A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER TEN

That mood was gone by the next morning. Lenox rode out early across the fields on a neat little chestnut hack that his uncle kept stabled at Everley, primarily for visitors, occasionally for himself. When the member for Stirrington fetched up to the hall after his ride he was happy, hot, and in a tearing hunger. He fell eagerly to the eggs and bacon laid out upon the sideboard.

“How is Sadie?” asked Frederick when he came into the breakfast room. “Chalmers was delighted to have her taken out. Wishes I did it more myself.”

“She was in very fine form, quick as a bee when she jumped the stiles. I must have ridden her eight miles and she was still fresh when we returned.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I can never give her enough exercise, though I let one of the lads from the village take her out on Saturdays. Would you like a cup of tea? Or is it coffee?”

“If there’s coffee—”

When he had had his two cups of coffee and read the Times back to front, and the local paper from Bath more cursorily, Lenox, quite satisfied with his morning, sought out his uncle again. For his part Frederick always took his own breakfast in his study, even when guests were there; he had spread out on a table beside his telescope a single egg in a silver cup, a crust of toast, a blot of marmalade, and a pewter cup full of dark red liquid.

“Oh, Charles,” he said, turning at the sound of the door. “Will you join me in a glass of hot negus? It settles the stomach wonderfully, I find.”

Lenox sat down. “Thank you, no. I thought we might resume our conversation of yesterday evening, if you remain so inclined?”

“By all means, yes.”

“My question was whom you might suspect, or indeed who it is that the town suspects. They must have someone in mind, mustn’t they?”

Frederick, who had been standing over his breakfast, occasionally peering into the lens of his telescope, sat down, too. “There we come to Captain Musgrave.”

“Who took Dr. McGrath’s house.”

“The very one, and in fact he has bought the parcel of wooded land that lies behind it from old Turnbridge and is planning to clear it. He’s rather rich, I believe.”

“He’s not from Plumbley?”

“Oh, no, he’s from Bath. Tenth Regiment of Foot. I don’t think anyone here saw him before six months ago.”

“Why does the village suspect him?”

Frederick pursed his mouth thoughtfully, considering how to answer. “I half wonder if it’s only because he’s new to these parts, yet I confess that I don’t like the set of his sails much, myself. He’s a very handsome man, light-haired, rather tan, very tall, and even his worst enemy would have to admit that his manners are fair.”

“How did he come to Plumbley?”

“He married one of our local girls, Catherine Scales. Do you remember her?”

“I do not.”

“No, I wouldn’t have thought you would, but she was a very beautiful child around the time you visited Everley most often, working for her mother in the dress shop, always about town, quite beloved — spoiled, you might say, by those who knew her. She has pale skin and black hair.”

“A dress shop? I take it their birth is unequal, then?”

“Yes.”

“How did that come to pass?”

“Catherine’s mother died two years ago. The girl had an aunt in Bath and went to live with her. This aunt had married well herself, to a manufacturer, and just managed to keep a carriage, could nod at some of the finer women in Bath in the streets — was always very hard on her sister when she visited Plumbley, I know, came it very grand. Anyhow she was childless and took an interest in Catherine when the girl’s mother died. Catherine met her husband when she spent the season in Bath. Of course, a military man will set his cap at anything, much less a girl of her beauty. I would reckon she won the captain without much difficulty, to be honest, handsome though he may be. Men are fools.”

“Nevertheless, I’m surprised that he consented to move here.”

“As was I. Stranger still has been their behavior since they arrived.”

“How is that?”

“Nobody has seen more than a glimpse of her for these six months, Charles.” Frederick looked grave. “If I hadn’t nodded hello to her at the church, a few weeks ago, as she was rushing away, I swear I would have feared there had been some foul play.”

“How strange.”

“Yes, it is. And it has given rise to tremendous gossip, of course.”

“What does the aunt say to it?”

“She trusts wholly in Captain Musgrave. I would venture that she stands rather in awe of him.”

“Is he much seen, any more than his wife?”

“No. He takes his custom in most things to Bath or to Taunton”—this was a larger town not far away—“and that alone would have made him unpopular, if people hadn’t decided that he was mistreating Catherine.”

“Yet you said he had good manners.”

“Manners; yes. Personally I didn’t see the incident.”

“Incident?”

Frederick rose and returned to the small table by the telescope, where he took a sip of his negus. “Before Catherine left Plumbley she was, of course, wooed by several gentlemen. One of these was Wells.”

“The grain merchant? Whose shop was vandalized?”

“The same.”

“And the incident?”

“Captain Musgrave and his wife were walking through town one afternoon and Mr. Wells approached them. Nobody quite heard their conversation — eyes in windowpanes, you see — until Musgrave’s voice rose. Said that if Wells was a gentleman he would call him out; that he expected him not to address Catherine Musgrave again; and that he would thank him to continue along his way. Then Musgrave grabbed his wife by the wrist — most cruelly if accounts are to be believed, though it’s possible that the myth has grown rather out of proportion to the event itself — and dragged her away. It was after that that we begin to see much less of her about Plumbley. Of course the timing may be coincidental.”

“What was Wells’s account of the matter?”

“He was very free about it in the Royal Oak — said he had merely been wishing them a good day, and was astonished at Musgrave’s reaction. Said a sort of black jealousy came over the man, though he had won his wife fair and square.”

Lenox waited, but his uncle didn’t say anything else. “And that is all?” the member of Parliament asked.

“Yes.”

“Nothing else on earth encourages people to attach Musgrave’s name to these acts of vandalism, then? I call it very thin, to think that a captain of the Tenth Regiment of Foot has been setting out about a small Somerset village with rocks and a bucket of paint to frighten the locals, simply because he may be unkind to his wife and has had words with one of her former suitors. Does that seem plausible to you?”

“Not phrased as such.”

“And what use could he have with a brass clock that might seem very fine to a grain merchant, but likely not to a gentleman?”

“None. You’re right.”

“If anything it sounds to me as if he wants privacy. Beyond that we know that he has no fear of speaking directly to Wells, which makes me wonder very sincerely why he would go to the wearisome effort of staying up half the night to break his windows.”

The older man frowned, hands clasped behind his back. “Yet there is something in the man’s air — well, perhaps you shall see, if you meet him. I fancy myself a judge of character, you know.”

“Yes,” said Lenox. “And it’s all damnably puzzling to be sure.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps I’ll have a word of conversation with Oates, the constable, after I drop in on Fripp.”

“You’ll find that he and Weston are very eager for help.”

“Where are they?”

Frederick gave Lenox instructions about where to find the small police station. “Tell them I sent you,” he said at last.

“I shall. And is there anything else I ought to know?”

“No. I don’t think so, anyhow.”

“Nothing about Musgrave?”

“No, I don’t— Oh! I quite forgot. I should have added that it is held against Musgrave in Plumbley — held as almost damning, I fear — that he is attended everywhere he goes by a large black dog.”