A Stranger in Mayfair

Chapter Twenty

Though he now had a dozen things to do, he decided it was important to stop in for a visit at the McConnells’.

Jane was still spending nearly all of her time there. He didn’t wonder at her devotion-he knew better perhaps than anyone else in the world the strength of her friendship-but did ask himself whether it took a toll on her. She would be happy for Toto, that was a given. But would she be sorry for herself?

She had been a very young widow. It was the one subject they never discussed, the sudden death of her first husband just a year into their marriage. Lenox tried to think back to Jane as she was then, at a time when he could be friendly but dispassionate in his analysis of her character. He remembered that she had been a very happy bride, and a very brave widow. What had she planned for herself, in the idle moments during the weeks before that first wedding? How many children? What names had she bestowed upon them?

It made his chest feel hollow, his lower stomach roiled. It was awful.

Still, he managed to put on a cheerful face for Thomas and spent half an hour closeted with him, drinking a dram of whisky with the new father, who paced back and forth, an unshakable grin upon his face. It was the happiest, quite literally the happiest, that Lenox had ever seen him.

Jane came downstairs, brushed a kiss on his cheek, said a few quick words-amiable enough, loving enough-and went back to be with Toto, who was apparently still rather weak.

“Another sip of Scotch?” asked McConnell when she had gone.

“Thanks, yes.”

McConnell poured two from his sideboard and handed one to Lenox. “To George!”

“With all my heart.”

They drank. “I think all my toasts from now on will be to her,” said McConnell thoughtfully, looking out of his window at the soft pink and white fall of evening, buildings half lit, homeward-headed people scattered over the cool streets. “Whether we toast the Queen or a newly married couple, in my own mind I’ll know who my toast is really for. Little George McConnell.”

Lenox smiled. “What’s it like?” he asked quietly.

“What is it like? It’s…it’s like being given your own life to start over. I don’t think I’ve ever thought for a moment about what I ate or what I drank or whether I hit my head. I don’t think I ever thought for a moment about my education, not really.”

“Oh?” Lenox felt slightly crestfallen-not envious, but sad that the brilliant, shimmering happiness of McConnell’s face would never show on his own.

“Other parents said I would care more about her than myself, and I see now that’s what they meant. All of the choices that are quick and painless for my own old bones seem so important when they’re for her. Where will she go to school, I wonder?” In a private reverie he fingered a book on the shelf next to him. “What will she learn there?” He looked at Lenox. “It’s the most wonderful thing you can imagine.”

“Is Toto holding up well?” asked Lenox after a silent moment.

“Oh, she’s making jokes again. And between us all is well.” This was an unusually intimate thing for the doctor to say, and perhaps he realized it, but, caught up in his own exhilaration, he went on. “When one is unhappy and trying to hide it-when one has a secret trouble-there’s an antic cast to everything in life. Now things are serene again.”

“It’s very finely put,” murmured Lenox.

Then a thought occurred to him. It was that turn of phrase: “an antic cast.” It put him in mind of someone.

Ludo Starling.

If one has a secret trouble…and now it occurred to Lenox in a fell stroke what should have occurred to him all along. That Ludo himself was certainly a suspect in the murder of Frederick Clarke.

Everything about his behavior had been odd, but more than that, there was some indefinable disturbance in his mind that was obvious if you spent three minutes in his presence.

Of course it was a problematic idea. For one thing, Ludo had an alibi (but hadn’t he been quick to deliver it?). Dallington would have to check whether he had in fact been playing cards at the hour when Clarke was killed. For another thing, he had approached Lenox. Why would he have done that, had he been the murderer?

And yet the detective’s intuition was pulsing with the certainty that Ludo was concealing something.

“What is it?” asked McConnell. “You look peculiar.”

“Nothing-nothing. I must be going.”

“Is it about your case? Shall I lend you a hand?”

Lenox smiled at him. “Your place is here. Tell Jane I’ll see her this evening at home.”

“As you wish, of course.”

On the way to Ludo’s house Lenox pondered their encounters over the past few days. There were Ludo’s constant pleas that Lenox drop the case. There was the invitation to dinner, ostensibly in the spirit of friendship but in fact as an excuse for Elizabeth Starling to make the same request.

It was all exceedingly strange.

Ludo’s house was brightly lit; it was nearly night by now, with only thin purple bands of light visible below the black of the horizon. Lenox knocked on the door, and Collingwood-whose complicity suddenly seemed like a possibility-answered.

“Is he in?” asked Lenox, barging past.

“Yes, sir. Please-” Collingwood had been going to invite him to sit and wait, but Lenox had already taken a place on the sofa in the drawing room. “Just a moment, please.”

Ludo appeared. “Oh, Charles,” he said. “How are you?”

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“To thank us for supper? It was our pleasure, I promise you.”

“I do thank you, but no. I have some questions about-about Frederick Clarke. And you.”

“And me?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I was just on my way to supper and a hand of cards. Will you walk with me?”

“As you please.”

“Just wait here a moment, if you don’t mind. You’ll find something to read in the bookshelf if you like.”

Ludo left. Lenox felt suddenly nonplussed: What was he going to say? Perhaps coming here had been a mistake. It was the fervor of his meeting with Hilary that had made his blood race. He was behaving impulsively. Now he resolved that he would ask Ludo only the most innocuous question, and leave it till the next day to collect more facts.

Then something rather strange happened. Having expected Ludo to be gone a moment, Lenox waited nearly twenty minutes before the man appeared again. At first he was annoyed, then puzzled, and finally truly perplexed.

“Sorry for the delay. I had to get my papers in order before I went out for the evening. It took longer than I expected, but my secretary is coming by to pick them up in a little while, so it was quite necessary. Parliament sits within the week, as of course you know.”

“It’s quite all right.”

“Are you nervous? I was, my first time. Here, this way. If you don’t mind terribly, we’ll go down the alley. A bit ghostly, but it’s the fastest way out.”

“Not at all.”

They went through a back garden into the brick alleyway. Ludo was chatting amiably on, much more self-assured now, when Lenox heard rapid footsteps behind them.

He turned to see and with one shocking glance realized it was a masked man, bearing down on them.

“Ludo!” cried Lenox.

“Wha-oh!”

The man in the mask had barreled into them, and in the confusion of the next moment Lenox saw a glint of silver. A knife. He lunged at the man in the mask-a black cloth wrap, he noticed, though it was now very dark-but was too late.

The knife plunged into Ludo-Lenox couldn’t see where-and the masked man, silent all the time, withdrew it and sprinted down the alley, toward the busy thoroughfare at the end of it. Lenox caught sight of something green, trousers or a shirt perhaps, in the quick glare of streetlight that bathed the man before he turned right.

“There’s blood!” said Ludo, raising his hands.

“Where is it, Ludo?”

“Get my wife!”

“I’m going to get help. Where-”

“She’s in Cambridge with Paul-get her! Get the police!”

“Let me look at the wound first.”

This he did. There was blood everywhere and a deep cut, he could see. Soon he ran down the alley, his mind fluttering with the implications of a second attack in the exact spot where Frederick Clarke had been murdered.