Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was a very long walk home.

As they were nearing Lenox House, with its low glimmer of domestic light shining in the darkness of the evening, Edmund said, “You know, it occurs to me, we might easily have gone up to Snow’s and asked him to lend us a couple of horses.”

Lenox stopped in his tracks. “It occurs to you, does it?”

Edmund smiled good-naturedly. “Yes, I’m sorry. But listen, there’s no need to be cross with me. You didn’t think of it either.”

Lenox smiled wearily and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “No, you’re right. What a pair of flats we look, I’m sorry to say.”

The rain had pasted fallen yellow leaves to the smooth marble steps of Lenox House, and they walked up to the door carefully. Two of Edmund’s footmen came out to hold umbrellas over them, Waller hovering in the doorway and watching. “Thank you, thank you,” said Edmund. “Yes, thank you. Waller, have our horses come back?”

“Your horses, sir?”

Edmund, despite his light tone, was desperate to have the horses back, particularly Cigar, and had forced Charles to a breakneck pace on their walk home. He had fire in his eyes now. “Send for Rutherford, please.”

That was the man in charge of the stables. “Yes, sir. Immediately sir.”

“After that, get the cook to make us some kind of hot drink, please.”

“Make it stiff as a poker too,” Lenox put in.

“Very good, sir.”

They were in the entrance hall, and despite being wet and cold, despite having lost the horses, Lenox felt a kind of good cheer. This was the same hall, with its black-and-white checkered floor, its curving staircase, that had seemed desolate the day before, but now, with the dogs and the servants around them, it reminded him of long-ago days, coming home after a traipse in the country with Edmund, or on occasion with his father.

“And I could use something quick to eat, too,” he added.

“By all means, sir,” said Waller, though looking overwhelmed by this succession of requests.

“Rutherford first, though,” said Edmund. “We’ll change in the meanwhile.”

A few minutes later they met Rutherford in the hall, both changed, with their hair toweled dry.

He was a cagy-looking outdoorsman in his fifties with bushy gray eyebrows and a matching mustache. He said their horses hadn’t returned — and he took the news that they were gone very, very hard, particularly because of Daisy, whom he had been training. He couldn’t understand how Charles and Edmund had lost them.

“Never mind that,” said Edmund. “Ride into town and put the word about among the other groomsmen. Will they recognize the horses?”

“Every groom in Markethouse knows Cigar.”

“Good. And while you’re there, fetch Clavering for us, please.”

“Constable Clavering, Sir Edmund?”

“Yes — this is a crime. Quickly, if you please. And tell the stable lads to get two or three other horses ready for a longish ride, too — several miles.”

Rutherford frowned darkly but said, “Yes, sir.”

Before they had begun their walk back toward Lenox House, they had looked over the gamekeeper’s cottage carefully. “He must have heard us from the start,” Edmund said after they had stood dumbly for a moment, looking at the tree to which their horses had been tied. “He took the dog to the back room, let him loose to distract our attention, and then slipped around to take the horses.”

Lenox had nodded. “Yes. I think that sums it up.”

It had been twilight by then, dark falling fast, and though they had scanned the fields all around the house, they hadn’t been able to spot the horses riding away — too dark. It didn’t help that the cottage was low in a swale, surrounded by hilly land.

When they returned to the cottage they found candles (“a box of candles, from Mr. Woodward’s stall” had been among the missing items, Clavering had said). Lenox was carrying matches, and they lit two of the candles, then set about sifting through the loose, lived-in contents of the little dwelling.

It was a clever place for a fellow to hide himself: isolated, but warm and close to the village. As Lenox had suspected, it didn’t seem at all as if a mere itinerant had been living here, waiting to be discovered before he moved on. The blankets and cloak on the floor were made into a small, tidy bed; in the kitchen, meanwhile, there was a tin pannikin full of water, a group of wild apples, and a small slate cooking stone, which had the remnants of a blackened chicken leg on it. A stolen chicken leg, presumably.

What had interested Lenox most, though, was the collection of things that sat close to each other near the head of the makeshift bed: first, a lovely bundle of loosestrife, an entirely pointless decorative touch; second, a book from the Markethouse Library, the fourth volume of Robinson Crusoe; and third, a knife.

“I’ve always been very fond of loosestrife,” said Edmund, coming over to stand next to Lenox.

“I wonder if this thief has local knowledge.”

“Why would he?”

“Did he know that Snow doesn’t have a gamekeeper, whereas Wethering did, and that therefore this building has been lying empty?”

“Mm.”

“Tell me, can you see this place from Snow’s house?”

Edmund shook his head. “Certainly not. It’s a mile and a half away over uneven terrain.”

“Then he could have safely lit a candle here at night, even had a fire, without worrying about the smoke from the chimney.”

They looked and looked by the candlelight. When they were done, Edmund stood tall and stretched his back. “Shall we walk back to Markethouse, or the house?” he said.

Lenox knew they ought to fetch Clavering immediately — but home sounded irresistible. “The house is a bit closer, isn’t it?” Lenox said.

“Yes, I think so, if we cut across my fields. Our fields.”

Lenox smiled. “Yours, certainly! James’s, too, if anyone’s. Yes, let’s head home. There is no urgency to go over the cottage before daylight tomorrow. I doubt the fellow’s returning to it tonight, after seeing us, and the horses are a pretty enough prize in exchange for his loss of a roof.”

So it was that they had walked back across the country in the driving rain. Now, as they sat drinking warm cider in the short room — that was Edmund’s private study, a satisfyingly untidy book-lined cherrywood refuge, with beautiful large windows looking out over the pond — Lenox said, “Do you know what was interesting about the cottage?”

“What?”

“All that we didn’t find there.”

“What’s that?”

“A bottle of sherry, for starters.”

“Hm. Nor any chalk, for that matter.”

“We’ll have a closer look in the morning,” Lenox said, shaking his head. He thought deeply for a moment, then added, “It’s an unusual case. I’m glad Hadley came to us.”

Edmund’s face, glowing rather pink after the exertion of the walk and the switch from cold air to warm on his cheeks, looked tired but engaged. “I’m very glad you’ve come to visit,” he said, glancing through the window.

“Though it’s lost you your horses?”

“I don’t know that I could have faced dinner alone on a night such as this.”

Lenox followed his brother’s gaze outside, to where it was storming, the trees mauling each other at the edge of the pond. Grim, indeed. “Do you ever eat triples any longer?” he said.

Edmund laughed. “Oh, yes.”

“I still say you got them more often than I did.”

“Not likely.”

Triples were a reward of their youth; any time one of them received a good mark, or finished chores early, their mother would give him a piece of candy she (and nobody else on the earth) called a triple, which was a striped piece of burnt sugar. They were horribly chewy. “After that walk we deserve a triple,” Lenox said.

“I doubt Father would have thought it particularly commendable to lose the better part of three hundred pounds’ worth of horseflesh.”

“Well, Mother was an easier touch, it’s true,” said Lenox. “You were somehow able to convince her every Christmas that you had saved me from a bullying at school the term before, though I was perfectly fine, and she would give you extra pocket money.”

“A fair stratagem,” said Edmund. “I used the money to buy picture-cards of the seaside, I remember. I hung them up above my sink in sixth form. Everyone envied me.”

Clavering arrived. He joined them in the study; they told him what they had found, and about the theft of their horses. Perhaps because he didn’t feel the happiness they did simply to be inside and dry, his consternation was very much greater than theirs.

“There was nothing there what to identify him, sir?” he said to Edmund.

Edmund shook his head. “Not that we found. I suppose you’ll go around to look for yourself in the morning?”

“Yes, and tell Snow, too,” said Clavering, shaking his head. “He won’t like it a shred, he won’t.”

“He’s still got his house — we haven’t got our horses,” Lenox pointed out.

“That’s true. He’ll be deep in for it now, though, whoever this fellow is. The assizes take horse theft very seriously.”

“Was anything else stolen at the market today?” asked Lenox.

“All sorts, I don’t doubt, sir,” said Clavering, with a despairing look. “And who’ll hear about it come the morning? Me, that’s who.”