Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER SIX

The next morning, just as they were finishing their breakfast, the bell for the front door rang. Edmund looked up from the papers he was perusing — matters of the estate — and Charles from his newspaper.

“Are you expecting anybody?” Lenox asked.

Edmund shook his head. “No.”

A moment later the butler came in. Waller was his name, a young man, just past thirty years, the best part of them spent in some capacity here at Lenox House, until finally two years before he had ascended to his current august position. He was part of a new guard; with one thing and another there were no old staff left from their youth. Lenox rather preferred it that way. It meant there was no fust of olden times upon life at the house, as there was at so many country houses. To be sure, their father’s steward — the older Mather — lived in the village, as did the astonishingly ungifted cook of their childhood, Abigail, upon whom Lenox called every Christmas with a goose. (She was probably the last person alive who called him “Master Charlie”—though she did it with mischief in her eye, an astute older woman, seated every day of the winter by her daughter’s fire, knitting and telling stories to her grandchildren, emphatically not cooking.) Otherwise the people had all been here only since Edmund had inherited the house and the title.

“A Mr. Arthur Hadley, to see Mr. Charles Lenox, sir,” said Waller.

Edmund and Charles exchanged glances. “I don’t know anyone by that name. And I don’t think I’ve told anyone I was coming to the country, either.” He looked back at Waller. “What is his business?”

“He has not said, sir.”

“What sort of fellow does he look like?” asked Edmund.

“Sir?”

“Does he look likely to point a pistol at us and ask for our money?”

“Oh, no, sir. A respectable-looking gentleman, sir.”

“Charles?” said Edmund.

“Show him in, by all means.”

After the butler had left, Edmund said, “You have more faith in Waller as a judge of character than I would,” then turned his eyes back to his tenant rolls.

Mr. Arthur Hadley was, though, a very respectable-looking gentleman, it was true. He wore a twill suit of clothes, the cloth an ideal weight for this brisk autumn day, and had in his right hand a walking stick with a brass knob on its end. The bottom was covered with fresh mud — from the look of it he had walked here. Lenox put his age at about fifty. He was clean-shaven, with a strong, square face. Under his right arm was a folded newspaper; his right hand was in the pocket of his jacket.

Lenox rose, and after a beat so did his brother. “How do you do, Mr. Hadley?”

“Mr. Charles Lenox?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

Hadley, still standing in the doorway, said, “I hope I don’t call upon you at an inconvenient time.”

Lenox smiled. “I suppose it depends on the purpose of your call. Are you collecting taxes?”

Hadley’s open, good-natured face broke into a smile, too. “Not at all, sir, no. In fact, I was hoping to gauge your professional opinion of a small peculiarity I have experienced.”

Lenox was astonished. “My professional opinion?”

Hadley unfolded the thin newspaper he had been carrying, and read from it. “In residence at Lenox House,” he quoted, “Mr. Charles Lenox, eminent consulting detective of Chancery Lane, London, for an undetermined amount of time.”

“Is that this morning’s paper?” asked Edmund. “May I see it?”

“Yesterday evening’s,” said Hadley, handing it over. “The Markethouse Gazette.”

“My gracious,” said Lenox. “They do move quickly.”

Edmund laughed. “Here’s cheek,” he said to Charles. “It concludes, Mr. Lenox happy to take on any new business that may present itself.”

“I admit I felt a powerful relief when I saw that, Mr. Lenox,” said Hadley. “The Gazette gave us all the reports about your triumph at the Slavonian Club, that terrible business of the women being stolen and brought into England, and I knew at once that I must come see you. It’s been a week now, you see, and I haven’t been myself — have barely slept.”

“But I’m afraid I’m not actually here in a professional capacity, Mr. Hadley. Perhaps you might consult with the local police.”

Hadley shook his head. “That’s the trouble. Nothing definite has happened. I couldn’t trouble them. Yet it’s all preying on my mind so constantly.”

Lenox had encountered this attitude again and again in his work — the impossibility of “troubling” the official police force, who were of course handsomely paid precisely to handle possible crimes against all members of the citizenry, and yet the utter ease of “troubling” him, who was almost invariably expected to take the greatest pains and seek no remuneration. If he had one criticism of his age, Lenox thought, it was this: too holy a respect for governmental institutions. Many of them, hospitals, orphanages, records offices, had gotten away with bloody murder for year on year, simply by residing in imposing buildings and having superintendents with side-whiskers.

He was intrigued, though.

“Edmund?” said Lenox.

Edmund gestured toward the table where they had been sitting, next to a wide window with a particularly lovely view of the rolling countryside to the south, and said, “Please, Mr. Hadley, sit.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly, sir.”

“Nonsense. Do you take coffee or tea?”

At last they cajoled Hadley — whom momentum had gotten through the door, and awe paralyzed once he was there — to sit down, and Lenox said, “Now, please: What has happened that has you so concerned, but is so insignificant that it would be of no interest to Constable Clavering?”

He awaited the answer, feeling awake and energetic. The first thing he liked to do when he returned to Lenox House was get on a horse, and that morning he had taken a fine tobacco-colored bay filly, new to him, not yet two years old, on a thundering gallop across the turf. Her name was Daisy, and she rode as well as you liked, he had reported to his brother when he returned.

Arthur Hadley, sitting opposite Charles, took a steadying sip of tea, set down his cup, and began his tale.

“I have lived in Markethouse for nearly two years now,” he began. “I am one of six vice directors of the Dover Limited Fire and Life Assurance Company, and most of my business is in Lewes, but I have a retiring disposition, and upon my most recent promotion, I bought a small house for myself here in Potbelly Lane. I have known Markethouse from my youth. My mother grew up in the village, and her sister, my aunt, remained here until her death, twelve years ago. You may possibly know her — Margaret Wilkes, as kind-hearted an aunt as anybody could have.

“I have been very happy since moving to the village. The place is just as I expected when I came, friendly but quiet. I live alone, with a charwoman who does cleaning and cooking for me from seven to five each day, excepting Sundays, which she takes as her day off. She leaves a cold collation out for me on Saturday nights — or I occasionally visit the Bell and Horns, in Markethouse Square, if I feel a hankering for Yorkshire pudding.

“I am very regular in my work schedule. Each Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I travel to several of the larger towns in Sussex — it’s ‘my’ county, as it were — and sell policies for fire and life insurance, or meet with existing policy holders who require my assistance. Incidentally, if either of you require a policy for … the peace of mind—”

Lenox shook his head, and Edmund, with a trace of coldness in his voice, said, “I have one already, through the House of Commons, thank you.”

“Ah, of course,” said Hadley. He soldiered on. “On Thursday and Friday, I remain here in Markethouse and draw up the papers of the week’s work. They go by train on Saturday to our head office. In an emergency, I can be contacted here by wire. The local postmistress, Mrs. Appleby, knows that I receive telegrams at odd hours, in the event of a fire or sudden death, and is alert for them even in her sleep, in exchange for which I pay her a small standing fee each month. If there is an accident, I make a point of traveling to see my clients immediately, wherever they may be.”

Lenox wondered if all this was material — hoped it was. “Go on,” he said.

“Well, such is my life, gentlemen. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me in the past two years, until last Wednesday night.”

“What happened then?”

“I was returning home from a trip to Lewes. It was past nine o’clock. I was very tired — and happy to be back, for while I work on Thursday and Friday, Wednesday is effectively the end of the hardest part of my week, when I am traveling. At my age, the rails are a grueling master.

“By eight o’clock it is dark out, of course, at this time of year. I reached my house and saw two things at once, despite the dark: first, that on my stoop was chalked a strange white figure, and second, that in a downstairs window there was the light of a candle. I keep my curtains closed when I am away, but there was a small gap in them, and I was sure I saw the light.

“I was surprised, as you can imagine, but it was nothing compared to my surprise at what I saw next: A face appeared in the same downstairs window, for scarcely an instant, and then vanished.”

“A face?” said Lenox. “A woman or a man’s?”

Hadley shook his head. “I cannot say. It was very dim, and my eyesight is not what it once was. All I know was that it was pale, and looked to me … well, I cannot say, exactly.”

“You must try,” said Lenox.

“I suppose it looked very upset,” said Hadley. “As if its owner was experiencing great emotion.”

“It was the charwoman,” said Edmund.

Hadley shook his head. “That was what occurred to me, but I asked the next day, and she swore up and down that she was out of the house by five, that her whole family could attest to it. And then, why wouldn’t she have stayed to see me?”

“She didn’t want you to know she had remained in the house,” said Edmund.

“I take it, if you went to the trouble to inquire with your charwoman,” said Lenox, “that you did not find anyone inside the house?”

“I was astounded, as you can imagine, and barely able to keep my wits about me. Almost immediately the light went out. I turned on the gas lamp outside my door and considered what to do. First, I looked at the chalk figure on my step.”

“And what was it?” asked Edmund, who was leaning on the table with his elbows now, eyes curious, papers forgotten.

“I shudder to think of it, gentlemen,” said Hadley, and indeed he looked pale. “It was a figure of a girl. A small girl. Only a simple drawing, but I hope you will believe me when I tell you that there was something very strange about it — uncanny. I felt my stomach turn when I saw it.”

“A girl,” murmured Lenox.

“After bracing myself, I went inside. I took up a heavy paperweight that I keep by the door for outgoing post, and went from room to room — well, there are only four proper rooms in the house, a forward sitting room, a dining room, and two small bedrooms upstairs. Everything was entirely as I had left it. The doors of the kitchen and washroom, just off of the dining room, were both locked from the inside, and empty. I checked each room and each closet a dozen times.”

“And found?”

“Nothing, and nobody.”

“Is there another entrance?”

“Only windows — but there are many of those, front and side,” said Hadley. “And I do not keep them latched. Or did not, for now I do.”

“Was anything missing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“And this is the mystery you hope to solve?” Lenox asked.

Hadley shook his head. “Not all of it. I went to bed that night very afraid, with the door locked from the inside; but the next morning, when I woke, it all seemed rather foolish to me. As I said, I have weak eyesight. Was it possible that I had seen the reflection of a light across the way, and even, perhaps, a face? In the light of day it seemed just possible — though if I call that face to mind now, I know, feel certain, that it was inside my house.

“No, if it had simply been that experience, I might have been disturbed, but I doubt I would have sought any help. It was what happened the next day that has forced me to think something greater must be afoot — and in truth, gentlemen, to fear for my safety.”