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.”
“Oh?”
Ludo’s face flushed, and his tone became confidential. “In truth I wouldn’t mind it quietly handled, and I know I can count on your discretion. Quite between you and me, there has been some talk of a title.”
“A title for you?” asked Lenox, surprised. A title usually capped a career. Ludo was still young, or at least middle-aged.
“I’ve been a guest at the palace quite often recently, and play whist with one of the royals almost every night. I won’t say his name. But apparently my service in Parliament has been observed and may be commended.”
“I congratulate you.”
“It would please me immensely, I don’t mind saying. It always rather rankled in our family that the old King didn’t hand us something in that line. God bless him,” he added as an afterthought.
This was puzzlingly intimate, thought Lenox, and then asked, “Why must it be quiet? Surely there’s no implication that you killed the boy?”
“I? Never!” Ludo laughed. “Besides having no reason on earth to do it, I was sat firmly at the card table for ten hours last night, with Frank Derbyshire and a whole host of others.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean-”
“It’s only that the slightest breath of scandal or infelicity can shake this sort of thing. It’s all so fragile, you know.”
“The title?”
“Yes, exactly. Also, as I say, Eliza is quite upset-most upset-and asked me to come.”
Lenox was puzzled by Ludo’s behavior. Did he care about this lad, Frederick Clarke? Why not let the Yard handle it? And why was he bursting with all this information about his prospects for an elevation to the House of Lords? It seemed in awfully poor taste. Then it occurred to Lenox that perhaps Ludo couldn’t share any of this potential good fortune with his friends, or even his family, lest it fall through and make him look like a liar or a fool. It might be that he needed an audience, someone who would listen with appropriate gravity to the news but who would keep it to himself. Yes, Lenox decided, it was because the man had run over the tantalizing facts so often in his mind and needed to blurt them out to stay sane. Had been bursting with the news. Strange indeed, though, to deliver it as he simultaneously delivered news of a murder.
He was terribly restless. “Here, sit,” said Lenox. At last Ludo settled into the armchair Graham had only recently occupied, opposite Lenox and in front of the cold hearth.
“Thanks, thanks,” he said. “Now-may I bring you back with me? My carriage is outside.”
“I’m honored that you came to me, but it’s the worst possible moment for me to take on any new responsibilities.”
“You mean you can’t come look?”
“I wish I could, but I cannot. The leaders of our party have made allowances because of my marriage, but as you well know the House reconvenes in a little more than a week’s time, and there are meetings for me to attend hour after hour before then.”
“If it’s about money…?”
Shocked, Lenox drew himself up in his chair and said, “No, it isn’t.”
Ludo saw straightaway that he had made a blunder. “I’m so terribly sorry. Of course it isn’t about money. Forgive me.”
“As I say, my responsibilities at the moment scarcely permit me any return to my old field. You of all people can understand how daunting it is to be a new Member.”
“Yes, of course.”
“The Yard is competent in these matters, I promise.”
Ludo, still agitated, said, “Are you sure you couldn’t come and have a quick look?”
In fact Lenox was sorely tempted to do it. He missed his old work and, excited though he was about his new career, contemplated with mute dread the idea of giving detection up forever. Even while he had been on the Continent, absorbed by Jane and the local life, his mind had often turned back to old cases. Still, he said, “No, I’m afraid-”
“Oh, please, Lenox-if only for my wife. She has no peace of mind at all just now.”
“But-”
“We must look out for each other, Members of the Commons. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t distressed.”
Lenox relented. “Just a look. Then perhaps I’ll pass it on to my student, John Dallington, and he can delve into the matter if he chooses. Come along, I must hurry. That meeting about the colonies is in two hours.”