Home by Nightfall (6 page)

“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 question! 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.”

Hadley nodded but said, “Without intending any disrespect, Mr. Lenox—I think you are perhaps accustomed to the
Metropolitan
Police, which is of a very different order than our local police forces, here in the country. I deal with loss and fire and theft for a living, and you cannot imagine how hidebound, how immobile, how very contrary, a small village constable can be.”

Charles looked to his brother, hoping to appeal to him for a better account—but saw, to his surprise, that Edmund was nodding. “It is quite true. Clavering's a very good fellow, but not one of your cunning London sharps.”

“Indeed?” said Lenox. He thought for another moment. In truth, he was intrigued. The pale face, the drawing of the girl, the bottle of sherry. He turned to his brother. “Edmund, you know my days here are yours.”

Edmund nearly smiled. “In that case, I happily transfer ownership of them to Mr. Hadley, at least temporarily—and hope that he will accept mine as well, for I am exceedingly curious about what on earth all of this can mean. In Markethouse, too, as he says!”

“Very well,” said Lenox. “Mr. Hadley, I will take the case.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mrs. Watson, the charwoman, lived with a family of six in two rooms on Drury Street. This was one of the small lanes toward the western end of town, near Markethouse's only factory, which manufactured tallow. It was the poorest part of the village—there was an unpleasant smell from the factory at most hours, much worse in the summer—but it was still nothing like the poverty of London. Penned in front of most houses were a few chickens or a pig, and more often than not a small vegetable garden grew alongside them.

The charwoman was not at work in Hadley's more middle-class street, closer to the square, because one of her children was ill; Hadley had given her permission to take the day.

“It's only the second time it's happened these two years,” he'd told them in Edmund's breakfast room, speaking in a forgiving tone, and Lenox's ears had pricked up at that. Anything out of the ordinary was worth noting.

“Has she been behaving peculiarly at all, your Mrs. Watson?”

Hadley had furrowed his brow. “Mrs. Watson! Not at all. As reliable as the church bells, she is.”

Now they arrived at the house where she lived. The young boy who answered the door didn't look sick. “Do you want to buy a toad?” he asked.

“No,” said Edmund.

“What about two toads?”

“Can they do anything interesting?”

“They'll leap something tremendous,” he said, with fervent sincerity. “I can give you both for sixpence.”

“George!” cried a voice behind the boy, before they had the time to answer. It was Mrs. Watson, hurrying forward. “Gracious me, Mr. Hadley, how sorry I am—George, get out of the house this instant—with your brother ill, no less—go!”

The little boy ran off without looking back at them, and Mrs. Watson, though flummoxed by the appearance of her employer and two strangers who were obviously gentlemen, made a fair show of guiding them into her small, extremely warm kitchen. Another boy was lying in some straw in the corner, a long string bean of fifteen or so, his face waxy, his eyes fluttering. Mrs. Watson put a kettle on for them without being asked.

“Is he all right?” asked Edmund, frowning.

Mrs. Watson glanced down at the boy. “Him? He'll be well enough soon, I hope.”

“Should he see a doctor?” asked Edmund.

The charwoman looked at him for a moment, and then realized that her face must have betrayed how stupid the question was, because she said, “It's a very gracious thought, sir, but not just yet, I think.”

Only if the boy was actually dying, of course, Lenox realized, maybe not even then. “I know that Dr. Stallings would come visit if we asked him,” he said. “Edmund, why don't we send a note and ask him? It's not ten minutes' walk.”

“I call that a capital idea.”

So the note was written, and the boy next door enlisted to take it to Stallings, and they sat in the boiling hot kitchen, sipping flavorless boiling hot tea—and waited. Mrs. Watson, a rough, raw-faced, but kindly woman, was too polite to inquire why they had come, and the three men didn't wish to disturb the boy. At last, Lenox suggested they remove themselves to the next room for a moment.

Here they were able to interview the charwoman.

She offered an account that mirrored her master's: She had worked for him for two years, six days a week, Sundays to herself, cooking, cleaning, mending, sewing, shopping, no, the duties was not onerous, sir, yes, she was quite happy in her position. With these initials out of the way, Lenox was able to pose a few more probing questions.

“Can you cast your mind back to last Wednesday?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“What time did you leave Mr. Hadley's house?” he asked.

“At five o'clock,” she said. “Same as every day, sir.”

“When you left, was there anything chalked on the steps of the house?”

She shook her head, face firm. “No, sir. Absolutely not. I would have seen. I always sweep the steps, last thing, before I go.”

“Was the day unusual in any way?”

“None at all, sir.”

She had so far evinced no desire to know who they were, or why they were questioning her—apparently Hadley's presence was enough to vouchsafe them—but now Lenox said, “We're hoping to get to the bottom of this missing bottle of sherry.”

She quite mistook his tone—and perhaps felt herself worried that she would have to pay the bill of the doctor, who was known to travel in a coach led by a horse, too, and she flushed red and said, “I never took it! I swear it before Jesus Christ our savior himself!”

“Mrs. Watson, be calm, please,” Hadley said. “These gentlemen don't think you stole anything.”

“I didn't!” she said.

“I'm very sorry,” Lenox said. “I ought to have phrased it differently: We believe someone stole the sherry, not you, and hope that with your help we might find the person.”

“I didn't steal it.”

“We have no suspicion whatsoever that you did,” said Lenox, though from the corner of his eye he could see that Edmund did.

Ah, that was different, Mrs. Watson said; she would be only too happy to help. She poured more tea into Lenox's cup.

It was at this moment that the sound of hooves came clicking up the small street, and a moment later a small fly led by a single horse arrived at the door. Dr. Stallings dismounted from the conveyance. They waited for him in the doorway, and he inclined a deep bow toward Edmund.

“Sir Edmund,” he said. Then he turned to Charles. He was a round, very well dressed man, bald but for a fringe of hair around his ears, with half-moon spectacles. He gave Lenox a slightly shallower bow. “Mr. Lenox. I hope that the reports in town are correct, and I may be the first to congratulate you on your permanent return to the county. For your health, you could not have chosen more intelligently.”

“I'm only here for a visit,” Lenox said, but Stallings had already turned toward Hadley and was addressing him.

Mrs. Watson, driven to distraction by this accumulation of distinguished visitors (Had the physic said
Sir
Edmund? she muttered to herself, to herself but audible to all), spoke in a long, ceaseless, meaningless rattle, whose gist eventually shepherded the doctor into her overheated kitchen.

Lenox knew that Stallings was a fair physician. He radiated the complaisant good cheer of a man whom life had treated kindly—who hadn't missed a meal in many years, nor lost a bet, nor thrown a shoe, nor shed a tear.

The doctor approached the patient very gravely, sat in the chair next to him, and proceeded to make a considerable examination of him, as they all looked silently on: pulse; temperature; responsiveness of the eyes; examination of the gums; test of the reflexes; and much more beside.

At the end of his inspection, he patted the boy on the arm, stood up, turned toward the adults in the room, and said, in a loud, clear voice, “He's faking.”

“Faking?” said Edmund.

“Yes. Faking, shamming, putting it on. However you prefer to put it. He's in more or less perfect health. His most serious ailment at the moment is the castor oil I believe he may have swallowed. Was it as an emetic, young man? Well, never mind. I hope you have managed to avoid whatever you wished to avoid. I will wish you good day, Mrs. Watson … Mr. Hadley … Mr. Lenox … Sir Edmund.”

“Good day,” Edmund said. “The bill to me, mind you.”

“Of course, sir.”

Mrs. Watson, amidst these pleasantries, had shifted from confusion to incandescence—she was cuffing her son on the ear, dragging him up out of the straw, telling him how little he was good for, and how stupid he was, and that he had wasted the time of
four
gentlemen that day, and she had missed work for the first time in two years (she had apparently forgotten the first time, even if Hadley hadn't), and did he think money grew on primrose bushes. Gradually Lenox came to understand that the young man had been scheduled to return to the village school that day for the first time since spring. Unusual, rather, for a boy of fifteen and his class. He made a gentle comment to that effect. Mrs. Watson turned and proudly declaimed to him, Edmund, and Hadley—without any apparent concern for consistency—on the subject of her son's extreme brilliance, overwhelming cleverness, unsurpassable goodness.