A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [50]
“Who’s that?”
“Ludo—”
“No, this gentleman.”
“Ah. This is my friend Charles Lenox. Lenox, Frank Derbyshire.”
“Lenox the detective? That’s right, you are, too, Dalls,” said Derbyshire, giving them a nasty grin. “Playing about at bobby?”
Something happened then that shocked Lenox: For a single moment Dallington’s face showed a mix of shame and hurt that was piercing. He covered it with a sardonic laugh. Suddenly Lenox understood the cost to his pupil of this occupation: dismissed for so long because he didn’t work, because he drank and played, and now dismissed because he did work.
Dallington went on, “Did you play cards with Starling recently?”
“Yes, strangely enough. He usually plays with an older set, doesn’t like the university crowd down here on the second floor. But he wanted a game and got one, by God. I took him for eight pounds and a halfpenny.”
The impeccable memory of the gambler, thought Lenox. “How long did you play for?” he asked. “Ten hours, was it?”
Derbyshire snorted, and then something from the snort caught in his throat and he coughed horribly on his cigar smoke, hacking for what seemed like an entire minute. At last, eyes watery, he gasped out, “Never!”
“How long, then?”
He was still hoarse. “Couldn’t have been more than four hours.”
“What day?”
“Would have been about a week ago. It was eight days, in fact, I remember.”
The day of the murder.
“What happened?”
Derbyshire looked at Lenox strangely. “What happened? Nothing unusual. I took the eight pounds and bought as much wine as I could carry to take over to the old Rugbeian match. We drank ’em all. I still have the halfpenny.” He grinned.
“You’re sure about the day?”
“Yes!”
“What time of day was it? This is important. Late? Afternoon?”
“Early evening.”
“You’re sure?”
“You can stop asking me that. I’m certain.”
They let Derbyshire go, amid a variety of hacks, coughs, and eructations, back into his card room. As he turned he invited Dallington to play that night and shrugged at his decline.
“Inconclusive,” said the younger man to Lenox, hands in pockets, a disappointed look on his face. “He was probably there.”
“You’re sharper than that, surely. Think—we’ve just caught Ludo in his first lie, and if he would lie about six hours, wouldn’t he lie about matters of greater moment?”
“Anyway, why wouldn’t he have signed the book if he simply wanted an alibi? It might have been an exaggeration.”
“He was too specific for that, as I remember it. This is incriminating, somehow or other.”
“So Collingwood is innocent.”
“I don’t stipulate that point,” said Lenox. “There have been half a dozen cases during my years in London when a man who had been arrested seemed innocent, another suspect having emerged, only for the first man arrested to be proven guilty. In one instance, Smethurst back in ’52, the second man was covering up for an entirely different crime. Embezzlement.”
They were out on the street now, the light low. They passed a fruit and vegetable cart, and Dallington swiped an apple from it and flicked a coin at the cart’s owner, who caught it and touched his cap in one quick motion. Dallington crunched into his fruit as they walked down toward Green Park.
“Tell me, what shall we do next? Or what shall I do next, as you must be in Parliament tomorrow?”
“I think we must go see Collingwood himself, and I would like to go to the boxing club. It still bothers me that Clarke had money slipped to him under the servants’ door. I reckon Collingwood wouldn’t have tolerated secret doings among the servants, strange business that touched the house. And then Clarke’s peculiar room…” Lenox shook his head. “I feel quite sure we’re missing something.”
“Must you go back to work?”
“No. I don’t have any particular role in the state opening of the House, beyond observation.” He looked at his watch. “It’s only six o’clock. We should be able to find our way to Collingwood if we get there before eight. We’ll pass by the Starlinghouse along the way, to wish Ludo a swift recovery.”
As a shortcut