A Death in the Small Hours clm-6

by Charles Finch

  Nobody came out. He rode up just alongside the door and kicked it hard, trying to rouse somebody, but to his despair there was still no answer.

  Just then a man appeared several doors down, pale, young, and with ink-black hair. “May I help?”

  “Where is the doctor?”

  The young man took in the situation. “A wound? The doctor is — well, perhaps I should look.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  He shook his head. “A veterinarian. But the doctor, by this hour—”

  He had an honest face. “What, drink?”

  “Bring him here,” said the young man, and then called back into his office for his assistant. “What is his malady?”

  “I found him upon the road, shot,” said Lenox.

  The young man nodded, calmly. Together the three of them took Chalmers past several waiting dogs and cats, one goat, and into the young veterinarian’s office.

  “I need to find the men who did this,” Lenox said. “Do all you can for him — spare no expense. I am at Everley, but I shall return soon.”

  “You’re leaving him here with—” Lenox handed the young surgeon a card. The lad looked at it and nodded. “Mr. Lenox.”

  “I or one of my friends shall return, you have my word of it.”

  In the street several boys were gawking at Sadie, touching the place on her withers that was slick with blood. “What happened, sir, please?” asked one of the boys.

  “Where is the police station?” asked Lenox. The same boy pointed down the street. “You shall have a half-crown if you give this horse water and oats.”

  The boys burst into activity—“There, sir, it’ll be a moment,” “Oats and a carrot, I say”—and Lenox strode toward the police station.

  The constable there was quick-witted, fortunately. He had heard of Wells’s arrest, knew Lenox’s name, and agreed to help. The only question was what they should do.

  “There are so many paths they might have taken off the main road,” said the constable, Jeffers.

  “My uncle is in that carriage,” said Lenox. “Alive, I hope. I mean to go after him. Fortunately the ground is wet.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Telegram to Bath, go to Plumbley and tell—” But Lenox didn’t know who to tell. Then he remembered. “Send word for a John Dallington at the big house, and tell a Mr. Fripp.”

  Jeffers nodded, somber. “Anything else?”

  “The man to telegram in Bath is Archer. You may try any of them, though. They should be apprised of the situation immediately — and tell them to send men, if they can.”

  Lenox and Jeffers shook hands and the detective flew from the station, handed over his half-crown to the boys, and vaulted himself aboard Sadie, who with all the eagerness in the world turned her head again in the direction of the road.

  He would never forgive himself if anything had happened to his uncle, he thought.

  Out upon the road again he passed a carriage almost immediately, not the one he was looking for, and realized with dismay that he could no longer be sure which of the fresh carriage tracks in the mud belonged to Frederick’s. Neither did he have a pistol, a constable, any means of convincing Wells to give up his cousin — for he was still convinced of Wells’s intimate involvement in the business. Lenox worried that he might do more harm than good. Still he rode on.

  What did Wells intend to do with Freddie? Lenox had yet to fully consider the circumstances because finding Chalmers in the road had driven him so definitely to action, not reflection. Presumably Wells had some plan to which the groom — but not Frederick, or indeed, Oates — was superfluous. Did he mean to hold them hostage? Had Chalmers simply been the one who fought back, and been shot for his troubles?

  Then, though he was riding pell-mell, a realization came to Lenox in slow motion: If Wells had commandeered the carriage, he must have had an accomplice in his actions.

  Why? For the simple reason that there was no chance Oates, Frederick, Chalmers, or Wells had been carrying a gun, and what Chalmers had suffered was a gunshot wound.

  Perhaps Musgrave, or one of the coiners from Bath, had met Wells out here on the road. Perhaps the foreknowledge of that plan was what had made Wells seem so sanguine, so untroubled, in their interview the day before. Interested in the cricket, even. He had known he would be free again soon.

  Think, Charles, he chided himself.

  The rain began to come down harder. It cooled Sadie, but it slowed her, too. Lenox brought her to a trot for a moment to get his cloak from one of the saddlebags, and while he was in there fumbled out a cube of sugar. It had fallen into the mud but he knew she wouldn’t mind — he wiped it against the saddle, blinking away the raindrops, and gave it to the horse, who was breathing heavily but seemed in no danger of outrunning herself.

  The difficulty with the scenario was in its planning. How would Wells have been in contact with Musgrave, or with any of his accomplices in Bath? Even if he had, why would they risk coming out to see him? Clearly when Musgrave had left Plumbley he wasn’t worried about Wells shouldering the blame for Weston’s death.

  As he was mounting the horse again, Lenox felt a chill.

  Who were the three men in the carriage, now? Wells. Frederick. And Oates.

  It was impossible. Oates with his fleshy, impassive, unintelligent face, his grief over his cousin.

  Yet wasn’t he the most logical co-conspirator? There had been no evidence of another carriage stopping where Chalmers had fallen — only the one, Frederick’s. And Wells couldn’t have overpowered Oates, Chalmers, and Frederick together, even with a gun.

  Lenox shook his head, yet a flood of inconsequential memories, small oddities of behavior, returned with great force to his mind. It was true that Oates had behaved strangely at moments. He hadn’t wanted Lenox to look at Weston’s correspondence, arguing overmuch for the boy’s privacy. Had he been afraid of a note implicating him? Or the canvas of the town green: Oates had uncovered nobody to help them, while Fripp had produced Carmody within ten minutes.

  And the note from Weston to Oates! “Swells” seemed such an obvious nickname for the grain merchant, and all the lads in the pub had known it at once. Wouldn’t the constable have recognized it immediately? Wouldn’t Weston have used only a nickname he was sure his cousin would understand?

  Lenox’s resistance to the idea was weakening. He hoped it wasn’t Oates — but, he thought, who had been in the grain merchant’s shop the first time Lenox visited? The constable.

  Lenox remembered, too, Wells’s somewhat unusual insistence that he stay in Oates’s custody, the man from whom he should have most feared retribution. Beyond that there was Wells’s alibi, and his true, convincing outrage when he was asked if he had killed Weston. What if Wells had only confessed because he knew he had a way out? That Oates would spring him?

  It had already, after only a few hours, been a long day, and these small, agitating thoughts, arriving in Lenox’s mind unbidden, seemed wrong, inaccurate. For half a mile of riding he dismissed the possibility from his mind.

  Until, that is, he remembered a phrase from McConnell’s letter: The only fingerprints on the knife belonged to Constable Oates.

  How many dozens of times in his experienced had it been the murderer who found the body, who found the weapon? Hadn’t Oates found the knife in the slop bucket at the last possible moment, that morning in the basement of Wells’s house, at the last throw of the dice?

  With a terrible sense of dread Lenox began to fear that the accomplice wasn’t Musgrave at all. That it was Plumbley’s police constable. That Weston’s own cousin had murdered him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The rain was gone forty minutes later, the weak yellow of the sun glittering in the branches of the trees, blackened by their wetness, that lined the road. Lenox had lost all track of the carriage ruts, and nearly all hope, too. The thought of Oates working with Wells was too terrible to contemplate, but it solved so many niggling doubts. It explained Wells
’s behavior.

  Now was the time to turn back. He had no way of knowing where Wells had taken Frederick — Wells and Oates, perhaps. His horse was getting genuinely tired. If Jeffers, the constable from West Buckland, had done as he said he would, by now they knew in Bath and Plumbley what had happened, and surely massive reinforcements would be patrolling this road soon.

  Then there was Chalmers. Was he alive? If he was, could he tell them anything?

  Yet something drove Lenox on. It was simple enough: his cousin, his mother’s dearest friend within her family, was in the hands of a man, perhaps of two men, who had proved they didn’t scruple at violence. If there was some chance of stumbling across them he had to try for it. He prayed for luck.

  In the end, however, it wasn’t luck but design that helped him.

  As he was cantering along — a gallop now was too much for Sadie, who had white froth at her mouth — he saw, half-trapped in the mud of the road, a bright blue ribbon. He stopped the horse and got down, realizing with a fizz of joy as he did that it was Frederick’s. It was the same ribbon, given to him by the garden society of Somerset, that he wore every day in his lapel.

  Lenox knew Freddie; he would have dropped it from the window of the carriage on purpose. It was never the sort of thing to come loose on its own, either. How many times had Charles told his cousin of the importance of the trail of breadcrumbs in his cases, of small clues?

  The question was why he had dropped it here, of all places.

  Lenox looked around. The road had narrowed, vast tangles of maple branches intertwining to form a cathedral ceiling overhead. There was no evidence that he could see of a carriage stopping. Perhaps farther down the path.

  He mounted the horse again and rode on, very slowly this time, his eyes scanning the space among the trees and along the ground. Nothing so far.

  After a short distance, not above a tenth of a mile, he saw a shingle attached to a post. It read:

  WILD BEAR COACHING STATION

  PUBLIC HOUSE

  HOT FOOD BEER BLACKSMITH STABLES

  NEXT TURNING.

  He could smell the smoke of the Wild Bear’s woodfire. Was this where they had gone? Perhaps one of the horses had lost a shoe, perhaps one of the men needed food. Or perhaps it was a coincidence. Still, Lenox took the turning.

  The inn was a squat, stone house with two modest gables in the upper story and a large stable attached to it, the sort of place where travelers stop for a bite and where local farmers congregate if it’s closer than the village.

  A boy appeared as he rode up. “Take your horse, sir?”

  “Please. She’s had a hard morning — water her and rub her down, if you would.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  Lenox stepped down from the horse, gave the boy a coin, and passed him the hack’s bridle. Might as well let her have ten minutes’ rest, even if there was nothing else to keep her here. It might mean another hour’s good riding down the road.

  He waited until the boy had gone out of sight and then followed him with soft footsteps. He came to a door in the stable and pulled it slightly ajar.

  With a thrill he saw, unmistakable in its trim and its construction, his cousin’s carriage.

  So they were here. Now he had to consider what he wanted to do.

  He pulled his hat low over his eyes, so that it gave him some protection from recognition, and went around through the front door of the Wild Bear.

  At this hour it ought to have been empty, but in fact it was rather full. A market day locally, perhaps. Or happy chance. Either way he accepted the luck with gratitude. The walls were dark from decades of smoke, and even now there was an eye-watering concentration of it floating constantly upward and collecting at the ceiling, from the badly ventilated hearth and from the pipes the men along the bar constantly refilled.

  He moved toward the bar, catching the eye of the publican who stood behind it. “A half of stout, please,” he said.

  “Right away, sir.”

  When he had his drink he could sip it slowly, concealing his face, and scan the place. There were perhaps twenty people in the room all told, crowded around small tables and along benches at the back wall. He looked very carefully but saw that none of them was Oates, or Wells, or Frederick. He cursed under his breath.

  Just as he was deciding that he ought to go straight to the coach and risk being shot, however, the door opened and there he was: Wells. Lenox saw him first, and quickly turned his back to the door. He wondered if he would stand out — dressed better than the men in here, no coat (that was still with Chalmers), and with dirt spattered up and down his breeches from the long morning of riding.

  Wells approached the bar. “Pint of mild,” he said, “and wrap up some sandwiches for us to take away. Six should do.”

  The barman nodded and pulled the pint of mild — contrary to its name the strongest of the ales that most public houses sold — before going into the kitchen through a pair of swinging doors behind him.

  During the order Lenox had settled upon a plan. He took a deep breath, lifted his head, did a double-take, and then cried, from his end of the bar to the other, “Mr. Wells! Imagine seeing you here! What an unexpected pleasure!”

  Wells had turned at his name, and when he saw Lenox his face blanched. He was caught off guard by the greeting, but other people were looking, so he played along. The two men shook hands. “Mr. Lenox. Excellent to see you again.”

  Almost immediately people stopped paying attention, the murmur of the pub increasing again, and Lenox could whisper to the coiner. “You and Oates in league, was it?”

  Wells hesitated, but then nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  It was a sorrowful confirmation. Oates — he had seemed such a good man, so incapable of surprising people. In the end greed had gotten to him, too. “Is my uncle safe?”

  “Yes. We mean to leave this place, the three of us, or take out a fair few of you with us.”

  Lenox shook his head. “That is not necessary. Listen, I am quite alone. You have all the advantage. I only want my uncle. You may still go free. In fact, if my uncle’s life is spared it is a matter of indifference to me whether you escape or not.” This was false, but it was also true to a point. “It will be impossible to tell people that I didn’t see you, but I will say, and it will be the case, that I have no idea where you might be going. London, Bath, the north, even overseas.”

  Wells shook his head. “You’d send up a cry. Then we couldn’t get at—”

  He cut himself off, but Lenox understood. They’d secured money somewhere, enough to fund their lives as fugitives, he and Oates, and they had to retrieve it before they escaped. “I can promise you, upon my word as a gentleman, that I will give you time to go. All that matters is my uncle’s safety. You must understand that — I don’t care if you’re caught. Weston won’t be any more or less dead. On the other hand if you were to harm Freddie or me, it would be national news — it would be the gallows. Would you rather be dead in a month or alive and away and rich? The choice is yours.”

  Wells smiled thinly. “That is precisely why we took your cousin. Thought he might buy us our life, if we did. But I need some guarantee.”

  “I have an idea,” said Lenox. “Take me with you in the carriage. I don’t mind. I’ll leave my horse, and my uncle can stay here.”

  “He’ll call the police.”

  Lenox thought for a moment, ignoring the faint relief in the back of his head at the rejection of that idea. “Then you must trust us. Take my horse, if you like, she’s a runner. Leave the carriage behind and you’ll go swifter. My uncle and I will have no means of catching you, of warning anybody. You’ll be down the road, miles in whichever direction you like. I give you my word, my solemn word, that I’ll tell them nothing other than that I exchanged my horse for my uncle.”

  Wells was a rational man. Oates had been drinking his sorrows away, was likely, at just this stage, capable of irrational action. The right man had come into the bar. Wells
understood his situation: He wanted his money; he wanted to live.

  “Very well,” he said, at last. “Give me the money in your pockets, too, so you can’t hire a carriage out of here.”

  Obediently Lenox handed over his billfold. “There are nearly twelve pounds in there.”

  Wells opened it greedily and verified the truth of this. “Nice to be a gentleman, ain’t it. Come, we’ll go to the carriage. You’ll tell the boy we need your horse, and we’ll take one off the carriage.”

  Lenox nodded. “Just remember, if you feel the urge to trick me, how much worse it should be for all of us — for you — if we don’t make a clean exchange. Why should any of the four of us drop an ounce of blood?”

  Wells laughed. “Don’t worry on that count. I know where my bread is buttered. We’ll make the exchange, I’ll get Oates, and Freddie will stay in the carriage.”

  “No. I need to see my cousin before you go.”

  “Fine, then. He’s taken a knock on the head, be warned.”

  Lenox mastered his anger at this, and nodded. Wells drained his drink, stood up, and led the way out of the Wild Bear.

  In the stable there were two boys, the one who had taken Sadie and another, older one. He came forward. “Help you, sirs?”

  Lenox said, “My horse—”

  Wells interrupted sharply. “No. I need to speak with Oates first.”

  He went into the carriage, stayed a few minutes, and came out, apparently satisfied. “All well?” Lenox asked.

  “Saddle up the horses. Food in the saddlebags.” He pointed toward the better of the gray carriage mares and to Sadie. (Absurdly, Lenox felt a pang at losing the horse. He told himself to focus.) “When they’re ready to go I’ll whistle, and Oates will bring you your uncle.”

  The stable boy looked troubled. “Sir—”

  “It’s all right,” said Lenox.

  It was an agonizingly slow process — five minutes perhaps, but each passing as slowly as a Sunday hour. At last the horses were ready. Wells put two fingers in his teeth and gave a loud whistle.