Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Edmund and Atherton watched Lenox, awaiting a signal. For his part he was feeling irresolute; he kept glancing from the dog to the door of the little cottage and back.

Then he glanced into the garden. He thought of the mint, the marjoram, and the rosemary in the rudimentary little kitchen inside Snow’s gamekeeper’s lodge, next to the butter.

“Look,” he said to Edmund after a moment, voice quiet, gesturing toward the garden. “Loosestrife growing there on the south wall, just by the second window.”

Edmund raised his eyebrows in response, a look that said he understood the implications of that loosestrife. Neither mint nor marjoram nor rosemary nor loosestrife was very uncommon; on the other hand, there likely weren’t many gardens in Markethouse or its environs that contained all four.

Lenox recalled watching Mad Calloway walking around the Saturday market with his little stringed-up bundles of herb and flower.

In the twenty or thirty seconds all of this took, Toby remained frenzied, jumping with his front paws against the wall, turning around at them beseechingly every few seconds.

At last, Lenox stepped down from his horse. “Atherton, will you hold the dog? My horse, too, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” said the farmer.

“Thank you,” Lenox said distractedly.

He was trying as hard as he could to recall what he could of Mad Calloway. It was very little. Calloway was the next thing to a hermit — disappearing for long stretches at a time into his little cottage, emerging every other market day usually, friendless, unfriendly indeed, and by all accounts truly mad. Lenox had never heard him speak a word.

On the other hand, he hadn’t heard of him being violent.

And yet — a full gray beard, that was what the man who had sold their horses to Tattersall’s had had, and that was what Calloway had. It was also common to see him ranging across town with a pipe clenched in his teeth, and Lenox hadn’t forgotten the tobacco ash that had been piled next to the door of the gamekeeper’s cottage, as if someone had been standing there for a long while, refilling a pipe as he waited.

A woman or a child, McConnell had said. But mightn’t an old, stooped man strike a similarly weak blow?

He was close enough to Atherton and Edmund that he could say to them, in a low voice, “Do Calloway and Stevens have anything to do with each other?”

Both men shook their heads. “Calloway has nothing to do with anyone,” said Atherton.

“What about Calloway and Hadley?” Lenox asked.

Again, both men said that they knew of no relationship between Calloway and any man in the village, and Atherton said that would be doubly true of a relative newcomer there, such as Arthur Hadley. “On the other hand,” he added, “Hadley and Stevens know each other well.”

“Well?” said Lenox. “What?”

Atherton looked surprised at the vehemence in Lenox’s voice. “Yes, Hadley bought Stevens’s house when Stevens moved to Cremorne Street,” said Atherton. “Ed, you must have known that.”

“I had no idea,” said Edmund. “In Potbelly Lane?”

“Yes, they’ve been friendly since.”

Toby was making an outright commotion at the gate of the cottage. Though nobody was stirring inside, in the rest of Clifton Street people had noticed. Glancing back, Lenox saw several women in the doorways, peering down toward the group on horseback.

They must do something soon, or risk Calloway running as he had before, if indeed it had been he who’d taken their horses outside the gamekeeper’s cottage. This new information about Stevens and Hadley — this troubling new information — would have to wait. He looked back to make sure that Atherton was still restraining Toby. The dog was pulling hard at the end of his leash, forelegs lifting off the ground, but Atherton had him.

Lenox went to the gate. As he pushed it open, it gave a loud creak.

“Mr. Calloway?” he called.

There was no reply. He went in and took one or two steps up the short path to the low front door. Edmund, too, had dismounted. He followed behind his younger brother.

Together they waited at the front door. “Do you hear anything?” Lenox asked in a quiet voice, after he had knocked on it.

“No. You?”

Lenox pushed the door inward. The garden smelled strongly, but as they moved into the house the smell of greenery became all-consuming — neither pleasant nor unpleasant precisely, a jumble of every herb that had ever been, living, dead, growing, dried. In the dim light, Lenox could see dozens of jars on a small table by the door.

“Mr. Calloway?” he called out loudly.

There was no answer, and he began to have a dreadful feeling. What if they found him dead, Mad Calloway? The town’s mayor and its hermit in the same week?

What if that chalk drawing was waiting on the wall?

The rooms of the house were tiny. There was a sitting room, a kitchen, and a bedroom, none much wider than the span of Lenox’s arms, and none of the ceilings high enough that he felt confident walking entirely upright.

These rooms were also empty.

“What now?” asked Edmund.

“I’m not sure.”

“Hm.”

“Let’s see if there’s a back gate,” said Lenox. “It’s a trick that fooled us once before.”

They returned to the front door and walked out the little path. Then, peering around the corner of the house into the garden, Lenox noticed a rickety shed at the end of it, made of what looked like ancient time-blackened driftwood.

Through its slats he saw a movement.

Heart quickening, he gestured to Edmund to follow him, and they waded through the deep herbs growing all around to get to it — trying not to trample them underfoot, which was funny, Lenox thought. After all, Stevens was nearly dead.

“Mr. Calloway?” Lenox called when they had come to the shed.

At the sound of his voice, there was a thin whine for response — a dog’s whine.

Without hesitating, Lenox opened the door and saw them both: There was Calloway, still alive, thank God, bent over a small sprig of some herb, pruning it with infinite care and tenderness, and behind his chair, staring up at them with beautiful wet dark eyes, was Mickelson’s spaniel.

“Mr. Calloway?” said Charles softly.

There was no reply.

“Mr. Calloway, I’m Edmund Lenox. My brother and I hoped to have a word with you.”

Calloway didn’t turn away from his project, and Lenox said, “It’s about Stevens Stevens, the mayor. Did you know that he’s been attacked, Mr. Calloway?”

There was a long pause, and then the old man put down the plant carefully on a bed of wet cotton that he had evidently prepared before beginning this delicate operation — there were similar such beds on the makeshift table, a kind of infirmary for plants — and turned to them.

“Is he dead?” Calloway asked.

Lenox would later learn that these were the first words anyone in Markethouse had heard Mad Calloway speak in eleven years. Not surprisingly, his voice was hoarse. “No, he’s not,” said Lenox.

“More’s the pity. Have you arrested anyone?”

“No, sir.”

“And who do you think did it?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

A look came over Calloway’s face then that struck Lenox, a look he would remember, some odd mixture of strain, relief, and exhaustion. “Well,” he said calmly. “I did it. Give me a moment to finish this and I’ll come away with you.”