A Death in the Small Hours clm-6

by Charles Finch

  Oates came out of the carriage, supporting Frederick. The squire of Everley looked sluggish but he was plainly alive. Lenox breathed a sigh of relief, and in doing so realized he had been holding that breath, after a fashion, since he found Chalmers.

  Oates refused to look at him. Lenox couldn’t help himself. “Oates!” he said.

  The constable turned to him for an instant, and Lenox saw etched upon his face crazed, grief-stricken regret. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Quickly,” said Wells.

  The two men took their seats and without looking back kicked their horses away. Just like that, they were gone. Lenox — feeling it was a trade he would happily make again and again — ran to his uncle, muttering under his breath his thanks to God that the old man was still alive.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Likely they are in London,” said John Dallington, speaking of the two fugitives. “I cannot imagine them stupid enough to place themselves within the confines of the city of Bath.”

  “And yet that is the most probable location of the money they stowed away,” said Frederick, a bandage wrapped tightly around his head, face pale but eyes steady.

  It was still wild with rain outside, the trees lashing into each other, but here, in the sitting room at Plumbley, the three men were warm, two of them sipping from well-deserved cups of hot wine.

  Lenox shook his head. “I think Wells is too clever to have left his stockpile in Bath. He wanted a bolt-hole. I expect it’s somewhere far from the Wild Bear, to be honest, perhaps several counties over. Otherwise he wouldn’t have stopped to bother about the horse’s shoe — he would have carried on though it permanently lamed the beast.” For it had emerged that a hobble in one of the mares’ gait was what had, fortuitously, caused Oates and Wells to stop. Frederick, though captive, had overheard this plan to lie by at the Wild Bear and dropped his ribbon from the carriage to warn Lenox, or indeed any pursuers, that this was where they would stop. “If they have gone to Bath, however, they will be caught soon enough. Archer’s telegram said that half the police force is crawling over the city, looking in every hostelry and back alley for two men answering to their description.”

  The men talked for a while longer, speculating about Wells and Oates and where they had gone. Both Lenox, who had seen it in his eyes, and Frederick, who had heard it from his mouth, also returned to Oates’s regret at involving himself in the plot.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Nash. “Dr. Eastwood, sir,” he announced.

  “Show him in,” said Frederick.

  It was Eastwood whom Frederick had insisted he see for the wound upon his head, inflicted by Wells a few miles outside of Plumbley with the butt of a revolver Oates had brought. It was also Wells who had shot Chalmers in cold blood; Oates hadn’t known it was part of the plan.

  On the other hand it was Oates himself who had killed Weston. Sobbing, in the carriage, he had told Frederick the terrible details, while his accomplice stared impassively on. There was no McCutcheon.

  In his surgery Eastwood had pronounced Frederick wounded, but not dangerously. Now the squire sat quite comfortably with his wine; it was difficult to tell whether this ordeal of the past week had made him look older or younger. A bit of both, perhaps. Physically he was down to his last ounces of energy. At the same time he looked as if he had discovered within himself a new fortitude.

  After wrapping Frederick’s head Eastwood had borrowed a horse from the stables — the now badly depleted stables, which only had an old cart horse left, Sadie and one of the two gray mares being up-country — and ridden to West Buckland, to look after Chalmers. Now he was back. He accepted a scotch and soda.

  “Well?” asked Lenox. “Any news?”

  Eastwood, his handsome face graven with concern, said, “It is touch and go whether he shall survive. If he does it is because of your veterinarian, Mr. Lenox. That young man took excellent care of Chalmers. In return for the favor had an earful from the drunken doctor next door, Morris-McCarthy, about infringement upon his practice. I told them both a specialist in Harley Street could scarcely have improved on the job the veterinarian did, Jacklin was his name.”

  “What is your instinct?” said Freddie. “Will Chalmers survive?”

  “I have not seen many gunshot cases, but I would say that his chances are fair. It all depends upon infection.”

  “Would it help to call doctors from London? Specialists, I mean, from Harley Street, as you say — I know that your education in general medicine is second to none,” said Frederick.

  “No. It is as straightforward a wound as I ever saw, no organs hit, thank Christ, three ribs broken from the impact, and the ball itself came straight out under Jacklin’s knife. Now we can only wait.”

  “He has not spoken?” said Lenox.

  “Not yet.”

  “Can he return to Everley for his recuperation?” asked Freddie.

  “No. He shouldn’t be moved.”

  Frederick acquiesced to this with a nod. Then he stood, though the doctor motioned him to sit. “Shake my hand — you have behaved damned handsomely today, Eastwood, patching me up and going to Buckland. In Plumbley we do not consider you much more than a passing visitor until you’ve been here a few decades, but I think I may say that you are as true a Plum as I ever knew.”

  Eastwood, like many men of reserved manners, took a compliment with unusual pleasure, flushing and declining and accepting all that Freddie had said. They shook hands. “And now I should go,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” said Frederick. “My nephew will pour you another scotch and soda. You are as deeply involved in this horrible matter as any of us are. Charles, the doctor’s drink?”

  Eastwood declined. “I have patients waiting still,” he said. “Please excuse me, gentlemen.”

  When he was gone Frederick looked after him. “I wish he had a wife to go home to, you know.”

  Supper had been cancelled — neither the squire nor Lenox feeling much like a social occasion — and so as they sat on, discussing Oates and Wells, Nash brought in plates of toasted cheese and cold chicken.

  To his surprise Lenox found that he was famished, though he had eaten a quick bite when he first returned to Everley. It was the hardest exercise he had done in some time, riding as he had across half of Somerset. Thank goodness the Wild Bear had let them a coach to return to Everley in, and one with four horses, too, fast enough to cut the travel time in half.

  Much of their conversation still revolved, unsurprisingly, around Oates. Apparently he had been half-drunk when Frederick had come to the police station, and as soon as he had handed the revolver from his cloak to Wells, he had taken his flask out and begun to drain it, all the while telling in great jags what he had done, and constantly asking Frederick for forgiveness. Wells had been happy to let Oates speak, even chiming in now and then with a detail.

  “It was that which convinced me they didn’t mean to let me live. A full confession to a magistrate — I believed they didn’t care because I would be a corpse soon anyhow.”

  Dallington grimaced. “I can scarcely imagine a worse sensation.”

  Frederick’s face was steely. “It shows a man what he wants from life, believing he will die.”

  “What did Oates tell you, then?”

  “Just what I have told you — that it was he, not Wells, who treated with the men from Bath, and it was he, not Wells, who killed Weston. It broke his heart, I think. Anyhow he seemed barely a man.”

  “Nothing else of material interest?” asked Lenox.

  “Oh — that he planted the knife at Musgrave’s, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “That was where he dished himself,” said Dallington. “He’d have been better off washing it and putting it back in his drawer.”

  “It might still have been matched to Weston’s wounds, however,” said Lenox.

  “Throwing it into the woods, then.”

  “It was foolish, but one can imagine his reasoning. Musgrave w
as already suspected in Plumbley, and indeed made himself the prime suspect by fleeing the village altogether. The knife must have seemed like the final clue that would decide me — all of us — against Musgrave.”

  “I have a question. If Wells wanted Carmody to tell us about the horses, why did Oates pass him over?” asked Dallington.

  Lenox shrugged, but Frederick knew. “They hadn’t had time to speak yet. Wells mentioned that. Said he would have told Oates to bring Carmody to you later that day.”

  They talked for an hour more, perhaps two, smoothing over all the details of the case to their satisfaction, until it clicked together like a puzzle in all of their minds.

  By now it was getting late. The wind whistled outside, the rain tapped the windows: It was a good night for a heavy sleep. “I suppose I had better retire,” said Lenox at last. “Certainly you should, Uncle Freddie.”

  “Oh, I don’t need as much sleep these days, and my head hardly smarts at all. John, will you sit up with me for another glass of hot wine? I wouldn’t mind something else to eat, either.”

  They were the kindest and least reserved words the squire had spoken directly to the young lord, who smiled — he loved to be liked, and hated to have a bad reputation, though he always seemed to acquire one anyhow. Still, here was a chance; perhaps his ignominious arrival at Everley could be forgotten. “With great pleasure,” he said. “It was the finest toasted cheese I’ve ever had.”

  “Mustard is the key,” said Frederick as if revealing one of the secrets of the ages.

  Lenox looked at him fondly and then rose. “I shall leave you to it. Good night, gentlemen.”

  Just as he reached the door, however, the butler appeared again.

  “Nash?” said Freddie.

  “It is a telegram, sir. For you and Mr. Lenox.”

  Frederick took it. He absorbed its contents quickly and crumpled it in his hand, eyes on the far wall. “It’s from Archer,” he said. “They’ve found Oates.”

  “But not Wells?” asked Dallington.

  Frederick shook his head. “Oates was shot dead not far from the Wild Bear. They discovered his body a few hours ago. There’s no sign of Wells at all.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The shock was over quickly; it couldn’t have been plainer what had happened. Dallington said it. “He wanted all the money for himself.”

  “And Oates was in no condition for conspiracy, with his drinking and his chatter,” added Frederick. “Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, he travels fastest who travels alone.”

  Lenox shook his head. “Poor soul. It is probably for the best, after all. He was ill-conditioned to live with a bad conscience.”

  Indeed, what had been the point of all this? It was hard to imagine a life more comfortable than Oates’s; he lacked a wife but he had friends and family, a decent job of good work. Men like Wells, men of ambition, Lenox could understand their turning to crime. But Oates?

  He went upstairs with a heavy heart, and knocked on the door to make sure he wasn’t interrupting Jane. “It’s Charles,” he said.

  He heard her lovely voice. “Imagine you knocking, Charles! Come in! I have just been to see Sophia, she is blooming — has no idea what kind of day her father had. You could not call her very interested in the affairs of others yet. I’m afraid in fact that she’s rather a narcissist.”

  Lenox laughed and they met halfway across the room, where she leaned up to kiss him. “As we rode home I was thinking how sad it shall be when we can no longer spend as much time with her. Or when I cannot, in plain truth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A mother always has a place in a nursery, but I don’t believe I know a father who sees much of his children, at any rate not for longer than an hour in the evenings. That was as much as Ed and I saw of our father, though we loved him more than the world. Every day that she gets older I feel as if I am coming to the end of a wonderful voyage.”

  “She’s only a few months old, Charles.”

  “You’re right. There’s time yet.”

  She heard him, and leaned her head into his chest. “We can be any kind of parents we like,” she said, though both knew it was not precisely true.

  “Yes. Perhaps I will make her have breakfast with me in the mornings, and convention be damned.”

  She laughed. “I call that a fine plan, but how are you feeling, my dear? Come, sit with me, I can put my feet under your legs — they’re cold.”

  “I’m tired, but fair enough otherwise. Oates though — I have not told you of Oates.”

  He did, and she reacted with the same surprise, quickly trailed by comprehension, that the men had downstairs.

  When Lenox had arrived home — covered in mud, with Chalmers’s blood still upon him, and in Lady Jane’s hand a telegram from the West Buckland constable that offered just enough information to scare her — his wife had been sitting by the pond outside the house, waiting to greet him in an uncontained flurry of grief and worry. She was a woman who seldom wanted for strength. When she had ascertained that he was alive she had ordered a bath for Lenox, had cleared the drawing room so that Eastwood could consult with Frederick, and had arranged for food and drink all around.

  Once Lenox had rested for a while they sat together on this sofa for an hour or two, until at last she was satisfied that he was here — corporate, solid, unharmed — and then she had given him an embrace and sent him downstairs, to speak with Dallington and Frederick.

  Now her worry was back, he could tell. “Are you quite unhappy?” he asked.

  “I like it much better when you are sitting on the benches in the House, dozing off, without much more danger than crossing the street to bother you.” She paused. “Francine Hudson lost Jonathan last year, you know.”

  “I remember.”

  “She is still in black, of course. And their child only two.”

  “I’m not a soldier in India, however, Jane. That is the flaw in your analogy, I have spotted it for you.”

  She smiled weakly. “Very humorous, I’m sure.”

  He took her in his arms. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  When he woke the next morning he was sore and sorrowful, but two pieces of good news greeted him when he went down to the dining room for breakfast.

  Frederick was there — feeling very well, thank you, no the head is slightly sore but not too painful — and put down his gardening journal when Lenox entered. “Chalmers is well, according to your veterinarian. No fever. Eastwood is on his way over later today.”

  “That is excellent.”

  “And if you believe in good omens, here is one: Sadie has returned.”

  Lenox was in the midst of lifting a piece of toast to his mouth, but it stopped in midair. “Sadie? Your horse?”

  Frederick smiled. “The very one.”

  “She must have been thirty miles away!”

  “Apparently Wells loosed her. I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell her to a farmer, but he must have figured it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.”

  “I’m amazed she made it back.”

  “As was I. It is a small miracle. It’s a good thing she traveled under the cover of darkness, because certainly some unscrupulous traveler would have taken her up, if he had found her wandering loose upon the road during the day.”

  “Of course — a fine animal,” said Lenox. He was unreasonably happy.

  “The servants have rounded up every apple in Somerset and given it to her — she is an object of great wonder indeed. She shall lose her sweet tooth, I don’t doubt.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “A cut along one hock, incidental. Our own veterinarian is coming to look at her, but the boy, Chalmers’s assistant, Peters, says she could run today.”

  “I won’t chance it,” said Lenox.

  “No, better not.”

  “What about the papers?”

  “Eh?”

  “Wells — has he ma
de the papers?”

  “Ah, that. Yes, I’m afraid he has.” Frederick pushed a copy of the Bath Herald across the table. “My name is out of it, thank God, though Oates is mentioned. Too early to know whether Fleet Street has gotten hold of the story.”

  “I wonder where Wells is.”

  Frederick shook his head. “He might have let Oates live, even if he took the money for himself.”

  “Oates did not have much to live for.”

  “But that was not Wells’s to determine.”

  “What will you do today, Uncle? Rest, I hope?”

  “Rest! No, I mean to have busier days now. Miss Taylor has still yet to see half of the gardens, and there is a correspondent — a most vexing correspondent, Charles — who writes me on the subject of the peony; facts all wrong. I mean to put across a good letter to him in Wiltshire, set him firmly in his place on the subject of compound leaves.”

  Lenox planned to return to work upon his speech after breakfast. With a fluttering in his stomach he realized that it was now rather close, less than a week. A packed House of Commons.

  These plans were upset by a succession of visitors. First there was Lucy, good-hearted niece of the redoubtable Emily Jasper, who had come to console Frederick for his ordeal. The squire, however, was on fire to write his letter to Wiltshire, so it was Lenox who entertained her, their easy rapport passing thirty minutes in what seemed like five, covering those eternal village subjects: the vicar; the vicar’s wife; the town drunk; the old days. He extended her an invitation to London and was pleased when she said she would take him up on it. They had been friends in years past, and he always liked to pick up such strings again.

  As she was leaving Dr. Eastwood came in. She curtsied to him, he bowed gravely, and then inquired, when she was gone, whether he might see Frederick.

  “By all means, though he seems in the pink of health. Might his head injury have changed his personality?”

  Eastwood laughed. “It is not likely. It was a soft blow, though I admit he has come up under it strong, very strong indeed.”