Home by Nightfall

by Charles Finch

  12 Sept. 76

  Midshipman’s berth, The Lucy

  Gibraltar

  36.1° N, 5.3° W

  Father and mother,

  Writing in absolute haste, as did not expect to put into Gibraltar, but weather muddy and ugly and woke to find leeshore rather closer than comfortable—so cut against the wind and pulled into harbor, and now just time to dash this off before we lie to and tack out of harbor again. The good news is that we ought to be in Plymouth in a month, perhaps even less. That means my birthday at home! Hopes they will give us a week. If I can I mean to bring Cresswell with me—so hide the gin. (Am only joking, do not hide it please.) Mother, if you fancy you could draw Cresswell, he’s a great peacock. I do long to be on a horse again. Life aboard ship is splendid however. We passed old McEwan in Gib and he said to say hello to Uncle Charles and would he be so kind as to give him a character, because he is contemplating entering Parliament in Uncle Charles’s old spot (which was a joke). Will James come home at Christmas? What odds the four of us can spend it together? Love to all of you and mind you bring the dogs in on cold nights, that stable is fearfully drafty, whatever Rutherford says.

  Your loving son,

  Teddy

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Lenox went to the town hall alone. He could see from the activity in the corridors that business had resumed, albeit uneasily. In the small room opposite Stevens’s larger office, where his clerks sat, he found Miss Harville, the mayor’s secretary.

  She was a quiet young woman with dark hair and narrow dark eyes, aged fifteen or sixteen, very, very young for the job. When Lenox mentioned this, she merely nodded.

  He had expected her to be highly emotional, but in fact she was quite poised, and had spent the morning helping Stringfellow, the deputy mayor, catch up on the duties that would fall to him, at least for the time being. Perhaps forever. Lenox asked if there was much to do. A great deal, she said—particularly with the budget meeting approaching. It was the village’s most significant public debate of the year.

  “Do you know who attacked Mr. Stevens, Miss Harville?” he asked.

  Her eyes widened. “No, sir,” she said.

  “It wasn’t you.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “In that case, it must have been disturbing to find the body.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Yes. It was.”

  He asked how she had come to work for Stevens, and she replied that she had been a student at the grammar, where she had shown a flair for mathematics. When she had left school—not intending to work, for her father was an assistant foreman at the factory, and fairly comfortably off—Stevens, searching for an assistant, had found her through the recommendation of her schoolmaster. He had first tested her skill, and then offered her the job.

  “Have you enjoyed it?”

  “Yes,” she said, but dutifully.

  Lenox pressed her. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s a pleasure to have my own money. I do feel quite ready to be married, and in a home of my own. But there are … there are not many young men in Markethouse, I suppose, and then, after a fashion, I am married to my work.”

  Lenox frowned. As with Elizabeth Watson and Claire Adams, there was something reserved in her reaction to the attack upon Stevens.

  “Stevens was not married?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, as if the idea were outlandish, but added nothing else.

  “Tell me about discovering the body.”

  “I arrived here early yesterday morning, just past seven o’clock, because Mr. Stevens asked me to come in early and run over figures for the budget. We both checked them for safety, though his own calculations were never wrong. I knocked on the door of his office, and there was no answer.”

  “Were you surprised?”

  “Yes. He normally had his office door open.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I knocked again and waited for a response. When there wasn’t any, I assumed he had been detained at home. I went and fixed him a glass of sherry with an egg in it, which he always liked to take when he arrived at work and just when he left.”

  Again that sherry. Lenox remembered Stevens ordering the same concoction at the Horns on Market Day. But could Stevens, of all people, have been the one to have broken into Hadley’s house? To have stolen the sherry?

  It seemed impossible both because of the mayor’s character and because he had been the one so eager to put a stop to the thefts. It was Stevens, after all, who had told him that books from the library had gone missing—the titles that matched the books in the gamekeeper’s cottage.

  “And then?” asked Lenox.

  “I went into his office without knocking, thinking I would leave the glass on his desk. It was then that I found him.”

  “Had you seen anyone in the corridors of the building? Anyone leaving as you came in?”

  “No, sir,” she said.

  “As far as you knew, you were the only person in the building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox paused. “Did you disturb anything in the room?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called for help straightaway.”

  Lenox shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”

  The secretary flushed. “Excuse me?”

  Lenox nodded toward her shoes. “There were faint footprints in the carpeting that match the size of your shoe—in blood, you understand. They lead to the window. One set is much deeper there. I think you must have stood at the window for a while, more than a few moments. Perhaps you even drank the sherry! I shouldn’t blame you. At any rate, I know that nobody was admitted to the room again after you went for help.”

  “Well, perhaps I did stand at the window. I was very shocked.”

  Lenox inclined his head. “Did you drink the sherry?”

  She was still red. “A sip, to steady my nerves.”

  Very calmly, Lenox said, “What sort of man was Stevens?”

  “A man much like any other.”

  He noticed the word “sir” had dropped out of her answers. “You liked him?”

  “He was not a warm person. But he did … he selected me,” she said.

  “And who do you think attacked him?”

  There was a long pause, and then, at last, she said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. And I really must pick up my work again.”

  Lenox’s brain was running rapidly through everything this young woman had said. He tried to focus, to remember her face and tone of voice so he could mull them later at his leisure. “Does the name Arthur Hadley mean anything to you?” he asked.

  “I believe he’s a resident of the village. Why?”

  “How do you know him?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot recall, but I have seen the name somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “As I say, I cannot recall.”

  “In the mayor’s papers? Or did the mayor mention him?”

  “No, not that. Perhaps in his papers—in fact, yes, I think somewhere in Mr. Stevens’s papers.”

  “You’re sure you can’t recall anything more exactly?”

  “If I do, I’ll tell you,” said the young secretary. “Please excuse me, Mr. Lenox. I wish you luck in finding out who killed Mayor Stevens, but if you want to speak any further, it will have to be after my work is finished.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Miss Harville.”

  Lenox left the building and walked up the square, brooding. It had been a peculiar interview. Why had she been so eager to end it?

  He found his feet turning to Potbelly Lane. On an impulse he stopped into Mrs. Appleby’s post office first, where he greeted her and then fired off a telegram to Polly and Dallington. In it, he asked if they might spare Pointilleux for a night, and added that if they could, the young Frenchman could pack a suitcase and stay at the hall.

  After that he went to Hadley’s house. The street was quiet and empty, the
morning sun falling softly on the cobblestones, the few clouds slipping soundlessly across the pure blue sky. Lenox paused at the foot of Hadley’s steps and took a few breaths of the clean air, thinking.

  When he knocked, Mrs. Watson answered the door. “Hello, Mr. Lenox,” she said.

  To his eye she looked troubled, and after greeting her, he said, “Is everything quite all right?”

  “Well—I suppose.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, exactly. Only I don’t think Mr. Hadley came home last night.”

  Lenox became very alert. “How do you know?”

  “The food I left for him is untouched. As far as I can tell, so is his bed.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  There was a broom leaning against the front hall table—evidently Mrs. Watson had been sweeping—and Lenox walked past it toward Hadley’s sitting room. There he checked the alcohol (all present) and surveyed the room for some time. The charwoman watched him.

  Then, abruptly, he turned back into the front hallway, making for Hadley’s study. “Today is Wednesday,” he said. “When did you last see Mr. Hadley?”

  “Monday evening, sir.”

  Lenox went into the study. There was nothing of very great interest on the desk—but something in the room looked different. What? He forced himself to slow down and look around carefully, as he had in the sitting room.

  Then he saw it.

  The door of the mahogany cabinet underneath the window hung just slightly open; he strode forward and opened it fully, and found, inside, Hadley’s safe, where he kept his collection of gemstones.

  Empty.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Back at Lenox House an hour later, Lenox found there were two telegrams waiting for him, both sent by Dallington. The more recent of the two merely reported that Pointilleux was on his way. The first, from that morning, was a disjointed post on their progress in the Muller case:

  When can you return STOP following chandelier per your sugg STOP whole thing damnably confusing STOP suspect Greville myself STOP have just discovered bizarre fct also STOP Margarethe Muller is reported in Paris right this minute by their constblry STOP anyhow come back here curse you STOP Dall

  Lenox frowned after he read that. He read it again. Reported in Paris. He sat for some time, thinking about all that this information implied.

  Thurley had identified the dead woman without hesitation when they found her: Margarethe Muller, Muller’s sister and assistant.

  It was possible that Thurley had been lying, but Lenox didn’t think so. His reaction had been immediate, genuine.

  That meant Muller had introduced the woman to the theater manager, and presumably everybody else, as Margarethe Muller. Which, in turn, meant, that the woman calling herself by that name in Paris might well be an impersonator—or that the dead woman had been an impersonator. One or the other.

  After pondering this in silence for a long time, Lenox suddenly sprang up out of his chair. Writing rapidly, he drafted a telegram to Dallington.

  Must remain here for now STOP but was Muller married STOP if so possible mistress traveling under sister’s name STOP please keep apprised STOP Lenox

  No sooner had he given that slip of paper to a footman with instructions to hurry down to the village and send it, however, than he had another thought. This one hit him even harder, with all the force of a revelation.

  In his excitement he grabbed another servant and had him stand there and wait as he wrote.

  And if lover then MULLER HIMSELF must be suspect STOP but how did he learn of chandelier STOP and why STOP push hard on Greville and Thurley STOP wine glasses STOP

  Lenox sent this missive off—not much more coherent than Dallington’s—and after he had watched it go stood stock-still in the front hall, thinking for many minutes on end.

  As he stood there, he was wholly in London, wholly bent upon the problem of Muller’s disappearance. Had he cracked it? A certain race in his pulse and his thoughts told him he had gotten a step closer to the truth, anyway. A lovers’ quarrel. It made sense. If Muller was married—and Lenox strained to recall whether the newspapers had said he was, but couldn’t—then his mistress might easily have traveled with him, and been more plausibly explained as a sister than a secretary or friend.

  He would have gone on thinking about Muller for a great deal longer, if at that moment Edmund had not come in with a handsome brindle pointer. “Hello, Charles,” he said.

  “Hello, Edmund. How are you?”

  “Oh, well enough. This is Toby, your scenting dog.”

  Lenox looked at his brother and smiled a smile of forced cheer. “Let’s take him out, then. Do you have your walking boots on? Good, because the Lord knows what will happen to our horses this time.”

  They had to ride very slowly. For a moment Lenox had thought that Edmund would decline to accompany him, but after a beat he had agreed, and now, having given Toby the flannel from the spaniel’s neck, they followed him together at a walk, now and then a trot. Occasionally they would exchange a few desultory words. Only when Lenox described Hadley’s disappearance did Edmund become engaged.

  “My goodness. Did you tell Clavering?” he asked.

  “I passed the word by Bunce, and I wired the head office of the Dover Assurance to ask what news they had of Hadley’s whereabouts.”

  Edmund shook his head. “It doesn’t look good.”

  Lenox squinted into the sun. “I know. And yet … well, it’s simply odd, that’s all. Why is his disappearance so different than the attack on Stevens? I mean to say, Stevens is confronted and stabbed, Hadley tormented for weeks and then kidnapped? Isn’t it odd?”

  “It is. Is it possible that Hadley himself attacked Stevens, though?”

  “Yes, and what if Stevens was the tormenter! I thought of that, but then—why would Hadley have come to us, if he knew what was afoot, and that he planned to confront Stevens? His puzzlement seemed completely genuine. And then, even more baffling, why would he draw our attention to him by leaving directly after the attack?”

  “Yes, true.”

  Lenox looked at his pocket watch. It was just before one o’clock. “At this moment, the Queen is either in my house or not in my house,” he said.

  “I don’t want to puncture your amour propre,” Edmund replied, “but that’s true of my house, too.”

  Lenox smiled. “I wonder whether she went, that’s all.”

  “Will Jane wire to tell you?”

  “Hm. Only in the event of a nonappearance, I would wager. We shall see.”

  Toby ran along ahead of them, nose importantly to the ground, tail high in the air. They were again walking the perimeter of the village, on the logic that Stevens’s attacker, if it was the same person who had been in the gamekeeper’s cottage, must have needed a new place to stay until at least Tuesday, the day of the assault.

  After a mile or so, they spotted another horse, and as it came closer, Lenox saw that atop it was George Atherton, one of Edmund’s closest friends here. Atherton hailed them from a few hundred yards and rode their way, pulling his horse up short from its canter when he reached them, a trim, healthy animal, black all over but for its white socks. Toby smelled its legs and then dismissed it from his mind, coming to take a piece of dried duck from Edmund, then sitting and waiting at his command.

  “I call this lucky—I was just riding over to see you, Ed!” said Atherton. He was a large, extremely good-natured fellow, country through and through, bluff, with an easy laugh and his blond hair held back in a clip, in the fashion of the last century. His chief passion in life was farming. He had chaffed Lenox since they were boys, and as a result Lenox had never been as fond of him as Edmund was. “Is that Cigar? What’s all this I hear about you selling him to the glue factory for a shilling a pound?”

  Edmund shook his head. “He was stolen. You remember Charles, obviously?”

  “Of course! How d’you do, Charles? Sti
ll scared of roosters?”

  “Not for thirty-five years or so. Are you still wet from falling in Sturton Pond?”

  Atherton bellowed with laughter at that, and then called Charles a good’un. After that he asked what they were doing, and when he learned they were scenting, offered to come along.

  Lenox was irritated when his brother agreed—it would slow them down—but as time passed, and Atherton chatted away without a care, Lenox realized that Edmund was smiling. More than that, it emerged, from one or two stray comments, that Atherton had been a regular visitor at Lenox House whenever Edmund had been here, and learning that, Lenox felt himself warm to the man. He even put in his joke about Bill Stickers being innocent—and was rewarded with another of Atherton’s infectious guffaws.

  It was when they were three-quarters of the way around the village that Toby picked up a scent. They were near a rutted cart path, and all at once all the muscles in the dog’s body came alive. His pace increased, and he quivered and whined, his nose so close to the ground that he bumped it every few inches. Lenox offered him the flannel again to be sure, and Toby barked impatiently and increased his pace.

  To Lenox’s surprise, the dog led them not out into the countryside but toward the village of Markethouse itself.

  Soon there was an air of great suspense among the three men, urgency. They were silent—even Atherton, unless you counted one occasion when he muttered that he’d never seen a dog so full of hell and pepper—and watched Toby intently as they followed him.

  Presently they came to the head of Bell Street. “Shall we leave our horses here?” asked Edmund.

  “Fool me once,” said Lenox.

  So they rode in a crowd, almost as wide across as the street.

  Toby, on the scent, was possessed—he would break into sprints now and then, and never faltered, turning right onto Markham Lane, left onto Pilling Street, left again onto Abbot Street. The few people about looked at them oddly, including half a dozen women from their windows. This was a quiet, working part of Markethouse, extremely tidy and well kept. In Abbot Street a chicken waddled indignantly beyond Toby’s path, though the dog ignored it completely.