Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lenox went to the town hall alone. He could see from the activity in the corridors that business had resumed, albeit uneasily. In the small room opposite Stevens’s larger office, where his clerks sat, he found Miss Harville, the mayor’s secretary.

She was a quiet young woman with dark hair and narrow dark eyes, aged fifteen or sixteen, very, very young for the job. When Lenox mentioned this, she merely nodded.

He had expected her to be highly emotional, but in fact she was quite poised, and had spent the morning helping Stringfellow, the deputy mayor, catch up on the duties that would fall to him, at least for the time being. Perhaps forever. Lenox asked if there was much to do. A great deal, she said — particularly with the budget meeting approaching. It was the village’s most significant public debate of the year.

“Do you know who attacked Mr. Stevens, Miss Harville?” he asked.

Her eyes widened. “No, sir,” she said.

“It wasn’t you.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“In that case, it must have been disturbing to find the body.”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes. It was.”

He asked how she had come to work for Stevens, and she replied that she had been a student at the grammar, where she had shown a flair for mathematics. When she had left school — not intending to work, for her father was an assistant foreman at the factory, and fairly comfortably off — Stevens, searching for an assistant, had found her through the recommendation of her schoolmaster. He had first tested her skill, and then offered her the job.

“Have you enjoyed it?”

“Yes,” she said, but dutifully.

Lenox pressed her. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a pleasure to have my own money. I do feel quite ready to be married, and in a home of my own. But there are … there are not many young men in Markethouse, I suppose, and then, after a fashion, I am married to my work.”

Lenox frowned. As with Elizabeth Watson and Claire Adams, there was something reserved in her reaction to the attack upon Stevens.

“Stevens was not married?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, as if the idea were outlandish, but added nothing else.

“Tell me about discovering the body.”

“I arrived here early yesterday morning, just past seven o’clock, because Mr. Stevens asked me to come in early and run over figures for the budget. We both checked them for safety, though his own calculations were never wrong. I knocked on the door of his office, and there was no answer.”

“Were you surprised?”

“Yes. He normally had his office door open.”

“What did you do?”

“I knocked again and waited for a response. When there wasn’t any, I assumed he had been detained at home. I went and fixed him a glass of sherry with an egg in it, which he always liked to take when he arrived at work and just when he left.”

Again that sherry. Lenox remembered Stevens ordering the same concoction at the Horns on Market Day. But could Stevens, of all people, have been the one to have broken into Hadley’s house? To have stolen the sherry?

It seemed impossible both because of the mayor’s character and because he had been the one so eager to put a stop to the thefts. It was Stevens, after all, who had told him that books from the library had gone missing — the titles that matched the books in the gamekeeper’s cottage.

“And then?” asked Lenox.

“I went into his office without knocking, thinking I would leave the glass on his desk. It was then that I found him.”

“Had you seen anyone in the corridors of the building? Anyone leaving as you came in?”

“No, sir,” she said.

“As far as you knew, you were the only person in the building.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox paused. “Did you disturb anything in the room?”

“No, sir.”

“What did you do?”

“I called for help straightaway.”

Lenox shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”

The secretary flushed. “Excuse me?”

Lenox nodded toward her shoes. “There were faint footprints in the carpeting that match the size of your shoe — in blood, you understand. They lead to the window. One set is much deeper there. I think you must have stood at the window for a while, more than a few moments. Perhaps you even drank the sherry! I shouldn’t blame you. At any rate, I know that nobody was admitted to the room again after you went for help.”

“Well, perhaps I did stand at the window. I was very shocked.”

Lenox inclined his head. “Did you drink the sherry?”

She was still red. “A sip, to steady my nerves.”

Very calmly, Lenox said, “What sort of man was Stevens?”

“A man much like any other.”

He noticed the word “sir” had dropped out of her answers. “You liked him?”

“He was not a warm person. But he did … he selected me,” she said.

“And who do you think attacked him?”

There was a long pause, and then, at last, she said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. And I really must pick up my work again.”

Lenox’s brain was running rapidly through everything this young woman had said. He tried to focus, to remember her face and tone of voice so he could mull them later at his leisure. “Does the name Arthur Hadley mean anything to you?” he asked.

“I believe he’s a resident of the village. Why?”

“How do you know him?”

She shook her head. “I cannot recall, but I have seen the name somewhere.”

“Where?”

“As I say, I cannot recall.”

“In the mayor’s papers? Or did the mayor mention him?”

“No, not that. Perhaps in his papers — in fact, yes, I think somewhere in Mr. Stevens’s papers.”

“You’re sure you can’t recall anything more exactly?”

“If I do, I’ll tell you,” said the young secretary. “Please excuse me, Mr. Lenox. I wish you luck in finding out who killed Mayor Stevens, but if you want to speak any further, it will have to be after my work is finished.”

“Of course. Thank you, Miss Harville.”

Lenox left the building and walked up the square, brooding. It had been a peculiar interview. Why had she been so eager to end it?

He found his feet turning to Potbelly Lane. On an impulse he stopped into Mrs. Appleby’s post office first, where he greeted her and then fired off a telegram to Polly and Dallington. In it, he asked if they might spare Pointilleux for a night, and added that if they could, the young Frenchman could pack a suitcase and stay at the hall.

After that he went to Hadley’s house. The street was quiet and empty, the morning sun falling softly on the cobblestones, the few clouds slipping soundlessly across the pure blue sky. Lenox paused at the foot of Hadley’s steps and took a few breaths of the clean air, thinking.

When he knocked, Mrs. Watson answered the door. “Hello, Mr. Lenox,” she said.

To his eye she looked troubled, and after greeting her, he said, “Is everything quite all right?”

“Well — I suppose.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, exactly. Only I don’t think Mr. Hadley came home last night.”

Lenox became very alert. “How do you know?”

“The food I left for him is untouched. As far as I can tell, so is his bed.”

“May I come in?”

“Of course, sir.”

There was a broom leaning against the front hall table — evidently Mrs. Watson had been sweeping — and Lenox walked past it toward Hadley’s sitting room. There he checked the alcohol (all present) and surveyed the room for some time. The charwoman watched him.

Then, abruptly, he turned back into the front hallway, making for Hadley’s study. “Today is Wednesday,” he said. “When did you last see Mr. Hadley?”

“Monday evening, sir.”

Lenox went into the study. There was nothing of very great interest on the desk — but something in the room looked different. What? He forced himself to slow down and look around carefully, as he had in the sitting room.

Then he saw it.

The door of the mahogany cabinet underneath the window hung just slightly open; he strode forward and opened it fully, and found, inside, Hadley’s safe, where he kept his collection of gemstones.

Empty.