Home by Nightfall

by Charles Finch

Lenox was astonished. “My professional opinion?”

  Hadley unfolded the thin newspaper he had been carrying, and read from it. “In residence at Lenox House,” he quoted, “Mr. Charles Lenox, eminent consulting detective of Chancery Lane, London, for an undetermined amount of time.”

  “Is that this morning’s paper?” asked Edmund. “May I see it?”

  “Yesterday evening’s,” said Hadley, handing it over. “The Markethouse Gazette.”

  “My gracious,” said Lenox. “They do move quickly.”

  Edmund laughed. “Here’s cheek,” he said to Charles. “It concludes, Mr. Lenox happy to take on any new business that may present itself.”

  “I admit I felt a powerful relief when I saw that, Mr. Lenox,” said Hadley. “The Gazette gave us all the reports about your triumph at the Slavonian Club, that terrible business of the women being stolen and brought into England, and I knew at once that I must come see you. It’s been a week now, you see, and I haven’t been myself—have barely slept.”

  “But I’m afraid I’m not actually here in a professional capacity, Mr. Hadley. Perhaps you might consult with the local police.”

  Hadley shook his head. “That’s the trouble. Nothing definite has happened. I couldn’t trouble them. Yet it’s all preying on my mind so constantly.”

  Lenox had encountered this attitude again and again in his work—the impossibility of “troubling” the official police force, who were of course handsomely paid precisely to handle possible crimes against all members of the citizenry, and yet the utter ease of “troubling” him, who was almost invariably expected to take the greatest pains and seek no remuneration. If he had one criticism of his age, Lenox thought, it was this: too holy a respect for governmental institutions. Many of them, hospitals, orphanages, records offices, had gotten away with bloody murder for year on year, simply by residing in imposing buildings and having superintendents with side-whiskers.

  He was intrigued, though.

  “Edmund?” said Lenox.

  Edmund gestured toward the table where they had been sitting, next to a wide window with a particularly lovely view of the rolling countryside to the south, and said, “Please, Mr. Hadley, sit.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly, sir.”

  “Nonsense. Do you take coffee or tea?”

  At last they cajoled Hadley—whom momentum had gotten through the door, and awe paralyzed once he was there—to sit down, and Lenox said, “Now, please: What has happened that has you so concerned, but is so insignificant that it would be of no interest to Constable Clavering?”

  He awaited the answer, feeling awake and energetic. The first thing he liked to do when he returned to Lenox House was get on a horse, and that morning he had taken a fine tobacco-colored bay filly, new to him, not yet two years old, on a thundering gallop across the turf. Her name was Daisy, and she rode as well as you liked, he had reported to his brother when he returned.

  Arthur Hadley, sitting opposite Charles, took a steadying sip of tea, set down his cup, and began his tale.

  “I have lived in Markethouse for nearly two years now,” he began. “I am one of six vice directors of the Dover Limited Fire and Life Assurance Company, and most of my business is in Lewes, but I have a retiring disposition, and upon my most recent promotion, I bought a small house for myself here in Potbelly Lane. I have known Markethouse from my youth. My mother grew up in the village, and her sister, my aunt, remained here until her death, twelve years ago. You may possibly know her—Margaret Wilkes, as kind-hearted an aunt as anybody could have.

  “I have been very happy since moving to the village. The place is just as I expected when I came, friendly but quiet. I live alone, with a charwoman who does cleaning and cooking for me from seven to five each day, excepting Sundays, which she takes as her day off. She leaves a cold collation out for me on Saturday nights—or I occasionally visit the Bell and Horns, in Markethouse Square, if I feel a hankering for Yorkshire pudding.

  “I am very regular in my work schedule. Each Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I travel to several of the larger towns in Sussex—it’s ‘my’ county, as it were—and sell policies for fire and life insurance, or meet with existing policy holders who require my assistance. Incidentally, if either of you require a policy for … the peace of mind—”

  Lenox shook his head, and Edmund, with a trace of coldness in his voice, said, “I have one already, through the House of Commons, thank you.”

  “Ah, of course,” said Hadley. He soldiered on. “On Thursday and Friday, I remain here in Markethouse and draw up the papers of the week’s work. They go by train on Saturday to our head office. In an emergency, I can be contacted here by wire. The local postmistress, Mrs. Appleby, knows that I receive telegrams at odd hours, in the event of a fire or sudden death, and is alert for them even in her sleep, in exchange for which I pay her a small standing fee each month. If there is an accident, I make a point of traveling to see my clients immediately, wherever they may be.”

  Lenox wondered if all this was material—hoped it was. “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, such is my life, gentlemen. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me in the past two years, until last Wednesday night.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I was returning home from a trip to Lewes. It was past nine o’clock. I was very tired—and happy to be back, for while I work on Thursday and Friday, Wednesday is effectively the end of the hardest part of my week, when I am traveling. At my age, the rails are a grueling master.

  “By eight o’clock it is dark out, of course, at this time of year. I reached my house and saw two things at once, despite the dark: first, that on my stoop was chalked a strange white figure, and second, that in a downstairs window there was the light of a candle. I keep my curtains closed when I am away, but there was a small gap in them, and I was sure I saw the light.

  “I was surprised, as you can imagine, but it was nothing compared to my surprise at what I saw next: A face appeared in the same downstairs window, for scarcely an instant, and then vanished.”

  “A face?” said Lenox. “A woman or a man’s?”

  Hadley shook his head. “I cannot say. It was very dim, and my eyesight is not what it once was. All I know was that it was pale, and looked to me … well, I cannot say, exactly.”

  “You must try,” said Lenox.

  “I suppose it looked very upset,” said Hadley. “As if its owner was experiencing great emotion.”

  “It was the charwoman,” said Edmund.

  Hadley shook his head. “That was what occurred to me, but I asked the next day, and she swore up and down that she was out of the house by five, that her whole family could attest to it. And then, why wouldn’t she have stayed to see me?”

  “She didn’t want you to know she had remained in the house,” said Edmund.

  “I take it, if you went to the trouble to inquire with your charwoman,” said Lenox, “that you did not find anyone inside the house?”

  “I was astounded, as you can imagine, and barely able to keep my wits about me. Almost immediately the light went out. I turned on the gas lamp outside my door and considered what to do. First, I looked at the chalk figure on my step.”

  “And what was it?” asked Edmund, who was leaning on the table with his elbows now, eyes curious, papers forgotten.

  “I shudder to think of it, gentlemen,” said Hadley, and indeed he looked pale. “It was a figure of a girl. A small girl. Only a simple drawing, but I hope you will believe me when I tell you that there was something very strange about it—uncanny. I felt my stomach turn when I saw it.”

  “A girl,” murmured Lenox.

  “After bracing myself, I went inside. I took up a heavy paperweight that I keep by the door for outgoing post, and went from room to room—well, there are only four proper rooms in the house, a forward sitting room, a dining room, and two small bedrooms upstairs. Everything was entirely as I had left it. The doors of the kitchen and washroom, just of
f of the dining room, were both locked from the inside, and empty. I checked each room and each closet a dozen times.”

  “And found?”

  “Nothing, and nobody.”

  “Is there another entrance?”

  “Only windows—but there are many of those, front and side,” said Hadley. “And I do not keep them latched. Or did not, for now I do.”

  “Was anything missing?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “And this is the mystery you hope to solve?” Lenox asked.

  Hadley shook his head. “Not all of it. I went to bed that night very afraid, with the door locked from the inside; but the next morning, when I woke, it all seemed rather foolish to me. As I said, I have weak eyesight. Was it possible that I had seen the reflection of a light across the way, and even, perhaps, a face? In the light of day it seemed just possible—though if I call that face to mind now, I know, feel certain, that it was inside my house.

  “No, if it had simply been that experience, I might have been disturbed, but I doubt I would have sought any help. It was what happened the next day that has forced me to think something greater must be afoot—and in truth, gentlemen, to fear for my safety.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lenox’s coffee had gone lukewarm as he attended to Hadley’s account. He took the last sip, always so superbly sweet and milky, and then poured himself half a cup more from the chased silver pot at the center of the table, leaning back in his chair. A feeling of contentment and interest filled him. He’d feared a very gloomy trip, but now he had a pleasant fatigue in his muscles from the ride that morning, a fine breakfast in his stomach, a breezy and warm day awaiting him outside, and here, entirely unlooked-for, something to divert his attention.

  And possibly Edmund’s, too, he thought.

  Edmund had always been fascinated by Charles’s work. For years they had joked that they ought to trade jobs, during the period of his life when Charles had been so absorbed from afar by England’s politics. Then he had entered the Commons himself. After his election Charles had suggested that Edmund take the reverse course—set out his shingle as a detective—though of course only in jest. In all these years he had never done more than speculate from his armchair, hectoring Charles for ever more detail about his cases.

  The look on his face now, intent and absorbed, was, if not exactly one of happiness, at least one of distraction. “Your safety?” he said to Arthur Hadley.

  “I was at my desk the next morning at nine o’clock,” said Hadley, “a bit later than usual. That morning I had gone out to the front steps with warm water and scrubbed off the picture of the girl in chalk. I admit that I felt better when it was gone, though it is not rational. That, too, I could account for in the daylight—local children, and what had seemed like eeriness the night before no more than an accident, the inexpert effect of a clumsy hand.

  “At about ten o’clock there was a ring at the door. It was Mrs. Appleby, the postmistress. Since you have both lived here, perhaps you know her. A very intelligent, closemouthed, and respectable person—certainly not someone who would be willing to participate in a joke.”

  “A joke,” said Lenox.

  Hadley nodded, face grim. His back was straight and his gaze level; he made for a very convincing witness even to strange events, a fellow utterly English, probably without a very great deal of imagination, certainly not prone to exaggeration or whimsy.

  “According to the telegram Mrs. Appleby brought me, there was a fire at the corn market in Chichester. I don’t know if either of you knows Chichester, but the corn market is cheek by jowl with many of the finest houses on the town square there, half of which, perhaps more, I insure. You can understand my alarm.

  “I hired the coach at the Bell and Horns to take me the twelve miles there, at no inconsiderable expense—but there are many insurance companies, and reliability and friendship in a crisis is what I have always felt distinguishes Dover from the others. We are not always cheaper, but we are always better, I tell my clients. Moreover, frankly, to be on the spot of a fire as soon as possible guarantees that we are not defrauded by our customers—that they do not overstate their claims, or what they have lost. Both for selfish reasons and for ones of professional pride, therefore, I was in haste to get to Chichester.

  “The horses felt that haste on their backs—I offered the driver an extra half crown if he could cover the ground in less than two hours, and he did it, though we nearly turned over at a ditch near Pevensey.

  “We arrived at the corn market, then, and what do you think I found? Nothing. Absolutely nothing—or rather, a normal day’s business, without so much as an upset firepot on the premises, or an ember that had flown out of a hearth and onto a piece of hay.”

  Hadley’s indignation was very serious indeed. “Who sent the telegram?” Lenox asked.

  “It was signed by the mayor’s office.”

  “Did you not think that peculiar?” asked Lenox.

  “No. I’m well known in Chichester, and in the case of a fire they know to call me straightaway. As it is, when I knocked on the door, they were as surprised to see me on a nontraveling day as if I had appeared at their front doors after working hours. Nobody there had sent me the telegram.”

  “And at the post office?”

  “I hadn’t thought to ask there.” Hadley frowned, then brightened. “That’s why you’re the detective, though, isn’t it?”

  Lenox allowed himself a dry smile. “Perhaps it is, though. Is that the end of your tale?”

  “It’s a very unusual one,” said Edmund.

  “Nearly,” said Hadley. “Thank you both for your patience.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I returned home—much more slowly, and much perplexed, as you can imagine. I hadn’t yet connected this false report to the incidents of the night before, which had vanished from my mind in all the commotion, and indeed, at home everything was as I had left it. I returned to my papers, confused about the events of the day and regretful about the lost time, but determined to finish with the most essential parts of my work.

  “After an hour at my desk it was five o’clock, and the woman who does for me, Mrs. Watson, said good-bye, and that there was dinner waiting for me under a cover. I thanked her, and when she was gone sat back and, with a feeling of great relief, packed my pipe. I changed into my slippers and my robe, found the newspaper that Mrs. Watson had left on my hall table, and thought that I would have a drink to soothe my nerves before I ate. I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

  “I should add that everything in the house, upon my return, was exactly as I had left it that morning. There is no lack of things a thief might take in my house, either. I enjoy collecting small gems, and a few of the finer ones are laid out very prominently on my desk, including one ruby that I flatter myself does not have a superior from here to the doors of the British Museum. Needless to say, I have now stowed them away with the bulk of my collection under lock and key. To think, that I should have to take such a precaution in sleepy Markethouse!

  “All of the liquor in my house is kept on a small mahogany stand in the sitting room. I went in to pour myself a drink—I enjoy a brandy—and noticed, to my amazement, that one of the six bottles that had been there, a bottle of sherry, was gone.”

  “The charwoman took it,” said Edmund.

  Hadley shook his head. “Yes, it must seem that way—but you are quite incorrect, with my apologies for contradicting you. She has been with me since the week I arrived in Markethouse, and her duties are quite clearly understood between us. She never touches my liquor stand. What’s more, I asked her the next day, and she gave me her word that she hadn’t taken it.”

  “Or thrown it away? Was the bottle of sherry empty?” asked Lenox.

  “On the contrary, nearly full.”

  “How can you be sure that it hadn’t gone missing the night before?”

  Hadley nodded excitedly. “Precisely the question, sir, precisely the ques
tion! I am very particular in my habits, and the night before, after seeing that pale face, and that ghastly drawing, I had taken a glass of brandy. I am absolutely certain—would swear it upon my parents’ eyes—that all six bottles were there when I went to bed. The same six bottles I always, always keep on hand.”

  There was a long pause. “Curious indeed,” said Edmund.

  “I felt a chill run down my spine. I tried to shake it off, tried out just the explanations you have both offered, but I couldn’t, and in the end I walked across town and knocked on Mrs. Watson’s door, which interview’s results I have already conveyed to you. She did not touch the liquor table, did not take the bottle of sherry. And yet it was gone. For the second day in a row, someone had been inside my house.”

  Now Lenox frowned. “Had Mrs. Watson allowed any visitors into the house while you were away?”

  “None.”

  “Was the door to your house locked?”

  “I generally leave the door and the windows unlocked while Mrs. Watson is there, and I believe I did that day, too. Since then, of course, I have taken to locking everything—and, I don’t mind saying, checking twice or three times that I have done so, before I have the courage to fall asleep.”

  “Someone could have entered the house without her noticing, then?” asked Lenox.

  Hadley grimaced. “I would have doubted it, if it hadn’t happened. Somehow they must have, I suppose. It’s true that Mrs. Watson passes a great deal of her time in the kitchen, which is at the back, and to some degree segregated from the other rooms in the house. By her own account, she was there for several hours in the afternoon while I was gone.”

  Lenox pondered for a moment all that he had heard, and then, leaning back in his chair, he said, “You have come to ask me my professional opinion—well, you may have it.”

  “Ah, that’s a relief.”

  “I think that these are very strange circumstances indeed, and I think that the police would unquestionably be interested in them. I am happy to assist them or you, of course, but they know the village better than I do, they have your welfare at heart, and I should certainly, in your position, place the matter in their hands.”