A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Perhaps you could begin by telling me something about yourself,” said Lenox.

Musgrave shrugged. “There is little enough to tell. I was born to two excellent parents in Bath, who purchased me a commission in the Tenth Regiment of Foot when I was still in an Eton jacket. I took up my commission some twelve years ago, and sold it out in 1870, just before it looked like being worthless.”

Parliament had decreed the year after that, in ’seventy-one, that men could no longer buy or sell their way into military office. “And subsequently settled here?”

“My wife is of a delicate constitution and wished to live near her childhood home.”

“You met in Bath.”

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“Are your parents there?”

“They are both deceased.”

“And how have you found Plumbley?”

“It is not to my taste, I confess to you.”

“But you stay?”

Musgrave was silent. “You may see that plainly enough for yourself, yes.”

“You do not find the people of the town congenial?”

“I never met a more tired social circuit in my life, and — excepting your relation, I mean,” said Musgrave, realizing his solecism. “I have not had the pleasure of much of his acquaintance but he seems a capital fellow.”

“And the shopkeepers, the men and women in church?”

“Am I expected to take notice of them?”

“What did you make of the vandalisms?”

Musgrave smiled maliciously. “Foolish superstitions of a foolish village.”

“Then you do not ascribe to them any connection with Mr. Weston’s death?”

“I had not thought of it.”

“It has been noted in the village that you have a black dog, of course.”

“I wonder whether there are ten thousand black dogs in the county? More, very likely. No, it is because I am new here that people do not like me. Have you noticed, Mr. Lenox, the intense moral pressure that a village feels it has the right to bring to bear upon any of its members? That is why I take joy in their panic over these childish symbols in the windows. It serves them right, the yattering halfwits.”

Lenox — who felt fairly confident he had a sense of the captain’s character now — said, “Let us turn, then, to the evening of Mr. Weston’s murder. The accounts we have received place you upon the town green at half past eleven. Is that accurate?”

“It may be. I did not have a close eye upon my pocket-watch.”

“Did you cross the green at the beginning or at the end of your walk?”

“Both. I went to the Yew Walk. The town green lies between the walk and Church Lane.”

“And you would not care to venture a guess as to whether you were going out or returning, at half past eleven?”

“Returning, I should imagine.”

Lenox made a note in his mind — important not to introduce the formalizing element of the notebook, just when they were talking so easily — to ask Carmody which way Musgrave had been walking, toward or away from Church Lane.

The dog was an alibi of sorts.

“Was your wife with you?”

“No. She would have been retired for several hours by then.”

“Is it a custom of yours, to walk at that time?”

“There is no specific time of day when I walk him.” He gestured toward the dog. “When the fancy takes us.”

“What is he called?”

“Cincinnatus. Cincy, inevitably.”

Lenox nodded. “I have my dogs with me, from London. They prefer the country air.”

“He has never known anything else.”

“Did you see anyone while you were walking the dog, Captain Musgrave?”

“One or two people, yes.”

“Did you know them?”

“I saw Mr. Fripp. Mrs. Tolliver, a widow who lives in Gold Street. One or two others, to nod to. In London of course I wouldn’t know them, but in a small village, you see, these civilities …”

“Were any of the people you saw behaving suspiciously?”

Captain Musgrave pondered this quickly, then said, “No.”

Lenox thought of the clearing, the horses, the bottle of ale. “Did you recognize all of them?”

“Yes. By face, even if I couldn’t place their names.” A footman came in from the hall, to pour more coffee. “Not now,” Musgrave said sharply.

The footman blanched, his visage transformed by fear, and quickly withdrew. Ten minutes of conversation with him might be valuable. Or with any of the servants. They still hadn’t spoken about Musgrave’s wife.

Almost as if by prearrangement, at that moment a piercing scream went up in a far corner of the house. It was a woman’s voice.

Musgrave stared steadfastly ahead, pretending not to have heard it. Good manners dictated that Lenox do the same, but his investigative instincts did not, and he made a point always to sacrifice the former for the latter when they came into conflict.

“It is impolite, but necessary, to ask whether that was your wife, Captain.”

“There is no other woman in the house.”

“She does not keep a lady’s maid?”

“No.”

That was unusual. Perhaps it was to keep her isolated. “I understand that she has not been well?”

“She is receiving excellent care.”

“From Dr. Eastwood?”

“From a doctor who comes from Bath. None of these countrified barbers when it comes to the health of my wife.”

“May I see her?” Lenox asked.

“Certainly not.”

“If I were to return with Constable Oates, he—”

“Was she seen upon the town green? Is she a suspect?”

“No.”

Musgrave’s face was dangerously composed. “In that case, nothing short of legal compulsion shall grant you an audience with her.”

Lenox had asked the questions he wished to ask. Now he risked a gambit of the kind that Scotland Yard might approve. “You keep her a prisoner, from what I understand?”

Musgrave stood up, his rage near to overflowing. “You should be ashamed to repeat the lazy gossip of stupid women, Mr. Lenox. You will see yourself out.” He strode to the door, Cincinnatus on his heels — such a pompous name for a dog! — before turning back. He was shaking. “Would that it were a different age, that I might see you at dawn tomorrow with a pistol in hand,” he said, and then left the room.

Lenox, quite unperturbed — he had been glared at by men with a dozen murders to their credit, in gin mills east of the Isle of Dogs, so it was unlikely that Musgrave’s genteel ire would much frighten him — sat for some moments, considering the interview.

This man was certainly capable of violence. He had been in the military and he had a temper, but why would he have killed Weston? Were his answers, straightforward and occlusive at once, evidence of any larger concealment?

At length Lenox stood, pocketing a couple of the macaroons from the plate on the table, waved good-bye to the cherubim, and walked out.

There was a snarl of inconsequential, linking facts that he felt confident lay at the heart of the case. The question now was to order them for himself, if possible to add to them, and to reduce them, finally, to their common element. He was closing in, he knew. It vexed him that for the moment he could not see how, or if, Musgrave fit into it all.

Outside the rain had intensified and steadied, and he regretted not bringing an umbrella. He hunched further under his coat, lit a small cigar, and puffed it meditatively as he began the short walk back to town.