The butler very nearly laughed. “Sir?”
Lenox sighed, stood up, and began pacing the study. “I’ve been troubled during all my time on the Continent about the business of a secretary. I interviewed eight candidates, all young men just up from Cambridge or Oxford, all of them of excellent family and eager to be personal secretary to a gentleman in Parliament. The trouble was that I felt that each one of them was sizing me up to decide when he could have my seat. They were all too ambitious, Graham. Or perhaps that’s not it-perhaps it’s simply that I didn’t know them, and I didn’t want to risk getting to know them as they worked for me.”
“You cannot be suggesting, sir-”
“You read more than half the men sitting in Parliament, Graham. More importantly, I trust you.” Lenox walked up to the study’s row of high windows, his slippers softly padding the thick rug. He stared into the bright, summery street for a few moments. “I want you to come be my secretary.”
Graham stood up too now, quite clearly agitated. “If I may speak freely, sir-”
“Yes?”
“It is an utterly impossible request. As gratified as I am at your consideration, Mr. Lenox, I am in no way suited to such a role-a role that belongs to someone-someone from the great universities, someone with far more education than I possess, and…if I may speak frankly, sir, someone of your own class.”
“I’m not trying to change the world. I simply want someone I can trust.”
Graham swallowed. “As a solution to a simple staffing problem, sir, I must say I find it exceedingly inelegant.”
Lenox waved an irritated hand. “No, no. I want both you and Kirk to be happy, of course, but it’s more than that. For one thing, you’ve been overqualified by your natural merits for years. More to the point-more selfishly-I’m new at this. I need help.”
At last Graham was silent. Finally, he said, “I’m honored, sir.”
“Will you do it?”
“I cannot say, sir. May I have time to consider the proposal?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would I still live here?”
“If you liked, yes. You shall always have lodging while I draw breath, as you well know.”
“And if I say no, sir? What will become of me then?”
Grumpily, Lenox said, “Well, we’d keep both of you, of course-and we’d hire five more butlers, just to make sure we had one in every room.”
Now Graham did laugh. “Thank you, sir.”
“Before you get above your old station, would you mind helping me with this painting?”
It was the one from the Salon, the blurry one. The two men pried its crate open, took its wrappings off, and then walked it down to the dining hall. There they hung it, tilting it imperceptibly back and forth until it was just level.
“May I ask who painted it?” Graham asked.
“A chap named Monet,” said Lenox. “Rhymes with bonnet, I think. I never heard of him myself. Funny, the picture looked better over in Paris.”
“Such is often the case with these flashy Continental objects, sir,” said Graham with evident disapproval.
As they got the picture hung just right, there was a knock at the door. Through the troubling weeks that followed, Lenox sometimes wished he and Graham had ignored that knock and the ominous events it portended.
Chapter Three
The gentleman’s name was Ludovic Starling. Lenox had known him for a decade. Nevertheless it was a surprise to find him at the door, for there was little acquaintance between the two men.
Ludo was through and through a son of Wiltshire, with a family that had sat obstinately on the same plot of land there since the Restoration, when one of Ludo’s progenitors had remained covertly loyal to the King. This man, Cheshire Starling, a blacksmith, had received six hundred prime acres in thanks for printing twelve copies of a single handbill that denounced (with dazzlingly poor syntax) Oliver Cromwell and his people. With a grant of three hundred pounds Cheshire had erected a tidy L-shaped hall, and the generations that had succeeded him in it had been filled with dull, pasty, and, despite their fanciful surname, heavy-footed men. The Starling women had just as little enterprise, and in all the family had been content to remain just as they were, year after year and decade after decade. Century after century. No Starling was ever too dismal a failure or too great a success, and the little parcel of family money never dipped or rose too high in value. The cousins were all looked after. They were a comfortable, pointless clan.
Until Ludovic, that is. About Lenox’s age, he had gone up to university as a willowy, handsome, ambitious lad of seventeen. From there he had moved to London and by the age of thirty had through his marriage attained a seat in Parliament; his father-in-law was a Scottish lord with land in Kintyre and a district in pocket. Since then Ludo had been a reliable backbencher and more recently had assumed a prominent position in his party’s hierarchy. He had also gained weight and was now a red-faced, sturdy, and social creature, who loved to drink and play cards. A year before he had inherited Starling Hall-an only child-but hadn’t visited it since his father’s funeral. All this Lenox knew by the way, just as well as he knew a thousand other short biographies of his London acquaintanceship.
“Why, Ludo, what can I do for you?” asked Lenox, who had come down the hall and watched Graham open the door.
“There you are, Charles. I’m sorry to pop up unannounced like this.”
Graham left, and Lenox shepherded Ludo into the study to sit. “You’re very welcome, of course. How is Elizabeth?”
“Quite well, thanks. A bit unsure of what to do with herself, with Alfred at Cambridge and Paul following him in the fall. They’re both here for the summer holidays at the moment, at least.”
“Following in their father’s footsteps at Downing, I take it?
Here, come into my study. Have you come about Parliament? I’m to meet with a group of gentlemen this afternoon to discuss our position in the colonies. I expressed an interest on the subject, and James Hilary was kind enough to include me.”
Ludo shook his head. “No, not that at all. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“In fact I’ve come for another reason. A lad in my house has been killed.”
“My God!”
“Not in my house,” Ludo hastened to add. He was restless, anxious. In Lenox’s study he stood up and paced back and forth. “A lad of my house, I should have said. In fact his actual demise took place in an alley just behind us, off of South Audley.”
“Who was it?”
“Not anyone I knew well-a young man named Clarke, Frederick Clarke, who worked for me. He was only nineteen.”
“How was he killed?”
“Bludgeoned to death. There was no weapon at the scene apparently.”
“The Yard is in?”
“Oh yes-it happened last night. Two constables are there now, keeping people clear of the area. I came to see you because-well, because I know you’ve worked as a detective in the past. Kept your cases very quiet, too.”
“This young man, Frederick Clarke, worked for you?”
“Yes, as a footman. His mother, Marie, was our housekeeper briefly, about fifteen years ago. Almost as soon as she came into our service she inherited something from her family and moved back to her hometown to open a pub. Apparently her son wanted to come to London, and she wrote asking if we might take him on, so of course we said yes.”
“Decent of you.”
“Elizabeth has a long memory for these things-you know how kind she is. He’s been with us for four years now, but I spend so much time at the House and at the Turf”-this was his club, whose membership consisted largely of sportsmen and cardplayers-“that I don’t know all the faces.”
Four years! thought Lenox. It seemed impossible to live under the same roof as a person for so long without knowing him through and through. “You didn’t know him, or you didn’t know him well?”
“Didn’t know him well, I should have said. Of course I knew his face and exchanged a few words with him here and there. But Eliza is very upset, and I promised her that I would ask for your help. She’s the reason I’m here, in fact. Although we were both relieved when we remembered you had just gotten back into town.”