A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The two men split apart now, Carmody for his evening walk — though he seemed apprehensive about venturing anywhere too far out of town, and said he would avoid the wood — and Lenox back to the town green.

Dallington, standing on the church steps, hailed him. “Charles!”

“How are you?”

“Well enough. More important, how was your errand?”

Lenox nodded slightly, his face grim. “I think the facts are settled in my mind. I shall wait until the morning — until this has died down — to make the arrest. First I must go to one of the public houses and have a quiet word with a man, as a final verification. Perhaps you and Freddie might come with me, and I shall explain.”

Freddie was speaking in consoling tones to a group of woman who were standing in front of the police station. When he saw Lenox, he asked, “Do you need to see the constable’s hat, the rock, Charles?”

The detective shook his head. “No, at least not at the moment. As long as Oates has retained it as evidence.”

“It is in the station’s safe.”

“Will you come along to the Royal Oak for a few moments? I should like you to point out Weston’s friends to me. We are close to the end.”

Frederick looked hopeful. “You have it?”

“I think I may,” said Lenox. “It is a pitiful reason to waste a life, if I am correct.”

They trudged across the village green toward the King’s Arms, a dark, low-slung Tudor pub without much cheer to it, full of quiet voices and lit only by a few swinging candles. The cider was reckoned to be some of the best in Somerset, however. Lenox ordered three pints of it at the bar.

“Which of these is Weston’s friend?” he asked Frederick.

“Several by the back wall there, that young man, for instance, Michael Robe. Then there’s Edward Carfax, just next to him, holding the glass of shandy.”

“Which one can keep a secret?”

“Carfax, I would say.”

“I’m going to ask the publican for a private room. If you could bring Mr. Carfax back to see me, I would be grateful.”

Soon it was done, and in a few, low words, sealed with a promise of silence, the young man confirmed Lenox’s suspicions.

Dallington and Frederick came in again when Carfax had left. “Well?” asked the old squire.

“Could you have a constable here from Bath, in the morning?” asked Lenox.

“Very easily, yes.”

“And could you write up a search warrant?”

“Again, very easily, yes.”

“Then I will ask you to do those two things — and for a modicum of patience with me. Tomorrow when the policeman from Bath arrives it shall all be clear.”

Dallington objected. “Come, you must tell us now.”

“No. I think my uncle would want to make an arrest, Oates is agitated, it is late, we have need of support, of a search warrant … and then there are a few final details I would like to ponder before I lay out the entire case before you.”

“But—”

Frederick put a hand on Dallington’s shoulder. “Come, we must permit him his methods. Charles, can I tell Oates when to meet us?”

“I would prefer if you did not. The murderer must not think himself closed-in upon.”

“Is it not Musgrave, then?” said Dallington.

“I have my suspicions of him, perhaps, but let it wait until the morning.”

They went back to Everley, then, the hour not much before midnight. It had been one of the longest days Lenox could remember.

Jane was still sitting up, however, a pair of lamps upon her desk, her head bent low over it.

“Still writing?” Lenox asked as he came in.

She turned. “Charles! You’ve been gone for ages, you poor soul. Did you ever eat?”

“Come to think of it, I did not.”

“Let me call for something.”

She moved to ring the bell-rope, hanging in the corner of their sitting room. “No, no!” he said. “I’ll have a ginger biscuit and wait for breakfast. In truth I am out of my appetite.”

“Is it your speech?”

“No — this murder.”

“Come, sit and tell me all of it.”

She beckoned him to a small, comfortable sofa near the window. The whole western gardens of Everley were visible under the moonlight: their precise graveled geometries, their intricate plantings and effloresences, their trimmed trees, all of Rodgers’s and Ponsonby’s many hours of mutual work. As Lenox gazed upon it he thought at once of how frivolous these country-house gardens could seem and how noble, what an achievement of man.

The tin of ginger biscuits (a present from Toto) was opened and raided, a glass of Madeira poured from a half-full bottle upon a side table, and soon Lenox felt less like a wraith, more wholly human.

He explained the entire sequence of events, as he saw them, to Jane.

“It is a gamble to go in blind, tomorrow,” he said. “If the machine is not there I shall feel very foolish indeed. Yet all of the arrows — Weston’s note, Fontaine’s actions, the vandalisms — they seem to point in one direction, do they not?”

Lady Jane, for her part, had no doubts that he was correct. Her legs were tucked under her, her hands on his shoulder as she gazed at him. “Of course they do,” she said. “And I think you’re brilliant.”

He laughed. “If I could just thank you to get that statement notarized, then I might show it to you the next time we need to settle a debate about the color of the carpet in my library.”

“I said that you were brilliant, not that you were in full possession of your eyesight.”

“Very funny.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Now tell me — what have you been working on, so assiduously? Is it for the charity ball in December?”

“Have you noticed that?”

“It would have been difficult to miss it.”

She smiled. “I’ve had my head down, it’s true. I’ll tell you why in a day or two.”

“It’s too late to peer in on Sophia, I suppose?” he said.

“Far too late. Not fair on the governess, either. Incidentally, you can still sit for supper tomorrow evening?”

“Barring a catastrophe.”

“Don’t speak like that,” she said, frowning. “I don’t like it.”

Though he ought to have been mortally tired, he found that when it came time to go to sleep he was more awake, more alert than he would have expected. It was often this way at the end of a case. Small details returned to him. Then thoughts about his speech. Then distant memories of Frederick, of his mother, of Everley …

Just after the great mahogany clock downstairs tolled one o’clock in the morning he realized that he was not likely to fall asleep soon. He got up and with soft footsteps made his way to the kitchen, a place to which he had made many unlicensed late-night visits in his early years of life, and made himself a pot of tea.

This, along with a few more ginger biscuits, he set on his desk, then lit a soft light, sat down, and set to work on his speech. It came to him effortlessly. Almost as if in a dream he filled line after line, sheet after sheet, pausing only for sips of the hot, then lukewarm, and finally cold tea, deaf and blind to the world around him.

By half past two he had written nearly the entire thing. With a contented exhalation he put down his pen and returned to bed, where he fell asleep instantly.