A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

There was a distinguished and (locally) famous lady in Plumbley, who had lived there for many, many years, named Emily Jasper. She had been married when the century was still young to a barrister in Taunton, widowed at thirty, childless, and, betaken herself back to the village of her youth, where her sister and her sister’s husband and her sister’s seven children became the primary concern of her days. As she was much richer than they were she could take a pretty active hand in their lives, given certain inconsistently timed contributions to their budget, and the children had been schooled at her expense, while her brother-in-law, a painter of great talent and little enterprise, had been made to show the world his work, in London. Though it had brought him a small measure of fame he did not thank her for the headache it gave him — which was a gratifying state of affairs to Mrs. Jasper, because it made her both correct and inconvenient. She still wore black crepe.

Now ninety years old, she lived in the finest house on what villagers called the Hill. With her lived a niece named Lucy, who was certainly past thirty-five and had never married — but who, rather surprisingly, had a sweet and lovely temperament, a great deal of patience, in fact, true love for her aunt, and a talent at the piano that Lenox remembered vividly. The result of that schooling, perhaps.

It was Emily Jasper who was to be the guest of honor at the dinner party that evening — the trumped-up dinner party Lady Jane had devised. When Lenox arrived home, just after seeing Archer onto the train back to Bath, he recalled for the first time that day that the house had committed itself to such an event. He groaned.

“It’s hardly an auspicious time for it,” he said, “just when we—”

Lady Jane, away from her desk for once, came and kissed him on the cheek, one earring in, the other held between her middle finger and her thumb. “I heard, the maid told me! Congratulations, Charles. That evil Wells, would you believe it?”

“This dinner—”

“Does my hair look passable?”

“Lovely. But I say—”

“Dr. Eastwood will be here. And we have Mr. Marsham coming, too, of course.”

This was the vicar. “Nash had better lock the wine cupboard.”

“Charles!” she said, not at all scandalized. “Anyhow Miss Taylor is dressing. She even asked me what I thought of a gray dress, which I consider a positive sign, given that I usually skulk around her in fear.”

“Oh, she’s not so bad,” said Lenox. “Did you approve the gray?”

Lady Jane smiled. “I recommended something more vividly colored, if she had it. Charles, could you see her with young John?”

“Enough of that, please. Where is Kirk? I need my shirt pressed.”

They prepared for the party together, in the comfortable rhythm of a couple that by now had done so together many times. Lenox told her about Wells and the coining machine.

“Your uncle must be relieved.”

“He is primarily exhausted, I think. His strength is not what it once was.”

Jane stopped what she was doing. “Perhaps it’s not a bad idea, him moving into the village. A smaller house.”

“How can you say that?” he asked. “It would be such a loss — for the village, for you, for me, for Sophia. Not to have Freddie in Everley?”

“You did not say that it would be a loss for him.”

“Of course it would be!” he said, his voice rising with anger.

“You have the luxury of coming here when you like. He must manage a great estate all on his own, year-round. I can understand why he might want to leave that responsibility to his nephew.”

Now Lenox became positively vexed and she, usually so good-natured, said a word or two back to him — and the result was that when they finally went downstairs to the guests, they were thoroughly fallen out with each other. It happened rarely enough, though they had been married several years now. Still, Lenox remembered with a sort of resigned dread, this sort of argument often lasted a day or two when it finally arrived.

Dallington, despite his exertions of the day, seemed fresh; by contrast Frederick looked squinty and out of all sorts, and when he was addressed responded only with a few short words, occasionally even with silence. He needed a good night’s sleep, thought Lenox, and then perhaps a day or two of quiet recreation in his small study, with his books, his manuscript, his telescope, his evening wine. His routine.

For her part, Miss Taylor had dressed up very finely indeed. When she came into the drawing room the three men stood and bowed, all, to one degree or another, dazzled by the transformation that had come to her face simply from loosening her rather severe plaits of hair. She looked pretty now, less ascetic, softer. Her dress was a vibrant blue color, and cut slightly lower than they might have been used to in Somerset, though it would have been modest for London. She smiled graciously when Dallington offered her a glass of champagne.

The conversation at dinner was not, it must be observed in the hopes of maintaining the strictest honesty, very sparkling. Still, Lenox was genuinely glad to see Lucy — he had known her in other years — and sat next to her, laughing softly with her throughout dinner about the people in town that he had met and re-met in the past few days: Carmody, Fripp, the women on the church steps. Mr. Marsham told Dr. Eastwood a few hoary anecdotes from his days at Clare and Emily Jasper was content to be kept company by Lady Jane, being something of a snob. This left Dallington and the governess to talk, with occasional, now more spirited interjections from Freddie, who had recovered something of his color with a glass of wine.

Inevitably conversation turned general, however, when Wells’s name arose. Dr. Eastwood said, his face grave, that he thought it was a very bad thing for Plumbley, whose name now would be bandied around the county, possibly even the country. “Such associations tend to linger,” he said.

“I am an old woman,” said Emily Jasper — a statement that it would have been impossible to contradict—“but I cannot see why he was not apprehended sooner.”

“He was concealing his activities, Aunt Emily,” said Lucy, voice gentle. “I think it was very clever of Mr. Oates, Mr. Ponsonby, and Mr. Lenox to catch him.”

“Hm! I like that. Did he think of us at all?”

“I doubt it, ma’am,” said Dr. Eastwood, and Lucy laughed.

By the time dessert was being served Lenox had to stifle a yawn every thirty seconds or thereabouts. Coffee perked him up, however, and when the men withdrew to smoke, he was alert enough to pull Dr. Eastwood to the side.

Lenox glanced over at Dallington, Marsham, and Frederick, who were discussing cigars, though the young detective, with his usual keenness of perception, plainly had an ear bent toward this conversation. “Did you receive the parcel I sent you this morning?”

“I did. I didn’t mention it before supper because you’ve caught—”

“I’m still very much curious.”

“Unfortunately I cannot say what the powder is. I have a friend in Liverpool, from my days at St. Bart’s, who might be able to help. I can tell you it is nothing in the ordinary way, not flour, not sugar, not arrowroot. I did one or two basic catalytic reactions to determine that much.”

“Could it be poison?”

“Yes, I suppose it could. Would you like me to send it to Liverpool?”

“Thank you, no, I have a friend in London who is already looking into it.”

“Please tell me what he finds.”

“I shall, of course,” said Lenox.

The men and women reassembled soon therafter and heard Lucy play, ate walnuts and apples from a silver tray, and drank port. At eleven, finally — too early for some, including the indomitable Emily Jasper, too late for others, including Lenox, whose entire determination it took to keep his eyes open — the party broke up.

It had been another surpassingly long day, and Lenox felt he might sleep without any trouble until the same time the next evening. He gave word that he didn’t need to be awakened at any particular hour.

Soon he and his wife were alone in their room again, and he could let himself give way to exhaustion. He loosened his tie and slumped into a soft armchair by their window.

Throughout the evening Jane had been affectionate with him, but now, alone again, she was silent, undoing her hair and removing her jewelry.

He granted her the right to silence, not doubting that he had been too harsh in his speech before supper.

At least he spoke, trying to make her smile by teasing her. “I would not call it your most successful party.” She didn’t respond, and so after another moment he added, “But did you see Dallington speak to Miss Taylor?”

Here was bait she could not help taking, though she knew it was offered for precisely that reason. “They were barely apart for the last hour of the evening,” she said. “So there, Charles Lenox.”

“Freddie was on the couch with them, dear.”

“Mark my words, it will be the making of him, to marry that young woman. She has a great spirit.”

“There we agree.”

They were quiet again for five or ten minutes after this, Lenox at his desk very casually looking over his speech, Lady Jane finishing a letter to her brother, in Sussex, that she intended to send in the morning. Yet their interchange had left them feeling more inclined to softness with each other, and when Lenox apologized she circled his neck with her arms and said that she, too, was sorry — and so they made it up.