A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [59]
The suit. Show up in a well-cut suit at Claridge’s bar, with the right accent, and you could generally fall in with the proper crowd. Had Clarke been a talented mimic? What had been the aim of all this?
“You can’t remember anything else?” asked Dallington.
“No,” said North. Then he turned and called loudly to the rest of the people in the room, “These men are here for whoever killed Freddie!”
There was a low chuckle at this. “It was me!” called out a joking voice.
Then, to the perfect astonishment of everyone there, a short man with light hair separated from the group and sprinted for the door as fast as he could. By the time Lenox and Dallington had reached the door he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Who was that?” shouted Dallington at the crowd of people who all stood together now, mute and stunned. Lenox, who had run down the street to see which way the man had turned—a futile attempt—returned.
There was a long silence.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” said Willard North at last. “Have any of you lads?”
There were murmurs in the negative and much headshaking. Lenox couldn’t tell if they were protecting one of their own or if their mystification was genuine.
But then another voice chimed in.
“I know him. Fella who sometimes comes to see me fight.” It was the losing boxer, the large one without much science. He spoke in the accent of the West Indies, but with a disconcerting cockney tinge mixed into it. “Butcher. I know because he bring me a steak if my eye is swelled up.”
Dallington and Lenox looked at each other: a butcher. The piece of evidence incriminating Collingwood had been a butcher’s apron.
“Where is his shop? Where does he live?”
The big man shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Did you catch his name?”
“He told me, but I can’t remember it.” He looked exhausted and took a gulp of water. “S’all I know.”
“Thank you.”
Out on the pavement Lenox and Dallington both started to speak at once. “You first,” said the older man.
“I was only going to say—this man, this butcher, may have come with Clarke.”
“It could be,” said Lenox thoughtfully, “but what about his disguise? Would Frederick Clarke the ‘gentleman’s son’ want to introduce a butcher as his particular friend?”
“You’re right.”
“Did you get a good look at the man?”
“I didn’t, unfortunately.”
“Nor did I,” said Lenox. “Still, I think I could choose him from a group of three if I had to. The next step is to go to all the butchers’ shops around the alley. I’ll do that.”
“What if he’s hiding?”
“We’ll see.”
“And what shall I do?”
“It’s time we split up, I think. I have two tasks in mind for you: First, you can see whether you do any better with Fowler than I have. He may have imagined some slight against him from me, or some condescension. Otherwise I can’t explain his behavior.”
“Second?”
“We haven’t spoken to Mrs. Clarke since Collingwood was arrested.”
Dallington whistled sharply between two fingers. A cab started to pull up to them, its horse an old plodder. “Anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fowler—Mrs. Clarke—excellent.” He swung up a leg into the taxi and soon was on his way.
Lenox soon was on his way, too, back to Curzon Street. In truth he had always disliked butcher shops; it might perhaps have been because his family had never on either side been great hunters, or because Lenox House, while it had a working farm on its land, was set at a distance from its own barns. He went into the first butcher’s that he saw near Ludo’s house, and there were the familiar sights—two deer, their eyes glassed, skinned and slung up on the wall. A jar of pigs’ hooves, being slowly cured on the countertop. The tidiness of the red-checked curtains and the large roll of wax paper in counterpoint to the bloody hunks of cow and pig everywhere. He could eat what came from these carcasses readily enough, but he didn’t care to look at them.
“Does another gentleman work here?” Lenox asked the man behind the counter, who looked about 150 years old and could no more have attacked Ludo Starling