Free A Stranger in Mayfair by Charles Finch

earns.”
    Lenox ignored this all, deep in thought. At last he said, “Five percent of his yearly wage, slipped under the door so nonchalantly. What was that young man doing with his life, I wonder?”

Chapter Eleven
     
    Lenox and Dallington walked very slowly through the pristine, vacant streets of Mayfair, moonlight and lamplight enough to make it rather bright. They discussed the case and arrived at one essential conclusion: Ludo Starling’s behavior was odd. Neither of them knew whether it was significant, but they concurred upon that fact. As for the packet, or packets, that Frederick Clarke had received, Lenox was inclined to believe that Clarke had been the participant in some variety of fraud or chicanery.
    They stood at the corner of Hampden Lane discussing it until they were neither content nor unhappy, then parted. It was past midnight. They agreed that Dallington would attend the funeral and then report in to Lenox.
    When he went inside his house, Lenox was surprised to find a figure on the small chair in the hallway. It was Jane.
    “Hullo,” he said, cheerfully enough.
    “Hello, Charles.”
    “You sound upset.”
    She stood. “I am.”
    “What’s the matter?” Dread struck his heart. “Is it Toto?”
    “No. It’s you.”
    “What have I done?”
    “Are you aware of the time?”
    “Roughly.” He pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “Fourteen minutes past midnight,” he said.
    “I came home at nine o’clock, and Kirk hadn’t the slightest idea where you were, except to say that John Dallington had dragged you off.”
    “I don’t understand what’s wrong, Jane.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me where you would be? Or leave a note! The most threadbare consideration would have satisfied. Instead I have had to worry for three hours, needlessly.”
    “Three hours scarcely seems enough to go into such a panic over,” he said. “I’d have thought you understood the nature of my profession.”
    This raised her ire. “I understand it well enough. You are under the constant threat of getting shot or stabbed or who knows what, while I wait at home and—what, politely wait to hear news of your death?”
    “You’re being absurd,” he said in what he instantly knew, and regretted, to be a haughty fashion.
    “Absurd?” Suddenly her anger had turned into tears. “To worry about you—that’s absurd? Is this what marriage is meant to be like?”
    As she started to cry in earnest, his resentment washed away and was replaced with regret. “I’m terribly sorry, Jane. For so many years I could come and go as I pleased, and now—”
    “I don’t have any interest in that. We’re married now. Do you understand that?”
    He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. He sat down. “I hope I do.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Really, I am sorry,” he said. Still she wouldn’t look at him. He sighed. “We never argued once during our honeymoon, did we?”
    “Our honeymoon was lovely, Charles, but it wasn’t real life. This is real life. And it’s not fair on either of us to have you gallivanting around London, putting yourself in danger, over some obscure murder.”
    “Obscure murder? If our friendship had taught you nothing else, I hoped it had taught you that there is no such thing.”
    “It’s past midnight!”
    “When I’m in the House I won’t be home till much later than this on occasion.”
    “That’s different.”
    “How?”
    “It’s your job.”
    “Being a detective is my job, Jane.”
    Lady Jane’s voice rose. “Not any longer!”
    “As long as I live!”
    “You’re in Parliament, Charles!”
    “So that’s worth staying out late for? Are you ashamed to be married to a detective?”
    She looked as if he had slapped her: suddenly still, suddenly silent. Without a further word she swept out of the room and ran up the stairs.
    “Damn,” he said to the empty room.
    He sat down, and as the anger burned out of him and he returned to his right mind he felt a