A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [74]
Lenox watched him for the rest of the night, occasionally returning to him to say another courteous word or two, and by the end of the evening the old man’s demeanor had softened. Still, he smiled only once: when Toto came in, accepting congratulations from everyone and chattering as rapidly as an auctioneer. For all his seriousness Disraeli was known as a man who loved a pretty young lady.
Many hours later, when the last guests had gone and the tables in the sitting room were empty, with only a low pond of punch left at the bottom of the bowl, Lenox, Edmund, and Dallington were sitting in Lenox’s library, smoking cigars.
Edmund and Lenox talked of the chancellor first, and the very great honor of his visit, and then all three spoke appreciatively of Lady Jane’s turn at the piano.
“I wonder what Ludo Starling is doing at the moment,” said Dallington at a lapse in their talk. “I’d pay a shilling or two to read his mind, the devilish sod.”
“Why?” asked Edmund. “It was the son, wasn’t it?” Seeing his brother’s smile, he said, “Am I behind the times? I always am in these things.”
“Yes—or a bit, anyway. We think that the footman, Freddie Clarke, may have been Ludo Starling’s natural child.”
Edmund blew out a low whistle, shocked. “Who told you?”
“Nobody,” said Charles and recapitulated the series of small facts that had led him to the idea.
Dallington chimed in when he was done. “Something else. Do you remember how he hovered around the hallway when we looked at Clarke’s room? Guilty, I thought at the time—as if he couldn’t come in, for whatever reason.”
“Then, too, his reaction to the ring was singularly strange,” said Lenox.
“How?” asked Edmund.
“He didn’t recognize it at first. If he had, I would have believed more readily that Freddie Clarke stole it, although the act of his engraving his own initials on it would still have been a mystery to me. I think perhaps Ludo gave it to Clarke’s mother many years ago.”
“Just the sort of foolish gesture Ludo Starling would make to a maid,” added Edmund.
“It may even have been that they were in love. At any rate, I don’t think he had seen it for some time.”
“Freddie Clarke was proud of it,” said Dallington thoughtfully. “It was polished, well engraved, kept in a safe spot.”
“The one memento he had of his father,” said Edmund.
They talked it over for a while longer, but soon enough their cigars had burned down to stubs, and both Edmund and Dallington left, taking a taxi together away from Hampden Lane. After he had seen them off, Lenox went upstairs to have the real postmortem for the party, with Jane.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next morning was a break from it all, politics and murders and secret sons. It was George McConnell’s christening.
A few days before, the cards had been sent out: small white ones with the child’s full name engraved in the center in gray, and in the lower left-hand corner, per custom, the birth date. On the reverse was the name and address of a church—St. Martin’s—and a date and time.
“A bit early, isn’t it?” asked Lenox when Lady Jane told him about the note. “As I recall the christening is usually a month or so after the birth. It’s scarcely been a week.”
“She wants visitors,” was all Lady Jane said in reply, with a slight, affectionate eye roll. Except for the very closest friends and family, a new mother couldn’t receive social calls until after her baby’s christening. “You know Toto has never thought much about convention, either.”
“Have you decided what you think we should do for the child? As godparents? We’ll have to give her something now if it’s already the christening.”
“She’ll have enough money—I don’t think we need to make an investment on her behalf.” This was a common enough present. “I would like to give her something special, though, besides the silver porringer I already gave Toto.”
“What sort of thing would you