dallington, who knew many of the servants by name quietly asked each whether Frank Derbyshire was there. The third one said yes.
Derbyshire, an ugly, carrot-haired, very rich young man, was annoyed at the disruption. “What in damnation is it, Dallington?” he said. “I don’t owe you a cent, and there are no places at the table. Monty Kibble is ahead thirty pounds, and I’ll be damned to hell if he isn’t cheating. I need to get back in there and catch him.” A moody puff on his cigar.
“It’s not about cards.”
“Well, what else is there?”
Lenox smiled, then realized it wasn’t a joke.
“Ludovic Starling,” said Dallington, whom they had agreed would be the one to speak to Derbyshire.
“Who’s that?”
“Ludo-”
“No, this gentleman.”
“Ah. This is my friend Charles Lenox. Lenox, Frank Derbyshire.”
“Lenox the detective? That’s right, you are, too, Dalls,” said Derbyshire, giving them a nasty grin. “Playing about at bobby?”
Something happened then that shocked Lenox: For a single moment Dallington’s face showed a mix of shame and hurt that was piercing. He covered it with a sardonic laugh. Suddenly Lenox understood the cost to his pupil of this occupation: dismissed for so long because he didn’t work, because he drank and played, and now dismissed because he did work.
Dallington went on, “Did you play cards with Starling recently?”
“Yes, strangely enough. He usually plays with an older set, doesn’t like the university crowd down here on the second floor. But he wanted a game and got one, by God. I took him for eight pounds and a halfpenny.”
The impeccable memory of the gambler, thought Lenox. “How long did you play for?” he asked. “Ten hours, was it?”
Derbyshire snorted, and then something from the snort caught in his throat and he coughed horribly on his cigar smoke, hacking for what seemed like an entire minute. At last, eyes watery, he gasped out, “Never!”
“How long, then?”
He was still hoarse. “Couldn’t have been more than four hours.”
“What day?”
“Would have been about a week ago. It was eight days, in fact, I remember.”
The day of the murder.
“What happened?”
Derbyshire looked at Lenox strangely. “What happened? Nothing unusual. I took the eight pounds and bought as much wine as I could carry to take over to the old Rugbeian match. We drank ’em all. I still have the halfpenny.” He grinned.
“You’re sure about the day?”
“Yes!”
“What time of day was it? This is important. Late? Afternoon?”
“Early evening.”
“You’re sure?”
“You can stop asking me that. I’m certain.”
They let Derbyshire go, amid a variety of hacks, coughs, and eructations, back into his card room. As he turned he invited Dallington to play that night and shrugged at his decline.
“Inconclusive,” said the younger man to Lenox, hands in pockets, a disappointed look on his face. “He was probably there.”
“You’re sharper than that, surely. Think-we’ve just caught Ludo in his first lie, and if he would lie about six hours, wouldn’t he lie about matters of greater moment?”
“Anyway, why wouldn’t he have signed the book if he simply wanted an alibi? It might have been an exaggeration.”
“He was too specific for that, as I remember it. This is incriminating, somehow or other.”
“So Collingwood is innocent.”
“I don’t stipulate that point,” said Lenox. “There have been half a dozen cases during my years in London when a man who had been arrested seemed innocent, another suspect having emerged, only for the first man arrested to be proven guilty. In one instance, Smethurst back in ’52, the second man was covering up for an entirely different crime. Embezzlement.”
They were out on the street now, the light low. They passed a fruit and vegetable cart, and Dallington swiped an apple from it and flicked a coin at the cart’s owner, who caught it and touched his cap in one quick motion. Dallington crunched into his fruit as they walked down toward Green Park.
“Tell me, what shall we do next? Or what shall I do next, as you must be in Parliament tomorrow?”
“I think we must go see Collingwood himself, and I would like to go to the boxing club. It still bothers me that Clarke had money slipped to him under the servants’ door. I reckon Collingwood wouldn’t have tolerated secret doings among the servants, strange business that touched the house. And then Clarke’s peculiar room…” Lenox shook his head. “I feel quite sure we’re missing something.”
“Must you go back to work?”
“No. I don’t have any particular role in the state opening of the House, beyond observation.” He looked at his watch. “It’s only six o’clock. We should be able to find our way to Collingwood if we get there before eight. We’ll pass by the Starlinghouse along the way, to wish Ludo a swift recovery.”
As a shortcut they took the fateful back alley, now gloomed with shadows. Fetching up at the back stoop of Ludo’s house on Curzon Street, Lenox said, “Out of curiosity, which house belongs to Ginger’s employer?”
“It’s three down,” Dallington was saying, when they heard the short, urgent rap of knuckles on a window. They looked up. It was coming from behind a curtain on the second floor.
The curtain pulled aside, and they were both surprised to see Paul, Ludo’s younger son. He held up a finger: Wait.
He had raced down the stairs, evidently, because when he reached them he was breathless. “Dallington!”
“What is it? Didn’t you like Cambridge during your visit?”
“Oh, bother Cambridge. It’s Collie!”
“A dog?”
“Collingwood, you ass!”
Dallington raised his eyebrows. “I see.”
Paul looked appalled at what he had said to his drinking hero. “I’m sorry. I’m too used to speaking with Alfred. Anyway, no, it’s about Collingwood. They’ve arrested him!”
“So we heard.”
“But don’t you understand, it’s impossible!”
“Why?” asked Lenox.
Paul threw up his arms with the despair of someone who feels that he should be understood but isn’t. “Ask Alfred. Collie was our friend-our best friend. When we were children and he was a footman, he let us jump on him over and over, and just laughed. When he should have given us a lashing for stealing from the pantry, he smiled and looked the other way.”
“There’s every chance-”
“No!” Paul looked as if he were going to cry. Suddenly he reminded Lenox of Frabbs, his new clerk at Parliament: youth dressed up in the maturity it didn’t possess. “He couldn’t even bear to watch the foxes die at the hunt!”
“Paul!” From the back step Elizabeth Starling, red with emotion, almost shouted her son’s name.
“Damn,” said Paul under his breath, his face suddenly fearful. He ran up the steps and past her.
She ignored Lenox and Dallington and closed the door.
“Do you give that any credit?” asked the young lord.
“It was in Collingwood’s professional interests to befriend these lads.”
“I don’t know, Lenox. Their father is at the Turf constantly, and their mother is a bit too protective. You saw. He seemed genuinely upset.”
“He did. Unfortunately this is a field in which sentiment is of little practical value.”