Home by Nightfall

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mrs. Watson, the charwoman, lived with a family of six in two rooms on Drury Street. This was one of the small lanes toward the western end of town, near Markethouse’s only factory, which manufactured tallow. It was the poorest part of the village — there was an unpleasant smell from the factory at most hours, much worse in the summer — but it was still nothing like the poverty of London. Penned in front of most houses were a few chickens or a pig, and more often than not a small vegetable garden grew alongside them.

The charwoman was not at work in Hadley’s more middle-class street, closer to the square, because one of her children was ill; Hadley had given her permission to take the day.

“It’s only the second time it’s happened these two years,” he’d told them in Edmund’s breakfast room, speaking in a forgiving tone, and Lenox’s ears had pricked up at that. Anything out of the ordinary was worth noting.

“Has she been behaving peculiarly at all, your Mrs. Watson?”

Hadley had furrowed his brow. “Mrs. Watson! Not at all. As reliable as the church bells, she is.”

Now they arrived at the house where she lived. The young boy who answered the door didn’t look sick. “Do you want to buy a toad?” he asked.

“No,” said Edmund.

“What about two toads?”

“Can they do anything interesting?”

“They’ll leap something tremendous,” he said, with fervent sincerity. “I can give you both for sixpence.”

“George!” cried a voice behind the boy, before they had the time to answer. It was Mrs. Watson, hurrying forward. “Gracious me, Mr. Hadley, how sorry I am — George, get out of the house this instant — with your brother ill, no less — go!”

The little boy ran off without looking back at them, and Mrs. Watson, though flummoxed by the appearance of her employer and two strangers who were obviously gentlemen, made a fair show of guiding them into her small, extremely warm kitchen. Another boy was lying in some straw in the corner, a long string bean of fifteen or so, his face waxy, his eyes fluttering. Mrs. Watson put a kettle on for them without being asked.

“Is he all right?” asked Edmund, frowning.

Mrs. Watson glanced down at the boy. “Him? He’ll be well enough soon, I hope.”

“Should he see a doctor?” asked Edmund.

The charwoman looked at him for a moment, and then realized that her face must have betrayed how stupid the question was, because she said, “It’s a very gracious thought, sir, but not just yet, I think.”

Only if the boy was actually dying, of course, Lenox realized, maybe not even then. “I know that Dr. Stallings would come visit if we asked him,” he said. “Edmund, why don’t we send a note and ask him? It’s not ten minutes’ walk.”

“I call that a capital idea.”

So the note was written, and the boy next door enlisted to take it to Stallings, and they sat in the boiling hot kitchen, sipping flavorless boiling hot tea — and waited. Mrs. Watson, a rough, raw-faced, but kindly woman, was too polite to inquire why they had come, and the three men didn’t wish to disturb the boy. At last, Lenox suggested they remove themselves to the next room for a moment.

Here they were able to interview the charwoman.

She offered an account that mirrored her master’s: She had worked for him for two years, six days a week, Sundays to herself, cooking, cleaning, mending, sewing, shopping, no, the duties was not onerous, sir, yes, she was quite happy in her position. With these initials out of the way, Lenox was able to pose a few more probing questions.

“Can you cast your mind back to last Wednesday?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“What time did you leave Mr. Hadley’s house?” he asked.

“At five o’clock,” she said. “Same as every day, sir.”

“When you left, was there anything chalked on the steps of the house?”

She shook her head, face firm. “No, sir. Absolutely not. I would have seen. I always sweep the steps, last thing, before I go.”

“Was the day unusual in any way?”

“None at all, sir.”

She had so far evinced no desire to know who they were, or why they were questioning her — apparently Hadley’s presence was enough to vouchsafe them — but now Lenox said, “We’re hoping to get to the bottom of this missing bottle of sherry.”

She quite mistook his tone — and perhaps felt herself worried that she would have to pay the bill of the doctor, who was known to travel in a coach led by a horse, too, and she flushed red and said, “I never took it! I swear it before Jesus Christ our savior himself!”

“Mrs. Watson, be calm, please,” Hadley said. “These gentlemen don’t think you stole anything.”

“I didn’t!” she said.

“I’m very sorry,” Lenox said. “I ought to have phrased it differently: We believe someone stole the sherry, not you, and hope that with your help we might find the person.”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“We have no suspicion whatsoever that you did,” said Lenox, though from the corner of his eye he could see that Edmund did.

Ah, that was different, Mrs. Watson said; she would be only too happy to help. She poured more tea into Lenox’s cup.

It was at this moment that the sound of hooves came clicking up the small street, and a moment later a small fly led by a single horse arrived at the door. Dr. Stallings dismounted from the conveyance. They waited for him in the doorway, and he inclined a deep bow toward Edmund.

“Sir Edmund,” he said. Then he turned to Charles. He was a round, very well dressed man, bald but for a fringe of hair around his ears, with half-moon spectacles. He gave Lenox a slightly shallower bow. “Mr. Lenox. I hope that the reports in town are correct, and I may be the first to congratulate you on your permanent return to the county. For your health, you could not have chosen more intelligently.”

“I’m only here for a visit,” Lenox said, but Stallings had already turned toward Hadley and was addressing him.

Mrs. Watson, driven to distraction by this accumulation of distinguished visitors (Had the physic said Sir Edmund? she muttered to herself, to herself but audible to all), spoke in a long, ceaseless, meaningless rattle, whose gist eventually shepherded the doctor into her overheated kitchen.

Lenox knew that Stallings was a fair physician. He radiated the complaisant good cheer of a man whom life had treated kindly — who hadn’t missed a meal in many years, nor lost a bet, nor thrown a shoe, nor shed a tear.

The doctor approached the patient very gravely, sat in the chair next to him, and proceeded to make a considerable examination of him, as they all looked silently on: pulse; temperature; responsiveness of the eyes; examination of the gums; test of the reflexes; and much more beside.

At the end of his inspection, he patted the boy on the arm, stood up, turned toward the adults in the room, and said, in a loud, clear voice, “He’s faking.”

“Faking?” said Edmund.

“Yes. Faking, shamming, putting it on. However you prefer to put it. He’s in more or less perfect health. His most serious ailment at the moment is the castor oil I believe he may have swallowed. Was it as an emetic, young man? Well, never mind. I hope you have managed to avoid whatever you wished to avoid. I will wish you good day, Mrs. Watson … Mr. Hadley … Mr. Lenox … Sir Edmund.”

“Good day,” Edmund said. “The bill to me, mind you.”

“Of course, sir.”

Mrs. Watson, amidst these pleasantries, had shifted from confusion to incandescence — she was cuffing her son on the ear, dragging him up out of the straw, telling him how little he was good for, and how stupid he was, and that he had wasted the time of four gentlemen that day, and she had missed work for the first time in two years (she had apparently forgotten the first time, even if Hadley hadn’t), and did he think money grew on primrose bushes. Gradually Lenox came to understand that the young man had been scheduled to return to the village school that day for the first time since spring. Unusual, rather, for a boy of fifteen and his class. He made a gentle comment to that effect. Mrs. Watson turned and proudly declaimed to him, Edmund, and Hadley — without any apparent concern for consistency — on the subject of her son’s extreme brilliance, overwhelming cleverness, unsurpassable goodness.

Meanwhile the boy was quietly eating a piece of bread — having apparently gone without, while his ruse de guerre to avoid school was in action, but having given up now. He did indeed look to be in fine health, now that he was upright. Mrs. Watson rushed him out then, saying that he could at least make the afternoon lessons — and he went, hair flattened, a slate and chalk tied to his belt, and a sprig of mint in his hand to sweeten his breath when he made his excuses to the teacher.

At last, this comedy of errors concluded, their interview could resume.