A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [57]
“Now, how was it?” asked Lady Jane when at last they had settled on the sofa, her hands clasping his.
They spent an hour in close conversation, absorbed in each other as they had been that morning but so rarely in the past week. He fell ravenously upon a shoulder of lamb and fresh peas, having been unconscious before it appeared on a silver salver how hungry he had been. He felt cared for again.
“It’s almost cool enough to have a fire tonight,” Lady Jane said. “I’d like to stay in and be lumps here on the couch, and read. What do you say to that?”
“I say yes, of course. I wish it could be Cranford, but it must be blue books, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll call the footman to light it.”
As she left he wandered into the dim dining room, restless. His eyes alighted on a watercolor of the London skyline. It had replaced that Paris painting, which was in a guest room now—it had made him feel uneasy, despite how he had liked it in France. In the skyline was St. Paul’s, and Westminster Abbey, and there, just above a middling of roofs, the Palace of Westminster: Parliament.
He had been pulled in so many directions during the fortnight since his honeymoon ended. There were Toto and Thomas McConnell, there was Jane’s distance, there was the case, there was first his disenchantment with Parliament and then the galvanizing realization of the public danger cholera presented, and beyond all that the hundred meetings to attend and duties to discharge. It had been impossibly fraught. Now his life clarified before him. Parliament was where he belonged. Everything would be all right with Jane, and he would do his work there. Seeing the Queen, hearing her order them to execute the business of the people, standing among lords, bishops, cabinet ministers, in the mix of power and possibility…here he was. It was time to work.
This new resolve lasted until the next morning. The pledge lingered with him—he meant it—but when Dallington came to see if he wanted to visit Freddie Clarke’s boxing club, he couldn’t decline the offer.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In the trip to Kensington, where the boxing club was situated along an old work road, Lenox described his day. To his initial disappointment and subsequent amusement Dallington could barely keep his eyes open.
The building itself was a large converted store house; as they entered, the instant tang of sweat and blood filled their nostrils, despite the draft of air among the high rafters.
“Hardly the back room of a tavern, is it?” murmured Lenox. “I had always heard these contests took place there.”
“Those colored lads in the far ring are giving each other a walloping, aren’t they?”
“It seems there’s betting on it.”
There were four rings spread around the room, and perhaps two dozen people in and around them. Fifteen of these were crowded around the match Dallington had mentioned; two were in a different ring, gently sparring with each other as they received technical advice. Close to the door several men were exercising on mats. An old, white-haired man, who was supervising, stopped when he spotted the detectives. He came over to them.
“Help you?”
“How do you do? My name is Charles Lenox, and this is John Dallington. We hoped to speak to somebody about Frederick Clarke.”
“Freddie? Decent fighter. Shame what they did him.”
“You knew him, then?”
“I’m the trainer. I know all the young gentlemen. The one you want to talk to is there, the one in the blue suit.” He pointed out a tall, slightly paunched fellow with black hair who was watching the match. “He’s the secretary of the club.”
“Could you get him?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it until the fight is over. He and Mr. Sharp-Fletcher have a pound on the bout.” He turned to watch. “The bigger lad, Castle, ain’t got much science—but what a brute! The smaller one doesn’t have a chance. Poor Mr. Sharp-Fletcher is going to lose his money, what can scarcely afford to.”
“I know them both,” muttered Dallington, after the trainer had gone.
“The bettors?”
“Yes, they’re wellborn lads. Sharp-Fletcher was sent down from Brasenose.