He thought back to the day of the murder. She had come into the alley. Why? At the time she had said she wanted to see if the constable was hungry or thirsty, but now this seemed unlikely. It was much likelier she would have sent a servant out. Did she want to move the brick? Conceal some other clue?
And the attack on Lenox: She had been standing at the door to see Ludo away, no doubt, and heard him come. When she learned the secret was out, eavesdropping on the conversation in the street, she must have flown into a rage.
There was the note! In Frederick Clarke’s room, the note asking him when his birthday was. She must have found out that he was Ludo’s legitimate son, and wanted to know exactly how old the lad was.
These ideas flooded his brain, one tripping on the heels of another, but he didn’t have time to articulate any of them.
Ludo had stood up. “What!” he called. “They know about Fowler. They know about poor Freddie.”
Elizabeth Starling flung the door open, her face transfigured by rage, and screamed, “Shut up, you fool!”
Dallington, who was still in the dark, looked taken aback, but for Lenox it was the final nail in the coffin.
“You killed Clarke, didn’t you?” he asked very softly.
The three other people in the room froze, but he walked to Ludo’s desk and rapped it with his knuckles, eyes cast down, brow furrowed, thinking it through.
“It makes sense to me now. Poor Ludo isn’t a violent type. He’s happy with a game of cards and a glass of brandy. But you-you’re a plotter.”
She was bright red. “You’ve always been a small man, Lenox. Get out of my house.”
“I don’t think I shall. What happened? When did Ludo tell you? Or was it Freddie who told you? Yes-I suspect that’s right.” He started pacing up and down the room. “Freddie wanted to be acknowledged as Ludo’s son and heir, the heir to any Starling title, the heir to Starling Hall. In the heat of the moment-or did you do it coolly?-I can’t decide-at any rate, you pried a brick from the ground and waited at the bend in the alley, where you knew he passed often enough.”
“No!”
“Then you did it. Smiled to his face and struck a blow on the back of his head as he walked away. I shouldn’t have been fooled by your gentle manners, I see now.”
“Lenox, what are you saying?” asked Dallington, appalled. “A woman-a gentlewoman-to have killed-”
Ludo interrupted. “It’s true,” he muttered, almost involuntarily.
“Ludovic!” screamed Elizabeth Starling, her fists tightly clenched and trembling.
“I hate this,” he said. “Because of you-to have been stabbed-our son cast out of our home-our faithful butler-my son! Freddie was my son!” He descended into incoherence now, muttering single words that formed a loose narrative in his own mind.
Lenox saw that the spell of her personality, her willpower, had been broken when the secret came out.
“Why did you cover for her? Why agree to be stabbed?”
“She’s my wife,” was all he managed to stammer out. “But this folly has to end, Eliza.”
As Lenox turned to see Elizabeth Starling’s reaction, two things happened: He heard a sound behind him, and Dallington shouted “Lenox!”
She was attacking him again. She had picked up a good-sized gold clock and had it above her head.
Dallington, who had jumped to his feet, was too late. Fortunately Lenox had managed to spring around her strike and grasp her from behind. She struggled mightily against his grip, but soon she let the clock go and fell in a heap into an armchair, sobbing without restraint.
Lenox, his heart pounding, felt the bandage on his head. Ludo and Dallington were standing beside him, looking shocked.
“I think we must call the police constable,” said Lenox, “but perhaps a doctor would be better first.” He picked up the bell and rang for the maid, whom he directed to fetch both.
It was strange to be in that quintessentially English room, with its hunting prints, its lines of leather-bound books, its fireplace, its old portraits along the wall, and to imagine all the violence that it had borne. Both Ludo’s careless life-marrying a maid, having a child with her, and later accepting him in as a footman (the madness!)-and more importantly Elizabeth Starling’s raging anger, her dark heart.
As she sobbed, dispossessed now beyond a doubt of whatever life she had made for herself, he almost felt pity for her. Then he remembered the other mother, the one in a hotel in Hammersmith, slowly coming apart at the seams.
“Come, Ludo,” he said. “You shall have a drink. This will all be over soon. I’m sorry you had to endure it.”
Ludo looked at Lenox, tears in his puffy, dissipated eyes. “My own son” was all he said. “The insanity of it.”
“What happened?” asked Dallington. “You wanted the blame to fall on Paul?”
“No!” It wasn’t Ludo but Elizabeth who spoke, between sobs, from the chair. Despite her anguish she couldn’t stand to see her son’s name fouled. “He saw it. He saw me. Then when the trial was close he refused to let Collingwood stay in jail any longer.”
“And you-you let Collingwood believe Paul was a murderer? Your son?”
“Why do you think I’m crying, you halfwit?” she said. “Because of Paul. I don’t care whether Freddie Clarke burns in hell. Or his father, for that matter.”
“But I helped you!” said Ludo, shocked again. “You-you told me we had to protect ourselves! Our family!”
“I’m not going to say another word,” Elizabeth answered.
In its dimensions it was more like a Greek tragedy than anything he had ever come across in his career: the striving bastard (who turned out not to be a bastard at all), educating himself, seeking the approval of a diffident father; the mad wife; the incidental victims; the double-crossing and lies. Dallington was glassy-eyed. There was none of the satisfaction that usually comes at the end of a case.
In due course the doctor arrived, and so the wheels of bureaucracy began their slow revolutions. He gave her a sedative; she was docile enough but, true to her promise, didn’t speak. After him the police came, and then more police-the inspector, Rudd, was extremely troubled, needless to say-and soon she was taken away.
Rudd stayed behind, a bluff, genial, stupid man with a great red nose, the sort who would be the most popular man at his local public house. He was one of the two or three men who had risen after the death of Inspector Exeter.
“What do you reckon, Mr. Lenox?” he said. “Can she really have done it?”
“She admitted as much.”
He shook his head as if he didn’t like that much. “And attacked you! Lady Macbeth ain’t in it!”
“She ain’t,” agreed Dallington, still awestruck. Then a thought occurred to him. “I daresay Collingwood will be relieved.”
“Mightily,” said Lenox.
“Ah, you’ve put your finger on the thing, young man-is he innocent? Was he not complicit? What about the green butcher’s apron?”
Both Dallington and Lenox turned uneasy eyes on Ludo, who was sitting in the corner alone, a devastated man; everything in his mien said he hadn’t realized the extent of his wife’s evil.
“He certainly wasn’t involved,” said Lenox, “unless he agreed to go to Newgate to protect the Starlings.”
There was a tremendous commotion at the door just then, and two constables with their hands full of a fifty-year-old woman staggered back into the room.
“Where is she! I’ll kill her!” cried Frederick’s mother. “Where is that devil woman?” Her wild gaze alighted on Ludo. “Oh, Luddy!” she cried and in two or three steps fell on him.
To Lenox’s surprise he returned the embrace, and tears seemed to escape his eyes, too. “I’m so sorry,” Ludo said, patting her on the back. “Our poor son. He was such a lovely boy.”
In that instant Lenox wondered whether Ludo had loved her all along.