Page 19 of A Measure of Menace

“How did you leave Mr. Mobley?” Wallace asked.

“Alive, if that is what you mean,” Lord Clifford snapped. “I told him I didn’t care for his tone and that he harmed my family at his peril. Mobley continued to spit invective at me, so I snarled some back and stormed out. I feared his men would detain me, and perhaps quiet me with their fists, but they stood aside and let me go.” Lord Clifford let out a breath and wiped his forehead. “An encounter I would not care to repeat. But Mobley was standing upright, breathing, and calling me foul names when I walked out his door.”

“Did you return any time after that?” Constable Wallace asked calmly.

“No.” Lord Clifford’s answer was resolute. “I never wanted to see the fellow again. I went to a tavern and ordered a brandy. I am not certain how long I stayed there—I rather lost track of time—but when I emerged, it was dark.” He drained his goblet and regarded it mournfully. Daniel, without a word, fetched the decanter Mr. Davis had left and refilled the glass.

“Where did you go once you left the tavern?” Wallace continued.

Lord Clifford accepted the refilled glass from Daniel and took a quaff. He ran his tongue over his lips as he set down the goblet.

“I decided to visit Dougherty,” he said, his voice a near whisper.

“Mr. Dougherty?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Why did you do that?”

From what I understood of confidence games, once the person one intended to dupe had walked away, one let them go. To persist would arouse too much suspicion.

“Because I knew he had blunt, lots of it. Perhaps he would loan me enough to keep Mobley from me. Dougherty is a respectable chap, hardly likely to endanger my female relations to make me return his money.”

“And did he loan it to you?” Wallace asked.

“No, because I never saw the man.” Lord Clifford took another long swallow of brandy. “Dougherty was not at home, according to the obsequious chap who answered the door. I will wager Dougherty was lurking upstairs somewhere, commanding his man to shut me out. After that, I walked a good bit—not certain where—and then saw a hansom. I climbed in and had the driver return me to my club. I at least had the coins to pay for that.” He sat back, red-faced and unhappy.

“And then?” Wallace said.

“Then, nothing. I went to bed. Slept like the dead. Suffered the embarrassment of the police calling on me in the morning. Seems I’d been overheard arguing with Mobley, and so of course, I must have coshed him.”

“Where does Mr. Dougherty live?” Wallace asked.

Lord Clifford stared at him. “What has that to do with anything?”

“Just making an account of your movements, your lordship. For my records.”

“It’s poking about in a man’s private business, is what it is,” Lord Clifford growled.

“I live in Pimlico,” Wallace said in a friendly tone. “I don’t mind who knows it. What difference can it make to tell me where Mr. Dougherty resides?”

Lord Clifford waved a hand. “Oh, I suppose it is no matter. A house in Upper Holland Street. I forget the exact address. In Kensington.”

“Upper Holland Street, Kensington,” Wallace dutifully wrote. “A fair walk from the Strand.”

“I was agitated. After all the brandy at the tavern, I was also a bit drunk. I took a hansom to Dougherty’s, because I knew I’d never find the place on my own. Had no idea where I was when I left his street. I am not familiar with that part of London.”

“Then you took another hansom back to your club and remained there for the rest of the night.” Wallace finished writing and punctuated the last sentence with a stab of his pencil.

“Yes, I told you.”

“I’m trying to make everything clear, your lordship,” Wallace said in a soothing tone. “All this will be verified, of course, but I wanted to hear it in your own words.”

“Verified,” Lord Clifford muttered. “A man’s word isn’t good enough, I suppose.”

“This is a case of murder, your lordship.” Wallace closed his notebook with a snap. “We must do everything correctly, so the wrong person isn’t landed in the dock.”

“My father is the wrong person, I assure you,” Cynthia said. “He’d have made a muck of things if he’d tried to murder someone, leaving no doubt that he’d done it. As it is, he stumbled around London ineffectually and went to bed.”

“Thank you very much, Cynthia,” Lord Clifford said tartly. “Children are supposed to be a prop and a comfort in a man’s old age.”

“You have plenty of years left in you, Papa.” Cynthia patted his arm. She kept her words light, but I saw the relief in her eyes. She hadn’t been entirely certain of her father’s innocence until hearing his story.

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