A Death in the Small Hours clm-6

by Charles Finch

  Lenox nodded slightly, his face grim. “I think the facts are settled in my mind. I shall wait until the morning — until this has died down — to make the arrest. First I must go to one of the public houses and have a quiet word with a man, as a final verification. Perhaps you and Freddie might come with me, and I shall explain.”

  Freddie was speaking in consoling tones to a group of woman who were standing in front of the police station. When he saw Lenox, he asked, “Do you need to see the constable’s hat, the rock, Charles?”

  The detective shook his head. “No, at least not at the moment. As long as Oates has retained it as evidence.”

  “It is in the station’s safe.”

  “Will you come along to the Royal Oak for a few moments? I should like you to point out Weston’s friends to me. We are close to the end.”

  Frederick looked hopeful. “You have it?”

  “I think I may,” said Lenox. “It is a pitiful reason to waste a life, if I am correct.”

  They trudged across the village green toward the King’s Arms, a dark, low-slung Tudor pub without much cheer to it, full of quiet voices and lit only by a few swinging candles. The cider was reckoned to be some of the best in Somerset, however. Lenox ordered three pints of it at the bar.

  “Which of these is Weston’s friend?” he asked Frederick.

  “Several by the back wall there, that young man, for instance, Michael Robe. Then there’s Edward Carfax, just next to him, holding the glass of shandy.”

  “Which one can keep a secret?”

  “Carfax, I would say.”

  “I’m going to ask the publican for a private room. If you could bring Mr. Carfax back to see me, I would be grateful.”

  Soon it was done, and in a few, low words, sealed with a promise of silence, the young man confirmed Lenox’s suspicions.

  Dallington and Frederick came in again when Carfax had left. “Well?” asked the old squire.

  “Could you have a constable here from Bath, in the morning?” asked Lenox.

  “Very easily, yes.”

  “And could you write up a search warrant?”

  “Again, very easily, yes.”

  “Then I will ask you to do those two things — and for a modicum of patience with me. Tomorrow when the policeman from Bath arrives it shall all be clear.”

  Dallington objected. “Come, you must tell us now.”

  “No. I think my uncle would want to make an arrest, Oates is agitated, it is late, we have need of support, of a search warrant … and then there are a few final details I would like to ponder before I lay out the entire case before you.”

  “But—”

  Frederick put a hand on Dallington’s shoulder. “Come, we must permit him his methods. Charles, can I tell Oates when to meet us?”

  “I would prefer if you did not. The murderer must not think himself closed-in upon.”

  “Is it not Musgrave, then?” said Dallington.

  “I have my suspicions of him, perhaps, but let it wait until the morning.”

  They went back to Everley, then, the hour not much before midnight. It had been one of the longest days Lenox could remember.

  Jane was still sitting up, however, a pair of lamps upon her desk, her head bent low over it.

  “Still writing?” Lenox asked as he came in.

  She turned. “Charles! You’ve been gone for ages, you poor soul. Did you ever eat?”

  “Come to think of it, I did not.”

  “Let me call for something.”

  She moved to ring the bell-rope, hanging in the corner of their sitting room. “No, no!” he said. “I’ll have a ginger biscuit and wait for breakfast. In truth I am out of my appetite.”

  “Is it your speech?”

  “No — this murder.”

  “Come, sit and tell me all of it.”

  She beckoned him to a small, comfortable sofa near the window. The whole western gardens of Everley were visible under the moonlight: their precise graveled geometries, their intricate plantings and effloresences, their trimmed trees, all of Rodgers’s and Ponsonby’s many hours of mutual work. As Lenox gazed upon it he thought at once of how frivolous these country-house gardens could seem and how noble, what an achievement of man.

  The tin of ginger biscuits (a present from Toto) was opened and raided, a glass of Madeira poured from a half-full bottle upon a side table, and soon Lenox felt less like a wraith, more wholly human.

  He explained the entire sequence of events, as he saw them, to Jane.

  “It is a gamble to go in blind, tomorrow,” he said. “If the machine is not there I shall feel very foolish indeed. Yet all of the arrows — Weston’s note, Fontaine’s actions, the vandalisms — they seem to point in one direction, do they not?”

  Lady Jane, for her part, had no doubts that he was correct. Her legs were tucked under her, her hands on his shoulder as she gazed at him. “Of course they do,” she said. “And I think you’re brilliant.”

  He laughed. “If I could just thank you to get that statement notarized, then I might show it to you the next time we need to settle a debate about the color of the carpet in my library.”

  “I said that you were brilliant, not that you were in full possession of your eyesight.”

  “Very funny.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Now tell me — what have you been working on, so assiduously? Is it for the charity ball in December?”

  “Have you noticed that?”

  “It would have been difficult to miss it.”

  She smiled. “I’ve had my head down, it’s true. I’ll tell you why in a day or two.”

  “It’s too late to peer in on Sophia, I suppose?” he said.

  “Far too late. Not fair on the governess, either. Incidentally, you can still sit for supper tomorrow evening?”

  “Barring a catastrophe.”

  “Don’t speak like that,” she said, frowning. “I don’t like it.”

  Though he ought to have been mortally tired, he found that when it came time to go to sleep he was more awake, more alert than he would have expected. It was often this way at the end of a case. Small details returned to him. Then thoughts about his speech. Then distant memories of Frederick, of his mother, of Everley …

  Just after the great mahogany clock downstairs tolled one o’clock in the morning he realized that he was not likely to fall asleep soon. He got up and with soft footsteps made his way to the kitchen, a place to which he had made many unlicensed late-night visits in his early years of life, and made himself a pot of tea.

  This, along with a few more ginger biscuits, he set on his desk, then lit a soft light, sat down, and set to work on his speech. It came to him effortlessly. Almost as if in a dream he filled line after line, sheet after sheet, pausing only for sips of the hot, then lukewarm, and finally cold tea, deaf and blind to the world around him.

  By half past two he had written nearly the entire thing. With a contented exhalation he put down his pen and returned to bed, where he fell asleep instantly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  He slept later than usual the next morning, dressed quickly, and went down with Jane to breakfast. The room was empty, however: Dallington was walking in the gardens with Miss Taylor and Sophia, apparently, while Lenox’s cousin was in his study.

  After downing a cup of coffee Lenox looked in on him. The older man was sitting in a shaft of sunlight by the window, engrossed in a journal.

  “Anything interesting?” asked Lenox.

  “A history of the tulip in Brabant.”

  That was a kind of answer. “Do I have time for a quick ride out?”

  Frederick took his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “The constable from Bath will arrive on the eleven twenty-seven, so if you’re sharp about it I think you might have time. I don’t suppose you’d prefer to sit and tell me who you think killed Weston?”

  “Soon, soon,” said Lenox, his voice apologetic.

  “By all means, leave me in suspense as long as y
ou wish.”

  It was colder than it had been in the past few days, but as he rode, jumping stiles and puddles, Lenox quickly warmed. After half an hour of pacey travel across the fields circling the village, startling birds and small game as he tore along, he was sweating.

  It was refreshing to be in the country: He slowed the hack down with a tightening of the reins and turned her halfway back to gaze out at the course they had been running at Everley, set below them in its swale of land. This was the distance from which many artists had painted the house, and indeed it looked wonderfully serene. So, too, did the village, with its spires and its curvingly crossed lanes.

  He took the way back at a canter, not a gallop, and handed the horse over to Chalmers feeling energized. As he was washing his face and arms, Nash, the butler, came in and said that the carriage was waiting downstairs.

  It was with a feeling of some solemnity that the three men, Dallington, Ponsonby, and Lenox, gathered there at a little after eleven o’clock. They picked up Oates, who was silent after his greeting, then as a group met the train, where a tall, solid-looking constable named Archer, his face dominated by an enormous mustache, was standing on the platform with a small satchel. He did not require a bite to eat, no; he would prefer they made the arrest directly.

  “Where shall we go, Charles?” said Freddie.

  “To Fripp’s, please.”

  “Fripp’s!” said Oates.

  It was a short, tense ride. The squire, who had lived on the same meridian as Fripp for these sixty years, kept glancing at his cousin uneasily.

  The fruit-and-vegetable man was tidying his stalls, occasionally offering a stray word to one of the women prodding his goods. He looked up when the carriage stopped at the corner, and the men walked toward him along the white-stoned path that lay between the buildings and the green.

  “Gentlemen!” he said. “Have you caught ’em yet?”

  “Hello, Mr. Fripp,” said Lenox.

  “Charlie.”

  He turned to the three men. “You observe the sign in the window, gentlemen?” he said.

  “W. F. Purveyor,” said Archer.

  “This was the location of the first vandalism,” said Lenox. “Now — moving along.”

  Fripp looked confused. “Excepting what is that to mean?”

  “You may come along if you like,” said Lenox. “We’re only walking ten doors down. I think your shop was vandalized by mistake, Mr. Fripp.”

  “To Wells’s?” asked Frederick quietly.

  Lenox nodded. “The location of the second vandalism.”

  Wells’s shop was empty, though the man himself was behind his counter, apron on, barrels of seed full and gleaming, a pencil stub in his hand and a ledger before him. He looked up just as the bell, strung tightly to the door, clanged.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “You observed the sign in the window, as we came in, Mr. Archer?” said Lenox.

  “F. W. Purveyor,” said Archer with a nod.

  “Outsiders, nervous about a job, knowing they’re to commit a violation of a property on the east side of the village green — it is a mistake I understand. They came back a second time to do the job correctly, and took a clock, too.”

  There was a sudden strain, an airlessness, in the room. “What is the meaning of this?” asked the grain merchant.

  “Mr. Wells,” said Lenox, “I have come into your shop three times now, including this visit.”

  “I recall,” said Wells coolly.

  “On none of those occasions have I seen a single customer. Yet what was it you told me, Freddie — that he has changed it all out of countenance from the sleepy shop that it was in his father’s day, that he had a gold watch chain now, a carriage for his mother. Is that correct?”

  “My customers buy in bulk, not in dribs and drabs. But then I would not expect a politician to understand the ways of business.”

  Lenox laughed. “A point fairly taken, though I’ve seen grain shops busier than this. No, I grant you that — if it was only the watch chain, the carriage, then I would be on an unstable footing.” He went silent. The laughter left his face. “But your expansion,” he said. “The expansion of your store.”

  “What of it?” asked Wells.

  “Are we to arrest this man?” said Archer. Oates murmured his concordance with the question.

  Only Dallington knew Lenox’s methods. He was quiet. “How long did the expansion take, Mr. Wells?” asked Lenox.

  “Two months.”

  Lenox gestured at the narrow strip of new flooring in one corner of the room. “I noticed this when I was here before. Two months! It is a very small return on a very great investment of time and, I presume, money. Freddie, you called it a hellish noise, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And — I thought this was telling — he brought in men from Bath to do the work, too? Despite the town railing against Captain Musgrave for taking his custom to Taunton.”

  “I confess that I am still in the dark, Charles,” said Frederick. “May we come to the point? Did Mr. Wells kill Weston?”

  “Never!” said Wells, and indeed his face was filled with a convincing outrage.

  Lenox strode toward a door at the back of the room. “Dallington, it was something you said about Fontaine that finally tipped me.”

  The junior detective’s face — paled with guilt for these last few days, so eager to be of aid — seemed to flush with happiness now. He restrained it long enough to ask, in a casual voice, “Oh? Which was it? Glad to help, of course.”

  Lenox stopped at the door. “Mr. Wells, may we visit your cellar? As I remember there appears to be a heavy padlock on this door.”

  “Can that surprise you, after this shop was vandalized and a prize clock taken?” said Wells. “Am I accused of some wrongdoing, sirs?”

  “I suspect the padlock predates the vandalism — but never mind that, may we see your cellar?”

  Wells’s face was, for a moment, reluctant, but then he said, “By all means. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Take us down, if you would.”

  There was a ring of keys tied to Wells’s apron string. He selected a large iron one and opened the padlocked door, then led them along a short passage and down a flight of stairs, single file.

  The cellar was disappointing. There were sacks of grain, old bits of machinery, a few papers.

  Lenox felt the tide of the room turning against him; indeed, he was puzzled.

  Then it came to him: The room was too small.

  “Why is the cellar only a quarter of the size of the house?” he asked. He turned to Dallington, Archer, Oates, Frederick. Fripp had stayed upstairs, evidently. “Help me find the concealed door. It will be on this wall.”

  Now at last Wells broke. With a cry of fury he flung himself toward the stairs, but it was Constable Archer of Bath, as strong as an oak tree, who blocked his way and, with Oates’s help, put handcuffs over his wrists.

  “A concealed door?” said Dallington. “Concealing what?”

  “Help me look,” said Lenox.

  They spent ten minutes going over the back wall minutely until, at last, it was Fredrick, puffing slightly from the exertion of stooping and crawling along the floor, who found the small latch. “It needs a key,” he said. “There’s a keyhole in the floor here.”

  Archer took Wells’s ring of keys. It was the third key that worked, releasing the door in the wall a quarter of an inch. It was obvious now, in retrospect, where it had been all along.

  “Here is the reason for your Bath workmen — your two-month renovation,” said Lenox. “Dallington, it was the bad coin you mentioned that finally tipped me, one of the charges against Fontaine’s in Bath. You recall, too, Uncle, Jack Randall, passing false bits. I suspect both of them worked for Mr. Wells. This room is the reason for all the trouble Plumbley has had.”

  All of them surged forward around the door as Lenox opened it, except for Wells, who was
leaning, forlorn, against the stairs.

  Lenox knew what he expected, but even he gasped when he saw it; the others went slack-jawed. Within a long chamber stood an enormous bronze machine, gleaming under lamplight, and even now pumping out row upon row upon row of counterfeit coins.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Plumbley police station had a back room with a table and chairs in it. The transfer of Wells from his shop’s cellar to that room — a distance of perhaps fifty yards — took place quickly, in under a minute. Still it wasn’t quick enough to prevent people from seeing. Freddie had ventured outside and found a bedlam of people pressed up against the windows of the police station, hoping for a glimpse of the suspect.

  Now he returned to the room and sat with Archer and Lenox on one side of the table, Wells on the other, a pitcher of water and several glasses between them. Oates stood in the corner, watching.

  Dallington was out looking for the farmhand Jack Randall, with the aid of Oates’s temporary subordinate, the farmer, Mr. Hutchinson. As Lenox pointed out, Randall might have been involved or there might simply have been an uncommon quantity of false coin passing around Plumbley. Meanwhile Archer had sent a telegram back to his headquarters to report of the arrest and to ask that Fontaine be questioned about his relationship with Wells.

  “Tell it from the start, please, Mr. Lenox,” said Plumbley’s constable. His wits seemed sharper today, uninterfered with by any morning tipple. “I still don’t claim to understand it all.”

  Lenox shrugged. “Mr. Wells can recount the story better than I can.”

  Wells was silent.

  “Help him along, perhaps,” said Frederick. The squire looked heartily disappointed to be in the room, even in his relief at having caught the criminal.

  “It was greed, I suppose. The grain shop Mr. Wells inherited was not as prosperous as he would have wished, and when he took control of it he must have been on the lookout for a new way to create income for himself. Only he can tell us how he came to acquire the machine, though I suspect it was from someone in Bath. The police in the big cities are so alert to coining now that the shofulmen in London have moved their business entirely to the country. Perhaps he had a smaller machine at first and the expansion of the store — so minimal on the ground floor, but enormous in the cellar, and permitting the creation of a secret space — only came after he had saved enough money to build it. But I suspect that he borrowed the money.”