A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [25]
There was good news, however. The case might be perplexing, and domestic bliss elusive, but professional happiness was close at hand.
In his short time as Lenox’s political secretary, Graham had already proved a marvel. It had only been a few days, but he had filled each of them with furious activity, rarely sleeping longer than a few hours, the commitment he had always shown as a servant transferred to this new work. Aside from organizing the new office to within an inch of its life, he had gone over Lenox’s appointment book, deciphered which meetings were most important, and canceled the rest, something that would save the grateful Lenox several hours a day.
What was most impressive, though, was his quickly growing acquaintance. It took men years to know the various faces of Parliament, but Graham was a quick pupil. This was an unspoken but important fact of life in the House of Commons, and Lenox hadn’t known anything about it. Now, however, they walked the halls and various men Lenox had never laid eyes on nodded at them both. “The Marquess of Aldington’s secretary,” Graham would say, or “Hector Prime’s chief counselor.” Graham’s principal gift in detective work had always been infiltration—making friends in a pub or a kitchen—and he put that gift to use here now in these more exalted corridors.
The apotheosis of this talent in its political form came that morning. Graham was waiting at the Members’ Entrance, as he did every day now, when Lenox arrived.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “In ten minutes you must sit down with the Board of Agriculture. After that—”
Here Graham broke off and nodded his head at an enormously tall, thin young man with a giant forehead. “How do you do?” he said.
“Excellently, Mr. Graham, I thank you.”
After the man had walked on, Lenox said in a low voice, “My God, that was Percy Field.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How on earth do you know him?”
Percy Field was the Prime Minister’s own assistant, a famously accomplished and imperious lad from Magdalene College, prodigiously intelligent, whom the PM himself had declared more important to Great Britain’s welfare than all but ten or twenty people. Field had little patience for most Members, let alone their secretaries.
“He snubbed me, until I took the liberty of inviting him to one of your Tuesdays, sir. I spoke to Lady Lenox in advance of the offer, and she readily consented. Mr. Field’s attitude was cold when I first approached him, but he quickly warmed.”
This was disingenuous; they were Lady Jane’s Tuesdays, as they had been for fifteen years, a gathering of London’s elite—say twenty or so people—in her drawing room. Even for Field an invitation would be a great coup.
“Well done, Graham. Extremely well done.”
They went inside, up to the cramped office, and began the day’s work. For the rest of the morning Lenox dutifully attended his meetings and read his blue books. The entire time, though, his mind was on the murder. As such it wasn’t quite a surprise when he heard himself saying to Graham, “Send my regrets to the one o’clock meeting, please. I’m going round to fetch Dallington. I have to go to Frederick Clarke’s funeral.”
Chapter Twelve
What was the proper form for a servant’s funeral? In general one attended, but then in general the deceased was old and respectable. What if there was the strong prospect of a title, which only scandal could preclude?
The moment Lenox laid eyes on Ludo Starling it was clear the man had been mulling over these questions all morning. In the event Ludo and his wife were present, but Tiberius and the Starling boys weren’t. Jack Collingwood, Jenny Rogers, and Betsy Mints sat in the second row. Alone in the first row was a large, thin woman, perhaps fifty years old but still well-looking, horsey and countryish. She wore a straw mourning bonnet, black, with a deep black crepe ribbon, a soft black gown, and a dark veil. When she turned back Lenox saw that she was rather plain-faced, but somehow still