Lenox awoke the next morning bleary-eyed. It wasn’t so much that he had had three or four drinks but that they were spread over so many hours. In his younger days he would have woken the next morning and taken his scull onto the river to refresh himself, but it was his fortieth year now, and it took him longer to feel quite normal again.
Still, he dragged himself downstairs early and over a strong pot of tea devoured five blue books, none of them riveting but all, according to Graham’s carelessly penned notes, quite important. The sole moment of amusement that any of them afforded him was when a piece of paper dropped out of a blue book on education and he discovered that it was a self-portrait by Frabbs-that is, a self-portrait of how Frabbs wished he might look, which was nineteen years old, much more muscular, and with a rather dashing mustache. It was signed Gordon Frabbs in a deep, swooping hand.
“Graham!” he called out when he had finished his reading. It was nearly ten o’clock.
“Yes, sir?” said the political secretary when he appeared a moment later.
“I’m going to attend to the Starling case this morning-no, there’s no use looking stern, I tell you-but I want to be at the House promptly. Is it important to be there at the beginning?”
“I rather think so, sir. There will be an address on India by Mr. Gladstone, much anticipated, and he could use the benefit of your support on the benches.”
“Shouting ‘Hear, hear,’ and that sort of thing?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lenox sighed. “I only feel half part of the Parliament, Graham. I should have known about Gladstone’s speech. You told me, if I recall-but my mind has been elsewhere.”
“If I may speak freely, sir, I think it has.”
A look of anger quickly muted into resignation passed over Lenox’s face. “It’s not what I expected, I suppose. Not as easy, or revolutionary, as what I expected.”
“No, sir.”
“Well,” he said and stood up. “Thank you.”
Graham bowed. “Sir.”
When he was alone again Lenox’s mind traversed once more the details of the public water system, alighting on both its strengths and flaws. He was pacing his study when there was a ring on the doorbell. Dallington.
They rode together in a cab to Hammersmith, with the foul-mouthed driver cursing everyone who stood in their way. For much of the time they didn’t speak; Lenox had a blue book and Dallington a copy of Punch, and they read in the two corners of the carriage.
When they were close to Hammersmith Dallington looked at him. “How would you like to speak to her? Shall we come right out and ask who Clarke’s father was?”
Lenox was silent for a moment. “You mustn’t always look to me, if you intend to learn anything for yourself,” he said. “Perhaps I’ve been too domineering an instructor. Would you like to speak to her yourself?”
The younger man looked surprised. “If you like,” he said. “I’ve no wish to jeopardize our chance of hearing the truth.”
“You’ve sat with me often enough as I spoke to people, and stuck in your oar once or twice. Be gentle, I think-she seems quite fragile-and more importantly, when she looks like she’s wanting to speak, for heaven’s sake don’t say anything.”
“Well-excellent, then.”
They waited for her in a cluster of armchairs in a private corner. Lenox ordered tea and sandwiches. When she arrived to meet them she looked terrible, wracked by grief. She declined food and let a cup of tea sit untouched on the table before them all.
“I fear I cannot help any of you,” she said. “Not Mr. Fowler, nor you, Mr. Lenox. What am I meant to believe? That Mr. Collingwood killed my son?”
“What do you think?” asked Dallington.
She turned her eyes on him. “If I had an opinion I would be a great deal less unhappy, young man,” she said. “And don’t think I don’t remember you, at my pub-breaking glasses-carousing-inviting loose women into the bar. Sent down from Trinity College, weren’t you? Lord John Dallington! Out of respect for Mr. Lenox-a man in Parliament, no less-I’ve held my tongue, but I don’t want you asking me what my opinion might be. I want help!”
He blushed furiously and stammered out something less than cogent. It was true that Cambridge had expelled him, not so long ago. “Younger days-terribly sorry-new leaf-broken glasses a terrible expense-please allow me-” and so forth.
“Your scout, Mr. Baring, paid for the broken glasses. Your tab as well. He took it from the pocket money your father sent him instead of you. You ought to be ashamed for it, too.”
“I am,” said Dallington in a low voice.
Lenox, who had at first been inclined to smile when Mrs. Clarke began her rebuke, saw how gravely affected the young lord was and stepped in. “I’m sorry we can’t help you,” he said. “I wish we could.”
“Yes-well.” Momentarily her fragility was covered up by something hard and angry.
“We had a question, actually. That might help.”
“About Frederick?”
“After a fashion.”
“What is it, Mr. Lenox?”
It was Dallington who spoke. “Who is his father?”
“Frederick Clarke Sr. Of course.”
With a gentle frown, he said, “Is that-is it quite true? Might his real father be Ludovic Starling?”
She first looked taken aback, then crumpled into tears. It was a moment before any of them spoke again, and as Lenox had advised, Dallington stayed quiet. It was she who broke the silence.
“Yes…but I can’t believe he told you.”
“He d-”
Lenox interrupted Dallington. “How did it happen?” he asked.
Crying again, she said, “Oh, when I was a pretty little fool in Cambridge. He was a student at Downing, where I was a maid.”
“There was no uncle, was there?” asked Lenox. “The money for the pub?”
“No. It was his money. Ludovic’s.”
Lenox remembered her calling him Ludovic the last time they spoke, a little too intimately. “Why did you go to work for him?”
“We were still-I thought we were still in love. I said he had to let me work there, or I would tell his new wife.”
“It must have been a miserable time,” said Lenox.
“Miserable?” She let out a sob. “How can you say that when Freddie came out of it all? Dear, wonderful Freddie?”
“And when you were-with child?”
“I was six months pregnant when I moved to London, and only stayed for about two months. It was a terrible ordeal to watch him build a new life without me, but I blackmailed him into letting me stay. I was always very cordial to Elizabeth, and she gave Freddie a job straight away when I asked. In the end Ludovic gave me the money I bought the pub with and sent me to the seaside, where a nurse looked after me. After I had the child I thought perhaps he would wish to speak to me, but he never did, and in my pride-in my foolishness-I decided I hated him. Though I love him still, God curse me for it!”
There was a long break in the conversation, as she cried and cried. The wound was still fresh, it was obvious, or had perhaps been reopened by her son’s death.
“There was a ring,” Dallington ventured at last. “A signet ring, with Ludo’s initials in it.”
Haltingly, she said, “He gave it to me-he-” She began to sob again.
“Then you gave it to Frederick?”
“Yes. When he was fourteen I sat him down at our kitchen table and told him the truth. From then on there was nothing in his head but the Starling family. Just like his mother-a pair of fools.”
“No.”
“A pair of fools.”
“So is that why Frederick went to work for Ludo’s family?” asked Lenox.
“Yes. I begged him not to, but he wanted to be close to his father.”
“Did his father acknowledge him?”
“Yes. Freddie told me they were getting more and more friendly. Freddie said he would end up a gentleman one day.”
“No wonder Ludo has seemed so agitated,” said Lenox.
Dallington merely raised his eyebrows; apparently he still considered Ludo the primary suspect. Lenox wasn’t quite as sure.
Something else, though, made sense: the intellectual reading, the philosophy and great literature; the tailored suits and shoes; the aristocratic boxing club, where he spent money freely; and the ring, most of all having his own initials engraved on the Starling ring. Frederick Clarke was setting himself up, in his own mind, as a gentleman. Raised in a pub, but apparently of some natural gifts, he had decided to emulate his father. Freddie said he would end up a gentleman one day.
It reached a tender spot in Lenox’s heart, this idea of Freddie Clarke, the footman, striving to be so much more than himself-striving to be like a father who would never fully own him, indeed who would likely never fully love him.
“There was something else, too.”
“What?”
“Something even worse, for poor Ludo-for poor Freddie,” she said, sniffling into her handkerchief.
“Poor Ludo?” said Dallington with disdain.
“What is it?” asked Lenox.
“We-” She couldn’t go on, and for a tantalizing moment it seemed as if she were going to silence herself.
Then suddenly Lenox saw what it must be. “You and Ludovic Starling were married, weren’t you?”
She nodded and burst into further tears. “Yes. That’s it. That was when he gave me the ring! As a wedding ring. I thought his family would kill him when they heard, and they began to put an end to it quickly enough. Pretty soon after that they forced him to marry Elizabeth, though I know for a fact he didn’t love her, and in our little chapel in Cambridge!” A wracking sob went through her body, as if she could only now see just how much she had lost. “An arranged marriage.”
Lenox put a hand on her arm. “It will be all right,” he said.
“Why is that worse? What am I missing?” said Dallington.
“When is Frederick’s birthday?” asked Lenox of Mrs. Clarke by way of response to the question.
She looked at him, and he saw the truth.