Home by Nightfall (21 page)

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.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Back at Lenox House an hour later, Lenox found there were two telegrams waiting for him, both sent by Dallington. The more recent of the two merely reported that Pointilleux was on his way. The first, from that morning, was a disjointed post on their progress in the Muller case:

When can you return STOP following chandelier per your sugg STOP whole thing damnably confusing STOP suspect Greville myself STOP have just discovered bizarre fct also STOP Margarethe Muller is reported in Paris right this minute by their constblry STOP anyhow come back here curse you STOP Dall

Lenox frowned after he read that. He read it again.
Reported in Paris.
He sat for some time, thinking about all that this information implied.

Thurley had identified the dead woman without hesitation when they found her: Margarethe Muller, Muller's sister and assistant.

It was possible that Thurley had been lying, but Lenox didn't think so. His reaction had been immediate, genuine.

That meant Muller had introduced the woman to the theater manager, and presumably everybody else, as Margarethe Muller. Which, in turn, meant, that the woman calling herself by that name in Paris might well be an impersonator—or that the dead woman had been an impersonator. One or the other.

After pondering this in silence for a long time, Lenox suddenly sprang up out of his chair. Writing rapidly, he drafted a telegram to Dallington.

Must remain here for now STOP but was Muller married STOP if so possible mistress traveling under sister's name STOP please keep apprised STOP Lenox

No sooner had he given that slip of paper to a footman with instructions to hurry down to the village and send it, however, than he had another thought. This one hit him even harder, with all the force of a revelation.

In his excitement he grabbed another servant and had him stand there and wait as he wrote.

And if lover then MULLER HIMSELF must be suspect STOP but how did he learn of chandelier STOP and why STOP push hard on Greville and Thurley STOP wine glasses STOP

Lenox sent this missive off—not much more coherent than Dallington's—and after he had watched it go stood stock-still in the front hall, thinking for many minutes on end.

As he stood there, he was wholly in London, wholly bent upon the problem of Muller's disappearance. Had he cracked it? A certain race in his pulse and his thoughts told him he had gotten a step closer to the truth, anyway. A lovers' quarrel. It made sense. If Muller was married—and Lenox strained to recall whether the newspapers had said he was, but couldn't—then his mistress might easily have traveled with him, and been more plausibly explained as a sister than a secretary or friend.

He would have gone on thinking about Muller for a great deal longer, if at that moment Edmund had not come in with a handsome brindle pointer. “Hello, Charles,” he said.

“Hello, Edmund. How are you?”

“Oh, well enough. This is Toby, your scenting dog.”

Lenox looked at his brother and smiled a smile of forced cheer. “Let's take him out, then. Do you have your walking boots on? Good, because the Lord knows what will happen to our horses this time.”

They had to ride very slowly. For a moment Lenox had thought that Edmund would decline to accompany him, but after a beat he had agreed, and now, having given Toby the flannel from the spaniel's neck, they followed him together at a walk, now and then a trot. Occasionally they would exchange a few desultory words. Only when Lenox described Hadley's disappearance did Edmund become engaged.

“My goodness. Did you tell Clavering?” he asked.

“I passed the word by Bunce, and I wired the head office of the Dover Assurance to ask what news they had of Hadley's whereabouts.”

Edmund shook his head. “It doesn't look good.”

Lenox squinted into the sun. “I know. And yet … well, it's simply odd, that's all. Why is his disappearance so different than the attack on Stevens? I mean to say, Stevens is confronted and stabbed, Hadley tormented for weeks and then kidnapped? Isn't it odd?”

“It is. Is it possible that Hadley himself attacked Stevens, though?”

“Yes, and what if Stevens was the tormenter! I thought of that, but then—why would Hadley have come to us, if he knew what was afoot, and that he planned to confront Stevens? His puzzlement seemed completely genuine. And then, even more baffling, why would he draw our attention to him by leaving directly after the attack?”

“Yes, true.”

Lenox looked at his pocket watch. It was just before one o'clock. “At this moment, the Queen is either in my house or not in my house,” he said.

“I don't want to puncture your
amour propre,
” Edmund replied, “but that's true of my house, too.”

Lenox smiled. “I wonder whether she went, that's all.”

“Will Jane wire to tell you?”

“Hm. Only in the event of a nonappearance, I would wager. We shall see.”

Toby ran along ahead of them, nose importantly to the ground, tail high in the air. They were again walking the perimeter of the village, on the logic that Stevens's attacker, if it was the same person who had been in the gamekeeper's cottage, must have needed a new place to stay until at least Tuesday, the day of the assault.

After a mile or so, they spotted another horse, and as it came closer, Lenox saw that atop it was George Atherton, one of Edmund's closest friends here. Atherton hailed them from a few hundred yards and rode their way, pulling his horse up short from its canter when he reached them, a trim, healthy animal, black all over but for its white socks. Toby smelled its legs and then dismissed it from his mind, coming to take a piece of dried duck from Edmund, then sitting and waiting at his command.

“I call this lucky—I was just riding over to see you, Ed!” said Atherton. He was a large, extremely good-natured fellow, country through and through, bluff, with an easy laugh and his blond hair held back in a clip, in the fashion of the last century. His chief passion in life was farming. He had chaffed Lenox since they were boys, and as a result Lenox had never been as fond of him as Edmund was. “Is that Cigar? What's all this I hear about you selling him to the glue factory for a shilling a pound?”

Edmund shook his head. “He was stolen. You remember Charles, obviously?”

“Of course! How d'you do, Charles? Still scared of roosters?”

“Not for thirty-five years or so. Are you still wet from falling in Sturton Pond?”

Atherton bellowed with laughter at that, and then called Charles a good'un. After that he asked what they were doing, and when he learned they were scenting, offered to come along.

Lenox was irritated when his brother agreed—it would slow them down—but as time passed, and Atherton chatted away without a care, Lenox realized that Edmund was smiling. More than that, it emerged, from one or two stray comments, that Atherton had been a regular visitor at Lenox House whenever Edmund had been here, and learning that, Lenox felt himself warm to the man. He even put in his joke about Bill Stickers being innocent—and was rewarded with another of Atherton's infectious guffaws.

It was when they were three-quarters of the way around the village that Toby picked up a scent. They were near a rutted cart path, and all at once all the muscles in the dog's body came alive. His pace increased, and he quivered and whined, his nose so close to the ground that he bumped it every few inches. Lenox offered him the flannel again to be sure, and Toby barked impatiently and increased his pace.

To Lenox's surprise, the dog led them not out into the countryside but toward the village of Markethouse itself.

Soon there was an air of great suspense among the three men, urgency. They were silent—even Atherton, unless you counted one occasion when he muttered that he'd never seen a dog so full of hell and pepper—and watched Toby intently as they followed him.

Presently they came to the head of Bell Street. “Shall we leave our horses here?” asked Edmund.

“Fool me once,” said Lenox.

So they rode in a crowd, almost as wide across as the street.

Toby, on the scent, was possessed—he would break into sprints now and then, and never faltered, turning right onto Markham Lane, left onto Pilling Street, left again onto Abbot Street. The few people about looked at them oddly, including half a dozen women from their windows. This was a quiet, working part of Markethouse, extremely tidy and well kept. In Abbot Street a chicken waddled indignantly beyond Toby's path, though the dog ignored it completely.

“What the devil is he after?” said Atherton.

“He's going to take us clear out of town again,” said Edmund.

Indeed, the houses were thinning; they had trailed through some of the densest parts of Markethouse, but now they were in sight of open fields once more.

Then, at the foot of Clifton Street, which actually ran straight from the market to the countryside, Toby became frantic. Lenox had tied a piece of rope to his collar several minutes before, and the dog strained and pulled at it, barking.

And finally it became clear where he was pointed—toward a little cottage at the very end of Clifton Street, set some ways off from the rest of the houses, surrounded by a stone wall. As Lenox could see from the height of his horse, a thick, rich tangle of climbing plants rose up the walls of the dwelling.

Toby leapt and fought at the wall, barking furiously. Lenox saw Atherton and Edmund exchange a grave look.

“What is it?” said Lenox. “Who lives here?”

It was Atherton who answered, in a low voice. “Mad Calloway.”

 

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.