A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER FIVE

Before supper Lenox and Edmund had a visit with Sophia. Her affectionate uncle dangled his pocket watch over her crib and she happily batted at it, smiling and laughing.

“I wish I had had a daughter,” said Edmund, rather wistfully.

“How are the boys?”

“Oh, they’re in excellent form. Teddy is still aboard the Lucy with Captain Carrow, as you know, and happy as can be. Have I shown you his letters? Remind me to, when you next come to see me and Molly for supper. The ship has acquired a pet monkey, apparently. He sleeps with them in the midshipman’s cabin. But a little daughter, to dote over … I should have liked it above all things.”

“At any rate you may dote over Sophia, provided it doesn’t interfere with my schedule of doting.”

Edmund laughed. “A generous and fair proposal.”

As he was walking his brother downstairs, Charles said, “Uncle Freddie has invited me down to Everley, in fact.”

“Has he? It would be an ideal retreat, I should say. The most excitement I ever saw in those parts was the three-legged race at the summer fête. Then again you were always fonder of it there than I was.”

They were at the door, Edmund putting on his cloak and his hat. “I liked the country, it’s true.”

“And you were Freddie’s favorite.”

“Perhaps.”

Edmund smiled and tipped his hat. “Congratulations, Charles. Really, I’m excited to hear what you’ll say. It will be brilliant, I know as much as that.”

“Good-bye, then. I’ll write to tell you what I’m doing.”

“Tell Jane I’m sorry I’ve missed her.”

Even as Edmund walked away from the house, someone was approaching it from the other direction. It was J. G. Reese, the member for Dover, who was perpetually convinced that the French were at that very moment bracing themselves to cross the channel and climb his constituency’s white cliffs.

“Ah! Lenox! Capital, I was just coming to see you. Want a word about France. I hear dire things about their gunnery, really you won’t believe it when I tell you. Beastly frogs, their budget for pigiron alone would make you shiver.”

“I’ve no doubt at all.”

“At a bare minimum we need to double the budget at the Woolwich arsenal, for starters, and shift more men to Dover — hate to think of the poor cliffs — but here, I’ll come in, thank you, yes. You haven’t got a scone handy, have you? I’m positively famished.”

A trip to the country, thought Lenox, as he invited Reese into his study. It was just the thing.

To convince Lady Jane of it would be a different matter. When his final visitor had vacated the study that evening — George Swan, who wanted to outlaw Catholics from sitting down in Hyde Park — Lenox waited for her to arrive home, wondering how he could convince her to come along for a week in the country.

When she arrived it was with a bustle of boxes and parcels. “Oh, there you are!” she said to her husband, who was waiting in the hall. “How is Sophia?”

“She’s asleep. Can I help you?”

“Would you? I bought ever so much at the food hall at Harrod’s — I couldn’t stop. There are some marvelous ostrich eggs I want to give to your brother, he is fond of them, and then once I got to the chocolate counter I couldn’t resist — but listen to me. How is your speech coming along?”

He had told her the night before of his news, and now he told her about his day, about Bottlesworth, Brakesfield, and the rest of them. “The prospect of setting foot in the Commons is terrifying.”

“Won’t they stop bothering you after a day or so?” she asked.

“Edmund imagines not.”

She furrowed her brow and sat down. “Well, we must think of something to thwart them, these hordes.”

“I quite agree. Would you suggest tipping hot oil over them?” She removed her gloves, and looking at her thin, lovely fingers he felt a wave of love for her. “How are you feeling, incidentally?”

She looked up at him and smiled. “You’re sweet, Charles, but really I haven’t felt badly for a month or more, now.”

“You look pale.”

“Well, it was a long day.” He sat next to her and she leaned into his shoulder. “Perhaps I do feel a bit off, if I think of it. It’s only that I think I should be able to do what I did before, you see, and when I can’t …”

It had been a difficult birth for her, and she had been ill, though not gravely, for six weeks afterward. Still she looked too thin to Charles. “I wish you would rest,” he said.

She looked up at him, her eyes slightly saddened. “It’s London, I suppose. The invitations keep rattling through the door, noon and night, and now we must plan a party for your speech — of course we must, don’t shake your head — and, oh, I don’t know … I wish it could just be the three of us for a little while, don’t you?”

“You were cheerful when you came through the door, my dear. I feel guilty.”

“When I think of it I suppose I don’t feel my best. I try not to think of it.”

“Would you like to go to the country?”

He thought he saw hope dart across her face and then vanish. “But you couldn’t, of course, you must be here.”

“On the contrary, Edmund was advising me we ought to go away before the speech. Thinks it’s more statesmanlike,” he said with a tiny smile.

She laughed. “Are you to be a statesman, now? As long as you don’t get a big head. Oh, but Charles, could you really leave? It sounds heavenly, the country, having walks, skipping breakfast, nobody to see …”

“My uncle Frederick offered.”

So it was that in due course the Lenox family decided they would depart London for Somerset.

Lenox wrote to Everley immediately to tell them the family was coming, and to expect them as early as the next evening. Kirk, who had been Jane’s butler for many years, a fat, severely dignified specimen, was thrown into a panic of packing and sorting out, as was Sophia’s nurse, Miss Taylor. For his part Graham was shocked that Lenox would leave town at such a juncture. In the end he conceded Edmund’s superior political judgment, but he still refused to look happy about any of it, and kept muttering about the meetings they would have to cancel.

It didn’t matter to Charles and Jane, who both expressed, over supper, a feeling of relief, of a burden being lifted.

“In a way,” said Lenox, “we’ve never been alone with Sophia. I’ve had to work so much, and you were ill.”

“You shall still have to work.”

“Can’t you picture us walking her in the garden, though? And it’s still really splendid weather, if we hurry down.”

Jane laughed. “I don’t think a day will make much of a difference in that regard.”

“Come now, I feel happy. That’s all I mean to say.”

She smiled, indulgent. “So do I, Charles. We can bring the dogs, and not think about London things for a while.”

He felt delighted that he had enticed his wife to go to the country. It was only an hour or two after he had congratulated himself on this victory, sitting in his study, that he remembered the conversation over again, and began to wonder whether perhaps it had been the other way around. Had she seen some sign of him wanting to leave town, and let him think he was persuading her to do it? Hadn’t she been energetic and happy upon arriving home, and wasn’t she busy that very evening, planning a party to follow his speech? It would be consistent with her character, for her to let him think he was tricking her: with her subtlety of mind, her insight into his own clumsily gallantry, her empathy.

One could never quite know the truth of such a dance, even in a marriage as close as theirs. Whatever it was it left him feeling loved.

From all of which it may be inferred that Kirk’s momentary unhappiness, and Graham’s, and Miss Taylor’s, were not in the end of much importance. Anyhow, the sudden change of plans was very exciting for the housemaids, who were to be left behind and hadn’t had a holiday for ages besides. They decided they would go to the seaside.