A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [87]
“You’re a liar! Leave them alone!”
But the truth was plain on Ludo’s face; Lenox had hit home.
The detective smiled faintly. “The real shame in it all is that Freddie Clarke would have made an admirable gentleman. He read philosophy, he boxed. He was quite plainly intelligent. Well liked.”
“It’s nothing to me what he was—he was a footman.”
“And Collingwood—for shame, Ludo. An innocent man. Who really did this deed?”
Ludo looked for the first time as if he were on the verge of confessing. The people going by on the pavement jostled him closer to Lenox, and a confidential look appeared on his face.
Just as he was about to speak, however, something entirely unexpected happened.
The position of the three men on the pavement was such that Dallington and Ludo were facing Lenox, and suddenly they both saw something he didn’t.
“Lenox!” cried Dallington.
He knew somebody was behind him, and with a quick step backward he saved his own life. (He had always found stepping into the attacker the most successful gambit, unbalancing the other person—a boxing lesson Freddie Clarke might have known.) Something extremely heavy and blunt grazed the side of his face painfully, tearing at his skin.
Even as he turned he saw from the corner of his eye Ludo, stock still, eyes wide with astonishment, and Dallington, springing forward to help him.
He felt a heavy blow on the side of his head. His last thought was to wonder where the person had come from so quickly, and then he forgot the living world.
Chapter Forty-Three
When he came to he was for a moment quite dreamy, but then the nature of the situation returned to his mind and he sprang away with all his might from whoever was grasping him.
“Lenox! Lenox! It’s only me!”
As he blinked his eyesight back, he saw that the person holding him had been Dallington, who had supported him to Starling’s front steps.
“Who was it?” Lenox asked in a hoarse voice, his head still spinning.
“We couldn’t see—he wore a mask, whoever it was. He ran off as soon as he had fetched you that last smack on the head. The coward. I caught you as you lost consciousness.”
“And Ludo?”
“He tried to catch the attacker, and now he’s off to find a constable.”
“Or pay the person his fee,” said Lenox. He felt a throb in his head. Groaning, he let his body go slack, as it wanted to, on the step. “Just get a cab, will you? I want to lie down.”
“Of course.”
On the short ride home Dallington only spoke once—to ask whether Lenox believed that Ludo knew the attack was coming.
Lenox shook his head. “He didn’t know we were coming to see him.”
“He could have set the person after you nevertheless, and told him to attack you when you were in Ludo’s presence. Another alibi!”
Lenox shrugged. “It could be.”
In fact part of him wondered whether it was William Runcible, still afraid of jail and no longer pacified by Lenox’s promise in the butcher shop. Still, wouldn’t he have used a knife, or a cleaver?
At home there was a flurry of activity when it was discovered that he had been attacked. Kirk sent for the police, Dallington went to fetch McConnell, and two or three maids hovered anxiously around the door, waiting to see if he needed anything. As for Lenox, he lay on the couch with a wet, cold towel over his eyes, the lights all dimmed. He wanted to see Lady Jane.
When she arrived he felt comforted. She spared just a moment to come and put a hand on his forehead, then became a whirlwind of businesslike commands. She ejected the maids (who were having a very exciting day, it must be admitted) from the threshold of the room, and asked one of them to return with a basin of water and a cloth to clean the wound, though Lenox had already assayed the job. Then she called Kirk into the room and berated him for not returning with the police, who were on their way, before instructing him to find a doctor in case McConnell wasn’t in.
He was in, however; he arrived not fifteen minutes later. “What happened?” he asked Lenox.
“Some thuggish chap tried to hit me with a brick.”
McConnell