Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

They all spent the morning at the market together, where there was every kind of gossip running up and down the little lanes of the village. A little bit after noon they returned to Lenox House with a whole variety of parcels: oranges in brown paper for Sophia, a small silver mirror that Toto had bought for herself, a basketful of vegetables Lady Jane had acquired.

When they came into the front hall, Lenox saw straightaway that waiting on the silver tray was a letter, its return address visible, from James Lenox, Edmund’s older son.

Edmund spotted it a beat later. He turned pale, took it, and without a word went to his study. He was there for nearly an hour before Lenox decided to knock on his door.

“Come in,” Edmund called.

Lenox entered and saw his brother staring out of the window, a hand at his chin. The letter lay across a small card table next to him.

“How are you?” asked Lenox.

“I think James is the kindest soul that ever lived. He expresses a great deal of concern for me, which of course is unnecessary. Anyhow, better still — the best news I’ve had in a long time — he’s returning here for a visit, as soon as he’s handled a few small matters in Kenya.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I think he may be home in time for Christmas, with any luck from the wind,” said Edmund, smiling.

He looked younger — and Lenox realized, knowing Edmund as he did, that it wasn’t simply the news that James would return home. It was the letter itself. What did it mean to be left alone to take care of the children, when it was two of you who had brought them into the world together? It was a part of Edmund’s burden that Charles hadn’t quite considered; he had thought of the companionship that was gone, the love and care, but less of how solitary and grave Edmund’s responsibilities as a father had become.

James would be all right. That was why he looked so relieved.

“That will be a treat,” said Lenox.

Edmund sighed and smiled wanly. “Yes. Only Teddy to tell, now. And who knows, James may be able to tell him with me. Teddy’s always looked up to his brother.”

“I know it. So have I!”

“Oh, shut up.”

Lenox hadn’t been joking, but he let it pass.

The supper that evening was the nicest one they’d had yet. Atherton came, and afterward the five of them played cards in the convivial blaze of fire and candlelight, drinks and small biscuits on the table with the cards, the dogs sleeping on the thick rug, and Toto losing so steadily and spectacularly that she owed them a theoretical fortune by the end of the night.

She declared that she hated Sussex.

“You might as reasonably say that you hate this deck of cards,” said Edmund.

“I do hate this deck of cards, that’s what you don’t know about me, Edmund Lenox.”

“Shall I deal out one more hand?”

“Oh, go on.”

Lenox asked Atherton, who had been in Markethouse until just before supper, what he had heard about Calloway and Stevens.

“Pickler told me confidentially that he’d heard Stevens had cloven feet — Dr. Stallings had found them upon examination. Part devil.”

“Pickler the milkman?”

“That seems implausible,” said Lady Jane.

“Oh, the rumors are out of control. Nobody ever trusted him an inch, if you believe what they say now — but I swear I am astonished at it all, astonished. I freely admit that I saw Stevens every market day for the last twenty years, and I never had him down as anything except a human abacus. And I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, let me assure you.”

Every farmer Lenox knew considered himself a uniquely penetrating judge of character, and most of them couldn’t tell a parson from a murderer. Atherton shook his head, and Lenox merely nodded sagely. “Yes, of course.”

“Tell me, what did he do — exactly? There is every kind of gossip abroad.”

Lenox glanced at Edmund. “I think we must keep it to ourselves. He’s gone now.”

“But tell me this — he was bad? We aren’t ruining the name of a good fellow, are we now, for local sport?”

“No,” said Edmund. “He was a second devil. His name ought to go straight through your thresher.”

Atherton accepted this, sipping his whisky. “And Mad Calloway has been freed. People were lining up Clifton Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. There was smoke from his chimney. Then he came out at five and posted a letter. Mrs. Appleby was cordial to him when he did it, from what I hear.”

Lenox and Edmund exchanged glances. If Calloway had written to his daughter, he had done foolishly. On the other hand, it might have been hard to resist. There was no doubt a great deal for him to say. Ten years!

Toto put down a card. “The knave of diamonds. Can you beat that, Charles?”

At a little past noon the next day, Toto and her daughter, along with Pointilleux, who had spent the last thirty hours dead asleep, took the train headed back for London, waving at them all on the platform from the window.

After the train had gone out of sight, Edmund said, “How much longer do you plan to be here?”

“We have nothing urgent to take us back to London,” said Lady Jane, taking Sophia by the hand and leading her down the few small steps. The carriage was waiting for them. Lenox knew that she had canceled, oh, twenty or thirty appointments to be here with Edmund. “How long will you be in the country?”

“Another week. But you must go, really. I shall be fine.”

“No, no,” said Lenox.

“What about the missing pianist, though?”

In truth, Lenox had thought about little else in the past day. That morning after breakfast he had lain out all of the papers from the previous week and read through them avidly, using Lady Jane’s nail scissors to cut out a dozen intriguing scraps of information he hadn’t seen.

“Perhaps I might stop and wire Dallington on the way home, if you wouldn’t mind taking Jane and Sophia,” he said. “I can walk the rest of the way.”

“It’s a cold day,” said Edmund.

Indeed, the sky was a severe gray, the trees bending in the wind and scattering more and more of their leaves, which fluttered down to rest in their soft layers for the winter.

“I have my cloak,” Lenox said. “Tell Waller to keep lunch warm, and I’ll be back in time to eat with you.”

He walked into town with his collar turned up. Despite the cold, six or seven people were gathered near the little ledge at Mrs. Appleby’s house where the mail arrived and left; Markethouse had been in a breathless conversation for several days, and it didn’t look likely to stop anytime soon. Lenox went forward to the postmistress and asked if he could send a wire.

“Certainly,” she said, “and you can take one. I was just about to send it to Lenox House, but it’s easier to give it to you now. In from London this morning.”

“Thanks,” said Lenox, accepting the slip of paper.

It was from Dallington.

Lenox felt his nerves tighten and hum. A solution. What could it be? He remembered his last communication with Dallington, when he had suggested that Muller might not be the victim of this crime — indeed, that he might have been the murderer of the woman they had found, either Margarethe Muller or, if the real Margarethe was indeed in Paris, per the reports they had received, her impostor.

He thanked Mrs. Appleby distractedly—“Didn’t you need to send a wire?” she asked his retreating back — and tried to calculate how quickly he could be at the Queen’s Arms.

Could he leave, though? There was Edmund.

His brother quickly disposed of that question upon Charles’s return to Lenox House. He had Sophia dandled upon his knee, where she was studying with intense concentration his pocket watch, but he was able to muster his authoritative squire’s voice. “You must all three go. I’ve gotten far too little done since you came down.”

“There was a murder,” Lady Jane pointed out.

“Never mind. I’ll follow you to London in only five or six days. We’ll see each other then.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

Lenox looked at Lady Jane. “Darling?” he said.

“You take the soonest train. Sophia and I will follow you.”

Lenox nodded. He wouldn’t have gone if his brother hadn’t received that letter from James, but he seemed just enough improved to desert. “Lend me a horse, Ed, and then I can get a train direct from Chichester at 2:12.”

Edmund stood up, putting Sophia gently on the ground. “I’ll ride with you so I can bring the horse back.”

“You’ll pack my things, Jane?”

“Go!”

Lenox nodded and bent down to kiss his daughter on the top of her head. “Thanks. On our way, Edmund. Hopefully we don’t lose the horses this time.”

Lenox and his brother had spent their whole youth riding together, except for two appalling autumns when Edmund had been allowed to ride with the hunt and Charles had still been forced to ride with the children, hanging back as the adults thundered over the heather.

Now, galloping across the countryside, he felt the years fall away — the cold sharp air stinging his skin, the tears forming involuntarily in his eyes and then streaming away in the wind, the happy blur of the fields they crossed toward the low spires of Chichester. Occasionally a slight turn of his head or a roll in the landscape would give him a glimpse of his brother’s serious face, and he would feel his heart fill with affection.

They arrived at the train station with nine minutes to spare. Getting down from his horse, Edmund said, “Thank you for coming to visit, Charles. It was a nice time for it. Useful, too, as turned out.”

“My pleasure.”

“Do you have anything to read on the train?”

“Blast it, no.”

Edmund nodded toward the stationmaster’s small hut. “He sells newspapers and scones, though I warn you they’re both about equally edible.”

Lenox smiled. “See that Jane gets on the train safely, would you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And don’t stay down here too long.”

Edmund sighed. “No — I need to be back in Parliament soon, at any rate. Good-bye, Charles, safe travels.”

They shook hands, and Lenox turned toward the platform.

A little over eighty minutes later, he was flying through the door at the Queen’s Arms. All he had noticed on his dash from Paddington was the smell — the rich, middlingly unpleasant, river-and-waste-and-horse scent of London, which one forgot after any time away, and also after any time back, which meant that it existed only on in-between days like this one.

It was pungent.

The Queen’s Arms was the pub across from their office on Chancery Lane. Behind the bar was the reliable taverner named Cross. “Had word not ten minutes ago,” he said before Lenox could speak. “Said to tell you, at the theater.”

“At the theater,” Lenox repeated.

“That’s all he said, sir.”

“Thank you, Cross.” He put a coin on the bar. “Have your next on me.”

“Thankee, Mr. Lenox.”

The cab he had taken was waiting outside for him still. He stepped into it and gave his directions to the Cadogan, desperately curious what he would find.