Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The town hall was a two-story building the width of about four houses, topped with a large black-iron clock that had never worked in Lenox’s memory. In days when their mayor had been less able than Stevens Stevens, the villagers had noted that fact as ironic — but Stevens had looked into the expense of fixing it and dismissed it as frivolous within his first year in office, and revisited the issue only to reach the same conclusion every five years since.

That was the kind of mayor he was.

For that reason it seemed almost impossible to Lenox that anyone could feel such violent emotion toward him — six, seven knife wounds, to his head and chest, which meant looking into his face. Early in the morning, not in the drunkenness of midnight. What could their dry, pedantic mayor, whose whole life was bent toward the ledger, have done to inspire such passionate hatred?

Of course, that led directly to the second question he had: What, if anything, did this have to do with Arthur Hadley?

Stevens occupied a large corner office on the second floor of the town hall. Two men were sitting outside his door. One was, judging from his modest black suit and tie, clearly an office clerk, the other was wearing a gray uniform and tall black hat, with a torch dangling from his belt. Edmund explained that these were Stevens’s chief clerk and the building’s watchman. They had been stationed here since the attack to make sure nobody entered the mayor’s office.

“What time do you come on generally?” asked Lenox of the watchman, whose name was Sutherland.

“Ten minutes before eight o’clock each morning, sir, which is when the building is opened.”

“Is there a night watchman?”

“No, sir.”

“Is the building locked when you arrive?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“How many people have keys?” asked Lenox.

“Only three — myself, Mr. Stevens, and the charwoman, who stays behind every evening to clean from seven to eight o’clock.”

“Who is she?”

“Mrs. Claire Adams.”

Bunce interjected. “She’s Mrs. Watson’s sister.”

Lenox and Edmund exchanged a startled glance. “Elizabeth Watson? Hadley’s charwoman?”

“Yes. She’s housekeeper to the Malone family, but cleans here five evenings a week to make extra money.” Then he added, in a quieter voice, “Her husband, you know.”

Sutherland nodded knowingly.

“What about her husband?” asked Lenox.

There was a beat of silence, and then Sutherland said, simply, “Gone.”

Lenox decided to leave that for later. He said, “And was there any sign of forced entry here this morning when you arrived? A broken window, a jammed door?”

Sutherland frowned. “No, not that I saw.”

“Was it locked when you arrived this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Peculiar. Perhaps you could check around the building again now for any signs of a forced entry, while I look at the office.”

“If you wish, sir.”

Lenox turned to the clerk. “And you might tell us what Mr. Stevens’s planned meetings for the day were.”

“Miss Harville would be better able to inform you of that than I am — but I can look in her desk if you like.”

“Miss Harville is Stevens’s secretary,” said Edmund. “The one who found the body.”

“Where is she now?”

“Downstairs in the ladies’ lounge,” said the clerk. “She is … perturbed.”

“We must speak with her next,” said Lenox.

The clerk, who had on round glasses and struck Lenox as rather like Stevens, a local boy with ambition, said, doubtfully, “You can try. She’s a bit frantic. We always warned him that it was no good having a woman for a secretary, but he always did, several in a row.”

It was true that this was unusual. “Why did he, then?” asked Lenox.

“He said they were sharper,” said the clerk, and then went on, with a trace of bitterness in his voice, “and less womanish than the male clerks he had.”

Lenox, father to a strong-willed daughter, smiled fleetingly. “Very well. Please tell her that we mean to come speak to her soon, after we look at the office. Incidentally, where were you this morning?”

“I? With my family — my father, my mother, and six besides. Then I breakfasted at the coffeehouse on the corner, Taylor’s. I do most mornings.”

Lenox hadn’t liked the note of animosity toward Stevens in the clerk’s voice, but his alibi sounded solid. “And your name?”

“Van Leer, sir.”

“Thank you, Van Leer. After you’ve told Miss Harville we’re coming to see her, please come back and resume your watch here, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox turned back to his brother and Bunce. “Bunce, if you could send a telegram for me, by Mrs. Appleby, I would be grateful.”

“Of course, sir.”

Lenox scrawled it quickly and handed it over with a shilling — a note to his friend Thomas McConnell, asking if he would consider coming down that afternoon for an hour’s work. It was Tuesday, fortunately, McConnell’s day off from Great Ormond Street Hospital. Tuesday: Lenox wondered if Hadley was traveling for his work with Dover Assurance or had decided to give himself the week at home since his unnecessary trip to Chichester.

When Van Leer, Bunce, and Sutherland were all gone, and the two Lenox brothers stood alone before the door to Stevens’s office, Edmund said, “Lord, Charles, I wonder if you know what a holy terror you are, issuing orders to everyone you meet.”

Lenox shook his head unsmilingly. “It’s no joke, an attack with a knife. We must move quickly.”

“Shall we go in? I’ll admit to a bit of trepidation. This will be the first time I’ve seen it, too — I’ve been at the Bell and Horns all morning.”

“Lead the way,” said Lenox.

They went in.

Because Stevens’s office stood on the corner of the second story, in a village full of low buildings, it received a great deal of light, nearly blinding them as they entered. A large desk dominated the room. It was covered with tidy stacks of paper. A pair of spectacles sat on the leather blotter directly in front of the desk chair. Opposite, facing the desk, were two large brown leather armchairs, studded with bronze tacks in long trails from leg to arm to back and down again.

One was drenched with a thick, dark substance.

Lenox, who recognized the suffocating smell of it, winced. Edmund took a moment longer, and then he, too, winced. Though the chair was brown, it was obvious from a glance that it was blood pooled on it.

“Look,” said Lenox.

He was pointing at the floor. “What? Oh!” said Edmund.

In the deep blue of the carpet, there was a distinguishable darkening. Lenox knelt down and dabbed it with his handkerchief. It came up a brownish red. Blood, too, a few hours spilled. He looked carefully at the carpet and said, “It starts here, at the side of the desk. None behind the desk, at least that I can see.”

Edmund watched. “He might have been stabbed behind the desk and then staggered forward, hoping to make it to the door to cry for help.”

Lenox nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. But it’s awkward to stab someone seated behind a wide desk like this, isn’t it — to get so close? And then, six or seven slashes with a knife — there would likely be blood sprayed straight on the desk, right away. But there isn’t any.”

“Mm.”

“I would guess that Stevens came out from behind the desk to meet his attacker and was stabbed halfway to the door. The blood sprayed across the carpet; then the poor fellow lurched forward and pitched himself across the armchair.”

There was no response, and Lenox glanced up toward his brother, who had turned and was staring at the wall opposite the desk. His face looked pale.

“What is it?” asked Lenox.

But then, turning, he saw what was there for himself.

“It’s the same as Hadley’s,” said Edmund.

Lenox stared for a long beat. “Yes, it is.”

It was the stick figure of a schoolgirl — flat line for a mouth, with pigtails. Identical to the one that had been chalked on Hadley’s stoop. It was painted on the white wall in the vivid red of Stevens’s blood.