After Jenny Rogers had blushed, offered a confused curtsy, and retreated down the hallway, Lenox and Dallington turned into the room to begin a proper examination. Ludo stayed in the hall, trying to peer over their shoulders and shifting nervously from foot to foot.
“He was reading rather heavy stuff,” said Dallington, crouching down to look at the names on the spines of the books upon the side table.
“What?” said Lenox.
“There’s something called The Philosophy of Right by a chap named Hegel, a pamphlet on universal suffrage, and a little quarto of George Crabbe’s. He must have been the best-educated footman in London.”
“Those are all from my library,” said Ludo. “We encourage the staff to pluck what they will from it, but I’m afraid most of them read books from Mudie’s-adventure stories and romances. Three-volume novels. You know the sort of trash.”
“I rather like the triple-deckers myself,” said Dallington. “They make the time go.”
“To each his own,” answered Ludo frostily. His vices were not intellectual ones, at any rate.
“What sort of education did he have?” asked Lenox curiously. He stood up from his examination under the bed. “It must have been rather atypical. One of my friend Thomas McConnell’s footmen is quite illiterate.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. As I told you before, I didn’t pay the lad much attention.”
“I don’t blame you if he was always on about Hegel,” murmured Dallington, then laughed at his own joke.
There was really very little to see in the room. Lenox examined the entire bed and its frame for anything hidden-a note, a diary-but found nothing. The side table was similarly unrevealing. A small shelf in the corner had an assortment of meaningless trifles: a jar of ink, a picture postcard of Stratford with nothing on its reverse, a ball of black India rubber. The only thing that intrigued Lenox was a scrap of paper that read, When’s your birthday? C. said you would turn 20 soon. Did you have the day off last year?
“Does this note mean anything to you?” asked Lenox.
“I was curious about it myself,” said Ludo. “I asked Collingwood, and he said Elizabeth sent it, through him-we let the staff have their birthdays off, but she realized she didn’t know Clarke’s. She knew all the others.”
“Wouldn’t Collingwood have found that out? I imagine days off are within his purview.”
Ludo shrugged. “You know how solicitous my wife can be. She felt badly to think that we hadn’t given him his birthday off.”
“I see.”
The closet was the last place in the room that hadn’t been searched; in fact both Dallington and Lenox had run their eyes over everything else, shaken out the books, felt for lumps in the pillows. Lenox opened the closet, vaguely hoping to see something revelatory-something covered in blood, say-but he was disappointed. There were two tidy suits of livery, both black, such as a footman might wear, and four shirts.
“We provide them, of course,” said Ludo.
There was also a very fine gray suit, his one personal suit, that looked expensively tailored. On a shelf behind these was a stack of shirts. Lenox shook out and refolded each, then did the same with two pairs of trousers, checking the pockets, three pairs of socks, and a nightshirt.
“Defeated,” said Dallington.
“Probably,” replied Lenox.
He knelt down and looked at the shiny black shoes on the floor of the closet. He groped inside the left and found nothing, and then he groped inside the right and found-something.
He pulled it out and saw that he was holding a gentleman’s signet ring, made of heavy greenish-yellow gold. On its oval face was an intricately worked griffin with a small ruby as its eye.
“Good Lord,” said Dallington. “It looks like an heirloom.”
“I should think so. It’s shined smooth from use on the outside.”
“What is it?” asked Ludo, still in the hallway.
“You can come in,” said Lenox.
“I’d rather not.”
The detective flipped the ring. On the reverse of the griffin were two initials: LS. “I think perhaps you’d better,” he called out to Ludo.
“What is it?”
Lenox went to the hallway, holding the ring up between his thumb and middle finger. “Does it look familiar?”
For a long time Ludo peered at the ring uncomprehendingly. “What is it?”
“I believe it’s your ring. Unless there’s another LS in the house.”
Realization dawned on Ludo’s face. “The thieving bastard! That’s an old Starling family ring. I had it engraved when I was at university.”
“You didn’t give it to him?”
“Give it to him! Never in a century of Sundays!”
“Then I’m afraid he may have stolen it. I’m surprised, however. Would his duties as a footman have taken him near a jewelry case?”
“Anything’s possible.”
Lenox frowned. “Perhaps somebody else took it and put it here.”
“It even could have happened after Clarke’s death,” said Dallington.
“Yes.” Lenox examined the ring, holding it an inch from his eye. “Ah-or perhaps not,” he said.
“Why not?” asked Ludo, still in the hall.
“There’s another engraving, on the bottom inside of the ring, opposite your LS. FC. ”
“Frederick Clarke,” said Dallington.
Lenox nodded.
“The ruddy nerve,” said Ludo.
“Did you wear it often?”
“That? No. That doesn’t mean I intended it as a present for a footman.”
Lenox peered around the room, the ring now in his clenched fist. He gave the bed a tentative prod and thought over what he had seen. From the kitchen a sound of heavy washing filled the room’s new silence.
“It’s strange,” he said. “A strange room.”
“Why?” asked Dallington. “Strikes me as in the normal run of things for a footman.”
“Does it really? It’s extremely spartan, for one thing. I doubt the other servants’ rooms are as unadorned as this one. Could he possibly have been here four years and left so little a mark?”
“Perhaps he moved between rooms?”
“I doubt it. Ludo?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I think he’s one of those people who lives a life of the mind. Did he often take books of this sort from your library?”
“Yes, quite regularly according to Collingwood.”
“Yet contrast that with this ring.” Lenox held it up again. “Why take such a personal bauble for himself? From everything this room has to show, he cared nothing at all for physical comfort or ornament, but this is what he chose to steal?”
“Worth a damn lot of money,” said Ludo.
Lenox shook his head. “No. It’s not about the money. He engraved his initials on it. That shows he valued it.”
Dallington said, “Of course.”
“Something odd was happening in this young man’s life. Intelligence combined with menial labor…I wonder, is it possible he had found his way into crime?”
“Of course he had,” said Ludo. “My ring.”
“Not that, no. Think: a well-tailored suit, a signet ring…it looks to me as if he might have been playing the young aristocrat. Some scam or other, couldn’t it be?”
“Perhaps that’s why he reads,” added Dallington excitedly. “To impress people-to seem like a varsity man!”
“I say, could I have that ring back?” said Ludo.
“Of course, here it is.”
After handing Starling the ring, Lenox stood in the doorway of the room for a long time, thinking. Nobody spoke. The rhythmic sound of washing-what must have been the sound of Frederick Clarke’s life-wore on like the blank, unvarying noise of an ocean.
“Something deep is happening here,” said Lenox. “Deeper than I realized at first.”