A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Fortified by their hearty supper, Lenox went downstairs in slightly higher spirits to see Frederick. The older man was standing by his telescope, glass of wine in hand.

“Ah, Charles,” he said when the door opened, not turning. “Put your eye here. Remarkably clear out.”

Lenox looked. “Beautiful,” he said. The stars, isolate and furious in the black of the night, were spread in a pattern unfamiliar to him. “What am I seeing?”

“Did you know that the Chinese — well, of course they wouldn’t have the constellations the Greeks set out, the bears, the dippers, Orion, would they? I’d never thought of it before. Instead they have what they call the Twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon, I learned recently. Really rather interesting. At the moment you’re looking at the White Tiger of the West. More specifically its neck, or at any rate what they call its neck.”

“I can’t claim to see the resemblance.”

“No, and the Black Tortoise of the North is less like a tortoise than anything I ever gazed upon. With a little imagination the Vermilion Bird of the South comes good, however.” Freddie chuckled. “The Chinese. Funny to think of them, for the last few thousand years, seeing the stars we see, but spotting such different things there.”

“They saw animals, too.”

“Yes. I wonder whether that means it’s a human need, the fact we all see animals in the sky.”

“Or a human superstition.” Lenox paused. “How were Weston’s people, then?”

“He was well loved. What have you and Oates discovered?”

Lenox described, in brief, the series of interviews he had conducted. Frederick laughed at the encounter with Carmody. “I’ve always had half a mind to go meet these boys of Covent Garden, next time I’m at the flower show,” he said. “I wonder if they’ve ever heard of him at all.”

“Nonetheless his story is suggestive.”

“Then you think it was outsiders who committed this terrible crime?”

“I can’t imagine it likely that Carmody should take that route so often, two or three times a week, without great incident, and then on the night a lad is murdered on the town green, happen by sheer coincidence to find two abandoned horses to be standing in his way.”

“It is a danger to confuse correlation with causation.”

“Just so, and I don’t rule out that it might be randomness at work. Especially because the motivation of these two horsemen is obscure to me. Why would they want to kill Weston? And what does it have to do with these petty crimes in the town?”

“I’m wholeheartedly glad you’re here,” said Frederick. “Though I fear it will do your speech little good, to investigate this crime.”

“No matter.” Lenox found that he meant this: Compared to the visceral urgency of the case, the noble, papery pursuits of Parliament seemed insignificant. He couldn’t deceive himself that it was otherwise. “Tell me, Freddie, do you think Jane and Sophia should go?”

“To London? I think they’ll be safe in the house and the gardens.”

“Perhaps a word with your staff—”

“Nash has already spoken to them. All the verticals are to be on the lookout while they work, and the gates and doors are to be triple-checked by the horizontals.”

The outdoor staff had vertical stripes on their waistcoats, the indoor staff horizontal ones. “That puts my mind at ease,” said Lenox.

“What is your next course of action?”

“I mean to have a word with that man Musgrave. After that … well, I would like to see Mr. Weston’s charwoman.”

“Mrs. Simmons? I dropped in on her this evening, the poor soul.”

That was Frederick Ponsonby: quiet, in his way, but full of surprising knowledge and of deep consideration for others. Lenox felt a burst of love for him, not unmingled with a burst of love for his mother, who shared those two qualities. “How did she seem?”

“Devastated. I think she mothered him. His own mother is dead.”

“So I learned. Did you ask Mrs. Simmons if she knew anything, had seen anything?”

“Gently, yes. She kept repeating that Weston was in a very high mood yesterday afternoon — very excitable.”

“I wonder why.”

“She didn’t know. It may be nothing. It’s all the information she had, anyhow, though of course you have a better idea of how to speak to people when — in circumstances like these.”

“Yes.”

“Speaking of poor souls, by the by, you’ve provided me with a new houseguest?”

Lenox smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry for that, I am.”

“I suppose it’s all right. Can I ask—”

Lenox set forth, then, with straightforward honesty, Dallington’s character and history. His cousin listened carefully, his stare growing hard. Lenox rather trailed off. “If you wouldn’t mind, for a day or two …”

Frederick was kind, but he had the sharpness and shortness of a squire about him, too, on occasion. “Damned nuisance,” he said.

“I know it.”

“You’re coming it a bit high, filling my house with the dregs of every London gin house.”

“I can only apologize.”

“Ah, well.” Freddie showed the hint of a smile. “We can always set ’im to gardening, I suppose. Rodgers would like that.”

Lenox’s next stop was to see Dallington himself. The young man had sent him a note earlier in the evening, rather formal in tone, requesting a moment of his time. Lenox was in no hurry to see Dallington — still felt too vexed by the lad’s behavior, and its timing — but he decided it was best not to spoil his sleep by putting the meeting off till morning.

As if by way of censure Frederick had chucked the boy into the house’s least comfortable rooms. These belonged to an airless warren built many centuries before, when glass was a dear commodity, and were generally only just less warm than Hades. No question of a draught, anyhow. The ceilings, ancient and wooden, were the perfect height for even a small man to bang his head at every lintel. The fireplaces smoked.

Dallington sat up in an armchair, wrapped heavily in a dressing gown despite the heat of the room. His things had followed him down to Plumbley by the train — McConnell’s work, very likely — and he was reading from a novel, different perhaps in quality but not in kind of those beloved by young Weston, about an orphan who is discovered to be a countess.

“Hello, John,” said Lenox.

“Charles, how can I—”

“Are you quite comfortable?”

“Yes, very.”

“You’ve eaten?”

“Yes.”

“And has Dr. Eastwood visited you?”

“Not yet, but I know my constitution well enough. There’s no grave danger to my health at present.”

“Very well. I shall bid you good evening, in that case, and—”

“Oh, damn it, Charles, leave off the stern fathering. I’ve had it from everyone a day or more older than since I was in short pants.”

Lenox paused. “You’ve heard something of the case?”

The moral superiority in a conversation can shift very quickly. Dallington blanched, perhaps sensing that it had now. “Yes. May I help?”

“No, thank you. You heard of the timing of my trip to London, too, then?”

“You would scarcely have been on the town green at two in the morning if you weren’t in London, Charles,” said Dallington. Yet his voice was unpersuasive.

“It’s impossible to say where I might have been.”

“Come, now, I feel badly enough—”

“That is an easy way to feel after the fact.”

Dallington sighed, and set his book down. He took a sip from the glass of water on the table next to him, then leaned forward, face earnest. “I am in your debt, I know,” he said. “It was boredom, that was all. And seeing the wrong people at the wrong moment of boredom.”

“And the women?”

“Charles. Please, let me help with the case.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Lenox. “And now I must say good night.”

“Charles, I—”

“Good night.”