Home by Nightfall (8 page)

They walked with great care through each of the house's four rooms and its small rearward kitchen. Lenox had Edmund go back and enter the front door as he and Hadley stood by the stove, quiet. They couldn't hear him come in. So it was possible that a person could have slipped inside while Mrs. Watson was in the kitchen, though obviously it would have been a risk.

Mrs. Watson had been telling the truth, too—there was nowhere in this house where a person larger than a child could reasonably have hidden, by Lenox's reckoning. He knocked at the back of every closet, listening for the hollow sound of a false compartment, inspected the floorboards, asked whether there was an attic.

It was growing rather late now. “We have mastered the facts of the case today, at least,” said Lenox to Hadley. “Tomorrow I hope we may make further progress.”

A shadow of panic crossed Hadley's stolid British face. “Do you think I am in danger?” he asked.

Lenox shook his head. “I think that if anyone intended you harm, they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to draw you
away
from Markethouse, by reporting that fire in Chichester.” Hadley and Edmund made identical faces then, some realization dawning on them. Lenox felt a discreditable little moment of superiority and covered it with a frown. “On the other hand, I think something unusual is certainly occurring.”

“And you advise?”

“Giving us a little more time,” said Lenox. “If you feel uneasy, I would be sure to let your neighbors know before you retire for the night. A street full of inquisitive neighbors is often the most powerful deterrent to crime in my experience.”

Hadley nodded and, as they gathered up their cloaks and went to the door, thanked them profusely, telling them that he would be home all the next day, their servant whenever they might have the time free to see him again.

“An interesting day,” said Edmund, as they walked down Potbelly Lane and through Cow Cross Street. From a thousand summer afternoons, they both knew without saying it that they would take the shortcut across the old grazing pasture home—much quicker than the long road. “Why didn't you mention the gemstones, may I ask?”

“I'd like to know a little more about it all first.”

“About the crime?”

Lenox shrugged. “The crime, the criminal, the telegram—and Hadley, too.”

At Lenox House, Waller greeted them in the entrance hall, where their footsteps sounded loudly on the black-and-white checkerboard floor.

At this hour, the light falling gray through the windows, lamps still unlit, there was something peculiarly sad in the air, to do with Molly—something silent, almost more silent because of their own small sounds in this empty little hallway, with its vestiges of another, fuller life, gloves on the front table, umbrella stand poised to receive hats and sticks. In a frame next to the front table was a small line drawing of the dogs.

Waller coughed discreetly. “One of your tenants, Martha Coxe, is at the servants' entrance, Sir Edmund, enquiring for”—he looked distinctly uncertain as he said the next words—“for the late Lady Molly, sir.”

Edmund hesitated before he responded. “She doesn't know … no, evidently not,” he said. “They're very isolated down in the valley, I suppose. Please, lead the way.”

Edmund followed Waller. Lenox, alone, sighed and walked into the drawing room.

Things were a little bit more cheerful here, at least. On his mother's sideboard there was a rounded china urn of hot tea, with plates of biscuits and sandwiches near it, and gratefully he poured himself a cup, spooning in a small noiseless snowfall of sugar, then pouring a bit of milk in to follow it. Ranged across the long wall, opposite the windows looking out at the garden, were the old familiar portraits he had ignored so intimately in his childhood, when he spent hour upon hour in this room, especially on rainy days. One of the old Lenoxes—Sir Albion Lenox, 1712–1749, a small brass plate said—looked exactly like a cross between Charles's father and a large frog.

He took his cup over to the piano and found on the deep black shine of its surface a letter and a telegram waiting for him. (This was where Edmund always had Waller leave his post, and Lenox followed suit when he visited.) There was also a large stack of official pouches from Parliament, and he smiled, remembering the ceaseless flow of documents and constituents' letters and blue books from his own time in the House, and feeling glad that this cataract fell upon Edmund now, not him. He picked up the wire with his name on it and read it.

His eyes moved quickly. When he was finished, he said, in a low voice, “Well.”

He tossed the telegram down onto the piano. Down here, sadly, he'd be at least half a day behind in hearing any news of the missing German, even if Dallington wired, as he had now. Anyone who really wanted to take a hand in the Muller case had to be in London.

The young lord's telegrams had a unique style, for he tried to be economical with his words, since they cost a halfpenny each, but could never quite manage to contain himself. His message said:

Scotland Yard admitting stuck Muller STOP have called in agency STOP not us blast them STOP LeMaire STOP Polly advises independent investigation STOP urges you return STOP all here vexed in extreme STOP hope all well STOP Dall

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lenox woke up very early the next morning, with the first dark blue light. After taking a cup of strong coffee, he unstabled and saddled Daisy, gave her a handful of oats, and then set out with her across the country. Yesterday had been sunny, but this new day was wet and dark, a thin mist hanging over the open green landscape. He rode very hard. The horse responded beautifully, though he learned that he had to angle her off on downslopes, where she might easily have tumbled heels-over-head, for she didn't slow her pace at all. During their whole gallop his mind was an utter blank: the noise of the horse, the air in his face, the sensation of the thousands of pounds of muscles working beneath him, the close control he needed in his hands and his legs to stay safely astride her.

At last they stopped at a small brook, where he ladled water from the stream for both of them, first himself and then the horse. The soft rain was wonderfully cooling. After his breath had slowed, Lenox looked back and saw the house, only a small rectangle on the horizon. He ate a hard rind of cheese he had brought, chewing almost automatically because he was so hungry, and fed Daisy first an apple, then a few cubes of sugar, both of which she took with snorting joy.

He thought of Sophia; she could sit on a small stool in the stable for hours, feet swinging above the ground, watching the horses as they were combed and fed—indeed, watching them do nearly anything. He felt a thud in his heart, the sensation of missing his only child, sad but not unpleasant

In his breast pocket he had Jane's letter, and as he caught his breath he took it out and read it again. Not very much news, since she had written it only a few hours after he left.

My dear Charles,

Does the post arrive there only four times a day, rather than six? Now I cannot recall, for some reason. Still, this should be with you tomorrow, with
any
luck—with it my love and Sophia's. You will be no doubt content to hear, since you are pleased to indulge her worst vices, that she pulled the hair of a little boy on the street when he wasn't looking. He shouted terribly. She said that she knew him—
didn't
like him, he had done the same to her earlier. I had to apologize abjectly to her mother, who looked fit to roast me over a fire.

Toto arrives in ten minutes to help me plan the seating for the luncheon. If HM does come, of course, every plan will be shot straight to pieces. Then again, nobody will care, because she will be there. Then again again, even if she comes I will feel as if I have done wrongly, for Edmund's sake. I am glad that you are there at least.

Will you see my brother while you're in Sussex? Do call on him if you remember. More tomorrow morning—I will send cuttings of the news on Muller, as you requested. Write me by next post, would you? Love always,

Jane

Muller. Lenox, sitting on a rock by the brook, restored now but waiting to be sure that his horse had caught her breath, too, contemplated the missing German. The night before, after he had gone to his bedroom (the blue room, the best in the house they'd always thought, and strictly out-of-bounds in their youth), he had stayed up with a candle and examined his own small private file on the case. There was something slightly unbecoming—to be kept private, at any rate—in this collection of paper clippings, notes on chronology, scribbled thoughts. It was the pride of it. He had a great deal to do, and many, many men were already focusing their efforts on finding the pianist, LeMaire now among them, a wily old hand.

Yet Lenox found that he couldn't quite resist making his own surmises. Then again, neither could Pointilleux, nor Dallington, nor Edmund, nor probably HM herself, if it came to that. So it was without too much self-recrimination that he'd sat up later than he had intended, pondering every facet of the case anew, trying to circle in closer to the truth. If Polly thought the agency ought to be involved, she was no doubt correct. Of the three of them she had the best head for business.

He was nine-tenths of the way home, riding at a canter, when to his surprise he saw Edmund, walking down the slender path that led west away from the house. “Have you had your breakfast?” asked Charles. “It's very early.”

“I have,” said Edmund.

“I was expecting to see you over coffee. There's Hadley.”

“Yes, of course! I shan't be more than an hour or two. I just liked the sound of a walk.”

“With your valise?”

“Blue books, in case I sit.”

“Do you want company?”

Edmund shook his head soberly. “You'd better stable her. It's only getting wetter. I'll be back soon.”

Lenox watched his brother go, then shrugged and turned back toward Lenox House. He wouldn't be able to distract him indefinitely, that was the trouble. With a twinge of memory he recalled Edmund referring to “the boys” the day before. This was among the cruelest aspects of Edmund's grief: that his two sons did not yet know of it.

The older of them, James Lenox, who'd become baronet one day himself, would learn of his mother's death soon. He was an adventurous, handsome, fast-living young person, who had decided after he graduated from Harrow to forgo the slow rewards of university education and instead try his hand in the colonies, specifically Kenya. The letter Edmund had written him with the news a month before would arrive shortly, if the mails ran as they ought to.

But then there was Teddy, Edmund and Molly's younger son, who had been particularly close to his mother. He was at sea aboard the
Lucy,
a senior midshipman of Her Majesty's Navy. There was no way at all of knowing when he might return, or even what latitude he was currently sailing upon.

Lenox rode into the stables, gave his horse to the groom after a pat on her neck, and went into the breakfast room through the glass doors that looked out on the garden. To his surprise, a figure was seated there.

“Houghton, is that you?” said Lenox.

The fellow turned in his chair. “Ah! Hello, Charlie. How do you do, how do you do?”

This was Lady Jane's younger brother, Clarence, the Earl of Houghton. “What a pleasant surprise!” said Lenox.

Houghton stood, tucking his newspaper under his plate, and smiled warmly, putting out his hand.

They had never been terribly close. Houghton was an inscrutable sort, even to Jane. He was very old-fashioned. As a boy, an heir born after his father had nearly given up hope of such a thing, he had always been a marvel within the family, cosseted and beloved, and there was some air of permanent distance or detachment in his bearing now, as kindly as his manners were. A nursery air. He was deeply conscious of his position, both its perquisites and its responsibilities. He was married; had two sons himself; had no passions to speak of other than the administration of his enormous estate and the maintenance of his position. He probably hadn't opened a book in twenty-five years, but he read certain parts of the
Times
without fail—the court circular, the chess problem, the weddings and deaths, and the crime reports from London, though it was rare that he spent more than three days a year there. Jane managed him very well. She chaffed him, pushed food on him, mothered him. It was what he wanted, perhaps. In the end, Lenox thought of him as still half a boy, for all his frowning sense of duty. His wife was a cold, impeccably lineaged, proper woman, Eliza. The closest Lenox had ever felt to Houghton was after an unpleasant dinner with Eliza, when the two of them played cards in his library together alone; in silence.

“There's a ball next Friday night. I'm to invite you,” Houghton said. “Jane wrote.”

“That was decent of her.”

“I would have come straight across anyway, had I known you were here. Why the devil didn't you write to say you were going to be staying?”

“I had planned to write this morning. I only decided at the last moment, when my brother needed me to come down. It all happened in a rush.”

Houghton nodded. “I was very sorry about Molly.”

“We were glad to see you at the funeral,” said Lenox.

“Oh, of course.”

“Did you ride across today?”

“I? Oh, no, I took my carriage. Is your brother here?”

“He is out on a walk upon the estate,” said Lenox.

“Ah, is he! Capital, capital—so much to do with that sort of thing. You have it easy, Charlie, larking about London. Only he and I know all that can go wrong in places such as ours.”

This was polite of Houghton. Lenox House was not one of England's great stately homes—a hunt, riding hard, could cross its acres in five or six minutes, whereas Houghton's land would have taken them the best part of an hour, and two river fordings at that.