A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER TWELVE

Once, as a boy visiting Everley with his mother, Lenox had been scrubbed on his cheeks with soap and water, placed in a stiff collar and a blue coat, and fetched by the purposeful guidance of a junior footman into a wooden seat upon the town green. Alongside the young Lenox then had been his mother and a much younger Frederick. They watched in silence, among a crowd of some hundred or so people, as a man in a tall hat — later revealed to Lenox to be a bishop, that most awesome of creatures after the Queen — took to the church’s porch.

“Will Mr. Somers, M. A. Oxon, please rise!”

A tremulous young man, with a long, wet nose and thick eyeglasses, a book under his arm, had stood up from his seat at this request to join the bishop in front of the crowd. The great clergyman — his powerful brow knitted with solemnity, his gray and brown hair stiff against the wind — then led Somers to the door of the church, took him by his two wrists, and placed his hands against the door of the church.

“Now the living is his,” Lenox’s mother had said to him. She was a religious woman. “He will be a shepherd to these people, Charles. So goes the tradition.” Then, after a beat, she added in a whisper, “But did you ever see such a silly thing for grown men to do?” and laughed her light laugh.

As he walked the town green outside of Fripp’s, this was the memory that came back to him. He wondered if the man was still there, or if he had moved on to grander things. Funny that he remembered that name, Somers, when so many of the details he had once known about for more important matters had been sifted away from his mind into oblivion.

The office of the police force of Plumbley was in a humble shingled building next to the church on the town green, two stories, with the upper floors occupied by the town clerk, its record-keeper, and its historical documents, and the lower by Oates and Weston, the men Lenox had come to see, and the single jail cell over which they presided.

He knocked at the door. A moment later it opened to reveal a very young, red-cheeked boy, his face still downy. He wore a constable’s uniform. As one got older it became harder to guess the ages of young people, Lenox had found, but this boy couldn’t be far past eighteen. “Yes?” he said.

“Mr. Weston, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Charles Lenox. I’m staying at Everley.”

“Oh?”

“I wonder if I might see Mr. Oates.”

“You—”

Weston’s opinion of whether Lenox might see Oates was irrelevant, because now a meaty hand had taken him by the shoulder and Oates himself was barging ahead. He was a very large man with a trim, sandy mustache, and a slow, honest, rather stupid face. “Mr. Lenox?” His voice was very deep.

Lenox extended his hand. “How do you do?”

“Honored to meet a member of Parliament, sir. We ain’t had one in Plumbley since the last election.”

“Is it Mr. Cortwright who sits for you here?”

This was a gentleman who had bought his seat in Parliament much as men might buy trinkets for their watch-chain. He came to sit on the benches, oh, once a year, perhaps. There was of course no mandatory attendance. “The same,” said Oates. “Last election he bought every man in town as much beer as they could drink, if they signed down to vote for him.”

“Ripping drunk we got, too,” said Weston, his face ardent with the memory of that wonderful day.

“Not true,” said Oates sternly. Behind the older constable’s back, however, Weston winked at Lenox. “Your uncle said as you might come in, Mr. Lenox. Used to be a detective, did you?”

“In a quiet way.”

“If you can answer for these broken windows and this church door I’ll thank you — but then I reckon you won’t be able to, no, not by a long shot. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve seen in a dozen summers on this job. What’s the point of it, I ask you?”

“I’m curious to hear the story in your own words.”

The quality of the average constable in the bucolic parts of England varied greatly. London itself had only had an official police presence for the last forty-odd years, since Sir Robert Peel had established the Metropolitan Police Force at Scotland Yard. (The members of the new troop had been called “bobbies” in honor of the founder’s forename.) It was only in the last ten years that, by law, every town in Great Britain had perforce to hire and pay someone specifically to impose the law.

Oates seemed a fair credit to the profession. There was perhaps no great enterprise in him, but then one could glimpse a certain rural doggedness in his character that might serve just as well for a provincial police constable as cleverness. His relation of the facts of the crimes — the broken windows, the paint on the church door — tallied exactly with Frederick’s tale, though he offered precious little in the way of new information. This out of the way, Lenox was free to ask a few questions.

“Tell me, has there been more crime than usual in Plumbley, over the summer?”

Oates shook his head. “No, sir, the normal quantity, or perhaps even rather less. But then, you can ask your uncle about that. He’s sitting in two days.”

“Is he, though?”

“Yes. Every Monday, in fact, because there’s often one or two cases of drunkenness after the weekend.”

Frederick, like the long succession of squires of Everley before him, was a magistrate. These men occupied an interesting place in the legal system of England; they were generally local lords or landowners, chosen for their family name rather than training or merit, and they differed vastly in their expertise and judicial temperament. All of the small crimes of Plumbley and its environs came before Frederick. If he felt a case was beyond his purview, for instance if it was unusually violent, he might send it up to the monthly petty session, which consisted of either one or two magistrates in a more formal setting, with more witnesses, or even the quarter session, for which all the justices of the peace in the county met four times a year. The great murders and robberies went to the Courts of Assizes, which ran circuit from London all over the country, and might only come into one’s jurisdiction once in a year. Yet it was the judgment of the magistrates that affected the most people. Juries had convicted ten thousand or so men in the past year, magistrates eighty thousand.

“Perhaps I’ll sit in with him,” said Lenox. “Have any of the crimes in the past months been unusual in their nature?”

“Not in particular,” said Oates. “Your garden variety, Mr. Lenox.” He gestured at Weston. “We had this one up for fighting over a lass. Fine example.”

Weston snorted. “As if I cared a buttercup for her.”

“She’s married now.”

“And very happy I’m sure I hope she’ll be.” Then the young man added, with a spice of rebelliousness, “Not that it will be easy, with that fool of a—”

“Enough there,” said Oates sharply.

“Do you have a list of the crimes other than the vandalisms?”

“We could knock one together if you gave us a day or so.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, Mr. Fripp and Mr. Wells — can you tell me what you think they have in common?”

The two constables looked at each other. Oates spoke. “They both own shops, less than ten houses apart from each other. We think it might be an attack on the shops of Plumbley.”

“But then how to account for the church door?”

“Well, precisely,” said Oates. “And the other shops untouched, too.”

“Both men have been in town a long time, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps they’re being menaced in the hopes that they will pay off their attackers,” said Lenox. “Are they the two richest shops?”

“Wells is doing all right—”

“Better than all right!” said Weston.

“But as for Fripp, I don’t think he puts much by. His house is paid for, but his tab is running at the Royal Oak, I know.”

“Is it long past due?”

“Not too far, and not for too much. You won’t find a motive there,” said Oates.

Lenox looked down at a slip of paper he had brought. “The Roman numeral on the church door. Twenty-two.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any thoughts about what it means?”

“We can’t make head nor tail of it,” said Oates.

“Do any of the street numbers in town go that high? Could it be a date, a time, a numbered gravestone? Who knows Latin, or would be likely to use it? What if it’s not a number? Could it be a message, ‘two down, two to go,’ that sort of thing?”

Weston had taken out a pencil and was writing. “Hadn’t thought of those questions,” he muttered.

“I’ll look at whatever possibilities I can,” said Lenox. “Meanwhile, Captain Musgrave. Where does he enter into it?”

Both of the constables’ faces darkened. “We’re keeping an eye on him,” said Oates. “A very close eye.”

“Only because he’s new in town? And because he has a black dog?”

“If you meet him you’ll see why folk’re suspicious, Mr. Lenox, sir.”

“That woman is in trouble,” said Weston sadly.

“Catherine Scales?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Nobody’s seen her, have they?”

A troubling thought struck Lenox. “Are you sure she’s alive?”

Oates nodded. “Went up to check not ten days ago. She received us, after we fair insisted, but she didn’t look well. Weston’ll tell you.”

Weston had no trouble elaborating on this point — was shocked, most shocked to see the lady so pale — striking beautiful lady, too — damn shame.

“And if you had to assemble a narrative in your minds of what Musgrave is doing, what would it be?” Lenox asked.

“Causing trouble,” said Oates.

Weston nodded stoutly. “Causing trouble.”

Lenox held back a sigh. “Very well. Perhaps I’ll see the captain myself, if I can find the time. In the meanwhile let us hope that nothing further happens.”