Home by Nightfall

by Charles Finch

  Pickler frowned. “It’s not the village I would choose for it,” he said.

  “That’s true,” Edmund put in. “It’s very tight.”

  “I suppose the churchyard is the only place I can think of,” said Pickler. “Every other room in every other house is occupied, and my missus and I would know it in a heartbeat if someone was in our cellar, for instance. You wouldn’t last long trying to hide in any of the streets here. No, I don’t think it’s Markethouse you’re wanting, for that kind of thing—unless it’s the churchyard, as I say.”

  “Every village must have an abandoned room—a little lean-to—where a person could hide?” said Lenox.

  Pickler shook his head. “Not in Markethouse proper, sir. The town is overinhabited as it is, sir. Folk are very jealous of their space here.”

  Edmund affirmed this. “There’s a law on the books against putting up two continuous buildings or more within a few miles of the town limits. Agreed long ago by the local landowners. Everything’s very compact as a result, just as Pickler says.”

  “I see.”

  A few minutes later, as they watched the milkman walk back toward the cattle pen, Edmund said, “You think it’s an itinerant, then, someone living rough?”

  “I really don’t know. The blankets and the food would seem to indicate as much. But then there are the books, and Mr. Hadley’s peculiar experience.”

  “Mm.”

  “It can’t hurt to look at the churchyard, at least. Come, let’s go there now.”

  But at the churchyard they found only another dead end. They walked the whole length of it, then looked in all the nooks and crevices within the church itself, but there was no sign at all of inhabitation. And as Lenox thought of the town, he realized that Pickler and Edmund were right: There were very few places in Markethouse where one could hide out. Its most affluent residents lived in Cremorne Row, in a long line of alabaster houses, its prosperous burghers round about the area of Potbelly Lane, and its lower inhabitants toward Mrs. Watson’s end of town. In all that space, as he thought of it, he couldn’t call to mind a single dark alley, or a stableyard that wasn’t hawkishly watched. If the town said Mrs. Hargrave’s nephew had been the last stranger to visit before Lenox himself, the town was right.

  And yet, and yet …

  “I have an idea,” Lenox said.

  Forty minutes later both brothers were on horseback, Lenox on Daisy, who was cantering with a sprightly gait, and Edmund on an eight-year-old chestnut he loved better than all but a handful of human beings, Cigar.

  They rode in a perimeter around Markethouse. They started very close in, along the fields at the edge of town. There were several small buildings near a small public garden, but all of them were locked; when they came back to where they had started, they went a half mile farther out from the town and started the circle again.

  This was precisely the way Lenox always approached a corpse: moving away from it in concentric circles, studying the body and its environs from farther away with each one. Scotland Yard had officially adopted it as a standard method two years before.

  Now the corpse was Markethouse, and they circled it three times, at a half mile, a mile, and a mile and a half, stopping at every small building they saw, jumping easily over the fences they passed. On the main road a few people were starting to leave Markethouse, their goods all sold, evidently, traveling by donkey or by foot.

  They came again to the head of the stream where they had started, longitudinally, and Edmund said, “Another circle?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “With all my heart. It had been too long since I was on a horse.”

  Lenox broke into a grin. “I told you! There’s nothing like it.”

  “Yes, I remember now that you know everything. Come along, catch up if you can!” cried Edmund, and put his heel into the horse’s flank.

  Neither the next circle nor the one after that showed them anything. There were a few small buildings in various attitudes of crumble, but none looked as if its threshold had been crossed in years, never mind the last few days.

  It was growing dark when they reached a small, tumbledown gamekeeper’s cottage. They were about three miles outside of town now, and another three west of Lenox House. Both of the brothers were breathing hard. Markethouse was in the distance from them on the eastern horizon, smoke rising in thin columns from a few dozen different chimneys on this brisk day.

  “Whose land are we on?” Lenox asked in a low voice.

  Edmund looked at him curiously. “Alfred Snow. We have been for the past seven or eight minutes. A farmer in these parts. He keeps a good deal of livestock, too. A rough sort, but very smart—worked his way up from the orphanage in Chichester, you know, wholly on his own in the world, to very great wealth indeed. I have a good deal of time for him. He bought the property from Wethering when Wethering went bankrupt, poor sod. You remember Wethering. Why? Do you see something?”

  Lenox pointed at the ground. There was tobacco ash in a pile next to the door, as if someone had been leaning there and refilling a pipe. It might well have been nothing—another rider, stopping by, or the gamekeeper.

  But. “Does Snow keep game?”

  “No. Wethering did, and his forefathers, of course. That’s why this building is here.”

  “Let’s look inside,” said Lenox. “Quietly.”

  They dismounted, tied their horses to a tree, and walked silently toward the door. Lenox put a few fingers to it, and it swung open easily.

  Within the small stone cottage there looked to be two rooms. The door to the rear room was drawn to, but in the first it was obvious someone had been resident recently. There was a makeshift pile of twigs and branches in the fireplace, half burned, though it had been extinguished by the rain. Lenox went to it and felt the stones of the hearth—warm.

  He turned back to Edmund and raised his eyebrows. There was a blanket here, too. One of the church’s?

  And then his blood went cold. In the next room there was a sound, a footstep.

  Edmund looked at Lenox, who rose very, very slowly to a standing position. “Stay,” Lenox mouthed to his brother, holding up a hand.

  He walked as softly as he possibly could across the stone floor and put his ear to the door.

  There was certainly someone in the next room. He could hear the fellow’s breath, rather heavy, as if he’d been running.

  Then there was the sound of another door opening and closing.

  “Quick!” said Lenox. “There must be a back door!”

  He and Edmund burst through and saw the back door of the gamekeeper’s cottage flung open. Nobody was in this second, smaller room—a kitchen—and Lenox ran to the door.

  He pulled up short there. “Look,” he said, pointing out into the field.

  Sprinting into the gloaming there was a small, sturdy dog, barking happily.

  “A spaniel,” said Edmund.

  “Sandy,” Lenox said.

  Edmund shook his head. “Damn it.”

  They walked back around toward the front of the house, each wishing that it were a little brighter out, careful where they stepped, both wary of someone who might be lurking there, waiting to do them harm.

  When they reached the front of the house, they saw two leather lines hanging loose from the trees. Their horses were gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was a very long walk home.

  As they were nearing Lenox House, with its low glimmer of domestic light shining in the darkness of the evening, Edmund said, “You know, it occurs to me, we might easily have gone up to Snow’s and asked him to lend us a couple of horses.”

  Lenox stopped in his tracks. “It occurs to you, does it?”

  Edmund smiled good-naturedly. “Yes, I’m sorry. But listen, there’s no need to be cross with me. You didn’t think of it either.”

  Lenox smiled wearily and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “No, you’re right. What a pair of flats we look, I’m sorry to say.
”

  The rain had pasted fallen yellow leaves to the smooth marble steps of Lenox House, and they walked up to the door carefully. Two of Edmund’s footmen came out to hold umbrellas over them, Waller hovering in the doorway and watching. “Thank you, thank you,” said Edmund. “Yes, thank you. Waller, have our horses come back?”

  “Your horses, sir?”

  Edmund, despite his light tone, was desperate to have the horses back, particularly Cigar, and had forced Charles to a breakneck pace on their walk home. He had fire in his eyes now. “Send for Rutherford, please.”

  That was the man in charge of the stables. “Yes, sir. Immediately sir.”

  “After that, get the cook to make us some kind of hot drink, please.”

  “Make it stiff as a poker too,” Lenox put in.

  “Very good, sir.”

  They were in the entrance hall, and despite being wet and cold, despite having lost the horses, Lenox felt a kind of good cheer. This was the same hall, with its black-and-white checkered floor, its curving staircase, that had seemed desolate the day before, but now, with the dogs and the servants around them, it reminded him of long-ago days, coming home after a traipse in the country with Edmund, or on occasion with his father.

  “And I could use something quick to eat, too,” he added.

  “By all means, sir,” said Waller, though looking overwhelmed by this succession of requests.

  “Rutherford first, though,” said Edmund. “We’ll change in the meanwhile.”

  A few minutes later they met Rutherford in the hall, both changed, with their hair toweled dry.

  He was a cagy-looking outdoorsman in his fifties with bushy gray eyebrows and a matching mustache. He said their horses hadn’t returned—and he took the news that they were gone very, very hard, particularly because of Daisy, whom he had been training. He couldn’t understand how Charles and Edmund had lost them.

  “Never mind that,” said Edmund. “Ride into town and put the word about among the other groomsmen. Will they recognize the horses?”

  “Every groom in Markethouse knows Cigar.”

  “Good. And while you’re there, fetch Clavering for us, please.”

  “Constable Clavering, Sir Edmund?”

  “Yes—this is a crime. Quickly, if you please. And tell the stable lads to get two or three other horses ready for a longish ride, too—several miles.”

  Rutherford frowned darkly but said, “Yes, sir.”

  Before they had begun their walk back toward Lenox House, they had looked over the gamekeeper’s cottage carefully. “He must have heard us from the start,” Edmund said after they had stood dumbly for a moment, looking at the tree to which their horses had been tied. “He took the dog to the back room, let him loose to distract our attention, and then slipped around to take the horses.”

  Lenox had nodded. “Yes. I think that sums it up.”

  It had been twilight by then, dark falling fast, and though they had scanned the fields all around the house, they hadn’t been able to spot the horses riding away—too dark. It didn’t help that the cottage was low in a swale, surrounded by hilly land.

  When they returned to the cottage they found candles (“a box of candles, from Mr. Woodward’s stall” had been among the missing items, Clavering had said). Lenox was carrying matches, and they lit two of the candles, then set about sifting through the loose, lived-in contents of the little dwelling.

  It was a clever place for a fellow to hide himself: isolated, but warm and close to the village. As Lenox had suspected, it didn’t seem at all as if a mere itinerant had been living here, waiting to be discovered before he moved on. The blankets and cloak on the floor were made into a small, tidy bed; in the kitchen, meanwhile, there was a tin pannikin full of water, a group of wild apples, and a small slate cooking stone, which had the remnants of a blackened chicken leg on it. A stolen chicken leg, presumably.

  What had interested Lenox most, though, was the collection of things that sat close to each other near the head of the makeshift bed: first, a lovely bundle of loosestrife, an entirely pointless decorative touch; second, a book from the Markethouse Library, the fourth volume of Robinson Crusoe; and third, a knife.

  “I’ve always been very fond of loosestrife,” said Edmund, coming over to stand next to Lenox.

  “I wonder if this thief has local knowledge.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Did he know that Snow doesn’t have a gamekeeper, whereas Wethering did, and that therefore this building has been lying empty?”

  “Mm.”

  “Tell me, can you see this place from Snow’s house?”

  Edmund shook his head. “Certainly not. It’s a mile and a half away over uneven terrain.”

  “Then he could have safely lit a candle here at night, even had a fire, without worrying about the smoke from the chimney.”

  They looked and looked by the candlelight. When they were done, Edmund stood tall and stretched his back. “Shall we walk back to Markethouse, or the house?” he said.

  Lenox knew they ought to fetch Clavering immediately—but home sounded irresistible. “The house is a bit closer, isn’t it?” Lenox said.

  “Yes, I think so, if we cut across my fields. Our fields.”

  Lenox smiled. “Yours, certainly! James’s, too, if anyone’s. Yes, let’s head home. There is no urgency to go over the cottage before daylight tomorrow. I doubt the fellow’s returning to it tonight, after seeing us, and the horses are a pretty enough prize in exchange for his loss of a roof.”

  So it was that they had walked back across the country in the driving rain. Now, as they sat drinking warm cider in the short room—that was Edmund’s private study, a satisfyingly untidy book-lined cherrywood refuge, with beautiful large windows looking out over the pond—Lenox said, “Do you know what was interesting about the cottage?”

  “What?”

  “All that we didn’t find there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bottle of sherry, for starters.”

  “Hm. Nor any chalk, for that matter.”

  “We’ll have a closer look in the morning,” Lenox said, shaking his head. He thought deeply for a moment, then added, “It’s an unusual case. I’m glad Hadley came to us.”

  Edmund’s face, glowing rather pink after the exertion of the walk and the switch from cold air to warm on his cheeks, looked tired but engaged. “I’m very glad you’ve come to visit,” he said, glancing through the window.

  “Though it’s lost you your horses?”

  “I don’t know that I could have faced dinner alone on a night such as this.”

  Lenox followed his brother’s gaze outside, to where it was storming, the trees mauling each other at the edge of the pond. Grim, indeed. “Do you ever eat triples any longer?” he said.

  Edmund laughed. “Oh, yes.”

  “I still say you got them more often than I did.”

  “Not likely.”

  Triples were a reward of their youth; any time one of them received a good mark, or finished chores early, their mother would give him a piece of candy she (and nobody else on the earth) called a triple, which was a striped piece of burnt sugar. They were horribly chewy. “After that walk we deserve a triple,” Lenox said.

  “I doubt Father would have thought it particularly commendable to lose the better part of three hundred pounds’ worth of horseflesh.”

  “Well, Mother was an easier touch, it’s true,” said Lenox. “You were somehow able to convince her every Christmas that you had saved me from a bullying at school the term before, though I was perfectly fine, and she would give you extra pocket money.”

  “A fair stratagem,” said Edmund. “I used the money to buy picture-cards of the seaside, I remember. I hung them up above my sink in sixth form. Everyone envied me.”

  Clavering arrived. He joined them in the study; they told him what they had found, and about the theft of their horses. Perhaps because he didn’t feel the happiness they did sim
ply to be inside and dry, his consternation was very much greater than theirs.

  “There was nothing there what to identify him, sir?” he said to Edmund.

  Edmund shook his head. “Not that we found. I suppose you’ll go around to look for yourself in the morning?”

  “Yes, and tell Snow, too,” said Clavering, shaking his head. “He won’t like it a shred, he won’t.”

  “He’s still got his house—we haven’t got our horses,” Lenox pointed out.

  “That’s true. He’ll be deep in for it now, though, whoever this fellow is. The assizes take horse theft very seriously.”

  “Was anything else stolen at the market today?” asked Lenox.

  “All sorts, I don’t doubt, sir,” said Clavering, with a despairing look. “And who’ll hear about it come the morning? Me, that’s who.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was finally bright again the next day, a soft autumn wind shaking a few leaves from the trees now and then, the sun mild but warm. Downstairs early, drinking his coffee and sifting through the new cuttings about Muller that Jane had sent by post, it occurred to him that the horses were actually gone. He had half expected to wake and find that they had wandered home overnight, as horses were wont to do.

  Lenox rode nevertheless. Not far this time—the walk the night before, in combination with the unaccustomed exercise of the previous mornings, had left him very sore—but it was too pretty a day to miss out.

  Edmund was again out upon his walk when Lenox returned, the third day running. He came home sooner now, though. He greeted Charles with a smile, took a piece of toast, and said, between bites, “Shall we go down to church in the village? The service is at ten o’clock.”

  “Will I be noticed if I give it a miss?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly,” said Edmund. “Without a doubt.”

  “Very well.”

  “What do you say to visiting the chapel before we go?”

  The Lenox family chapel had been built sixty years after the house itself. It was a small round building with a fine ivory dome, situated on a hillside beyond the pond, where you could reach it by a series of stone steps laid into the ground.