A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The shock was over quickly; it couldn’t have been plainer what had happened. Dallington said it. “He wanted all the money for himself.”

“And Oates was in no condition for conspiracy, with his drinking and his chatter,” added Frederick. “Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, he travels fastest who travels alone.”

Lenox shook his head. “Poor soul. It is probably for the best, after all. He was ill-conditioned to live with a bad conscience.”

Indeed, what had been the point of all this? It was hard to imagine a life more comfortable than Oates’s; he lacked a wife but he had friends and family, a decent job of good work. Men like Wells, men of ambition, Lenox could understand their turning to crime. But Oates?

He went upstairs with a heavy heart, and knocked on the door to make sure he wasn’t interrupting Jane. “It’s Charles,” he said.

He heard her lovely voice. “Imagine you knocking, Charles! Come in! I have just been to see Sophia, she is blooming — has no idea what kind of day her father had. You could not call her very interested in the affairs of others yet. I’m afraid in fact that she’s rather a narcissist.”

Lenox laughed and they met halfway across the room, where she leaned up to kiss him. “As we rode home I was thinking how sad it shall be when we can no longer spend as much time with her. Or when I cannot, in plain truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“A mother always has a place in a nursery, but I don’t believe I know a father who sees much of his children, at any rate not for longer than an hour in the evenings. That was as much as Ed and I saw of our father, though we loved him more than the world. Every day that she gets older I feel as if I am coming to the end of a wonderful voyage.”

“She’s only a few months old, Charles.”

“You’re right. There’s time yet.”

She heard him, and leaned her head into his chest. “We can be any kind of parents we like,” she said, though both knew it was not precisely true.

“Yes. Perhaps I will make her have breakfast with me in the mornings, and convention be damned.”

She laughed. “I call that a fine plan, but how are you feeling, my dear? Come, sit with me, I can put my feet under your legs — they’re cold.”

“I’m tired, but fair enough otherwise. Oates though — I have not told you of Oates.”

He did, and she reacted with the same surprise, quickly trailed by comprehension, that the men had downstairs.

When Lenox had arrived home — covered in mud, with Chalmers’s blood still upon him, and in Lady Jane’s hand a telegram from the West Buckland constable that offered just enough information to scare her — his wife had been sitting by the pond outside the house, waiting to greet him in an uncontained flurry of grief and worry. She was a woman who seldom wanted for strength. When she had ascertained that he was alive she had ordered a bath for Lenox, had cleared the drawing room so that Eastwood could consult with Frederick, and had arranged for food and drink all around.

Once Lenox had rested for a while they sat together on this sofa for an hour or two, until at last she was satisfied that he was here — corporate, solid, unharmed — and then she had given him an embrace and sent him downstairs, to speak with Dallington and Frederick.

Now her worry was back, he could tell. “Are you quite unhappy?” he asked.

“I like it much better when you are sitting on the benches in the House, dozing off, without much more danger than crossing the street to bother you.” She paused. “Francine Hudson lost Jonathan last year, you know.”

“I remember.”

“She is still in black, of course. And their child only two.”

“I’m not a soldier in India, however, Jane. That is the flaw in your analogy, I have spotted it for you.”

She smiled weakly. “Very humorous, I’m sure.”

He took her in his arms. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said.

When he woke the next morning he was sore and sorrowful, but two pieces of good news greeted him when he went down to the dining room for breakfast.

Frederick was there — feeling very well, thank you, no the head is slightly sore but not too painful — and put down his gardening journal when Lenox entered. “Chalmers is well, according to your veterinarian. No fever. Eastwood is on his way over later today.”

“That is excellent.”

“And if you believe in good omens, here is one: Sadie has returned.”

Lenox was in the midst of lifting a piece of toast to his mouth, but it stopped in midair. “Sadie? Your horse?”

Frederick smiled. “The very one.”

“She must have been thirty miles away!”

“Apparently Wells loosed her. I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell her to a farmer, but he must have figured it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.”

“I’m amazed she made it back.”

“As was I. It is a small miracle. It’s a good thing she traveled under the cover of darkness, because certainly some unscrupulous traveler would have taken her up, if he had found her wandering loose upon the road during the day.”

“Of course — a fine animal,” said Lenox. He was unreasonably happy.

“The servants have rounded up every apple in Somerset and given it to her — she is an object of great wonder indeed. She shall lose her sweet tooth, I don’t doubt.”

“Any injuries?”

“A cut along one hock, incidental. Our own veterinarian is coming to look at her, but the boy, Chalmers’s assistant, Peters, says she could run today.”

“I won’t chance it,” said Lenox.

“No, better not.”

“What about the papers?”

“Eh?”

“Wells — has he made the papers?”

“Ah, that. Yes, I’m afraid he has.” Frederick pushed a copy of the Bath Herald across the table. “My name is out of it, thank God, though Oates is mentioned. Too early to know whether Fleet Street has gotten hold of the story.”

“I wonder where Wells is.”

Frederick shook his head. “He might have let Oates live, even if he took the money for himself.”

“Oates did not have much to live for.”

“But that was not Wells’s to determine.”

“What will you do today, Uncle? Rest, I hope?”

“Rest! No, I mean to have busier days now. Miss Taylor has still yet to see half of the gardens, and there is a correspondent — a most vexing correspondent, Charles — who writes me on the subject of the peony; facts all wrong. I mean to put across a good letter to him in Wiltshire, set him firmly in his place on the subject of compound leaves.”

Lenox planned to return to work upon his speech after breakfast. With a fluttering in his stomach he realized that it was now rather close, less than a week. A packed House of Commons.

These plans were upset by a succession of visitors. First there was Lucy, good-hearted niece of the redoubtable Emily Jasper, who had come to console Frederick for his ordeal. The squire, however, was on fire to write his letter to Wiltshire, so it was Lenox who entertained her, their easy rapport passing thirty minutes in what seemed like five, covering those eternal village subjects: the vicar; the vicar’s wife; the town drunk; the old days. He extended her an invitation to London and was pleased when she said she would take him up on it. They had been friends in years past, and he always liked to pick up such strings again.

As she was leaving Dr. Eastwood came in. She curtsied to him, he bowed gravely, and then inquired, when she was gone, whether he might see Frederick.

“By all means, though he seems in the pink of health. Might his head injury have changed his personality?”

Eastwood laughed. “It is not likely. It was a soft blow, though I admit he has come up under it strong, very strong indeed.”

Lenox lingered in the hallway reading Cornhill after Eastwood had gone to Frederick’s study, waiting for the doctor to come out. As he was waiting the third and fourth visitors arrived. The bell rang and Lenox, being nearby, went to the door, but found that Nash had hurried, indeed rather pushed, beyond him, giving a soft exasperated sigh at Lenox’s infringement upon his rightful terrain.

Nash stepped backward to admit the visitors. “Mr.—”

He needn’t have said a word, though, for Lenox could have spotted the two gentlemen from a Somerset mile off. “Edmund! And Graham! What on earth are you two doing here!”

Edmund laughed, taking off his hat, handing over his cane and cloak to the butler. “The cavalry has arrived, Charles. We cannot have you getting knocked on the head and missing out on your speech and going into pistol fights with bit fakers. It won’t do. And Graham has been pining to see the text you’ve drafted; he won’t stop complaining.”

One look at Graham’s silent, smiling face showed that there was some truth in this. Lenox shook his hand, thrilled to see his old butler, now his political secretary — indeed one of the savviest political secretaries in the Commons, despite the handicap of his birth, as most such jobs went to recent graduates of the great public schools, sometimes even one of the two universities.

“It’s true,” he said, “I am desperate to see it, after the prime minister himself stopped me in the halls yesterday to ask about your progress.”