A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [44]
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.
Chapter Twenty-One
“It could be—and I don’t say it is, mind—it could be a madman. Someone who lives or works quite near here.”
This was Inspector Fowler speaking. It was an hour later. Ludo, pale but well, sat in his own drawing room, a roll of bandage around the thick part of the thigh where he had been stabbed. He had insisted Lenox stay when Grayson Fowler arrived. There was also a young constable in the room, the one Lenox had fetched. Ludo had rejected his initial instinct and said he felt well enough to let his wife and son stay in Cambridge overnight. He told Lenox this privately, perhaps ashamed of his neediness in the alley. Lenox could hardly blame him, however; his own thoughts had flown to Jane when the masked man was barreling toward them.
“I very much doubt it,” he said in reply to Fowler’s proposition.
The inspector gave him a poisonous look. It was already a matter of some discomfort to Lenox that Fowler had been so rude at Scotland Yard, and apparently his anger hadn’t abated. “Oh?”
“Ten houses’ worth of people use that alley, but the two men who have been attacked both live here. It could be a coincidence, I suppose.”
Fowler sighed and took his note pad out again. “Tell me one more time what you saw, both of you.”
Ludo said, “Almost nothing. A black mask made of wool or perhaps some other kind of cloth. It was a man, I feel sure of that.”
“Do you recall any particular odor?” asked Lenox, earning another dirty look from Fowler, though it was the right question. “I don’t, but you were closer to him.”
“None. He was about my height, a few inches under six foot. Strong.”
“Mr. Lenox?”
He furrowed his brow. “All I can remember in addition to that is the color green, either his trousers or his shirt. I’m trying to remember—I think he must have worn boots, because his footfall was very heavy, and they didn’t make that click of dress shoes. More of a thud.”
“I’m skeptical of that sort of analysis, taken in the heat of the moment, but I thank you. Mr. Starling, I’ll stop by again in the morning, and we’ll post our man in the alleyway again. We took him from his place too early. Constable, you may resume your beat.”
“Nobody could have known this would happen,” said Ludo bravely.
“I must be going, too,” said Lenox.
“Oh—but really?”
“Unless you’re unwell?”
“Oh no, quite well, thank you.”
“Is Alfred in this evening?”
“He should be, yes.” Ludo tried a weak smile. Even apart from the exonerating circumstances of the attack an hour before, Lenox when he saw this smile had trouble believing that the man on the sofa, a ginger hand on his leg, was any kind of murderer. “We never did speak.”
“I only had some elementary questions, nothing you need to be worried with just now. Do you feel safe?”
“Of course—Collingwood is here, and two or three others. I shall be quite safe if I stick to the house and the larger streets. It will be a relief to have a constable stationed in the alley again.”
“Indeed. Good-bye, then. I’ll be by to check on your health tomorrow, if I may.”
“Thank you,” said Ludo, and looked genuinely grateful.
On the walk home, Lenox wondered if he himself felt as secure.