“The vandalisms,” muttered Freddie.
“Yes. I think his partners in Bath were unhappy with his payments to them. Did they take your clock in partial payment, Mr. Wells?”
Wells was silent.
“Why should he lack for money to pay them?” asked Archer. “We saw what he had down there!”
They had inspected the machine in Wells’s cellar for some time — an elaborate miniature processing plant of tools and dies, crucibles, melting pots, bars of copper, brass, and silver, coal fire, and machinery. It would send Wells to prison for life on its own, the murder charge aside.
“Most counterfeiters are caught,” said Lenox, “because they circulate the false coin too freely. I imagine Mr. Wells owed his money in the Queen’s true coinage, and perhaps didn’t feel like paying. Or perhaps he was frightened to take too much of it to the bank at a time.”
“But the third vandalism, Charles?” said Frederick. “The black dog?”
“Mr. Wells? No, you do not wish to speak? Anyhow I feel I can say with some assurance that he murdered Mr. Weston.”
“How?” said Freddie.
“Last night Mr. Carmody and I paid a visit to a certain stable in town. He identified the horses he had seen in the clearing, the ones that were intended to make us believe the murderers had come in from out of town. The stable belonged to Mr. Wells.
“And in fact I had my suspicions about the horses in that clearing. It is not a location, in my opinion, that a criminal from beyond Plumbley’s borders would know — so much easier to hitch your horse to a post on a country fence that a rich man’s steward might check once a week. Those woods are much walked-in by locals, however. Including Mr. Carmody, nearly every night.”
“Carmody,” said Wells, with a derisive snort. It was the first word he had uttered.
All four men were silent, hoping he would go on.
“Yes?” said Archer at last, but Wells had remembered himself.
“Then there was Carfax,” said Lenox.
“The young man at the Royal Oak,” said Freddie. “I wondered what you might have asked him.”
“What nickname have they taken to calling you, with your carriage and gold watch chain, Mr. Wells? Around Plumbley?”
It was Oates, smacking his head, who offered the answer. “Swells! Of course! How daft have I been!”
Lenox nodded. “Weston used the slang his friends did, writing that coded note. But why murder him, Mr. Wells? Did he see you making a payment? Perhaps you were bringing coins out of the cellar? I know that he had a good vantage of your shop from where he stood, smoking his final cigars.”
Oates was pacing now, angry. “Is that what it was, Frank?” he said. “Did my cousin catch you?”
No response was forthcoming.
“I don’t understand,” Frederick said after a moment. “The vandalism. Why not write him a note? Why go to the trouble of smashing windows?”
“That would introduce all sorts of unnecessary risks,” Lenox said. “The handwriting might be matched, the note might fall into the wrong hands, Wells himself might have held it back for blackmail. The vandalisms achieved the same end without the possibility of incriminating the vandals. Or their boss.”
“But smashing a window in a small town — that has its own risks,” said Frederick.
“Yet they did get the clock, the closest object of value, before they went. If they hadn’t made the mistake with Fripp’s the town would still have been sluggish.”
Oates stood up. “So the vandalism yesterday — the police station …”
Lenox nodded. “I was coming to that. I don’t think you saw them after all, Mr. Wells, did you? Didn’t you break the window with the rock and the helmet yourself? Another diversionary tactic. To try to pin it all on a gang of outsiders. Clever, in an insular village like Plumbley.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Wells. “None of it.”
Frederick stood up, then. The room went silent, in anticipation, and as if to prolong this sense he slowly poured a glass of water for himself. Then he offered to pour some for Wells, with a gesture, but the prisoner declined.
“I knew your father well,” said Frederick, still standing. “He was a good man.”
“Oh?”
“And you have a son, do you not?”
“You know I do,” said Wells.
“Is he — what, sixteen?”
“Yes.”
Frederick shook his head. “Sad. Very sad.”
Wells looked uncertain for the first time. “What?”
“Your father kept the shop in his name and yours, in case he should die, did he not?”
“Yes.”
“Have you done the same for your son?”
“What of it?”
“A life sentence in prison, for a boy that age.”
The terrible truth seemed to come alive in Well’s eyes as they widened. “No!” he said. “The boy had no idea about the dimmicking — had no — Mr. Ponsonby, play it fair with me!”
Frederick shook his head. “Justice demands that the owners of the store that held that machine come to trial, Mr. Wells. You and your son, both of you.”
Oates, his face unhappy, said, “Weren’t as if you gave Weston a chance to have much longer than sixteen years, either.”
Lenox weighed in now. “But Freddie, if Mr. Wells confessed to the murder — you’re a magistrate, you might have a word with them.”
Frederick took this in, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Yes, that’s true,” he said. “Mr. Wells? What do you think of buying your son’s freedom back?”
There was a brief thrust of defiance in Wells’s face, but as he looked at the four men surrounding him — all of them free to return to their hearths now, their happy families, their own children — something gave way.
“Yes, then,” he said. “If you’re willing to drag a sixteen-year-old boy to prison for it, you can have my confession. I was there when Weston died.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
You stabbed him?” said Oates. “No,” said Wells. “That was an Irishman named McCutcheon. He came to collect payment from me. We usually met in Taunton on Market Day, but he was to return my clock to me, too, and apologize, because I was back on schedule. I hadn’t fallen behind, only tried to pay them with some of the dimmicks. I tried to warn Mr. — I tried to tell my friend in Bath that his people should never come to Plumbley again, after the vandalisms, but McCutcheon showed up unannounced.”
“Who was McCutcheon’s boss?” asked Archer, keenly interested.
“It’s worth more than my life to tell.”
“Your son, Mr. Wells,” said Frederick.
Yet here Wells was adamant. Both he and his son — all his extended family — would be at risk, should he divulge that particular identity.
Archer seemed nevertheless to have some idea of who it might be, testing out a few names on Wells. None of them drew a reaction.
“And Weston confronted you?” Frederick asked, when this exchange had finished.
“Go back for a moment,” said Lenox. “How did McCutcheon arrive in town, if not by horse?”
“He took the train to Forstall”—this was one town over—“and then walked here. He was the one who spotted Weston, watching us.”
“Was it his idea to put the horses in the clearing?”
Wells shook his head. “I sent round word to my groom to take the two horses to the clearing, and a few beer bottles, after McCutcheon was so hell-bent on killing the witness. I liked Weston, for myself.”
“Liar,” spat Oates, full of rage.
“I did.”
“You weren’t worried that your groom would give you in?” asked Lenox.
“He’s loyal,” said Wells, shortly.
Frederick elaborated. “Simple is more like it. Joseph Thatcher, he had his head stoved in by his father when he was a lad, and hasn’t been the same since.”
“I knew Carmody or some-such would find the horses,” said We
lls.
Archer was taking notes. “And you’ll testify against McCutcheon? If it saves you the rope?”
“Why not? But the other one — no, not the boss. My skin wouldn’t be worth a counterfeit groat if I did.”
This was one of the coins that Wells’s machine had produced, worth four pence, along with a shilling — that was worth twelve pence, the most valuable coin he could manufacture — and a ha’pence. These were the most easily replicable, apparently. A sovereign, a pound coin, worth twenty shillings, was too valuable to counterfeit, according to Archer. The penny itself had been counterfeited so often that it had been redesigned, and was more difficult to copy now.
It was now past one in the afternoon, and Wells, looking haggard, asked if he might have some food, or even a word with his wife.
The men all looked at Lenox, who consented to the first request, but not the second. “I will not have her destroying evidence,” he said.
“She knows nothing about it,” said Wells.
“Oh?” Something in Wells’s voice persuaded Lenox that she was not a conspirator. Later he would have to question her.
For now he sent a small boy hanging outside of the station — part of the undiminishing crowd — to the King’s Arms, to fetch hot food and beer. Lenox handed him a few coins as payment for the favor, and realized he had almost passed off one of the false ha’pennies. How easy it was!
They ate in one room, Wells in another, and then they returned to interrogate him again, but in truth there was little more to discover. Teams of men from London and Bath had been sent for already, and were no doubt steaming along the rails toward Plumbley, desperate to analyze the contents of the grain merchant’s cellar: For both police forces counterfeiting was of primary importance.
The murder was simple, terribly simple. Wells had approached Weston, while McCutcheon waited in the shadows for the young man to turn his back. A cowardly killing, in that regard.
Lenox went on probing, however. “Why did you clear out his pockets? You could not have imagined that he would go unrecognized, if you took his identification.”
Wells shrugged. “Greed.”
It was Oates who said something — Lenox would have waited until they searched Wells’s house — about the weapon that killed his cousin. “What about the knife? What did you do with it?”
“McCutcheon took it,” said Wells. “At least as far as I can recall. Certainly I never handled it myself.”
Oates and Lenox exchanged looks, each wondering, perhaps, to what purpose the knife in the slop bucket had been used — and where Captain Musgrave, late of the Tenth Regiment of Foot, might be. Wells couldn’t help them, however.
At half past two none of the men had any questions. Archer, the constable from Bath, wanted to take Wells right away, but Wells wanted to stay in Plumbley.
Frederick agreed in principle, but demurred. “I scarcely feel comfortable leaving Mr. Wells with Oates, whose cousin has been murdered by this prisoner.”
Oates shook his head slightly. “I respect the system of justice, sir,” he said with some self-mastery. “He shall not be in danger under my care.”
“I trust Oates not to do me any harm,” said Wells, his voice cold, “and should take it as a great kindness to be permitted to stay in town, near my family. Bath is a city I do not know.”
Lenox and Archer, then, went to inspect the shop and Wells’s house more closely, and Frederick — still holding strong, despite his age, though slightly wan — sat down with the merchant’s wife to tell her what had happened. How she told her son and daughter was her own decision, he said.
With that duty discharged he said that he thought he might go back to Everley. “You’ve solved it, Charles, thank you.”
“It never feels quite as triumphant as it ought, does it?” asked Lenox.
The old squire looked at him with a half-smile. “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “D’you know what’s funny, I feel worse knowing than I did not knowing, though I’m glad the danger has passed.”
“You’ve been doing too much. You need rest.”
“Yes, it will be a relief to return to my books, my flowers. I think I shall take my tea alone today, if it won’t bother you and Jane.”
“Never.”
Wells’s house and his shop were both barren of further clues as to his villainy; from all appearances he was what he claimed to be, a prosperous seller of grain and corn. Only his ledgers — his real ones, which showed a certain recent slackness of business — offered any hint to the contrary. That and the monolithic machine in the basement.
Dallington returned at 4:00 that afternoon, arriving at the police headquarters with Hutchinson and a meek-looking Jack Randall, the man Frederick had fined only a few days before for passing bad coin.
“He’ll talk,” said Dallington grimly. “It took two hours to chase him down to an apple orchard and another two to get him to say a word. None of the words he said after that were very pleasant, but he’s as scared of prison as anyone I’ve ever met.”
Randall’s hooded eyes went up when he saw Oates. “Couldn’t come arrest me yourself?”
“I was busy arresting Mr. Wells,” said Oates. “Coiners, in Plumbley. You should be ashamed, Mr. Randall.”
“I don’t want to go to prison,” he said.
“I’ll help you if I can,” said Oates. “I’ve known you long enough, and your family, but you must be honest with us about Wells.”
Randall, looking slightly more confident, took a seat opposite Lenox, who had returned from inspecting Wells’s house and shop to speak to Archer. The constable from Bath was on the verge of leaving, but, looking at the clock, must have decided to stay until the 4:49 train.
He would have been just as well going; Randall’s tale was useful but unexciting. Once every two weeks he was to take fifteen pounds’ worth of coins and, through trades and small purchases, return with a minimum of ten pounds for Wells. Any of the false coins he had left over he could keep for himself. That was how he had been caught: His entire payment was in false coins, and naturally he wanted to spend them.
“Did you ever come up short of the ten pounds?” asked Lenox, more out of curiosity than anything.
“No, no. Usually cleared a pound or two for myself, and then I got to spend the other three — musicals, the best seats, ladies …”
“Where’d you usually go?”
“Mr. Wells made sure I went to different places — Bath, Salisbury, twice London, each time with thirty pounds…”
“That’s a great deal of money to spend in one day in London.”
“I was there three days. I found coffee shops worked well, put down a pound coin and pick up nineteen shillings and sixpence. Problem is you have to drink a great deal of coffee, then.”
“Public houses?”
“They’re suspicious of a coin there,” said Randall. “As I learned.”
“Did it never attract notice when you left Plumbley?”
The farmhand shrugged. “I work day shifts when I like.”
Lenox wondered how many such emissaries Wells had sent out into unsuspecting England, how much the man had enriched himself. “Do you know of anyone who did the same?” he asked.
“None such.”
“Fontaine?”
“That Frenchie?” said Randall, with the sort of dim-witted confidence that made it seem unlikely he was lying or concealing anything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
There was a distinguished and (locally) famous lady in Plumbley, who had lived there for many, many years, named Emily Jasper. She had been married when the century was still young to a barrister in Taunton, widowed at thirty, childless, and, betaken herself back to the village of her youth, where her sister and her sister’s husband and her sister’s seven children became the primary concern of her days. As she was much richer than they were she could take a pretty active hand in their lives, given certain inconsistently timed contributions to their budget, and the children had been schoole
d at her expense, while her brother-in-law, a painter of great talent and little enterprise, had been made to show the world his work, in London. Though it had brought him a small measure of fame he did not thank her for the headache it gave him — which was a gratifying state of affairs to Mrs. Jasper, because it made her both correct and inconvenient. She still wore black crepe.
Now ninety years old, she lived in the finest house on what villagers called the Hill. With her lived a niece named Lucy, who was certainly past thirty-five and had never married — but who, rather surprisingly, had a sweet and lovely temperament, a great deal of patience, in fact, true love for her aunt, and a talent at the piano that Lenox remembered vividly. The result of that schooling, perhaps.
It was Emily Jasper who was to be the guest of honor at the dinner party that evening — the trumped-up dinner party Lady Jane had devised. When Lenox arrived home, just after seeing Archer onto the train back to Bath, he recalled for the first time that day that the house had committed itself to such an event. He groaned.
“It’s hardly an auspicious time for it,” he said, “just when we—”
Lady Jane, away from her desk for once, came and kissed him on the cheek, one earring in, the other held between her middle finger and her thumb. “I heard, the maid told me! Congratulations, Charles. That evil Wells, would you believe it?”
“This dinner—”
“Does my hair look passable?”
“Lovely. But I say—”
“Dr. Eastwood will be here. And we have Mr. Marsham coming, too, of course.”
This was the vicar. “Nash had better lock the wine cupboard.”
“Charles!” she said, not at all scandalized. “Anyhow Miss Taylor is dressing. She even asked me what I thought of a gray dress, which I consider a positive sign, given that I usually skulk around her in fear.”
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