A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lenox had no real plan, now, except for a period of calm reflection — perhaps he would have lunch at one of the town’s public houses — but found himself walking in the direction of the village green.

Frederick was there, outside of Fripp’s shop. Honoring Lenox’s request, he had arranged for a further canvass of the houses that had a view of where the crime had taken place — there were men knocking on doors. It was obvious from his face, distracted and with a dissatisfied clench around the eyes, that his efforts thus far had been unavailing.

“Charles,” he said. “Oates is speaking to Carmody now.”

“Excellent. I have a question to add to his.”

“Was Musgrave a help?”

“I don’t know, yet. Have you turned up anything here?”

“Not yet. I spoke to Jones, at the Royal Oak, however, and asked him to direct any coach drivers who come along toward me, before they leave again.”

“Have there been any yet?”

“No, but there should be a flurry soon. I mean to have lunch there, so that I may catch them.”

“I was about to do the same — with regard to lunch, I mean.”

“Then we shall go together.”

A small, murmuring crowd had gathered on the steps of the church, Lenox noticed. He shot a quizzical look at Frederick.

“Gossip,” the older man said. “Nothing more.”

“Still, gossip may be useful.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to speak to them, and then to Carmody. Shall I see you in the Royal Oak in half an hour?”

“Half an hour,” Frederick responded with a nod.

Fripp was standing among the people on the church steps. As he walked toward them Lenox heard the name Musgrave spoken.

“How do you do, Mr. Fripp?” said Lenox.

“Charlie. Do you know these ladies, my boy?”

“I don’t.”

Fripp said a flurry of names, which Lenox immediately forgot. “What are you speaking about?” he asked.

“These women are afraid, unfrortunately,” said Fripp. “They feel—”

“Last night I locked my front door for the first time in fourteen years,” said a stout middle-aged woman, a child braced under each arm.

“Why did you lock it back then?” Lenox asked, curious.

“Rabid badger roaming the town,” the woman answered immediately.

There was a chorus of gratified concurrence at this recollection. Lenox just managed to stop himself from asking what the difference between a locked door and an unlocked door was to a badger. “You suspect Musgrave?”

All of them did, vocally. “Why would he want to harm Mr. Weston, though?” Lenox asked.

“Mischief-making,” said a woman, thin as a flagpole and with a great beak of a nose emerging from a tightly tied bonnet. “And what he’s done to that poor girl I shudder to think. As was Cat Scales, I mean.”

“His wife,” Lenox said.

“That’s her.”

Wells’s grain shop was very close by, and so after Lenox had doffed his hat he stopped in. The shop was empty, its fine bronze weights and barrels of grain awaiting their next customer. Wells himself stood behind the counter, jotting in a ledger. He looked up as the door opened.

“Mr. Lenox,” he said. “Have you found my clock yet?”

“Soon, I hope. I wanted a quick word.”

Wells laid his pencil down. “By all means.”

“I take it you saw nothing from the shop, late last night?”

Wells sighed and shook his head. “I was home several hours before Weston died. I dearly wish that I had been here.”

“You live …”

“Three streets south, on the corner of Maiden Lane. A large white house. My servants”—this word delivered with an inflection of pride—“can attest to my presence there yesterday evening. I was up rather late, past midnight, working on my books, and at least two of them stayed up with me, fetching drinks, managing the fire. They’ll tell you I never left my study.”

“Is anyone else in the village accustomed to passing time here in the evenings?”

Wells narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Perhaps the vicar,” he said. “Or his curate. They have keys to the church at any rate.”

Lenox paused, now, uncertain of how to ask what he wished to ask next. At last, he said, “Your incident with Captain Musgrave—”

“Yes?”

“Was it possible as you saw him to gather anything of Mrs. Musgrave’s mental state?”

Wells shrugged. “You might say as she seemed unhappy — but then with tales passing around the town like ’flu, it leads to an active imagination.”

“Confidentially, what have you heard of her mental state?”

“Nothing of her mental state. Only that she is unhappy — fearfully unhappy — and kept captive in that house.” Wells looked troubled, and Lenox remembered Frederick telling him that Wells had been one of Catherine Scales’s suitors, before she met Musgrave.

He wondered, as well, if he was duty bound to investigate that scream. Perhaps he would return with Oates.

For now, though, he bade Wells good day, lifted his hat to Fripp and the women on the church steps — still yattering away, to Musgrave’s bedevilment — and walked to Carmody’s. Carmody provided Lenox with a great deal of unasked-for information about the gentlemen in Covent Garden, as a sort of tax upon entering his home, before finally condescending to hear his question.

“Which way was Captain Musgrave walking when you saw him at eleven thirty — toward Yew Walk or home, toward Church Lane?”

“Toward Yew Walk,” said Carmody without hesitation.

So. It was not a lie, perhaps, but it was an infringement upon the truth. If his walk had been very long he might well have seen — spoken with — even murdered Weston on his way home.

“Did the bark of a dog ever wake you, that night?” Lenox asked.

“No,” said Carmody, “and I am a very light sleeper.”

“Thank you,” said Lenox. “Oates, I shall stop by the police station later today to speak with you.”

“Sir.”

He could feel that he was circling closer to the truth. His mind went to Dallington, who would perhaps return that evening with some account of Fontaine’s behavior. Might that prove the key?

He walked to the bar in a meditative disposition.

Frederick was sitting at a table in a private room upstairs in the Royal Oak. It was a friendly pub, full of highly polished brass and gleaming oak, with glasses and tankards hung above the bar and a worn sign that said DUCK OR MUTTON — the diners’ options, presumably — hung from two chains between a pair of bow windows, and swaying each time the front door was opened or closed.

They spoke for some time of the case but the facts, Lenox felt, were beginning to become stale to him, his energy growing inward and sterile.

“I think the solution will come to me more readily if we turn away from the subject,” he said.

The mutton had just arrived, ringed around with heaps of peas, potatoes, and smashed turnips. There was a bottle of claret on the sideboard. Frederick nodded. “Very sensible,” he said. “Occasionally when I have been too long at my desk, describing the properties of the Hyacinthus sylvestris or sketching a dried Spiræa ulmaria that I have picked — meadow-sweet, you would know it as, or meadow-queen — I can become rather muddled, and when I feel it, I immediately make the decision to go three or four days without once looking at or thinking of flowers. In general I spend the time off wandering about the house, finding things that need to be patched up or painted. Drives the servants mad, I’m afraid.”

Lenox took a sip of wine. He paused before he spoke. “Can you really be thinking of leaving Everley?” he asked. “Your gardens?”

Frederick, whose mood had been light only a moment before, scowled. “None of that, Charles.”

“I remember coming here with my mother, in ’fifty-four, and—”

“No, no reminiscing, either. I love Everley, and for that reason I must do my best by her.”

“The best she could have is your presence, Uncle Freddie.”

“Sentimental nonsense, Charles. There is no sense in resisting time, or change. Both will come to all men, whether they accede gracefully or kicking. I’m old, now, and let that be an end of it. There, eat some peas, you need a bit of greenery, you look tired.”